Vladimir and Artyom have dishonoured the whole of Archana. Their (rally) days are now over.
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They did have two second place finishes early on 
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For the endurance races, yes. Until incidents started to happen 
I expected the offroad stat to be more important than it actually was, hence why the car was great on the rough tracks but so slow for anything else.
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So close!! Top 4 completley different cars in 6 points after all thisā¦amazing!
@HowlerAutomotive Thank you for putting DBR65 together, it was hugely amusing 
I hope this competition will continue. I hope those sweet papers will not die as well.
as for my driversā¦It all went wellā¦but at very moment Juan Pablo Motorini smelled a possible victory, his foot went from lead to uraniumā¦or as would Angelo Smoothini say: āeee he no listen and he no brake. So car eee he brake aā¦ the car eeā¦ so now we no win. Still eee awe are a very happy.ā
PS: pace cars whooped our asses time wiseā¦
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Congratulations to @phale on winning. By the way, what real-life race track did you feature in the made-up front page of the Dalnit Herald? Is it the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi? Given that the track was opened in 2009, it gives the feel of a historic meet rather than a period race!
Hurrah for the '65 DBR! This really has been a blast 
thanks for this, @HowlerAutomotive!
Of course, the question is: Can we expect this to return any time?
Just to know how much time our engineers will have, and to tell Tare to release a car that is more sporty than a lush 4x4 estate 
shall we prepare for 1970?
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Jan-Bart opened his eyes. The sound of cars driving by in the background was normal. The feeling of blood rushing to his head was not.
He shook suddenly; they were upside down. A hissing was coming from the front of the car, and some liquid was dripping off the front of the crumpled bonnet.
It struck him right then; the race was over.
He turned towards Andrew. He hadnāt been knocked out by the crash. In fact, it was like he had barely moved. His hands were still on the steering wheel, feet still on the pedals. His face was filled with dismay.
āWhat went wrong?ā Andrew uttered suddenly, a vulnerability clearly in his voice.
āIā¦Iā¦I donāt knowā replied Jan-Bart. What else could he say?
Jan-Bart could see the tears welling up in Andrewās eyes. Now he was really struggling for words. Suddenly, Andrew wasnāt his team mate. He was the good friend heād found during this epic rally series. The person heād seen as incompetent, stroppy and annoying at the start, but now seen as a skillful, promising driver with real talent. And heād just had his first big defeat.
āHeyā said Jan-Bart, gently, āitās alright. This sort of stuff happens. Itās no ones fault, it just happensā
āBut we were going to do so well. This is a track car after allā replied Andrew, sounding almost as if he were a child.
Jan-Bart paused. He needed to reassure the young driver.
āYou know something?ā he said - Andrew turned towards him - āI havenāt seen anyone drive the way you do before. I havenāt seen anyone whoās put up with a car that isnāt even really designed to be here for so long without just giving up. You are brilliant, Andrew. Absolutely brilliant. And you have so much promise. You just seem to know what youāre doing. I donāt think Erin themselves knew exactly what they were entering in to, and yet you just jumped in to a trans-national rally event for your racing debut. That takes serious guts to do thatā¦ā
The dismay was gone from Andrewās face, and in itās place was a look of hope.
" ā¦Yes, it feels absolutely devastating right now. And youāll want to kick yourself for the next week every time you think of this moment. But there is no race driver in the world - certainly no rally driver at least - who hasnāt lost everything in one go like today. Youāll get past this. And youāve got so much to look forward to".
Andrew had never felt more optimistic. Heād completely forgot they were upside down - that didnāt matter.
āThank you, Jan-Bart. Not just for putting up with me, but for believing in meā he said at last.
Jan-Bart smiled. āNow how long until some stewards come and roll us over?ā he said, and they both laughed.
Andrew Sell would go on to be Erin Motorsportās first official rally driver in the 1967 European Rally Championship, and would finish the team in 2nd place at the Rally Monte Carlo in 1968. Though Erin Motosport never won the series, Sell helped the team to finish 2nd overal between 1969 and 1972, before he moved to Lancia when the World Rally Championship was started the the following year.
Jan-Bart continued as a co-driver with Andrew until 1970, when he became a race engineer for Erinās rally team. He would later join the Civera Silhouette project as a race engineer with Damien Harleson and Michael Farthing between 1971 and 1976, helping to cement the position of the car as ErinSportās best car of the 70s and one of the best Group 4 racers ever made, even ending up on the ErinSport-Martini team at the 1976 season of the BRC.
Both are widely remembered inside Erin as some of the most important team members in ErinSportās history. The two remained very good friends until Andrewās sudden passing in 2009 of a heart attack.
