TUNING ARMS RACE
A short, competition across the holiday season
Following on from some discussions over on the challenges channel on Discord (and personal experiences with racing challenges), I decided to run a little challenge focused on pushing for the best times on the drag strip. The aim of this challenge is to promote a constant jostling for position, an arms race on the drag strip.
GENERAL CONCEPT
- Current standings can be viewed here.
- You start with a base car, and tune it according to some ruleset.
- DM me your cars whenever you want, either here or on Discord. You are allowed unlimited resubmissions, and they’re encouraged. I’ll grab them between 11AM and 12PM UTC, then I’ll check each car and add their kilometre times onto a spreadsheet, along with an update here.
- You can share your numbers on Discord and such, but you don’t have to. Don’t be an ass with it.
- You gain points based on your rank on each day, with a bonus based on rank at the end of the week, see below.
- Your kilometre time is the only thing that matters for the main ranking. I’ll call out good liveries and visuals as well, but they won’t score points.
- I will correct very minor technical infringements, with a minor points penalty.
- I’ll run three rounds of this, based on progressively less and less restrictive rules. Each will be about eight real-time days, with the first one not counting for points and not having stuff reported.
- Entries from early weeks will be legal in following weeks if they’re fast enough, and will remain on the board the whole time. The next week’s minimum will be announced when there’s two days left, and will be based on the existing times.
- DM your car to me here or on Discord. Model and family are both to be named “TAR - YourForumName”.
- This challenge will be run on the Al Rilma open beta.
- If there are any ambiguities and issues with the rules, please feel free to point them out. In the first 24 hours of a week, I will look to correct them if possible. Beyond that, I will reserve judgement and try to find a balance between good rules and fair enforcement. If there’s some horrendous cheese left undiscovered, I’ll try and pick a fair outcome. Options include closing the loophole (with points for those who got nerfed) or just publicising the cheese so everyone can use it.
To clarify on cloning the car, you should click this button:
This will ensure that your entry doesn’t overlap with anyone else’s, and will keep the existing one around as a backup too.
THE POINTS SYSTEM
The points system is loosely inspired by V8 Supercars, loosely.
- A normal day in the first week gives 200 points to first place. I will potentially bump this up if we get over 30 people entering, because the rounding gets weird at that point.
- Every place behind gives about 6% fewer points. This will be rounded to the nearest point, but the rounding doesn’t compound
- The final day of a week scores 4 times as much as the rest of the week (800 points for first).
- The second week scores 1.5 times as much as the first (300 for first normally, 1200 for first at the end).
- The third and final week scores 2 times as much (400 for first normally, 1600 for first at the end).
So, to get the most points, you want to be consistently participating and improving regularly. An arms race where you’re always one-upping your opponents.
THE CAR
So, what’s your canvas?
A bog-standard, totally average, unremarkable van from the year 1995. Meet the Atun Automotive Shipment. An anonymous name for an anonymous car, but one with plenty of room for whatever cargo you need to carry. The marketing department has decided that they need some way to sell more vans, and they’re going to do that with some good old-fashioned drag racing. It’s got a 2.9 litre V6, but said V6 is tuned for economy and reliability rather than power or torque. It can be downloaded here, and only uses the RB Seam Kit mod. Any resemblance to real vans with real track-modified variants for marketing is almost certainly not coincidental.
I made it in a couple of hours, it’s admittedly not the prettiest car, but it works.
PART ONE SPORTING REGULATIONS
This round is for lightly modified versions of the base car. They should be theoretically viable to drive to events.
- Download the base car from here. Import it (by copying to %localappdata%\AutomationGame\Saved\UserData\CarSaveImport). It’s recommended click the “Clone a single new car model, car trim, engine family, and engine variant” button to make sure it doesn’t overlap with the original, but not mandatory.
- Model and family are both to be named “TAR - YourForumName”. No number is needed, because your part one car will be legal for part 2. Trim name will be shown on the spreadsheet if it was changed.
- All years must remain as they are.
- Make sure you are on the Al Rilma Open Beta.
- Keep all techpool at +5.
- Model body and chassis: Do not change anything here.
- Body style: Must use the existing 00sVan_Lowroof. Quality is free. Morphs are fixed, except for FrontFlare and RearFlare.
- Advanced Trim Settings are allowed, but don’t use the glitch around the Track Width setting to get extra tyre width via that bug. I’ll be checking and policing this.
- Fixtures: No invisible aero, no 3D aero placed behind the rear of the car (Global-mode green coordinate of -250) or ahead of the front of the car (Global-mode green coordinate of 275).
- Drive Type: RWD Only.
- Engine Family: Head design can change to any other Iron head (i.e. Iron Std or Iron Perf - it has to stay as a Pushrod). Do not change anything else.
- Fuel type: Must be unleaded pump gas, 98 RON or less. That means no Ethanol, no 100 RON, no Leader and especially no Nitro.
- All variant tabs: You’re free to do whatever - including Forced Induction, race intakes and race headers.
- Drivetrain tab: CVTs are banned. Everything else is free.
- Wheels tab: Race tyres are banned, have at least a little tread. The car must not display a warning about the tyres blowing out.
- Brakes, aero, suspension tabs: Free.
- Interior: Must have two or three full-sized seats.
- Safety: Advanced 80s or 90s. No negative safety quality.
- The car must have at least 40 reliability. This will be the designed reliability as shown in the “statistics” pane of the summary tab, or in the side of the “trim statistics” pane. Note that this combines engine and car reliability.
- The car must have at least 10 comfort and 45 drivability. These ones need to be sensible enough for them to be driven around normally.
- The 100-0 km/h braking distance must be under 100m. Make sure it can stop if something happens.
- The price must be 30 grand or less (again, as shown in the “statistics” pane of the summary tab).
- The car must pass WES 6.
- The km time must be 30 seconds or lower to count. This is pretty easy to get, and is there to make sure people don’t spam the base car.
- The first “day” will run for two days, as said before. The first deadline is December 3, 2025 11:00 AM - I may provide some grace if it’s submitted up to an hour after this. Deadlines will happen at the same time each day until December 9, 2025 11:00 AM. Remember, you start scoring points as soon as you submit and you will never end up in a worse position by submitting. No reason to wait for the deadline!
- As stated before, feel free to ask rules questions in the first 24 hours, I’ll try to catch and answer them. If some horrendous cheese slips though, I reserve the right to change the rules midway through the round but I will endeavour to be pretty fair.
