RD Le Mans Series Season 4 (rFactor)

[Daryl Russell]

Well this was our first proper attempt at a 24 hour event and i must say i really enjoyed the experience. My race stints didn't go without its problems i had a problem with some GTs not pulling over and closing the door when i tried to overtake them. I also had the Brems Lambo holding me up several times which infuriated me. Car was lacking power which i was baffled as Ben was getting max speed on the straights and i was getting 179mph. Couple of times i lost the nose one or two of them getting clipped by GTs not using their mirrors. Whilst Taner was doing his stint i had a look at my pedal problems and found them a bit dusty so cleaned them out. Find out Taner had a problem with his too so took over while he sorted his. I was happy to say i was getting max speeds back and my lap times improved. On my second stint the unfortunate happened the server crashed. This was around 8 - 9pm my time BST and this was the start of my major problems. We all got called out as normal and line up on the safety car. As it was dark i didn't see the Aston Martin GT1 car of UK - NL Racing going slow and i nearly rear ended him. Then i nearly ran into a red Corvette in the line and hit the brakes hard and it must of been a cigarette paper width away from his bumper. Then my FPS was dropping as 50+ cars were called out and it dropped to 4 which was really low so i had to pull off the track and let people go before it sorted itself out. I got going and coming up to the last complex of corners before the pitstraight i went to go pass a Porsche GT who shut the door and took my nose off the car. Luckily i was close to pits so dive in and got the stop underway. For some strange reason the car went straight into the pits and i got a DQ and couldn't continue. Numerous times i tried to get going but the drive wasn't showing. After loads of tries the race control advised to get another driver to rejoin. After a frantic call to Ben i dragged him out of bed to do a lap and clear my DQ. After that all was good and lowering my tire pressures by 3 i was in autopilot mode and lapping comfortably but the damage was done i had incurred 2 time penalties and was 20 something laps down.

All in all despite the problems all the drivers drove fantastically well Ben did well to get us some laps back towards the end and you had a great first stint from the start running as high as 4th. Greg and the GT guys did really well too and a massive thanks for Darien for keeping things going smoothly and keeping the moral up.

Thankyou everyone again in the team and RDLMS series and for everyone who competed.

For a laugh here a picture my missus took on the Sunday after the race. 24 hours not alot of sleep hot sunny day of 28c swimming in the morning plus a roast dinner = tired lol. The bib was extra i was probably dribbling like an idiot after that event lol

 

[Scott Webber]

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.

plugins don't crash the server straight away, but it's a cause towards it, hence why we ask everyone to remove it, it was clear from day 1 when we announced the league, in future i think penalties should be given out for it. or as marcel said, i would welcome some software to scan for 3rd party plugins.

endurance racing leagues, need support from the drivers to ensure the stability of the server, otherwise it sort of defeats the purpose you know?

 

[Robin Verdegaal]

This weekend I've been the weakest link in the Simracing For Holland Porsche. For this occasion Rudy van Buren joined the ranks, and when I tell you that he was nothing slower than Wilfred, it's safe to say that we had something to prove in the GT2 category. But this 24H wasn't only about the race win. In the championship standings we weren't far ahead of Brigata Orso, and double points meant that more teams could still run away with the title.

With lack of preparation I was extra anxious when it was my time to take over. I was never going to match our team's laptimes but I couldn't afford to run damage on our car and ruin the race for the team.

Track
I'll be frank with you, I didn't like the track version one bit. I hated it. I didn't even WANT to learn the layout that I thought I'd left behind four years earlier. It just felt like a huge anachronism with the Porsche, Audi's and Peugeots and I missed the flow of last year's layout.

Night
All morning I had been doing tracktime in pitch black conditions on the trainingserver, but when it was my time to drive at 21.00 it was still light. And it stayed light until the end of my second stint. It took some time to adjust to the different braking point markers, but on the positive side: it kept me on my toes and probably helped to keep me out of the walls.

Respect
Honestly, this was not good. I really missed respect between drivers on track. In our GT2 a lot of faster high downforce cars didn't care if they'd put our safety on the line. After a couple of near misses in the first hour of the race our Porsche was sent full speed into the wall when one of the LMP2s dove down the inside of Indianapolis. We lost the entire front end of the car. The LMP2 drove on. No apologies, nothing. We still don't know who it was.