Congratulations to @phale for the final victory! I really hope everyone has had as much fun following this as I have. Major well done to @HowlerAutomotive for running all this, making all the superb newspaper front pages and making it a seriously good competition.
You can bet Iām looking forward to a potential second round of this
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āWe could have had third if it wasnāt for that spoiler.ā
āFourth isnāt so bad, Brian. We pulled through in the end. This is what the Demon was really built for. We took what was supposed to be a brutal micro-muscle car with a massive V8 and changed it into this, a violent and fast machine. Gone is the V8, banned both by cylinder count and displacement, but our nearly 2-liter V12 pulled us through. We proved that while horsepower isnāt everything, it can make a big difference.ā
āButā¦ you drove a clean race.ā
āSo did you. Both of us wanted to win, and thatās why both of us drove a clean race. Somewhere, deep within that shell that says you want to win at all costs, is the guy who drove the first half of this race. That vicious spin showed that. It made you consider whether smashing the car up was worth potentially one more spot if it went in your favor, or ending up smashed and out of the race.ā
āSo youāre saying thatā¦ That because I didnāt let the car spin earlier, that because I held it into the safety barrier until the Smooth team got by, thatās why we won?ā
āPrecisely. Because you realized that while letting the car go would have dropped us in front of them, it would have been head-to-head in the collision, and weāre made of lightweight stamped aluminum. Theyād have driven through our car like it was made of butter, and we would have been out of the run.ā
āSo even though I knocked the rear spoiler loose again, I made the right decision?ā
āYes. You minimized damage. You scraped the guard-rail in order to let someone else get through, someone who had trouble not long after. Sure, you ripped up the tape holding the spoiler down, but we were able to fix that. Then when it was my turn to handle the damaged car, I brought it in on lap 205 and had them rivet the spoiler back down. When the exhaust header started falling off the car, you worked quickly, you bolted it back on, despite the heat, because otherwise we would have ended up out of the running.ā
Long after the Dalnit-Bralka Rally of 1965, Storm Automotiveās team was ready for anything.
Brian Shade now had an honest 8th place under his belt, 8th out of 14 cars. No longer having to hold up his 8th out of 8 from an amateur road course event as evidence that he did race cars, Brian chose in 1980 to leave the Engine Team Management in the hands of his son, Jim Shade, to pursue his passion of racing cars. He decided to follow his passion of rally racing, and got into Group B. When Group B fell due to the number of deaths caused by ever rising horsepower, Brian retired from racing cars, and despite being nearly 64 years old, decided to get into racing boats. His crash in 1988 would be his last crash ever, as his jet powered boat, the Valkyrie, collided with a bridge support and burst into flames.
John Storm returned to the company and poured his heart and soul into his work, creating many insane and fast cars until 1984, when he decided he was just ātoo old for this shitā and left the company in the hands of Jim Shade. Being in his 70ās, John knew it wouldnāt be long before the end, though also knew that heād seen many things, some at his own hands. Heād built and driven a 750 horsepower AWD station wagon because the design teams decided to just build whatever they wanted. Heād driven a dragster down the quarter mile, and heād run three road races since the Dalnit-Bralka rally. When he heard of his friendās crash in 1988, he grieved in his own way, entering a last race in honor of his friend, though the results of that race arenāt known. What is known is that John, knowing his last days were fast approaching, headed west to see the Rocky Mountains, and that he eventually settled in Colorado, where he lived for the rest of his days.
However, the Dalnit-Bralka Rally did one last thing that lives on in Storm Automotiveās legacy. It created the Storm Raceworks Division, building stupid-fast cars designed for specific races. This small group of car builders also followed in their founderās footsteps: They built 'em, so they raced 'em. Knowing their cars inside and out, these Raceworks Division drivers were also excellent mechanics, and gave them an edge over some of their competition.
Congratulations to @phale! This was really anybodyās race up to the very end, and you built the best car for both jobs.
Thank you to @HowlerAutomotive for hosting this excellent rally series. Iāve had a ton of fun following it, and even toward the middle of it started to hit my stride on developing the characters from just a splash of an idea and a few names, to fully building them out. Itās been an insane journey across many stages, many races, a roller-coaster ride of emotions, and I wouldnāt have had it any other way. Sure, many of us spent more time fixing the cars than we spent racing them, butā¦ Such is how racing has always been.
