It took a bit longer than anticipated, but season 5 is here!
For this season, I will try out a new format, so please read the format changes carefully.
RULES:
General:
- Year (for everything): 2020
- Body type: Coupe, Sedan, Wagon or Hatchback
- Wheelbase: min. 2.50m, max. 2.80m
- Body year: 2005-2020
- Body and chassis materials: any
- chassis type: monocoque only
- Engine position: any
- tech pool: +5 on everything
- Quality: -5 to +5
1. Engine baseline:
Every car must use a 1.0L Ford Ecoboost engine as the baseline. This means that all cars must use an engine with these base specifications:
Type: I3
Bore: 71.9mm
Stroke: 82.0mm
Cast iron block, aluminium head
Head: DOHC 4v, VVT on all cams, VVL
Engine Family Quality: +3 (because presumably, if you repurpose an eco engine for racing you’d probably strengthen it to make sure it lasts)
Here’s a screenshot to help you match the required specs more easily:
If your engine differs from this, the car will be disqualified.
2. Engine tuning:
- changing internals material is allowed
- must be turbocharged
- max. boost: 2.0 bar
- Fuel: Super Unleaded (up to 98RON)
- no changes to engine timing
- max. loudness: 60
- max. allowable engine stress: -5%
- max. power output: 350.0hp
3. Trim:
- Drivetrain: AWD only
- Gearbox: 7-speed DCT
- Tyres: any type, up to 560mm total tire width per side (1 front + 1 rear tire <=560mm)
- Tyre quality: +5
- Cooling Airflow: 50+
- Must have 2 full seats
- Must have power steering & ABS
- Safety: Standard 20s Safety, 0 quality
- Approximate cost: up to 50.000$
- Minimum weight: 900kg
- max. emissions: 20.0
^this refers to theTrim’s emissions, aka the Emission value under Detail Stats of the trim (NOT the emissions of the engine variant):
4. Aero:
- every fixture that affects downforce is classified as an aero fixture
- up to 8 aero fixtures per car. Each modular wing part counts as 1 fixture because that’s how Automation counts it. Mirrored fixtures count as 1 fixture.
- All aero fixtures must be visible from outside the car
- No wing stacking
- No invisible fixtures
- No wings inside the body or hidden under the car
- Modular wings allowed
5. Advanced Trim settings:
Engine:
Intake/Exhaust sportiness may be adjusted
Position X, Y and Z up to +/- 10
Body:
Front/Rear ride height: up to +5
Chassis Track Width: up to +10
6. Submissions:
Submissions open: Saturday, 8th of July
Submissions close: Saturday, 15th of July, 6pm CEST
Only cars submitted via my discord will be accepted . To submit, drag and drop your car file (Automation car files only) into the “community-challenge-files” subchannel. You can name your car and engine however you like, there are no naming conventions. Only 1 submission per player is allowed, no resubmissions. So please make sure your car meets all the rules before submitting the car. The deadlines will be generous enough to allow for thorough testing as well as double-checking the rules are met, and there will be no need to rush your entry. Collaborative efforts are allowed, but as stated before only 1 car per player is allowed, so if you submit a car that you built together with a friend then you (or your friend) can’t submit another car in addition to that.
For this season, because I’m a rally enthusiast I want to bring a somewhat more authentic rally experience across this time around. The problem I had was that for a proper rally experience the individual tracks should be longer because real rally stages are long. There are some great, long and challenging rally-esque stages in BeamNG. However, with the number of entries growing every season, if we get 20 entries this time and let’s say I were to pick Italy Mixed Hillclimb which probably takes about 6 minutes in a fast car like this, that’s 120 minutes (2 hours) of pure run time, not including the loading times when switching between cars and not including all the failed attempts. I would burn myself out with the less competitive cars before I even get to the top cars that actually have a chance of winning. It would be a waste of everyone’s time. Hence, I decided to change the format this time.
FORMAT CHANGES FOR S5:
First, we will do a qualification round. Every submitted car will partake in the qualification round, which will go like this:
- The cars will be shuffled into randomized pairings
- These pairings will be shown head to head in 3 races, 1 on asphalt, 1 on dirt and 1 mixed (Note: the head-to-head is only a video presentation style)
- The finishing times of all 3 qualification races are added together to give a total time for each car
- Every car whose total time is not within 5s of the fastest car will be eliminated from the main competition.
Main competition:
- The cars that qualified for the main competition will be raced on 3 stages, 1 on asphalt, 1 on dirt and 1 mixed.
- Times are added together to determine the winner. (the times from the qualification round don’t matter)
- In each of the 3 races of the main competition, 1 random car out of the eliminated cars will be chosen as a wildcard. It can’t score points, but it will still be in the video for comparison.
Qualification round tracks:
- Atoll - Asphalt Track (1 lap with standing start)
atoll in BeamNG repository
- Crandon International (1 lap with standing start) [*]
Crandon in BeamNG repository:
- West Coast - Cell Tower Delivery
Main competition tracks: TBD (but these will be longer and much harder than the tracks in the qualification round)
[*] Some tracks that these cars will race on have moderate to large jumps. Since these are high-performance rally cars, they must be capable of handling those jumps. If I get a bad landing and break the suspension I’ll reset, of course. But if lifting before the jump, taking different lines over the jump etc. and everything within reason (aka without slowing down to a crawl) doesn’t help and the suspension still breaks every time I go over that jump, your car is eliminated because it can’t finish. So if this happens at Crandon, not only will it not finish Crandon, but it also won’t be raced at West Coast and it won’t be considered as a wildcard for the main competition. If it happens in the main comp, the car will be eliminated from the main comp. But in all likelihood, if your car is good enough to make it to the main comp then it’ll probably be fine with the jumps.
With all of this being said, enjoy building! 