But it wasn't only cross-class driving that was sub-standard. Our GT1 car got damaged on the rear, left AND right side by another GT1 who was running slightly more wing than us. That's a strategic decision that you're going to have to live with and it's unacceptable to try and bump the front car off track in order to make the pass. Even if you're faster on some parts of the track, you're just going to have to be patient and wait for the right opportunity. Car contact should be avoided at. all. times. The driver in the linked video even managed to damage our car from behind on the Mulsanne straight. And not even in the braking zone. With 23 hours to go. Again, no apologies whatsoever.

My personal opinion is that this lack of respect is unacceptable. It shouldn't be down to Race Control to check back on so many race incidents during the event. It's a hard enough job as it is without people acting like the other driver shouldn't be on track in the first place. If you want to drive like this, host your own private session and add some AI. Seriously.

Traffic
That said, multiclass racing is hard. Not everybody is capable of putting themselves in the shoes of other class drivers. Misunderstandings are going to take place, incidents will happen, it's something we'll have to learn to live with.

What can we do?
There's track sections where you cannot make a safe pass, there's track sections where it's no problem, and there's sections that are something in between.

During my stints I've been trying to keep an eye on my mirrors and whenever a faster car would approach on a difficult track section I'd flash my lights in order to let them know that I had seen them and they were clear to pass. In turn, a lot of prototypes briefly flash their lights to let me know that they were approacting. From my point of view that seemed to work quite well.

The trouble is that I couldn't find out how to signal that it was NOT a good idea to make a pass. Some prototype drivers tried to make a pass in corners where a GT2 is just not able to take the outside line without losing it and damaging the car.

NOT flashing the lights could mean that I was going to claim the apex, but also that I just hadn't seen them. I have been passed in the Porsche curves by prototypes that totally surprised me. If you've never driven a GT2 car in a multiclass race you can't tell how utterly scaring that can be.

I think it could be a good rule of behaviour to never make pass without timely blinking your lights. In turn a confirmation blink from the slower car could avoid a lot of incidents due to misunderstandings. I'm not sure if it's a watertight plan. But like I said before, I think we need to raise the level of respect first.

Finish
In the end I managed to complete all five stints without damage, and I'm myself probably most surprised about that. While my laptimes were so-so, I can't help but think that keeping it clean added a lot to our chances. Winning the race and the championship is a great result.

We all owe everybody who put time in making this happen a lot. Thanks to everybody, on and off track, that made this event happen.

 

[Robin Verdegaal]

Just to make one thing clear: the above post does not concern everybody on track. I've raced many of you many times, and with a lot of you guys I know that it's not going to be a problem to be overtaken. You know who you are.

 

[Ronald Kracht]

I got one thing and that is the dubbel points on LeMans. Al the season we practice hard to get some good result and the hard work can be destoid in one race?

 

[Thomas Roth]

Respect
Honestly, this was not good. I really missed respect between drivers on track. In our GT2 a lot of faster high downforce cars didn't care if they'd put our safety on the line. After a couple of near misses in the first hour of the race our Porsche was sent full speed into the wall when one of the LMP2s dove down the inside of Indianapolis. We lost the entire front end of the car. The LMP2 drove on. No apologies, nothing. We still don't know who it was.

We were also taken out twice in Indianapolis. And nearly a third time, had I not put my car in the grass to avoid it. We had to pit for damage once because of this.
It really is unacceptable. There was one P2 car in particular that I was having problems with my entire stint.

 

[Daiman Patel]

I hope that it doesn't sound like I'm complaining, but one thing that was an annoyance was the constant refreshing of the live timing screen; this made it rather difficult to read, especially if you were towards the bottom of the table. I'm not sure if the same / similar software will be used during the VWEC, or if there will be a new tool. If the same software will be used then there should be a relatively simple fix for this, using AJAX to update the page contents without needing to refresh the page.

Other than this, I genuinely don't have any complaints about this season. It was well organised in my opinion, and I had great fun! Cheers guys. I look forward to the start of the VWEC, which already has the advantage of being one character shorter than RDLMS, which means that we'll have an extra available character when posting and hash-tagging on Twitter!

 

[Balazs Toldi]

plugins don't crash the server straight away, but it's a cause towards it, hence why we ask everyone to remove it, it was clear from day 1 when we announced the league, in future i think penalties should be given out for it. or as marcel said, i would welcome some software to scan for 3rd party plugins.

endurance racing leagues, need support from the drivers to ensure the stability of the server, otherwise it sort of defeats the purpose you know?

