FSR situation

[Bram Hengeveld]

And it is not possible to change the rules (after the season ends) to kick those people back to life?

 

[Kris Cobb]

Instead of selling WC Licenses we should sell TOA licenses, regardless if the team competes in WC, ACE or PRO.
Some newer teams are more eager to help FSR succeed than some older established teams.

Maybe other teams could have a observer status only. That would improve transparency but only the TOA voting members get to vote.

 

[Kris Cobb]

And it is not possible to change the rules (after the season ends) to kick those people back to life?

I believe the TOA can expel a license with a 75% vote. I don't think this is the best way to go about this.

Ondrej's idea about offering teams a set amount of money for their license would be a good idea, though I would amend it to inactive members.

WC teams either pay a premium for non-member license (renewed yearly) or buy a lifetime member license (with a requirement of being active) to race.
ACE and PRO teams may buy membership (renewed yearly). ACE and PRO teams should not be owned by other members. Example: ACR WC has a membership, ACR PRO is not allowed to buy a membership. Knight Racing would be able to buy a membership.

 

[Ondrej Kuncman]

They had a drivers association in the past (2008 or something) in a time that there was even more activity (more divisions and interest), that was a huge "succes" not. Drivers care as much as everyone else does in this league,.. nothing at all (except a handfull of members). Because otherwise you would have had more people in the administration to help out but instead the WCDA got as inactive as TOA does during the season.

I think drivers association would result in a mess, but if done and managed correctly with a good leader I think it could function as a measure to revert or amend certain decisions of directors. Such as drivers agreeing on cutting exceptions, track changes or track versions and perhaps it would result in improving relationships among drivers and teams, but that is reaching very theoretical grounds as the effort to achieve this would need to be quite vast. This isn't something that would help FSR in current situation in any case, so pointless to even think about.


TOA's functionality is simply to approve certain sporting rules and decisions taken by club admins. I had succeeded in pushing forward some rules and ideas until certains finish duo killed my motivation to do anything useful with their constant ignorance and stubborn refusals to accept anything. Turned out they needed the exact same thing I had suggested half year earlier. This happened on several occasions, but that is just to reply to Mark. I was on TOA, I don't consider myself to be the part of the careless and clueless cakes. It is the system that is flawed. Giving TOA more power is unbalanced as there are some people on TOA who just own a license or ''manage'' a team without really understanding anything. Or there are people active, but clueless. TOA as a whole has been simply an approval system to stop total dictatorship of the club admins, that's it. ISR ==> TOA accepts. TOA ==> ISR and it is hard to make something happen.

I disagree with Mark that TOA is the reason for things to happen each year. If i may give a few examples from last years when TOA actually acted against common sense and against FSR. In 2013 a few TOA members came up with the idea to have refuelling suddenly, a few weeks before the season. They didn't care the whole mod development and then suddenly started requesting stuff. Or in 2011 when I requested dirty air change before the season to boost racing. They refused it, wanted to wait. Of course 3 races later dirty air is changed. All because of their uneducated and uninformed guesses. I could write a book on disfunctionality of TOA. That being sad, TOA can work of course if people involved care, are up to date and directly involved in their teams which often isn't the case. When FSR was facing a threat of christensen before 2011 season, I managed to work most of the teams to agree on certains rules that wouldn't allow him dodgy stuff with different teams. I wanted more detailed control, but in the end we reached a good agreement and voted for the rules. However to achieve this it needs a direct involvement of everyone and vastly improved communication, which is very hard now more than ever, with people caring least ever.

As Mark said, the reason the league happens every year are the people that stepped up and did the work. I quite like the idea of David suggesting to replace TOA with a more global system. Question for the discussion is obviously how to do that and how to achieve it. How do you define the level of participation needed to stay in this team owners group? Going at it from some ratings and points is not gonna work obviously. That is supposed to be an FSR working group, not a competition. It is important to keep and have teams involved in decision making as much as possible and with 1 team having 2 or even 3 votes just because they own 3 licenses combined, that is just unhealthy. It needs a new improved system. I am not sure how and what, but that is why I am writing this. Others might have ideas. In any case there has to be a system to control admins, whether it is by a separate group as a new improved TOA or having a united decision taking/making process, which will assure improved communication, teamwork in this FSR working group as well efficiency of decisions.

