Formalities: let’s get them out of the way:
Original QFC
Previous QFC19
And now for something a bit more racy:
We will be building Group 3 (GT) homologation road cars from 1967. These will be street legal rides that have a racing counterpart. The GT cars weren’t up to the level of the GT40 and Ferrari 365, they were more street-able and attainable by “regular” people. The homologation rules of this class required a production minimum of 500 road cars to be eligible.
NOTE: I’m not a 60’s race history expert by any means, so these may end up being more of an “alternative reality” type of ruleset, but I’m sure we’ll have fun.
Techpool - proving to be a real mess with the possibilities of multipliers and other weird things to try and take advantage, so for this challenge, everyone leave TP alone at the stock levels. No touchy.
Naming convention - same as always, use "QFC20 - {your name here} for the Model and Family, and the rest is yours to label your vehicle.
Requirements
- Trim and variant year 1967 (model and/or family year can be older). Body can be newer, due to the Techpool standard +5 setting.
- Body type open. I suspect most will pick some sort of 2-door, but I won’t restrict. Build what sells and wins races.
- Wheelbase open.
- Engine class will be 4000cc or UNDER for this competition. Group 3 had all sorts of sub-categories so I’m sticking with middle of the road 4.0L here. So these will be small-midsize cars most likely.
- No price limit, but it will be extremely important to have a good value proposition.
- Fuel type: Leaded - Super 98 RON
- No race parts (intake/headers), or V16 engines. These are not the race cars, these are the road cars. You can definitely go for performance parts, however.
- Maximum loudness of 60. This should be enough for almost any high-sports car.
- RWD is the standard, let’s all stick to that
- (updated Feb 25) - Tires can be bias-ply or radial. HOWEVER, there are limitations for radials to address accuracy for the times. Quality for bias-ply tires must stay at Zero (0). Quality for radials must be set to Minus Two (-2) to compensate for all the advantages radials have. Radial tires must also be 70 profile. So, a 225/70R14 would be OK, but a 225/65R15 would NOT be. I can’t find historical records for 1967 where this would be different. For consistency, stick with Sports Compound for either choice, or if you feel like it would benefit you better, go with medium compound. Not sure that would be a good choice but it isn’t banned.
- At least standard 60s safety required.
- Your car must be road legal for the era. That is pretty easy: headlights, tail/brake lights (combined is fine), turn signals (can be combined to brake/tail lights), license plate (you can use UK, Japanese, USA, or any European).
- Advanced trim settings (small changes) are fine to accomplish a look. Do not abuse it.
- Interior will not be required or judged. It might be good for pics to toss in some seats and a wheel though.
- (updated for clarity Feb 25) 2 full seats minimum, however if you want to try it, you can do a single seat up front provided you can also get two full seats in the back, like a McLaren F1. I don’t expect it to work, but it would be legal. Otherwise, two full front seats at least.
- (updated for clarity Feb 25) Aero: You can put one spoiler, wing, or lip on the front and back, but make it look period-correct. Your total downforce per side must not be a positive number, but you can reduce lift with your aero parts. The exception is if you need more than one lip to blend together to make a shape work out. As long as the downforce is not positive, you are GOOD.
Top Priorities
- Performance stats / bragging rights - outright numbers matter. If your car is faster, brakes better, handles better, etc, then it will place higher on this side of things. You don’t have to be the fastest, but you probably don’t want to be the slowest!
–I will rank each performance spec - Top Speed, 0-100kph, 80-120kph, 1/4 mile, Cornering G’s (I’ll take the 20 and 200m specs and average them to one spec), and 100-0 braking distance. So, 6 specs to look after. - Track times - I will “race” each car on Automation’s version of the Green Hell (Nurburgring) and Circuit de la Sarthe (sans chicanes), for ultimate lap times and that will be a factor in the ranks. The total time for each will be used to rank, as a collective “track time” score.
- Sportiness - It has to be fast and handle well, and Automation’s stat will count for something.
- Styling - its got to look good to sell off the showroom, Pops! This is from the era of some of the most beautiful GT3/Group3 type cars to ever exist, so go wild and express your inner boy racer. (Subjective rank)
Pretty Important
- Safety, at least 1960’s standards of such.
- Reliability - It helps to be able to finish a race, but for a road car it helps to be able to depend on it day to day. At least some days like weekends.
- Price - while there is no price limit, a 100k car that does only as well as a 50k car is going to lose this category.
- Driveability - It’s important for your car to have accessible performance.
Still Matters
- Service Costs
- Fuel Economy
- Value
- Prestige
- Environmental Resistance
- Comfort
Notes about judging and how I’ll be scoring this challenge
Over the challenges in the past, I’ve developed a fairly decent way to run a rank point scoring system. For those unfamiliar, I will summarize:
3-star priorities are ranked with a 150% boost in their points.
2-star priorities are awarded with 100% (normal) points.
1-star priorities get 50% of their points.
This time though, there will be some elimination factors and it will be simple. If you place dead last in 5 (or more) judging categories, even the 1-star ones, the car is automatically disqualified from winning. This will serve as a balancer to keep the hardcore builds with extreme compromises from over-running the more conservative ones. So as examples:
- if you placed last on comfort, value, fuel economy, safety, and service costs but you had high performance figures, you would be out of the running because you built your car with too much race focus.
- On the other hand, if you placed dead last in all performance criteria but it placed well in comfort and driveability, you would be out because you built your car without sporting intent. The exception will be subjective styling, because that’s, well…subjective and not fair to eject a participant on this.
Speaking of styling, it will be a big factor in the total points. I’m going to try and secure some additional viewpoints to help me judge the best looking car. The styling aspect will account for 1/3rd of the total points.
Edited 2/24/2023 for Inspirations-
Inspirations
Keep in mind these are the race cars, the road cars would be basically the same minus the race livery, and race tires, etc.
Feel free to add your own inpirations as well. We’re looking for Alpines, E-types, Cobras, Panteras, Dinos, 911’s, stuff like that. I know some of these were in other classes (due to engine sizes I think), but I want to see some variety so if you think of others, just post them up!
Deliberation/discussion is fine up 'till Sunday Feb 26 2023 12:00PM PST.
Submissions will open after that
The deadline is Tuesday, March 7 at 12:00PM PST afternoon.
