RD Le Mans Series Season 4 (rFactor)

[Davy Lauwereys]

well well well, what an adventure this was After our teams unbelievable misfortune wich caused us to miss the start at last years 24hours of the nurburgring, we were looking forward at having another go at the pinnacle of endurance racing, a 24hour race.
During our first le mans 2 seasons ago, our corvette had a disco during a driverswap, and last season when we ran 2 porsches, the car i was driving had a pc failure 5 orso hours in.... to say, we had abit of an axe to grind, would be an understatement

The odds seemed yet again against us from the start, Kevin would not be able to take part, and as i was trying to do some driverswaps with our new driver, the server crashed as i was loading onto it, and it would not allow me join the server anymore after that, timing me out every time... wich meant, i had to pack up my stuff, and get it over to Nickys and setup there.
We then lost Paul after only 3 stints from him, wich meant we had roughly 20 hours to get through with 3 drivers
But, we soldiered on and had a blast doing so!
We had a good setup, though i wasn't very comfortable with it in the porsche curves, they kicked my ass all day, so apoligies to anyone nearby as i was struggling through them most of the time!
But overall, we are very pleased with our race, yeah we had to fit a few nooses (we brought enough spares ) but that was usually at the end of a stint, so we didn't loose an insane amount of time fixing the various bits we left on the track during the 24 hours.

As such i'm extremely proud of my guys and what we achieved here, P7 in class and P14 overall is a solid result for us in such a high quality field. P7 might not sound glorious,but the experience is one of the highlights in my sim racing career as i'm sure it will be the same for the rest of my guys.

lsd racing would like to thank all teams with the right spirit for participating throughout another great season of RDLMS, also a very big thanks to the staff who put on this show for us have fun in, for their time and energy that goes into the work involved to give us such a wonderfull arena to get our freak on. We salute you!

Hopefully, wichever incarnation the series undergoes with the move to RF2, it will be in the same vein (Le Mans cars!) as the series we have come to know and love. I personally don't have Rf2 yet as i to am not convinced of the new buisnessmodels these days of "pay now, (maybe) get later", but i suppose,rdlms on rf2, would be a pritty good argument for buying the game afterall...

So, hopefully, we shall meet again in season 5!

 

[Nero Sehovic]

Try to find some way to delay the commentary so that it's in sync with the video of the live broadcast ? Small detail but would be awesome if it's possible

One thing that's going to improve the safety and chance that cars crash into each other is assigning NO OVERTAKING ZONES. Also some zones where u are allowed to overtake but if something happens because of the faster car overtaking (a LMP overtaking a GT for example) then the LMP risks a drive through for the unnecessary risk taken.

For example Road America had both of these parts of the track but none of them were assigned. The Le Mans Porsche Curves were also dangerous and also not assigned. Just some examples from what I can remember

 

[Richard Blokker]

I really only had two issues with the current system.

EDIT: And almost forgot, there really needs to be a better selection process at the beginning of the season. My team really got screwed over, and couldn't compete until the very last race where we drove VERY competitively with VERY little practice or preparation (we found out we could race last Saturday). Can we have a qualifier where everyone logs a lap time and the fastest teams get in? Please. That could be done prior to every race. A hot laps server where you can set your qualifying time whenever you please. Top 12 teams get into the race, and that's the grid.

Absolutly not! Slow is NOT ALWAYS meaning that a team is bad! You can beter look at results from a team in previous seasons.. A steady pace, not much incidents, and of course the time available.

 

[Thomas Roth]

Perhaps that's not the best solution.
But I believe there was a problem with the original system.
The selection process seemed to be almost completely subjective. Based on whether the admins had heard of your team before or not.
My team was new, we didn't get in. Until 5 days before the race, we were told a spot in a different class was available. Obviously, we said we couldn't do that.
And then come Le Mans, racing under a different banner, we got in no questions asked.

There were open spots for Le Mans, and there were 60 teams trying to get into the first race. But I'd really rather something like what happened to me and my team doesn't happen again.

A pre-qualifying seemed like the most fair way to go about it, but as you have pointed out, there are issues with that.
There just needs to be something that gives smaller teams a better chance of getting in at the beginning of the season. Perhaps something like interviews with the team owners? That would put a lot of stress on the admin team though, they can always get a group of volunteers to help out with that I suppose.

What I'm getting at is there needs to be more than a team name behind whether or not a team eye picked or not.