Whichever way it is, TOA has been seen by some admins as enemy of the club and treated that way too. Very unhealthy again. The communication between admins and toa should be constant, working together and sharing information. That is the job of TOA chairman mostly, but this role has been practically pointless as far as I can remember, with chairmen only doing their minimal tasks - assuring voting happens.

Finally indeed stop keeping things private and discuss in public, which is the only way to involve new people who might have some fresh and good ideas to help FSR. Keeping it secret as current president has been doing, secret with people who don't really care is not gonna do anything.

To Mark: The current FSR mess doesn't have much to do with TOA or any other system as Johannes said. I don't think anyone has identified any FSR process as a problem. Removing TOA or ISR or anything will not fix the issue which I started the topic with. I think regardless of financial commitment of people of the past, the system has to be boosted by removing the inactive teams/owners/members. That is why I said remove the license system. Return some of the money to the teams, their actual value. Get the FSR working group of people who wanna make a difference and who wanna work for it, whoever they are. In any case there is no easy fix or solution to the dramatic lack of people who wanna do this. That is why I made this topic to make people aware. While I usually have fixes and solutions, with current situation it is really complicated and I don't think 1 or 2 people can change the path FSR is on. It has to be a group effort, FSR management must be a group effort.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Hello, I am back from the dead

Thought I may take 10 minutes just to pass on my feelings.

One of the main problems I've always found with FSR moving forward is, teams only care for their own success, and always have done. Teams will only do what's best for them to be successful, they don't care if they hurt the other teams, the league and cause "team wars etc", they just want success, simple as that. And this leads to all sorts of problems with many things associated with FSR moving forward and staying stable.

It's like that big proposal that was put forward which would of took FSR into much bigger places. (Which allot of you know about) Yes it may have only been a short term thing and could of failed, but short term success was going to be massive and at least the league would of gained much more success in terms of global exposure/financing/connections etc in a short period of time, and it could of lead to many of the drivers here being involved in real motorsports due to their talents shown in the virtual world. If it failed then the league could of rebuilt again a few years laterl, but as it meant no teams and it being about the league/drivers it did not happen, again because like stated, teams only care for their own success, not the general league/drivers. (Drivers if they was split from the team)

Yes teams are what make FSR currently, but while they have the final say on many matters, major changes will get voted down and things won't move forward, because of what's stated above.

There also needs to be much more togetherness and transparency between the teams, instead of bitterness/ rivalry (There is a thing called friendly rivalry) Kiss & Make up...

The other thing is, some people who are in higher powers (Admin) often don't listen to the community and other people involved in the league and think their own word is the final truth and cannot often see that they and the league are in the wrong sometimes. Those people who are speaking out are actually sometimes speaking the truth, and should be listened to. Instead they get brushed off by some higher powers , ignored and put down.

Blindness/ignorance to potential major changes that could benefit the league is often a problem, because one or two higher powers may not "personally" agree with the issue/change, and teams not agreeing (And of course there's the problem with things being kept private like it's already been stated)

There's always been plenty enough people to help with everything admin related, but driver's mostly care about testing to get as fast as possible for the race events, and people (like Bram has stated) will mention "they don't have time" as they would rather focus on their own/teams success, rather than helping the league with admin duties (Consistently) Bram explained it well, years back, everyone contributed, now people say, they don't have the time and want to do their own thing.


Budgeting with money could always be used more wisely, like with track makers, there's many in SimRacing if you dig deep and contact people. Some money could be put aside for them to lure them in for the season. And insure the best quality tracks all year around with no delay's with dedicated track people doing the work. (Taking the work load of presidents etc)

It's a difficult situation that's been going on for years and an hard one to solve. There's many good, dedicated and honest people here, but It would help everyone for you all to be more transparent, forget past rivalries, and ill feelings between each other, just get on, work together, be open to change/ideas, and move forward as a community.

 

[Ron Squire]

Hello, I am back from the dead

Thought I may take 10 minutes just to pass on my feelings.

