BRC: Global GT Series [THE END]


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BRC: Global GT Series


The BRC Global GT Series will bring the most prestigious sports and supercars of the early 90s to six iconic race tracks in the (Automation) world. Cars will compete in two classes, GT1 and GT2, for the race victories and the titles. Races will go over 200 km, searching for the best package of speed, efficiency and consistency.

Again, we will be using the BRC race simulation with live broadcasts of the races including commentary and later YouTube uploads for those who missed the live stream.

BRC Guide (WIP)

Example Race Broadcast



Historical Background

The BRC Global GT challenge is loosely based on the BPR Global GT Series, which was the predecessor of the FIA GT championship. The BPR Global GT Series was a grand tourer-based sports car racing series which ran from 1994 to 1996 before becoming the FIA GT Championship in 1997. The series was founded by Jürgen Barth, Patrick Peter, and Stéphane Ratel (their last names forming the BPR name) as an international endurance racing series to replace the World Sportscar Championship which had ended in 1992. The championship started with privateer gentlemen racing their own modified sports and supercars, but quickly gained interest from manufacturers, leading to the development of purpose-built, street legal race cars such as the Porsche 911 GT1.



The Cars

We will be racing in two classes, GT1 and GT2. GT1 cars will be a quite exclusive and more complex (supercars), while GT2 cars are more derived from typical medium- to high-end sports cars.

Inspiration


Banned bodies

These car bodies are banned from the competition. Reasons can be wonky/overpowered aerodynamics or just being not in the spirit of the challenge. I did not ban every truck/people mover/… body, as those should be a bad enough choice anyway.
The list may be extended, as new issues may be discovered and new mods may appear on the workshop. If you find something suspicious, ask first before you invest a lot of time into your car build.


Soft suspension exploit

Currently it is still possible to gain lap time by using an unrealistically soft suspension, as this issue has not yet been fixed by the devs. No big deal - if everybody knows about it, everybody is on the same page. I cannot do anything against it with reasonable measures, so I just sit and wait for it to be fixed.

Just try to soften your springs and dampers and see if it does something good for you.



The Drivers

For the first time in BRC history, you will be able to modify your driver skills. You have a given number of skill points you can invest in improving 6 different skills. The more you spend on a single skill, the more expensive it gets.

Try to use all of your skill points. It is not required to use all of them though. Just make sure it does not say that you have a negative number of points left - in that case, you are disqualified.



The Tracks

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Races will be held on six tracks in the automation universe. In addition to the well-known Automation Test Track, I have created another track for each country of the map. Link to track pack: Automation World Track Pack

Race Calendar

  • Automation Test Track (45 laps)
  • Al Rilma Beach (41 laps)
  • Narnilla (43 laps)
  • Autodromo Yanagrad Road Course (51 laps)
  • Teberbergring (34 laps)
  • Ellisbury Road Course (46 laps)

Race Format

  • distance 200 km
  • standing start (unlike the real BPR)
  • pit stops allowed
  • pit speed limit: 80 kph
  • tyre change time: 40s +/- 5s
  • refuel speed: 2 kg/s
  • refuelling and tire change simultaneously
  • safety cars possible
  • weight penalties for the top 10 cars leading the championship (up to 100 kg).

Weather forecasts are included in the strategy submission spreadsheet.
Note: The forecasts are updated once the challenge opens. Not final yet, just placeholders!



The reward

Fame and honours!



Entering the Challenge

Basic rules

  • one single entry per player (either GT1 or GT2, not both) - first submission counts, more PMs will be ignored
  • same for the pre-season tests: only submit a single car.
  • obvious meme cars will be disqualified (stretch-limos, trucks, …)
  • collaborations are allowed - each player may enter a car (including different liveries and different car tunes) - just one player name per car - cars of collaborators will still race each other (and crash into each other)
  • no multi-accounting
  • no cheating

Technical regulations

>> Rules Spreadsheet <<
There is a self-scrutineering sheet on the second tab of the spreadsheet. After copying the spreadsheet for your own use, please use this to check yourself if your car is legal.

Submission process

  • Claim your car number (matching your number you put into the team registration) here:
    >> Numbers Spreadsheet <<

  • Check your car against the rules in the self-scrutineering sheet:
    >> Self-Scrutineering Sheet <<
    Copy this spreadsheet for your own use if you don’t want others to see your car stats.
    As you have all the tools needed to check your car yourself, I will disqualify any car not meeting the rules without notice or second chance.
    Be aware of the 107% rule - cars more than 7% slower than the fastest car on the Automation Test Track (in-game standard track, standing start) will not be considered in the challenge.

  • The following step may be done twice (once for pre-season testing and once before the final car deadline (for changes after the pre-season test):

    • Register your race team here:
      >> Team Registration <<
    • Add your race car file to a PM to Der_Bayer and paste the team registration info into the PM. Before the .car file export, check if your car meets this naming convention:
      • Car model naming convention: your user name here
      • Car trim naming convention: your car name here
        Note: Please don’t add any “BRC” or whatever tag to the car model name.
  • After the practice results have been published, enter your race strategies here (one for each race):
    >> Strategy Submission Sheet <<
    Send your race strategies according to the instructions in the spreadsheet



Deadlines

Pre-season test (optional): Tuesday, 5th of January, 6 a.m. CET; Car export + Team Registration required.
Final race car: Saturday, 16th of January, 7 a.m. CET; Car export + Team Registration required.
Race strategies (not yet accepted): deadline not before Saturday, 23rd of January, 7 a.m. CET

Practice results will be provided for all races in advance of the season. Use them before submitting the strategies.

