goddamn that made me choke on my vape… 53+ to 18 Reliability! O_O
Oh snap, I realise now I have already done the Erin Merna photo op. I need to start scrolling through the previous papers before I do these. 
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Yep… You had 37 left after the crash, but decay kicks in below 40 and you still had more than 800km to go.
A less sturdy car may not have finished at all.
Edit: koolkei’s post was between my posts before. This is a wonky, wonky platform sometimes.
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After winning the fifth endurance stage, Frank Harper confessed: “If only there was a rally within a rally this year - specifically, one involving just the endurance stages. We would have almost certainly ended up as Endurance Champions, but on the other hand, we would have little chance of being Sprint Champions if such a series, using only the sprint stages, was also held.”
The “almost-podium” streak has now come to a very pleasing podium streak on the endurance stages, so far, at least, at last 
… though still at almost-last on the sprints 
Kai Gonhan, co-driver and aspiring journeyman engineer at Tare, returned after being interrupted to an extensive talk with some of his company’s “Export Project” officials. Walker Pierce overheard what he thought sounded like his name being mentioned a couple of times among the to him foreign gibberish.
Kai: “Export Project getting split after recent victories! I become second chief engineer!”
Walker: “Oh good for you, pal! But what was that about me? There’s still some races left! The last sprint bein’ very soon!”
Kai: “Yes. We stand on podium again, and you become the main driver for Motorsporting Project!”
Walker: “Motorsporting? Hold on, main driver? You think about employing me as a race driver if I get as close to ‘winning’ as we could possibly get?”
Kai: “How you say? ‘Mighty fine?’”
Walker: “Damn straight it is! Though, you as the second chief engineer better get the car runnin’ as sweet as it could after, so I can actually cruise, ahem, race it the next haul.”
Kai: “Also please look out for any, how do you call actions dangering ‘sweet running’?”
Walker: “Sabotage? Ohh you thinkin’ the guys behind the Demon are in any way mad that even this here mule passed their 200 ponies in overall rating?”
Kai: “Project officials warned about sabotage actions. You made interesting guess.”
Walker: “Sure they ain’t needin’ to go that low. They’ll be mighty quick shepherdin’ their herd on tomorrow’s sprint and the final race, too. Not like we’ve been a challenge there, anyway. Well, except for the time they’ve totally trashed their car!”
Kai: “But, we are at close position over them. And, who they judge for bad races? Is possible they think we want higher score than most powerful car.”
Walker: “Sure hoping that not any one of your guys are screwin’ round that way. Else I ain’t gonna join you, as much as I’d like to.”
Kai: “Positive that this is not case. I also will make sure as secondary chief engineer!”
Walker: “And you’ll build a faster ride next time!”
Kai: “Mighty fine!”
@HowlerAutomotive Let’s see if Walker and Kai can still Tare their way through to the podium on the final endurance to warrant a sweet print on the Herald 
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“You said you weren’t going to drive a clean race!”
“I had the off road lights on, but no one was close enough to give a little nudge to. Anyone we passed, we passed them while they were parked up for repairs.”
“But you had a chance with those H.A. guys.”
“And their car is Soviet steel. Ours is aluminum. We’d have fared far worse in the crash, and then probably ended up shot for doing that. And no, I didn’t get a chance to bumper-tag those Ravencraft guys, they slid off the road before I could manage it.”
“I see, John. So what’s the plan for the next race?”
“Drive like we did today, with the lights on. See if the dazzling brightness causes just as many accidents.”
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Getting close to the end here, this should be exciting! 
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This is one hell of an evening!
I see my drivers squeezed everything they could for the final sprint…now it’s all endurance 
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The HYPE Dam is close to bursting! Better pump out some of that excess and fuel Howler’s Guzzly Bear with that
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“This is what she’s made for! Long straights and wide open curves!”
“Just watch out for the trees when going fast tomorrow. And keep in mind that the Screamin’ Demon under the hood is going to chug fuel.”
“I know, Brian, but one has to celebrate little victories like this one. Especially because we’re the rookies. We can get away with cheering over a 6th place finish.”
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AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha haa haa haaaaaaa haaaaaahhhhhhhh just take it. i know my car’s going down from here…
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Mike Stone remarked after the final sprint: “Our placing in the last sprint wasn’t too bad, but we were simply outpaced by cars better suited to it. I am quite confident that the next stage - the last endurance stage before the 24 Hours of the Nutsoring - will bring better results for us, though.”
So with BRC, Team Wiseman and Smooth Motors making up the top three as of now, I am not sure which one to put my money on for the overall win, what with the end of the rally approaching fast.
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Congratulations to 4LGE, Der_Bayer and phale!