One of the main problems I've always found with FSR moving forward is, teams only care for their own success, and always have done. Teams will only do what's best for them to be successful, they don't care if they hurt the other teams, the league and cause "team wars etc", they just want success, simple as that. And this leads to all sorts of problems with many things associated with FSR moving forward and staying stable.

It's like that big proposal that was put forward which would of took FSR into much bigger places. (Which allot of you know about) Yes it may have only been a short term thing and could of failed, but short term success was going to be massive and at least the league would of gained much more success in terms of global exposure/financing/connections etc in a short period of time, and it could of lead to many of the drivers here being involved in real motorsports due to their talents shown in the virtual world. If it failed then the league could of rebuilt again a few years laterl, but as it meant no teams and it being about the league/drivers it did not happen, again because like stated, teams only care for their own success, not the general league/drivers. (Drivers if they was split from the team)

Yes teams are what make FSR currently, but while they have the final say on many matters, major changes will get voted down and things won't move forward, because of what's stated above.

There also needs to be much more togetherness and transparency between the teams, instead of bitterness/ rivalry (There is a thing called friendly rivalry) Kiss & Make up...

The other thing is, some people who are in higher powers (Admin) often don't listen to the community and other people involved in the league and think their own word is the final truth and cannot often see that they and the league are in the wrong sometimes. Those people who are speaking out are actually sometimes speaking the truth, and should be listened to. Instead they get brushed off by some higher powers , ignored and put down.

Blindness/ignorance to potential major changes that could benefit the league is often a problem, because one or two higher powers may not "personally" agree with the issue/change, and teams not agreeing (And of course there's the problem with things being kept private like it's already been stated)

There's always been plenty enough people to help with everything admin related, but driver's mostly care about testing to get as fast as possible for the race events, and people (like Bram has stated) will mention "they don't have time" as they would rather focus on their own/teams success, rather than helping the league with admin duties (Consistently) Bram explained it well, years back, everyone contributed, now people say, they don't have the time and want to do their own thing.


Budgeting with money could always be used more wisely, like with track makers, there's many in SimRacing if you dig deep and contact people. Some money could be put aside for them to lure them in for the season. And insure the best quality tracks all year around with no delay's with dedicated track people doing the work. (Taking the work load of presidents etc)

It's a difficult situation that's been going on for years and an hard one to solve. There's many good, dedicated and honest people here, but It would help everyone for you all to be more transparent, forget past rivalries, and ill feelings between each other, just get on, work together, be open to change/ideas, and move forward as a community.

Damian, you have got a point, i say we should restrict the team owners telling the admins what to do, at the end of the day its the admins choice, not the teams

 

[Johannes Kunkel]

@Damian Dainhumain welcome back amongst the living

I know quite a few see the rivalry between teams as one of the down points of FSR. But actually I see it as the opposite. Fierce competition is what made FSR strong, from the first seasons on people were fighting as hard as they could on track. A lot of new people get the impression that in the old days the forums were always peaceful and on track everyone was just slotting in behind eachother, but that´s far from the truth. Rivalry and competition is what keeps FSR going, and it has always been there since season 1.

That sometimes situations occur that teams are taking drivers off other teams, which obviously isn´t always nice, but it happens. I don´t think Vettel left the team because he doesn´t like Red Bull anymore, he got an offer he couldn´t resist. Now is that stealing?

For small teams it´s important to stretch out into other competitions and bring people into FSR if you can´t buy Morgan or Bono out of their contracts. There are several examples for new drivers being quick instantly (Jiri, Jonny, Aleksi, Patrik to name a few). Even if that potentially means you have to rebuild your lineup each year, but there have been examples in F1 where teams also managed that and pick the right talents that could provide some good results every 1-2 seasons.

This big old proposal before 2010 (I think that´s what you are talking about) actually showed how important the ISR Club is. As we saw afterwards this whole thing lacked any basis and substance, and luckely there were enough owners who didn´t instantly got dollar signs in their eyes and kept critical about it. This may well have ended FSR as we know it.

Anyways, I agree with you in many ways, but things like trying to pay people for track work and other things have been tried, but was usually refused as far as I know.

