RD GT Championship 2021 I

Hello. I would like to congratulate the champion of the championship, many congratulations.
I also want to thank the organization, commissioners and broadcast of the race for a job well done, thank you all.
Regarding the race, just to say that the whole issue of the stops was very confusing, that made me lose concentration and end up losing the difference in seconds that I had with the second driver. I had to stop at minute 40 but without a window and at that moment I did not understand anything, until I deduced that there was a problem with the server configuration. At 60 minutes the message of the pit window was open and 15 minutes before I made the pit stop, I decided to stop again to meet the window, I had to fill the tank to be able to finish my race.
 
thought the whole series was great, i was very much (i only race off-line person) this was my first online experience and it was great, made me think how crap i am and not much race craft. so i learnt new things and relearnt tracks i thought i knew. all work in progress and alot of practice require.
regarding pit stops i made my first pit stop around 40mins (i think) but the pit window notice had not displayed and i wasn't sure if it was working correctly as i seen other drivers doing there pitstop. it did appear 10 mins after i did the first pitstop. the second pitstop i did but again no pitstop window. appeared. i turned off my chat window during racing as it can be distracting.
 
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I've not looked at the scores, but I guess that pretty much every solution to the issue (From no penalties to adding time penalties to adding laps to rearranging the order for those who pitted twice to be at the front) will give a different result and different champion. Thus making it impossible to make the choice because it basically puts the champion in the hands of the organisers.

The real issue with this happening at Spa is the length of the pitlane making every unnecessary pitstop super long, meaning those of us who stopped twice in that 10 minute window pretty much lost a lap at least on everyone we're racing, or at least got lapped by the leader while the cars we were racing and did 1 less stop weren't lapped, meaning a simple time penalty won't work in all cases. It's an impossible situation which really can only be solved with another race, or taking the result from about 35 minutes into the race, when most people expected the first stop to be.

So as I said before, the best solution for a result that won't leave someone with a sour taste is to do another race and just chalk this one off. It's a shame that the 2 hour race is the one that we'll have to lose, but these things happen and as long as we learn something from it then it won't be in vain.

Another round is probably the only solution, as long as everyone is free to take part. Brands Hatch is on the British GT calendar and is a great circuit. Do a 1 hour race with 1 stop, like the previous rounds (or even reduce this length to a 45 minute 0 stop) and get the title decided there. Maybe even run with a limited number of racers if needed, like the top 20 in the championship or something, otherwise there will always be someone who feels like whatever choice is made for the pitstop mess penalised them or an opponent either too much or not enough.
 
I would not want to be in the position of administrators. In my view, repeating the race or doing it on another circuit will not solve what happened.
I think there was a clear rule to make two stops. Some did it in the window, others did it in the first 40 minutes and then the second was done either inside the window or outside it, but if the pilots met the rule of the two stops there should be no problem.
The problem is if some only made one stop, then it is clear that those drivers had an advantage over those who made two.
That said, any decision made by the organization will be accepted by me, now I am not going to run the same race again or another on another circuit, basically because we started other championships and our calendar is very tight.
 
I would not want to be in the position of administrators. In my view, repeating the race or doing it on another circuit will not solve what happened.
I think there was a clear rule to make two stops. Some did it in the window, others did it in the first 40 minutes and then the second was done either inside the window or outside it, but if the pilots met the rule of the two stops there should be no problem.
The problem is if some only made one stop, then it is clear that those drivers had an advantage over those who made two.
That said, any decision made by the organization will be accepted by me, now I am not going to run the same race again or another on another circuit, basically because we started other championships and our calendar is very tight.
The problem is there was an order from race direction to make two stops in the pit window at 55-65 minutes, and it was communicated after the first "theoretical" 35-45 minutes window, so after most people had made their first stop already. If the decision from race direction were to ignore the pit window, then fine. They had like 20 minutes to make a decision, because at 35 minutes into the race it was clear the first pit window was not opening (I even asked in the chat at 40 mins), and the only pit window opened at 55 minutes. The decision was to make us do 2 stops in that window, which obviously meant 2 more stops for those who had already made one. Some people made only 1 stop, so those who made 2 lost around 1 lap. I don't really care as i would have finished maybe 15th instead of 16th, but this is a league with actual prizes so it needs to be fair, i think.