@4LGE takes first place with a clean and fast run, and thoroughly earns the print in the Herald. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the car fixtures to load up properly even after deletions, redownloads and dirty language, so I recreated the nose based on the Auto Show gif. I hope I got it close enough. 
Remarkably the drivers still have strength left in them at the end.
@Der_Bayer claims second place with the best raw time, the BAM Paginza’s comfortable ride helping to offset the effects of fatigue and cheering crowds making up time for the extra fuel stop.
@phale earns third with a solid raw time and a fuel efficiency some thirty five kg ahead of the leaders. The crew starts off more tired than first and second place, and the Ardent is not quite as comfy as the BAM and Tare.
@DeusExMackia continues to show strong times in the endurances, and very narrowly beats out the Ardent on fuel consumption. The speed is good, but not quite enough to threaten the podium.
@thecarlover’s team starts very, very tired but a clean race and just two fuel stops help them drive into fifth place regardless.
@RaduST’s car shows a very similar raw time to the H.A., but six total fuel stops have a big impact on the final time, and the Apulum finishes more than 10 minutes behind.
@Faintingh may have found himself a few places higher in the rankings, if not for a rock hitting the grille and driving a bit of that through the radiator hose 180km into the race.
@abg7’s team goes off the muddy road at speed 360km into the race and find themselves in a deep pit of sticky mud. It takes almost an hour to dig themselves out and the car is worse for the wear. Problems with the chassis (480km) and engine (665km) add to the troubles and the car crosses the finish line 50 minutes behind Sikora-Racing.
@Madrias crashes out just 90km into the stage and loses about 36 minutes to hurried repairs. The impact is quite serious and leaves the car’s reliability decaying for the 600+km to follow. The suspension, bodywork and chassis each take some damage and need to be tended to on emergency stops at 335, 385 and 445km respectively.
@stensen loses some nine minutes to engine troubles at 310km. Perhaps trying to make up time, the team ends up in two crashes - the first, more serious one on mud at 415km and the second 550km into the race on rubble. The car is quite poorly when it crosses the finish line.
@lysambrias’ team sideswipes a tree on muddy roads at the 220km mark. At 465km in, having just transitioned from mud onto rubble, the car lands poorly on a big jump and blows three tires. At 535km, a crash on rubble costs more time.
@koolkei’s team has some troubles with the fuel system 210km into the race. The drivers have started tired and are all tuckered out by the 215km mark, but hang in until 430km into the stage where a very serious impact with a rock costs an hour’s time to pick up the pieces and leaves the car at just 23 reliability. It’s downhill from there unfortunately, with another crash 495km in and continued technical troubles (trim 530km, tires 580km).
@AirJordan sets a kind of record by crashing three times in a single endurance stage. The first one is relatively minor at 365km, but the second at 465km clearly breaks something important because the car has to stop to tend to the chassis just 5km later and has the third crash 5km after that. Three more stops for the Chassis (560km), Tires (570km) and Brakes (625km) have to be made before the car crawls to the finish with 2.88 points of reliability left.
@oppositelock’s team has unfortunately not had the time to fix up their car with just 5 hours between the events. The team is tired and the car starts out below the decay threshold. Exhaustion sets in at 255km and 60km later, the team crashes off the mud track. A second crash at 430km leaves the car only just moving along at 2.36 reliability. Stops have to be made at 450km (Exhaust) and 460km (Trim) until the car sputters to a halt at the 535km mark. (the excel shows more non-damage troubles than the car actually had, since it petered out so early.)
Both pace cars crash again. The Gnoo finds an interesting rock at 610km, the Howler misses the interesting rock but makes friends with a tree 10km later.
There will now be a 10 hour prep session for everybody to fix up and rest up, before the final 24 hour track event.
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Frank Harper recounted his experience in the final endurance stage: “It was tough, to be honest - we made an unnecessary mistake and lost too much time in the process. The wear and tear on the car made things worse, but we can hold our heads high, having won more endurance stages than any other team.”
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“…no, it’s exactly what they said - we should have a ride height of 82mm, as that is the standard level they use in the BTCC. Why would you disagree with that?” exclaimed Andrew. He was struggling to get the engineers to understand him.
“Because, Andrew” - the emphasis right on his name - “this is a rally tuned car, and it’s using bigger wheels. We’re not allowed to swap them out!” replied one of the engineers, his face beginning to writhe with annoyance.
“So you’re telling me that the advice of the two-times BTCC championship team who ran with this exact car should be ignored, despite the fact that we’ll be racing on tarmac?” said Andrew, pointing at the car in fury.
Jan-Bart stood in the corner fiddling with a water bottle. He too was a little annoyed at Andrew’s angry teenage rant, but he certainly didn’t disagree with him.
“I’m sorry” said another engineer, this one much less patronising, “but the whole car will feel completley different otherwise. The wheels and tires are too big to lower the suspension that much. You’ll be bottoming out”.