 

[Ron Squire]

Anyways, I agree with you in many ways, but things like trying to pay people for track work and other things have been tried, but was usually refused as far as I know.

the people here who help out in fsr are volunteers, they dont ask money to do the jobs, they do what they can to make FSR a better and more competitive league, not a boring and bland one to say the least

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

@Damian Dainhumain Anyways, I agree with you in many ways, but things like trying to pay people for track work and other things have been tried, but was usually refused as far as I know.

Yep, this doesn't work. FSR never had any proper track modders anyway, we only had a few guys placing anti-cuts. This year I digged a bit deeper to learn basic things, I made Suzuka conversion in 2 weeks thanks to clever cheating with some materials, which made art look a bit better than it really is. Dominguez spent a month or so at Montreal, building it more from scratch, but he only had time to just get basic things in order. No modder is interested to release half-ready tracks on a 2-week or 1 month schedule, when it takes on average around 3-6 months to release a track up to rF2 (insert other modern sim) standards. Most F1 tracks are simply old and useless by now, which is why it's so hard to run F1 type league with modern sims. As far as I know FSR is only league running proper F1 season at moment, if we don't include some Codemasters leagues. That's why I consider biggest achievement of this year to somehow get those 12 tracks ready at all.

 

[David Dominguez]

Yeah I agree on that, in 2013 Johannes and I contacted some known track modders, even offering money, and didn't work. And this year JES had an agreement with some track editor quite known @ ISI forums but when it matters you have no help at all, as usual.

 

[Dian Kostadinov]

It's first year on rFactor 2, at least I didn't expect to drive on great made tracks. But the problem is not related with the tracks. I will be short, I'm not good in long speachs with mine bad english.

I agree that sometimes the rivalry goes far, example by protesting everything, or voting for something that might hurt the rival team and etc. These things what I counted, can be avoided. Team owners are rarely friendly with others owners and everyone says, "we need to focus on ourself to may win". Yes, this might help you to beat the rival team, but you're not helping the league. I'm very sad that I don't have that category of understanding what JES or David have like modding, tracks building and etc..

Every step, every change for better future, all team owners should discuss it privately whether is good desicion or not, I believe if you do a chat with all team owners, that somehow would socialize the teams and friendship between them and to may all teams to work on one purpose - to develope FSR in the right way after being accorded.

About the transparency, I think we all would like to know how the finnancial accounting is managing. I see now, a lot of money going in the FSR's fund and after you pay whatever you have to pay to the staff caring for the league, then the rest you give like a bonus to the teams. That system can be changed - reduce the license price, reduce the bonuses, make drivers and people around FSR less money depending. Money makes people to hate and to do dirty things to win and to earn more money. That destroys the simracing, because 99% of the people are here to have fun, many of the drivers, don't have the possibility to race on real and they use the chance giving from FSR to do something what is really close to the realism. I don't like people doing business in simracing, last few years I noticed that teams are joining in FSR, rich guys, which want not to have fun and to spend their stay here to meet people and become friends, they are here for own purposes, something like to advertise their own business and only to look how to earn more money with all careless to the community. I want to give an example for myself and our situation in Eventa, we have a big history behind us, over 10 years already, after I decided to establish the team and in FSR (most successful league) I knew that would be difficult, because I don't have the money to do it. I connected with many guys, which were part of Eventa in the past and which I haven't been in touch since years. After I asked them for help with the words "I need money to pay the license for FSR" and they answered me "Ok, just tell me how much you need". I asked 7-8 guys and all were IN after 1 minute talk and so we decided to split the license between us, for the cаuse, because we created the team with love to simracing and we've spent many cool momments together and would like to give this opportunity to the guys, which want to share these momments together

I can count on fingers the guys who were interested what was the history how I managed to buy the licence, but what I wanted to say with this is, if you make the whole system cheapper, including the ideas what you've mentioned above, the league will start to grow up in the right way and would bring more and fresh air in the community.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

As long there is no independent director and vice there will be no moving forward.
Quite simple IMO. It's not a dig to the current dudes but it is just natural. Tems running the league is also just a hurdle. They should have max 49% vote right on league decissions IMO.
There must be found someone or more persons who are only interessted to run the league and ARE team independent. As long as oyu do not understand this point it will stand still.
And as allready mentioned disscussing FRS matters in the internal forums (AKA black holes) is just as nonsense. I already once mentioned it is not transparrent enough and then you just get a link to the FSR website. As a starting team you are just lost here. You know teams are running the league but you actually do not know anything, what decissions are made by whoome where and when. It is all allways behind the "doors" decided by the yeti.