Strategies may be changed during the course of the season - I still would like to have base strategies in advance, in order to get through the season quickly without having to wait for strategy submissions.



Changelog

  • Replaced TrackSportiness in car difficulty calculation (which affects the chance of driver errors) with a plain value of 50. So car difficulty is now 50/TrackTameness. TrackSportiness is still a part of the base lap time calculation by the Automation and the BRC (to be changed in a patch anytime in the future - most likely not for this BRC).

Other Notes

  • Wet weather racing: We are using the full tire selection to accound for weather this time: Slicks, Intermediates, Wets. No change has been made to how the system works compared to previous BRCs.
  • Strategy mode: We are using the strategy mode “Sprint” for this challenge, which allows for more customization than the simple one used in the 24h race. It is the same as the mode used 4 years ago in the BRC 1976 season (and in earlier BRCs).


Feedback and questions welcome! Let me know what information is unclear/missing. I’ll open the challenge as soon as I feel confident about the rules.

31 Likes

I’ll leave these playlists right here:

7 Likes

So question, the model body year can be a '96, but the trim can only be '95? Is that correct?

No, that’s an error, I’ll fix it.

According to the Team Registration spreadsheet, the maximum number of points available to each driver across all skills is 30 - is that correct?

Looking forward to seeing the debut racing appearance for the revived Hudson Motor Car Company. Hope to see y’all there!

Edit: One thing I’ve noticed in the self-scrutineering sheet that confounded me for a moment, and might do the same for other Americans: Values such as loudness and engineering times must be input with a comma as the decimal delineator instead of a period (for example: 69,5 is accepted, whereas 69.5 is not). Hopefully this saves someone else from the five minutes of confusion I just went through :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

Can we provide more cars for pre-season?

No, it depends on your skill distribution. The more points in a single skill, the more expensive another point becomes. You get the most points by using an equal distribution, but maybe you want to focus on a few skills more than on others.

Will be fixed later!

No, single entry only. Getting cars into the simulation is still a big effort.

1 Like

So we have to wait until the challenge is open to know the banned bodies I assume

Re the power to weight ratio, are those rounded numbers? For example, my first test car has 0.500004531…, or 0.49999924761… depending on one tick up or down in weight. Would the lighter car (0.50000xxx) be allowed? So are these rounded numbers, and if so, is it according to normal rounding rules (i.e., is 0.50499999999… acceptable to keep it under 5.1), or is it a strict mathematical 0.5 or below.

I will accept some deviations, but won’t discuss where I make the cut here. The difference in your examples is in fractions of a hundreth of a second in laptime.

Keep below the thresholds as posted, then your are fine. If you still get above the threshold (due to a morph reset or something like that), I will make sure that we get the car into the challenge.

2 Likes

Hi Der, arguing with Zilver about how tyre wear works. Does Service Cost Multiplier have anything to do with it?

Can we have Killrob move into the next patch a plus minus 50 or something like that? These racecars need finer tuning. Plus and minus 15 is 31 options, we can use 101 options.

is Body Year the Model Year or the actual year for the body itself?

From the auto discord:

chiefzach2018 | Zacspeed Yesterday at 01:27
For the body year, are you referring to the model year or the year the body was introduced?
Der Bayer Yesterday at 01:35
Body introduction year

in order to calculate driving difficulty, which one is the correct formula
TrackTameness / TrackSportiness
OR
TrackSportiness / TrackTameness
asking because i kinda wanna know how idiot-proof my car really is


scratch that, found it

it is TrackSportiness divided by TrackTameness


For those interested, post your times in this table to compare our “Private test” times :stuck_out_tongue:
Not made by me

3 Likes

Regarding power steering, what types, if any, can we use? And should there be a minimum safety requirement, and if so, how low will the minimum value be?

There’s no rule about power steering or safety.

Another set of questions and suggestions: The following two bodies are especially slippery and are therefore widely expected to be OP. However, I am not sure as to whether they should be banned from use - What do you think?

And I suspect the power-to-weight ratio limits are there mainly to stop people from going too crazy with turbos.

What about upper and lower wheelbase limits? Should there be any or not, and if so, how long and how short, respectively?

As for the engine PU limits, I think they are unusually low for both classes (especially when using a 4-valve DOHC valvetrain), and ought to be raised to account for the fact that a set of full-on racing exhaust headers adds a lot of PU due to being very difficult, time-consuming and expensive to manufacture even compared to a set of street-legal long tubular headers, all other things being equal. Moreover, I’m assuming we have to use 95 RON premium unleaded and a three-way catalytic converter of some sort.

Edit: Thank you for clarifying.

1 Like