Perhaps we should start a different thread for discussion.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Hi -- is there a calender of the events and any details for S5 on rFactor2?

Keep an eye on the Virtual World Endurance Championship forums

 

[Chris Partridge]

Thank you - willdo.

 

[Jean Marie Zmiro]

My Words as Teams Owner :

Epic job from the drivers, well done, wasn't there this WE, but, from what I saw, it was a great momentum of fun, good driving, and a smell of good job done.

Both cars, P1 and GT1 won on the 24h, on a 14th July, and both won their championships !

Thx to all the drivers, to all our contenders, you guys are, here, at RD, one of the TOP TOP league on the internet, we took a lot a pleasure with you, to race, to lose and win.
We love the mentality you all have here, that's why we will follow the next steps closely to come again, and fight again with you.

To finish I want to Thank my teammates :

P1

Steph Amiel : For taking good decisions when we choose the lineup. At the first look, I don't understand why he did that, but now, I want to thank Him. Top speed, top job, top Friend.
Jimmy Dion : Top job as always, when behind his wheel, one of the quickest !
Raphael Bohorodycz: He closed the gap to his teammate, improved a lot, a young driver who will improve his-self again and again.

GT1

Alexandre Amelot : For all the scaring momentum we had with him. We were always worried with him at the wheel, because he can't shut it f**king mouth all his stints ... Good job mate !
Valentin Soleilhac : Top job, quick and pro, thank buddy, being with you in those events were great.
John Dion : We lose a lot of faith in him 6 months ago, he took his time to come again on endurance racing, and he proved that he can handle it, with talent.
Baptiste Quesnaudon : Thank to join us, you are part of the team now, and part of this win.

To Yoann Sarzynski : Thank to be there with us, to share a lot of fun, and lot of LOL.
To the people I may forget : THANK YOU ALL.

​

 

[Rudy van Buren]

For us as Simracing for Holland GT2 things couldn't go any better with a win in the GT2 class.

For me personaly this event made me regret of not beeing able to take part in any previous races of this season, but the idea of the upcomming season after summer break makes up for it.

I do think that RF2 is a tad early to go on with such a big leaque as RDLMS is, but i guess it's wait and see what RD comes up with

 

[Yoeri Gijsen]

I'll put my coin in the bag as well.

First of all I was very pleased to see another season of RDLMS got started. The results were worth the efforts, at least from my part.

The rejoin and livetiming systems provided by Marcel added a great deal to the league, which kind of rectified another season in rFactor. None of the previous season saw so many finishers as this season. A great improvement. I hope we can continue with that in rFactor 2.

Communication could have been better. Some entries were lost, threads and updates came late. Some rules and practises were not entirely clear. All of this seemed to have been the result of the league being understaffed. I'm sure we will improve a lot on this in the future.

I was glad to see the broadcast was well arranged, especially the 24 hour coverage. I hope we can have a little more communication between commentators and cameramen to improve the feel of it. I know it's being worked on.

Restarts took a little long for my taste. We've got to find a way to smoothen that procedure. I'm glad they worked though!

 

[Rudy van Buren]

I think the way this season has been ended after the difficult start, its better to keep those things in mind and take that into another RF1 season. Yes its been used forever, but is RF2 better at this point? I dont think so. Not as many cars, to hard on FPS, still loads of bugs, driver swap only just put in and still not working properly, and there is probebly more.

I think for this one its like 1 season to early to jump over, it's better to have a good RF1 season then starting with RF2 to early and having loads of problems.

In half a year time RF2 is probebly alot better and up to a point where it can handle all the RDLMS power

 

[Rudy van Buren]

The new livetrack vieuwer looks good and works fine, but there aint a option where u can look back all your laptimes of a stint. I think it would be a nice add to get that feature

 

[Rudy van Buren]

SC Restarts, im not a big fan of all the car's mixed up. Yes it work's in real life, but for us it mostly makes accidents. That + the fact that old damage gets back even after a tiny hit makes it not worth it IMO.

It would be possible to call out a 'class' at a time and make them run on the pitlimiter on track. To get the correct positions for each car, the admins call out the numbers one at a time and the car can get out of the line and drive to the point where the SC is waiting. On a track like Lemans this would spare alot of time.

 

[Dennis Visscher]

I would like to see everyone to read the opening post (again) and stop posting all their suggestions in a single post so this thread/system might actually work.