Hard task I know but not impossible. The biggest hurdle for this probbaly again teams and owners AKA "this is impossible" or not the way to go but if you look around that is how basic fairness and flawless cometition in sports is established.

I quited watching FSR just beacuse of that rason and the teenagers . Just not interressting. Imagine Ferrari runs F1, huh eh O_o.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

I've seen Ferrari running F1 and also RB and Prost. Not completely but... Also do you think it's so easy to find so many people completely unrelated to FSR to join and run the league for free? That's not a hurdle, that's 400m hurdles.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

I've seen Ferrari running F1 and also RB and Prost. Not completely but... Also do you think it's so easy to find so many people completely unrelated to FSR to join and run the league for free? That's not a hurdle, that's 400m hurdles.

Nothing you have seen like that.
Easy or not is not the question. I mentioned it is a hard task but pretty sure aswell it would pay off. Anyways going by the amount of the credit they give them self for
running the league it seems it would be an easier task.

 

[David Dominguez]

Hard task I know but not impossible. The biggest hurdle for this probbaly again teams and owners AKA "this is impossible" or not the way to go but if you look around that is how basic fairness and flawless cometition in sports is established.

We tried that in 2012, and lasted 2 races. When someone is not attached directly into a league is very hard to find real commitment.

And in any case I can't remember of any decision from any WC director that was clearly biased towards one team.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

We tried that in 2012, and lasted 2 races. When someone is not attached directly into a league is very hard to find real commitment.

And in any case I can't remember of any decision from any WC director that was clearly biased towards one team.

Maybe you just had the wrong persons, maybe they didn't have enough control maybe maybe maybe...
No offense but that is exactly the answer I expected form somebody in your position and exactly the reason why barely a team joins FSR. As said...and you have even quoted it...

"The biggest hurdle for this probbaly again teams and owners AKA "this is impossible" or not the way to go but if you look around that is how basic fairness and flawless cometition in sports is established."

 

[David Dominguez]

The persons selected were RD admins by then... nothing against them of course, just shows how difficult is to find someone competent/with self initiative/with time/etc "out of nowhere" without any link to any team.

Regading the other sentence, of course the most fair situation would be to have every admin being independent, but when one complains about lack of independency and puts it on the top of the list, it's because one thinks that the persons in charge have been taking bad decisions due to their links to teams, so in that case please let me know when did that happen?

 

[Ondrej Kuncman]

Currently we are dealing with an issue there are no people at all for 2015. So thinking of some ideal scenario yet again... get real people.

As David said, you won't find anyone to commit who isn't tied to the league. That is unless you wanna pay that person considerable amount of money to do the job.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

Currently we are dealing with an issue there are no people at all for 2015. So thinking of some ideal scenario yet again... get real people.

As David said, you won't find anyone to commit who isn't tied to the league. That is unless you wanna pay that person considerable amount of money to do the job.

And if they are tied to the league there is no way not to be commited to any team.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

The persons selected were RD admins by then... nothing against them of course, just shows how difficult is to find someone competent/with self initiative/with time/etc "out of nowhere" without any link to any team.

Regading the other sentence, of course the most fair situation would be to have every admin being independent, but when one complains about lack of independency and puts it on the top of the list, it's because one thinks that the persons in charge have been taking bad decisions due to their links to teams, so in that case please let me know when did that happen?

Tell you just one amongst a few.
Sister teams. Cut it down. Establish fair competition. If you want to have 6 drivers make 4 of them test drivers. Simple as that. Competition would build up in a natural way again.
If the test drivers are fast enough they'd find soon enough teams again. Include parc ferme.
Check the setups/telemetry of the cars day before the race to ensure there is no colaboration between teams. Oh wait this can't be done if the directors and so on are involved in teams right?
ect.