IMPORTANT: FSR Problems: Debate (1)

[Ondrej Kuncman]

As David said. That also explains why the discussion of "serious" people only would just create a bucket of nothing. Lots of talk no action. Definition of isr. All of you old "serious" people want no change clearly and would prefer if Fsr just ceased to exist it seems. So far there are actually just 3 serious people - Cobb, DD, myself and a few others who said useful stuff. So get the head out of ur ass and wake up. Hate me or not but I am one of the few people who can Fsr go forward instead of graveyard. Once again I'm not going for president but I am willing to work on a plan with a potential president and take some role.

 

[Dian Kostadinov]

1) Ok, the problem here is the lack of care of WC owners and I understand your point. To may work an organisation whether TOA or ISR, it should be mandatory all owners to participate in the discussions there or at least to have their vote for the team. You can change the rulebook for penalties and to add a point including penalties for team owners which don't follow the rules. Example the penalties could be taking points from constructor championship, or grid penalties, or something related with the racing part of FSR. I'm sure all will follow the rules strictly and I think we (team owners) should be the one to create them.

2) This is not something that can be changed easy. Nowadays most of the people are waiting someone to do their job and that lazyness makes this task the hardest one to solve. I also as Ondrej said, am ready to help, there are not many the instances where I'm good.

3) I think everything is okey with this, when those teams racing like rivals on the track, I don't see any reason to change this. Maybe I would agree if you try to reduce the teams in lower devisions, not more than 1 team in same devision by one main team.

4) I'm not expert in economic area, don't have an idea how to develope our league to grow up economically, maybe trying to find out more general sponsors.

 

[Kris Cobb]

1) Ok, the problem here is the lack of care of WC owners and I understand your point. To may work an organisation whether TOA or ISR, it should be mandatory all owners to participate in the discussions there or at least to have their vote for the team.

Well they already vote, and you can't just have idiots put forth something just because they have to say something to be involved.

2) This is not something that can be changed easy. Nowadays most of the people are waiting someone to do their job and that lazyness makes this task the hardest one to solve. I also as Ondrej said, am ready to help, there are not many the instances where I'm good.

This is the critical problem. FSR can limp along forever is we get the volunteers. I think we have to take into consideration that not everyone is good at everything (or anything). That's why I proposed every 2 years members should volunteer from WC Lifetime license holders. It gives a chance to cycle people out so they don't get burned out (and possibly leave mid-season) and give all teams a chance to participate. Lets face it, a small team, lets take Madcape for example, has only visibly 3 people on the team (at least FSR Team). Owner, and 2 drivers and they may not be good at anything that needs to be volunteered for. We have to be careful to not punish them. (Sorry @Xavier de Carvalho, just using your team as an example) On the other hand, larger teams don't need to be doing all the work all the time either, though they could more readily assist just because of sheer numbers.

3) I think everything is okey with this, when those teams racing like rivals on the track, I don't see any reason to change this. Maybe I would agree if you try to reduce the teams in lower devisions, not more than 1 team in same devision by one main team.

Not sure how effective this is since you always tend to practice with people you are friends with. I have seen this personally in my team. No point in doing this. Promote the league more and you will solve the sister team problems (I disagree there is one). #3 is a symptom of the problem.

Thing is we can't change it too much that the current TOA won't vote for it. And I don't blame them at all for that.

 

[David Dominguez]

No worries, David, I agree with you. Although this is probably not a "one man" task, though. Hopefully, the next President, whoever it will be, can write a first draft of the updated documents with the ideas that are picked from threads like this, and then it should be discussed among Club members. In a similar way as it is done with the sporting Rules but hopefully with more activity.... Btw, candidates could even pick up the challenge of presenting updated documents as part of their campaign!

This is exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to say. See, you expect the next President to do it. You know what's going to happen? Next president will be busy enough trying to find people, trying to set deadlines, trying to find tracks, trying to open votes, trying to discuss about the mod, the game, validating people in gpcos, packing mods, etc... and at the end the last thing he will think about is about those papers, because the really important stuff is to make the league move forward. Which is sad, but it's the truth, it happened to me, it happened to Johannes, it happened to JES... when there is so little help you have to give priority to the important stuff.

There are a lot of club members, not only the president. You are entitled to open a debate, write your own new structure proposal, with your own rules, etc, and then it can be discussed.