In general, stuff happens even in real life: accidents, mistakes etc. I also understand that some people may have turned off the chat box completely. There was also the Discord live channel, so they should have at least kept that open. In general, there must be a way for race direction to inform the drivers of something happening. If you close all communication then you cannot complain that you didn't know what was going on, or that it was different from what you saw on the forum before the race. It's like if there is full-course yellow and a driver does not slow down because "you hadn't told me before the race there would be a FCY!".

Maybe a way to settle at least the championship winner could be to check what were the strategies of the "mathematical" championship contenders, i.e. those who had a mathematical chance of winning the championship at the start of the Spa race. If they all did the same thing (e.g. ignored race direction and made only 1 stop during the pit window) then well that evens out things for them and we have a legit champion. From what I saw on Discord, the championship winner made only 1 stop during the pit window, so if the other contenders like Chris etc. did the same then maybe it's reasonable to consider the issue settled. As I said, it's not my problem, luckily i was way too slow :D
 
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There were eventually no more than only four drivers that finished with 2 pit stops not served according to the grid in the stream (not the whole grid was visible).

That means everyone else didn't respect the mandatory pit stop requirements.

Definitely a mishap because nobody could address correctly the blue flag. I gave away several seconds to have cars passing me when there were actual fight for position.

Furthermore, I agree with Francisco that the concentration away and created unnecessary panic for the strategy. I personally drove with a ballast of 20kg in the tank cause I could not address the consumption for the end of the race not having clear visibility on when the next stop will occur.

Racing with motion and vr is quiet immersive and you are just focusing hard on driving, specially under those conditions.

Sure mistakes happen and I have nothing to say rather than had a great time and thanks to the organizers.

But at the same time when I share with my teammates about the episode they were not surprised.

Since there's no official result I will wait before any comment.

I watched and shared the whole stream: another great battle between the top three drivers, beautiful to watch, felt like real motorsport.
 
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After the first pit window did not open after 35min it should have been a clear sign for every driver, that the server was configured incorrectly. I really don't want to blame someone, because sh*t happens.

However .... we as the drivers have to adapt to this situation. Yes, my pitstop strategy was completely thrown overboard.

But it should have been clear for everyone, that we have to make our 2 stops in this single 10min pit window, even if it doesn't make much sense. We had to accept that.
If someone has not complied with this and simply ignored this unlucky situation, then these drivers should definitively be penalized. It was a big advantage to ignore the pit window.

PS: I don't read the chat during the race. It distracts me and i have no time to read it. But i was in Discord.
 
I came into the pits to refuel at around 42 mins into the race. I had noticed in the lap before that the notification that the pit window wasn't on. As such, I worked out that the 600 seconds pit window was likely to be around the 55 minute mark, so as I trundled down the first half of the pitlane I checked the race rules on Simracing.gp (which I had open on a screen next to me for exact situations like this) and realise that was what was happening. I quickly dropped the fuel load so this stop would only fuel me for 20 mins before stopping. Then I had to pit twice in the window on consecutive laps and had to suddenly adjust to fuel up for a full hour in the third stop, therefore losing further time with a heavy car early in the stint and worn tyres at the end. As this wasn't planned I ended up with one lap too little fuel and had to sacrifice 2 positions late in the race to get lapped again. We all got screwed in different ways.