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Between the Cascadia CSās thirsty engine guzzling down fuel and hard tires limiting the raw speed, placing first in the 24 hours of Nutsoring was the last thing I expected. Glad G+C Engineering did something right. The absence of trees and rocks lining the course probably helped
Itās been a blast to participate in this competition. I enjoyed the variety of challenges and awesome newspaper articles; it was great to see such a variety of cars succeed in different stages. Hard to believe the fight for first place was so close - Team G+C is pleased with finishing mid-pack, and really, just being part of this rally. Thanks for running such an incredible challenge @HowlerAutomotive !
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nice one, im looking forward for the next event
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Wow, what an unbelievable finish! After struggling through the first few stages, I was not expecting to pull through in the end. This competition really had it all: a challenging build process with many difficult trade-offs, an engaging and immersive storyline written by the community, and of course, an intense and exciting series of races! Big kudos to @Howlerautomotive for putting this all together, and to all the competitors for making it a great experience from start to finish!
Veronica Powell smiles for the camera with her trophy
Veronica Powell and Casey Schmidt
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Indeed.
It has been lots of fun, so it just might - but due to limited free time and the fair amount of work that goes into this, there is likely to be a bit of a pause before Iām up for the next one.
A big thanks to everybody for the kind words and the effort youāve put into making the rally come alive. It wouldnāt have been half as good without the back stories and interviews. 
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Thank you for helping to drive that story along - pun NOT intended - the little anecdotes about each stint were brilliant!
And do not worry about starting another round soon, have some well earned time off from Automation competition hosting 
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thanks for this great competition and the enormous amount of effort you put into this!
still, i have to admit i am a little disappointed with how the last two stages went considering how well my tactic worked until then. iām blaming the vodka 
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Is there going to be any more of this?
At some point in the future, the DBR may well come back. But right now I do not have the time.
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I think thatās very understandable. At least give it until UE4 before starting to think about it. What would the next year be? Would it be BRC style with decades between series, or more an era-based style (eg Group B/1980s, Group A Subaru vs Mitsubishi/1990s etc)?
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As far as lore goes, the DBR is intended to be a yearly event, but to bring variety to the Challenge, I would probably have a close look at when new technologies (and possibly body types) become available and pick the year accordingly. Thereās turbos in the seventies, which would be quite a nice shakeupā¦
I would seek to adjust the spreadsheet to account for changes in the game engine, balance for the changed technology and maybe adjust the stat weightings a little (for example I might make offroad+safety affect the damage taken in incidents, as a measure of robustness).
Iād also be reviewing the budget and ruleset to suit the era, but the DBR will remain a relatively low-budget, narrow-tire affair to keep as many technologies and body types viable as possible.
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Sounds like a good plan. Reworking the original rules basically, which is good because they were very well designed rules. Either way, I canāt wait for the next round (but absolutely no rush!)
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Awesome! I really liked how it played out last time, thrilled to see where it goes!
But I agree with @DeusExMackia and would wait until Automation goes Unreal. Though, I will guess that itād take some time until modded bodies will be made for/ported to UE4, especially for the possible late 60ās/early 70ās.
Speaking of the years, it being yearly would really stretch it. Three years would be tolerable, with future events in 1968, 1971, ā¦ , 1977, ā¦ , 1986, ā¦ , 1995. Though, that might still be an epic scale, with 18 more events to go until 2019 being the final possible year, unless the game stretches further into the future (Fear the all electric '28 Gnoo Dynamotorki!? ).
Going with four years, it would condense down to 13 more events until the final event in 2017, with next being in '69 (I like the sound of that), ā¦ , '77, ā¦ , '85, ā¦ , '93.
Or have larger, almost-decade long timespans, but returning back with one or three years advancement at each step once we reach the final year of a cycle?
So with a 9 year time span and 2 year reset-advancement, itād go like: '65, '74, '83, '92, '01, '10, '19 -reset-> '67, '76, '85, ā¦
This way, we could theoretically cover every or many years of the DBR while still having variety and advancement through the decades, with the very next Rally being in 1974 already.
Well, how is it with suggestions, anyways? There was one rule that itched me a bit, and that was on the displacement caps. I really liked that they varied between valvetrains, and it turned out to be nicely balanced but with one: I felt the limitations on SOHC and DOHC didnāt really regard the actual valve count, so that the maximum valve count was always preferred over e.g. 2 valve SOHC or 2 valve DOHC especially. While having less valves would provide improvements in reliability, weight and cost, the reduced efficiency and power didnāt make them worth it over just going with DAOHC and OHV. If both 2 valve DOHC and SOHC had a max displacement of 1.9l, and 3 valve SOHC 1.85l, they possibly wouldāve seen more use.
Ohh! And I hope Turul didnāt outlaw V10 engines
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