In other words, don't wait. Do it.

 

[Dmitry Zaharov]

I'd suggest to open a new thread to see how many people want to volunteer to fill roles in a new supposed structure.

 

[Christian Smirnoff]

You know what's going to happen? Next president will be busy enough trying to find people, trying to set deadlines, trying to find tracks, trying to open votes, trying to discuss about the mod, the game, validating people in gpcos, packing mods, etc... and at the end the last thing he will think about is about those papers, because the really important stuff is to make the league move forward. Which is sad, but it's the truth, it happened to me, it happened to Johannes, it happened to JES... when there is so little help you have to give priority to the important stuff.

What you say goes back to the issue of lack of volunteers, David. The problem about what you write there is that the President shouldn't have to do most of those tasks. President should be there to delegate tasks, doing medium and long-term planning, setting deadlines and only overseeing daily activities.

Finding tracks and packaging the mod should be activities of a Technical Director. Opening votes was normally the task of the TOA Chairman, and validating people in GPCOS also shouldn't be one of the President's tasks.

Again, as you said before, the issue is filling those roles, not finding a President who can take care of everything at the same time, because he will obviously fail. That is one of the reasons why we must return to actually having a structure, so that the responsibilities of each role are clearly outlined.

 

[David Dominguez]

I just want to be realistic. We will never have enough people to take care of every area. Not only FSR, that applies to any other league. Multitask is always needed.

Anyway what you said doesn't invalidate what I said earlier; don't wait for the president to do the stuff for you. You are also part of the club.

With you I mean you and all the club owners.

 

[Georg Winter]

Since there is no thread yet. I would apply for Technical Director reffering to cobb`s Overview: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U8wBA25qi3C6oWEDAgGxd9aDrBbHdkifW0knvG0JjSY/edit#gid=0

I would help at tracks and the mod. At tracks I already have some experience(textures and packing). And the mod packing will be not that much more difficult. And if I dont know something, I`m pretty sure, that JES will teach me.

 

[Ondrej Kuncman]

Just a random idea I had while writing season Honestly Said review (for all the followers, I've lost my mojo slightly it is not easy to write), to points 2 and 4: Since FSR has such a mixture of nationalities I think if PR/marketing team made a plan to promote FSR world wide with something manageable for everyone, literally anyone here could contribute and help promote FSR in their countries. Many people here come from their home national leagues and have contacts so this could help. Not much effort needed from these people, just consistent work. How many nationalities are in FSR? 20 - 30 or more? How many of of the people have simracing contacts in their country? 60 -70 %? Something to think about perhaps.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

Haven't read the all the posts so sorry if I reapeat something here.

1- TOA/ISR Club

Not sure how all this works. However, there are teams which own life long licenses.
Why is that? Wouldn't a yearly license fee bring more income as a more open structure aswell?
Give everybody the same chances. Stepping into FSR with a team everybody should start from the same point which is being 0. (No idea whats happening with all that money involved they have paid once) There is sure a solution for that also. However of course the teams being part of the league from previous season should have a priority for entries but that is all about it.
AFAIK selling a teeam does not get FSR any money but just the team owner. Going further a few years there is no income from the most teams anymore but they may win everything. Doesn't seem to be right. The risk is just as high as joining with a yearly fee license like the new teams have or teams with that "loaned license". It is afterall a competition advantage believe it or not.

FSR is not to compare with other leagues as you guys at the end run here for money. If that is the reason number one for anybody who runs he may decide himself.

I said it allready once, FSR need desperatly independent "leadership". Let's put it just by side if currently there is bias or not, it's not important when looking forward. Once independent people are running the league it is hard to moan and question every decission which makes the work much easier I guess. Of course they might make decission which favour one or another team but that is just the nature of the things. One time it's this team one time that team and so on.

You could still keep the same structure and let the TOA still vote but just have one or more guys who is/are independent, have some common sense and an idea about racing to make the last call.
If you setup strict rules this guy at the end would have simply to fallow those rules aswell.
So at the end there would not be much change to the structure and you still would keep things in TOA hands if this guy runs mental. If this is the case you still can vote him/them out and you have a backup with TOA. FSR would just win credibility with such a thing and all the conspiracy crap would have not base arguments anymore.