Andrew turned to face him, and breathed heavily. He considered what he’d just heard, before huffing and storming off.
Jan-Bart looked over at the engineers who were standing awkwardly around the car, none of them sure what to do. They couldn’t exactly disregard what the driver requested.
“Look guys” Jan-Bart stuttered, breaking the silence “He’s just very keen to do well, however ever obvious that is. I don’t think he or any of us expected to do this well and, er, he…” - he paused to choose his words- “…he doesn’t want to let that go”.
More silence met Jan-Bart. He thought for a moment.
“Ok, I know, he’s a stroppy little twat sometimes” - that got the engineers on his side - “but he wants to win as much as you lot do too.” said Jan-Bart. “Just do your best. Set the car up as best as you can, I’ll be back later. I’m gonna have a chat with him”. And with that, he left.
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Ohh boy, first place, even!
@HowlerAutomotive What was the issue with the fixtures? Was it one specific mod not working? And don’t worry, you got the design on spot, not like it was in need of a redesign anyway. But it sure did fly to new heights, as I can see from the picture 
Mr. Pierce has already suggested to Tare “It’d need a six-banger by standard, and just some more of that chrome! And I’m talking 'bout 20 percent more chrome!”. Tare Officials have not been sure how Walker came up with that specific value on the amount of additional chrome, but they took note regardless for the upcoming facelift of the Pratinum.
Right past finish line, Walker Pierce had a short scare as Kai just rushed out of the car as soon as they stopped by the side of the road and furiously patted the bonnet of the Pratinum, then walking off making funny noises. Such reactions were untypical of his co-driver, and the car didn’t perform poorly, he thought, so it shouldn’t be due to that.
Walker: “Were we even supposed to stop here… I ain’t seeing any of them other cars 'round! No Erin, no Wisers, not even the Kramer guys!”
After just sitting there for a minute or so, Walker noticed a car driving up besides his. A long, blue coupé, the driver mumbling something unintelligible that sounded like “What’s mocked the kelp-e black boxy sure here!” as they looked at his car. The sentence didn’t make sense to him, but by the reaction, he could guess what it was about.
Approximation of Walker’s reaction:
https://i.imgur.com/2NGTo.gif
And boy, am I excited! How will Nutsoring work?
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“Damn it!”
“Calm down, John.”
“Shove your ‘calm’ up your ass. We’re going into Nutsoring damaged and tired, because you just had to distract me by opening the map in front of the fucking windshield.”
“But…”
“Shut. The fuck. Up. Go fix the fucking car.”
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Sorry about the late response, I’ve had a couple of very busy weeks, hence also the relatively slower updates of late. I think it was something to do with the game install, I had similar issues earlier on in the thread after a Steam update. That time, I eventually got it to work.
Nutsoring is kind of a mixture of endurance and sprint events. the lap times are based on in-game times (with many modifiers), and every car has 24 hours to make as many laps as possible. Since the surface is good, there was no continuous wear and tear, but crashes and incidents are still in (and play a significant role as you can see below).
With incidents, when someone has an actual crash and the car comes in for more than 60 seconds, they have been allowed to replace tires and tank fuel. For minor troubles (no damage) it is assumed the car just slows down due to concerning noises, pulls over in a “safe” area to throw away loose bits or takes a quick trip through the pits without fuel and tires being replaced.
And so, without further ado:
#RESULTS FOR THE 24 HOURS OF NUTSORING
Congratulations to @lysambrias, @phale and @RaduST!
lysambrias takes a convincing victory 5 laps ahead of second place. This is especially remarkable because the raw lap time and economy of his car is not quite as good as some other cars in the running. The Cascadia CS is, however, very very easy on the tires with the fronts at a respectable 87% every time it comes in for fuel and therefore posts consistently fast laps throughout each stint. Minor troubles with Trim on the 203rd lap have little effect on the result.
phale posts the fastest raw lap time of all the cars competing for points and has one of the two cars which go the full event on just 9 total fuel stops. The tires do get more worn over the long stints. That and some minor car troubles (fuel system hiccups on lap 188 and suspension on lap 277) allow the Cascadia to pull away.
RaduST’s car can show very good lap times, but it is FF with lots of weight (relatively speaking) on the soft front tires and a little bit of wheelspin to boot, so regular stops are needed for fresh rubber. The car finishes on the same lap as phale, about two and a half minutes down, having lost a bit less time to technical troubles (Engine lap 48, Trim lap 319).
@Madrias’ team finally have some open air to floor the gas pedal and make use of all that monstrous hp. The car is still a bit of a handful, as the rear end lets go going into Fireworks on Lap 52, throwing plenty of sparks leaning against the safety barrier and ending in a spectacular spin. The damage is mostly superficial, though there are minor troubles with the bodywork on lap 205 and exhaust on lap 339. The car finishes less than half a minute away from the final podium spot.
