The ideal club meeting - What does it look like?

3468 Views 44 Replies 12 Participants Last post by Michael363672, Oct 16, 2011

UshCha

Discussion Starter · Sep 24, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

What does the ultimate race meeting look like.

Ground rules

• This is a digital discussion, analogue racers contributions are welcomed but must be constructive and "analogue is better" is not constructive.
• The race meeting has at least 6 folk , one of which is a rookie adult - Children can come in only as honerary adults.
• The doors open at 18:30 hrs for play/chat/ad hoc testing. Official festivities finish at 22:30 and kick out is 23:00
• The track is up for the duration and packing away bits is not a time limiter.

My Straw man of the ideal race requirements-

1. Drivers should spend most of the time driving not marshalling.
2. Some time should be allowed for Chat, vital repairs, Confort breaks and tea (very English me).
3. More than one class to be raced in an evening , if your car class A breaks you have only lost half of the evening at most because you can race in class B.

This leads to some basic requirements/organisation

• Auto yellow flag is a requirement towards meeting (1) and is set at Race stop in current positions. All drivers may re-slot/check and re-align car (but not move) prior to the re-start.
• No marshals are available as none are required under yellow flag.
• The obligatary cards for re-slotting are as follows:-
• Utter rookies 1 card, They should be lapping well inside their abilities in formal racing and just getting into the scheme of things. They need to satisfy the marshals they are sufficiently capable of meeting reasonable standards before given Mid standard i.e with 3 cards they can reasonably expect to make the end of the race. 3 de slots in a lap is definitely back to Rookie without a VERY GOOD EXCUSE.
• Mid level, 3 cards but are not eligible for the elite championship.
• Top level 1 card (they should not be making mistakes). I have seen analogue racers come close to this anyway. Any mid level driver is welcome to upgrade to Elite, but can only count results toward the standard they are driving at the time. This will encourage mids to become elite. The one slot looks (to me) possible if the cars are of high quality (i.e.on my track slot.it with magnets are not prone to de slotting for no good reason). With less able cars this may have to be increased.

The meeting
• Class qualification periods 10 mins for each class. 5 min between periods. Two periods each (Class A Class B, ClassA, Class B,Time now 20:30.
• Racing proper Heats 3 (Class A, ClassB, ClassA) 10 min duration (or equivalent laps) 5 min between heats.
• Race interval 30 min.
• Racing proper Heats 3 (ClassB, ClassA, ClassB) 10 min duration (or equivalent laps) 5 min between heats.
• As its all computer regardless of whose system results for evening will be avialble in last 30 min of evening.

Result with two cars you get 40 min driving in qualify mode. 1 hr in racing mode. That is just under 2 hrs. This is a bit on the low side but probably acceptable. Should qualification be dropped 1 1 15 min session a bit longer for each and extend racing? Is ½ hour break too long for chatting/tweaking? More shorter heats?

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ggonsalves

· #19 · Oct 3, 2011

Hi Guys,

Very interesting topic I have to say. We at FRC have massaged our racing rules to the point where things are reasonably well organised, however one area that still is a BIG problem is that of others driving through de-slotted cars which block the lane. Our drivers (myself included) are notorious for this. How can this be prevented or minimised?

Also, even though we have a stop and go penalty for people who drive into and de-slot the car ahead in the same lane (another thing I haven't seen mentioned yet here), drivers often times dispute this, arguing that the car ahead slowed unexpectedly or something similar. Perhaps Mr. Flppant's idea of penalising all de-slotters may be the way to go for this.

Any thoughts on these would be appreciated.

Gordon

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ggonsalves

· #23 · Oct 4, 2011

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 3 Oct 2011, 22:49) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>The question then is how do we decide who gets which driver station? Let each qualifier make his choice in turn? What if we have more than 6 racers? Split them up into classes? Then what? Since we usually run with 7 people, we have to do something to get everyone racing. So far, the answer has been to rotate through each grid place as if it were analog racing on lanes.

We solved some of these issues through trial and error. Here are a couple of excerpts from our racing regulations:

Gridding and Sub-Groups:

1. Cars are gridded for the first race based on their qualifying times, lowest times at the front. Thereafter cars are gridded based on their previous race finishing positions.
2. In the event that there are more than six and less than nine entries, excess drivers will cycle out for each race. For example, if there are eight entries, the last two qualifiers will sit out the first race. Thereafter, the last two finishers in each race will step out to allow the previous two to take their places.
3. If there are nine or more entries in a class, the class will be split into sub-groups (A, B, C. etc.), according to the following:

9 or 10 entries - first 5 in sub-group A, rest in sub-group B.
11 or 12 entries - first 6 in sub-group A, rest in sub-group B.
13 or 14 entries - first 6 in sub-group A, next 6 in sub-group B with the excess drivers cycling out.
15 or 16 entries - first 6 in sub-group A, next 5 in sub-group B, rest in sub-group C.
etc.

Racing:

1. Races take place either over a fixed number of laps ("Grand Prix" - referred to as GRP on the Power Base) or time period ("Enduro" - END on the Power Base). Number of laps per race (or time per race) and number of races per class will be decided at each event. (We generally try to do three 30-40-lap races per class.)
2. For each class, cars are gridded based on their qualifying times for the first race, thereafter based on the previous race finishing positions.
3. A car may be substituted for another provided it complies with the class requirements, however substitutions cannot take place during a race.
4. For each class, drivers are allocated to hand controller stations based on their qualifying grid positions and race there for all the races in that class for the event. Fastest qualifier uses Station 1, second uses Station 2, etc.

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ggonsalves

· #29 · Oct 5, 2011

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 4 Oct 2011, 18:56) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Do you qualify more than one car/driver at a time? All 6? How many laps/minutes do they have to qualify? How does a driver/host decide what ID/station the driver(s) qualify at?

For analog racing, it's common for each driver to take a turn at the same lane and same car. That way lane and car set up do not effect qualifying time. This doesn't match up with digital racing, but the same car/station can be used to mimic this. But when people bring their own cars, it makes sense they should qualify with their own car, not someone else's.
We used to qualify one at a time over three laps, but in the interest of expediency we now qualify up to 6 at a time per class using the Power Base qualifying mode set to two minutes. If we have more than six entries in a class, we split qualifying for that class into roughly even numbers (eg. two q-sessions of 4 cars for eight entries). Driving stations for qualifying are generally decided on a first-come, first-served basis although in our one-make classes (Porsche Cup and Lambo Series), we roll a dice for qualifying stations or skip qualifying altogether and roll the dice for first race driver stations. These classes are unique in that the cars belong to FRC and not to individuals and each car is set to a station for the night with the drivers rotating to a different station/car for each race.

Incidentally, for these special classes, the car bodies are swapped around in between race meetings (events), so the fast green Porsche one week may be on the slower red one's chassis the following week. Makes things even more interesting.

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ggonsalves

· #31 · Oct 6, 2011

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 5 Oct 2011, 20:36) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Your special class is what we call IROC (International Race Of Champions). It's because the cars are provided by the host, just like the real IROC.
Oh. Now I know

IROC it is!

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