2- Lack of volunteers

Give them a bone. This work needs to be respected so give the people who are doing that respect and award them with "however".

3- WC Sister Teams

Simply eliminate them, set rules for racing behaviour. Any possible case has to be investigated and punished hard as it is competitive distortion. Everybody has to have the same chances.
At the end fast people will win.
Example: This year I saw peole leting peole pass. This could have been situations where people have to fight for the place, probably crash, destroy tires, change strategy or at least compromise the stint in any case. Massive change in points. Just isn't right as much as you guys are used to it.
I am not blaming the driver nor the teams (they just make the best out of it) but it is a rule that needs to disappear. Leave the signups open, people will join and the hard racing will come naturaly again. There is no need to controll who is parcticing with another guy or this guy. Simply control it on track. If they exchange setups it is their thing. Nothing to do with administration. On track however if there is some budy racing just punish it hard. At the end the fast guy will always race for the place if he thinks he is fast enough and if nobody is holding him on a leash.

4- Business aspect

No insight, however try to set the price money at the start or before the league starts.
Make it atractive. Enough nut's people who might try to go for it.
Promete the price money aspect a bit more, wouldn't hurt.
Generally more promotion wouldn't hurt, reach out to other websites and so on...

Done, if it contains nonsense and unusefull crap ignore it.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

Oh, forgot one thing. The guy who makes the call on racing incidents needs to be independent aswell. Pretty much very important.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

1. Teams own lifetime licenses because they were promised those according to structures and statutes of ISR club. It's not an ideal situation, but you can't just tell a random team: Hey, sorry you paid 1000€ for license few years ago, from now on your payment is irrelevant, please pay again.

Regarding independency, I was not associated to any team at start of season, and only weakly now. That's pretty much the best you can hope for for next year (to have president independent). To have all race directors independent is impossible. We tried few years ago to have independent staff judging WC race incidents. It worked for one race before they gave up. Nobody wants to be a slave and judge incidents 10 hours a week, yet not be a part of the fun (driving).

2. I gave them a bone already last year by offering free licenses. Yet basically none were interested. The only area we had good amount of volunteers was commentators.

3. Sister teams can only by "eliminated" if we find 13 fully independent professional WC teams. Now that didn't happen even in golden years of FSR 2007-2010, so I wonder how we could achieve that now. Besides, even then it's impossible to control. GT Omega is sister team of Precision only because we "know" it is. They might as well change their status to "unrelated", and only way to prove it would be if we find an obvious teamorder (those can always be faked to look incidental).

4. Prize pot (3000€) was announced before season on first page of racedepartment. I don't think we can do much better here. Promotion was done on various forums, also via ISI. Once or twice they (even) responded and linked story of us on rF2 FB.

Again forgive me for sounding as a bitter old duck. But in order to get things changed, we also have to recognize what was already attempted and what didn't work.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

Also what I think is symptomatic of current situation is, I was already asked by two or three upcoming president candidates how much time I can commit to help FSR next year, one even asked exact hours per week. We really need to get new people involved with administration tasks. Ok, I have agreed to help some, but it's very worrying if even the next president candidates only have me as first candidate for helping. I've been around in FSR since 2006, Dominguez since 2009, Kuncman since 2006, Johannes since 2008, etc. It's time for the new people to step up, both in running teams and administration.

 

[David Dominguez]

I also want to add 3 things;

1- The biggest part of FSR's income comes from WC, despite not selling team licenses (WC driver licenses are way more expensive than Ace-Pro).

2- Team order ban can be fooled easily as F1 teams proved for years

3- The conspirancy crap never made any sense. I still challenge anyone to find any clearly biased decision from any FSR staff member that hurted the league or helped the interests of their own teams.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

1. Teams own lifetime licenses because they were promised those according to structures and statutes of ISR club. It's not an ideal situation, but you can't just tell a random team: Hey, sorry you paid 1000€ for license few years ago, from now on your payment is irrelevant, please pay again.

Just calculate what they have paid together, check the yearly license fee and calculate the difference. And maybe give them and exra year or two as a bonus and that's it.
Worth a try, nobody looses anything.

Regarding independency, I was not associated to any team at start of season, and only weakly now. That's pretty much the best you can hope for for next year (to have president independent). To have all race directors independent is impossible. We tried few years ago to have independent staff judging WC race incidents. It worked for one race before they gave up. Nobody wants to be a slave and judge incidents 10 hours a week, yet not be a part of the fun (driving).