@AirJordan has some trouble on that same lap 52, with the internal rear view mirror coming loose, dropping in the driver side wheel well and getting wedged under the clutch pedal. Some time is lost getting unbuckled and some on the following laps due to loss of rear visibility, until the next pit stop when the mirror can be glued back in place. In spite of that, the car is on track for a second place finish, starting their 325th lap with 10 minutes left on the clock. Disaster strikes when the team tries to take too much speed into Colosseum and goes into the barrier with significant force. Damage to the gearbox leaves them stuck in first gear and the engine is running on a couple of cylinders at best. Determined to make the most of the situation, the team spends the next hour and a half crawling through the rest of the circuit at walking pace and finishes long after everybody else has finished.
@Der_Bayer’s car is a bit down on power compared to the leaders, but still quite quick and the effect of comfort continues to be relevant. The BRC team drives a clean event and earns 6th place.
@oppositelock’s car is slightly faster than the BAM, but the drivers are less motivated (due to fewer cheering fans) and the tires wear just that little bit more quickly, leaving it in 7th.
@Faintingh has excellent economy and drives a clean race, but the lap times do not allow for a higher finish. Still, a solid 24 points.
@stensen has raced a mighty rally, but stumbles at Nutsoring. There are troubles with the exhaust system on laps 182 and 250 and the Drivetrain on lap 293. Those cost enough time on their own, but prove to be just a shadow of what’s to come. Perhaps trying to make up for lost seconds and hang on to the championship lead, far too much speed is taken into the Valkyrie on lap 298, the car slides out into the kerb at the negative camber corner and rolls three times. Remarkably, it lands on its wheels and manages to putter into the pits, but hurried repairs cost an hour of precious time. Tough the car does eventually return to finish several more laps, many, many points are now left out of reach.
@abg7 has an early crash in Bertram’s Folly on lap 19, going off into the gravel pits and causing some minor damage to the chassis. In the end, the time lost is negligible and the scuffs do not cause significant problems, aside from a quick stop needed on lap 191.
@4LGE nabs the final four points, having had to stop to fix the loosening driver’s seat on lap 131 and have a quick look at the engine on lap 289.
@thecarlover’s car is a touch too slow on a circuit to go any higher in the standings. A few minutes more are lost on a stop for the Chassis on lap 221. That said, the H.A. is the second car to finish with just 9 total stops.
@koolkei fails to finish a lap, with the brakes failing at the end of The Long Howl and the car hurtles straight into the safety barrier beyond the gravel trap. The crew are miraculously uninjured. (The car had not been tested on Nutsoring and the gearing went too high, so the game crashed.)
@DeusExMackia’s steering system makes a distinct “ping” noise as the team nears Valkyrie on the first lap at full speed, and something clearly goes wrong with the alignment of the front wheels. The little coupe goes wiggling off at speed, the front end digs into the gravel trap and trows the Erin Merna into one and a half soaring front flips, landing neatly on its roof. The crew is uninjured, but the car is totaled. (The car had not been tested on Nutsoring and the gearing went too high, so the game crashed.)
The Howler pace car is well inside its element, posting the fastest lap times and stopping for regular fillups every hour. There are minor issues with the engine (lap 140) and a touch of the wall in Fireworks on lap 325 (Body).
The Gnoo has minor issues with the fuel system on lap 95, but is generally also quite quick. The fuel tank, however, proves to outlast the tires by a significant margin.
Congratulations to phale on winning the 1965 Dalnit-Bralka Rally! There were some rough events and serious crashes on the mid stages, but the Adenine has emerged victorious. Every point counts in events like this, clearly.
Congratulations also to AirJordan and Der_Bayer for their silver and bronze trophies and props to RaduST on his very narrow fourth place. Any one of the top four could easily have taken victory in the end, I was amazed to see it come so close.
I was also glad to see so many different kinds of cars be successful in the rally overall and in individual stages. Almost every car (with the single exception of poor oppositelock) finished on the podium at least once, and we had purely speed built cars, purely economy built cars, comfort and offroad oriented designs and various mixtures of all of the above. And although there was a large amount of randomness involved, there were definitely favourites developing along the way both for individual stages and the overall event. Very happy with how it worked out. 
Thanks again to everybody who took part!
For anyone interested, the “Simulation.txt” file that has been sitting up in the 2nd post can be renamed to “Simulation.rar” and extracted with the password “1asd3blah4qwe”. You’ll find another .rar file inside it which can be extracted with the password “evenMOREsecure” for a double dose of encryption (for no particular reason). If you can be bothered to go through all that song and dance, you’ll find *.pdf files for all the cars in the event.
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