If you're still reading at this point, I would like to propose a few things to keep this topic structured:

1. First of all, please start by reading all the existing posts: If a point is being made that you agree about, please "Like" that specific post so we end up with some kind of indication on how many people actually agree with that post.
2. If you want to provide feedback, use a single post per suggestion you want to make. This makes it easier for people to agree on that specific thing.
3. If you want to add something to an existing proposal and it's a logical follow up, please quote the original post. Only do that if you want to add something substantial, please do not just quote and say "I agree" (use the "Like" function for that).
4. Please do not start discussions here! Stick to providing feedback. There are lots of topics that can be debated (to death) and that's not going to help us keep an overview. If you feel some specific idea warrants further discussion, open a new topic for that. Remember, for a lot of things we do, it's impossible for everybody to agree and we will in general take everybody's opinion into consideration.

 

[Ryan Walker]

What I liked about S4
*The rejoining system
*Winning the 8 hours of Silverstone in LMP2 running my own team
*The atmosphere at the server, chat and livestream during races

What I didn't like about S4 and how to fix it
* Communication could have been better as already mentioned in another post. Posting briefings in time as well. It was already a lot better for the 24 hours of Le Mans, I hope you could continue with that during S5.

My view
* I would stick with rfactor for another season as rfactor 2 I feel is still at the stage where it is still being updated so I would wait until it is fully ready for endurance racing and if you stick with rfactor for another season people would still race on it and numbers would be big.

 

[Dennis Visscher]

Not sure if it's technically possible, but I think getting disconnected is bad enough as it is, so I would prefer the 'rejoin penalty' to start at the moment you get disconnected instead of when you get your PC restarted and finally are back in again.

 

[Xavier de Carvalho]

i take no credit..... all i done was HOLD up the race with my Safety Car

(Cough) And your P2 (Cough)

 

[Ben Warren]

I also would like to see one more season with rFactor. The obvious increase in numbers compared to what we'd get turning out for rFactor 2 goes without saying, but also the fact we have a tried and tested (many, many hours!) mod which in my opinion anyway, is one of the best around. It's not a mod that has given us too many technical issues that I'm aware of. Certainly none at my end.

If we are to 100% definitely switch to rFactor 2 for the very next season, then I'd strongly suggest a few test events. I don't just mean an evening or two a few days before the actual race, I mean proper, non-championship events to eliminate as many likely issues as possible.

Believe me, I'm excited about rF2 and looking forward to what RDLMS has in store whenever we make the switch. I'm just not sure what is out there right now for rF2 that can give us the truly immersive endurance racing feel that the current Enduracers rF1 mod has given us every season so far. rF2 isn't going anywhere, and I'm sure more and more mods and tracks are going to be available as time goes on. I don't see a need to rush yet when we already have something great that works so well. RDLMS sticking with rF1 will not become stale either. Look at the amount of new teams that took part in the Le Mans race, all of which I'm sure would be hugely interested in participating in S5. Just my opinion.

 

[Balazs Toldi]

No comments about the video itself, but I do notice you are driving with a plugin installed and that is not allowed. I'm not going to take action anymore, but I would like to ask you and any others to stop using such plugins during endurance races. We know they cause trouble. Maybe not always directly to you, but to server stability in general. For next season we might even write software that scans for such plugins if kindly asking is not helping. Sorry if it seems like I'm coming down hard on you because of this, but it is a really important thing and we have asked people not to do this every race.

Hi! Yes, it's my fault because I forgot the XD HUD in rFactor. I will not use next time at race. When I drove the car, the server didn't crash, but it's not objection. Sorry for complication.

I have a remark. When I drove, more people tried connect to the server, but immediately disconnected and more times. It's very embarrassing.

 

[Matt Strand]

I'd really just like to see a race results and championship standings post once they're official after each race. GPCOS is clunky and hard to find all the info on. That and not updating SIM sync just a few hours before the biggest race of the season

 

[Daryl Russell]

This was my first race with the series. I was in the DR Motorsport GT2 car for a couple of 3.5 stint runs (1 cut short by a server crash, 1 by me crashing into the tires). Really enjoyed it. Was super impressed with the prototype drivers. I've done 90 minute races in the past with more close calls with prototypes than I had in 7 hours here. I only had 2 contacts with protos, and both were light sideswipes that left me with no damage.

So, great driving everyone. I'll have to try to get in for the full season next time.

Door is always open for you Daron be a pleasure to have you with us again for next season maybe