Do not want to comment on that honestly.

2. I gave them a bone already last year by offering free licenses. Yet basically none were interested. The only area we had good amount of volunteers was commentators.

I didn't know that. However I asked for braodcast material to do short summary vids after the races (1min stuff without comments) I didn't get an answer.

3. Sister teams can only by "eliminated" if we find 13 fully independent professional WC teams. Now that didn't happen even in golden years of FSR 2007-2010, so I wonder how we could achieve that now. Besides, even then it's impossible to control. GT Omega is sister team of Precision only because we "know" it is. They might as well change their status to "unrelated", and only way to prove it would be if we find an obvious teamorder (those can always be faked to look incidental).

Was looking last year to get a license. Could not get it, don't even know if the team with the license was racing anymore.

4. Prize pot (3000€) was announced before season on first page of racedepartment. I don't think we can do much better here. Promotion was done on various forums, also via ISI. Once or twice they (even) responded and linked story of us on rF2 FB.

Visiting RD almost daily and had no idea about that until this post. Even often reading FSR forums. That should give you an idea.

Look man, I am not writing all this to annoy you or anybody here.
But if you insist that all this is already happening and ignore what people say then I guess you will not get any step forward. Of course you have more insight in all this stuff. I can only tell what I see and I fallow FSR quite closely, sometimes more sometimes less.

If you say you can't find independent race directors because they have to do all the work without being involved in racing than find a solution. You have directors now, people who prepare all the videos for the review and all this stuff. You can still have them, but just let somebody else decide. I mean honestly, it can't be that hard to understand that if money is involved you simply have to be completly transparent and establish a fair base to compete to be free of any doubts.

It might be not the biggest problem you have there or even none in truth but it still is annoying as it can be.

I know it is easy to write down suggestions and smart arse around but the thread asked for it and I gave it a go. So don't blame me please.

 

[David Dominguez]

I forgot about a 4th thing, 90% (at very least) isn't really racing for money. They are here for the competition.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

FSR is not to compare with other leagues as you guys at the end run here for money. If that is the reason number one for anybody who runs he may decide himself.

I forgot about a 4th thing, 90% (at very least) isn't really racing for money. They are here for the competition.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Prize pot (3000€) was announced before season on first page of racedepartment.

That was one of three articles this year. For a league with this stature that FSR has at least there should be a weekly written recap of the WC weekend, driver interviews, beautiful screenshots for facebook etc.

Imo thats the critical part for next season: find an epic writer, who is not only talented but is committed. The later is the key part and hard to find these days.

The one that steps up to fulfill this big task gets a virtual statue ill build myself

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

To add to the above. To those that have a writing ambitions, a press job can kick off your career big time.

See this thread where our previous editor outlines how his articles here got him a paid job at Autosport.com http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/advice-for-a-motorsport-journalism-career.91960/

Thats what proper writing/PR can do

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

Was looking last year to get a license. Could not get it, don't even know if the team with the license was racing anymore.

Was announced:
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/fsr-wc-license-availability.81692/

Visiting RD almost daily and had no idea about that until this post. Even often reading FSR forums. That should give you an idea.

Look man, I am not writing all this to annoy you or anybody here.
But if you insist that all this is already happening and ignore what people say then I guess you will not get any step forward. Of course you have more insight in all this stuff. I can only tell what I see and I fallow FSR quite closely, sometimes more sometimes less.

If you say you can't find independent race directors because they have to do all the work without being involved in racing than find a solution. You have directors now, people who prepare all the videos for the review and all this stuff. You can still have them, but just let somebody else decide. I mean honestly, it can't be that hard to understand that if money is involved you simply have to be completly transparent and establish a fair base to compete to be free of any doubts.

It might be not the biggest problem you have there or even none in truth but it still is annoying as it can be.

I know it is easy to write down suggestions and smart arse around but the thread asked for it and I gave it a go. So don't blame me please.

Prize money is a bit delicate subject, due to taxes and such. That's why I prefer not to write about it in every forum/media.

As I said, I'm just a lame duck. I will not be president for next season, I just simply commented on what has been tried and didn't work in my experience. Of course next president will read this thread and from these hopefully find some good ideas to apply in practice.