Yes, I know and Sorry.

 

[Marcel Offermans]

I got one thing and that is the dubbel points on LeMans. Al the season we practice hard to get some good result and the hard work can be destoid in one race?

Just to clarify, the feedback you have is that we should not have decided to give double points at Le Mans?

 

[Ronald Kracht]

Just to clarify, the feedback you have is that we should not have decided to give double points at Le Mans?

Yes Marcel sorry for the lack of clarity.

 

[George Pol]

Okay ... my two cents ...

First of all ... thanks to all the guys who helped out keeping S4 alive when it seemed it would end premature.

Likes

- The number of teams being able to compete
- The chance to pick up again after a disconnect
- The choice of tracks
- Livetiming (although the way it refreshes is annoying for teams at the back of the field)
- The commitment and cooperation within my team

Dislikes

- Overall information could be more brief and less open for discussion
- Our overall performance (for which only we are to blame )
- We would like to see one or two more races in a season
- GPCOS ... what for?

About rF2 ..... I understand it might be time to move on to rF2 but only if it has more advantages over disadvantages compared to rF1. And I'm not convinced that's the case already. Remember ... rF2 beta-release was over 1,5 years ago and still it isn't finished. Bringing the weather into the events will be great, but will there be a mod that can make us forget what the guys at Enduracers have produced? I have serious doubts about that. If it was up to me I would prefer one more season with rF1. Don't throw away your old shoes until you have a new pair that fits.

 

[Daiman Patel]

If you'll be implementing software for the VWEC, using the rFactor 2 API, I would be happy to help with the coding (if you're looking for aides), for my own interest and also to better my general application development experience. As a computer scientist / software developer and sim racing enthusiast I think that I will be able to provide useful technical input in the creation of a solution, and would love to get involved in the nitty gritty of managing the events.

 

[Nicky De Fré]

Great race, great event really enjoy that.
Just back from my 24h rest as i needed that.
Not really on the pace to batlle for the top, but really happy to finish this in a descent position
Tx for all teams, tx to RD staff for the big effort, to make this possible, and looking 4word to the sequel on rf2 with weather and real pitstop times to repair.
LSD Racing Signing off

 

[Marcel Offermans]

looking 4word to ... real pitstop times to repair.

What do you mean by that? I am not aware of any changes to pitstops in rFactor 2, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.

 

[Nicky De Fré]

What do you mean by that? I am not aware of any changes to pitstops in rFactor 2, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.

Then i suggets you do a endurance race on it. Pitstop times when you have damage are much longer then in rfactor1 did a 2h30 min race here on RD pistop after damage 300sec

 

[Yoeri Gijsen]

Yep, damage repairs to a lot longer now, depending on how heavily damaged the car is.

 

[Daiman Patel]

The only other thing that I have to say is not really a complaint about the RDLMS, rather something that I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see in the VWEC - the inclusion of more up-to-date cars - it would be awesome to see the Audi R18 (or even the R15), Toyota TS030, Nissan in LMP2, and newer renditions of the GT1 and GT2 cars (I don't think that there would be much point in having Pro and Am classes in the new series).

 

[Rui F. Martins]

i would like to make a sugestion, i'm not sure if it is possible to do it, or the workload of such a sugestion would be too much fot hte admins, it was something that crossed my mind after the race and i would like to sugest.
I thought it could be done a special broadcast with invited drivers, teamowners, etc. to discuss how the season went, specially the last round. That broadcast could also have a space reserved to everyone who took part on the race and wanted to tell their stories during the race and that sort of things, what do you think?
please don't take my sugestion badly, i know admins are stuffed with work to do in their free time, it was just something that crossed my mind and i thought it could be really nice

 

[Jonatan Åcerclinth]

I would have loved to see a few more races in the season. For example Bahrain (there are a couple of really well made versions of this track) and Potrero De Los Funes (yes, it is a bit hilly but it is one hell of a blast to drive with the Enduracers cars).

If we stay with rF1, as I also think that rF2 still isn't ready, it would be great to see 6 events instead of the 4 events we had this season.

 

[Jonatan Åcerclinth]

It would be great to if it was possible to clean the live-timing screen a bit to make it easier for the GT1 and 2 teams that is allways towards the back and has to look through the allways updated page to try and find the team again after every update. I found several times that I couldn't find the RMI team for several minutes.

It was also a bit difficult keeping an eye on which column was "how far behind", "best lap time" and so on.