Really, priority should be given first to those who pitted in the window. No matter how much it was misread and communicated, the 10 minute pit window was programmed and the rules saying that were visible on simracing.gp all week. We could all see what was going to happen, as shown here.
A question for this week, the original post says 2 pitstops, but it seems like SGP has only one configured:

View attachment 458241

Shouldn't it be "2", to match the original post? :)

Alarm bells should have rung in everyone's head when the pit window didn't open at 35 minutes. If you have chat or the HUD disabled, or weren't in the Discord, that's not really an excuse. Because there's no team radio with a dedicated engineer telling you this stuff, how are you going to know when something has gone wrong? Mistakes happen and this isn't the first time something has gone wrong, and won't be the last - we're all human. Rules are rules, and if some people stick to them and some don't, what's the point in having rules in the first place?

It's not like this was a massive rule change thrown in by accident at the last minute, the clues were all there and we all - drivers and organisers - misinterpreted it. I applaud whoever it was who first put a message in the chat at around 37 minutes saying this was going wrong to try and warn others, and Ricardo as well for noticing the error and trying to send a message out to everyone. It's not easy, and there isn't a perfect solution, but I don't have much sympathy for those who didn't pit at all in the window. There were at least 3 places where the information was available (simracing.gp, chat, the HUD), and if you had all 3 of them off in the race, that's no longer the organiser's fault that you missed the error. Chris Down is about the only person with an excuse because he was the one who asked for clarification and got Ricardo's (later to be proved inaccurate) confirmation that the windows were correct.

Obviously take my opinion with a grain of salt. I was screwed over by the pit window significantly (because of the long pitlane), sow ill fight the corner for everyone who lost out as I did, but as we saw in the Grand Prix - even poorly communicated rules are still enforced. There were enough sources of information here that could have communicated the mistake that excuses run thin for those that missed it. Just think yourselves lucky that the game didn't instantly disqualify everyone who didn't make their stops in the window, because as the window closed I was fearing a sudden exodus from half the field.
 
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

As the last race of the championship has not changed the end result of the series we have decided it's the best call to just remove the results of the R4 race at Spa all together so there will be a classification based on the three 1H races only.

We would have loved to re-run the event next week but we don't think it's a possibility seeing that we would need to free up an entire broadcast and race direction team again and like yourselves we all have families that need our attention (sometimes) as well :)

But, we don't want to end it all here on a low so we'll throw you a really nice bone! Catch!

All who have finished the entire RDGTC season will be directly seeded (if they wish) for our upcoming multihour-teambased-driverswappinggoodnessmagnificentexperience-one-off-event-with-a-massive-viewing-audience that we will announce here soon on RaceDepartment.

Guys, once again we are really sorry this more of less ruined the last round but it's unfortunately part of the sport.

On behalf of the team: thanks a lot for the good fun this season and stay safe!

Bram

PS: we will anounce the prize winners asap here in this subforum. Stay tuned!
 
All I know is an older guy was watching and sooooo confused. It was a great race, and from what I could tell, guys made 2 stops, be it in the window or not, and I continued to watch some great driving throughout the field. Congrats to all the drivers for a great show and to the RD Team giving us a great platform and streaming coverage of just how much talent we've had here for years. Drivers, modders, forum users answering tough questions, admins, it's all here and ready to make it's mark in the E-sports and Sim Racing world. #growthegrids #reachtheworld

Cheers boys
 
Finally ..... here's my video from the championship finale (well .... which wasn't the finale). :O_o:
You'll find some words and highlights in the video description.


Even if i was pretty happy with my pace in the rain, but there were a few unlucky moments, where my race went down the drain. So the race was fun and also not-fun.:confused:

Nonetheless .... i really liked to race in the RD GTC. Organised in a very professional manner and with a bunch of good simracers as well.:thumbsup: Thanks guys.
 
HA HA what a surprise.

Thanks for that headset!
I have good use for that for shure

These events where a bumpy ride for me. With lots of bad joyces on my behalf, that resulted in frustration.

Admittedly i really have to say, that i enjoyed watching the races on twitch afterwards.
The stream was very well done.
Concratulations to the top drivers and the winner. There was some seriously fast and intelligent driving going on at the front.

Many Thanks!
I see you guys on track
 
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