SimRacing.org.uk

Car: Skip Barber Formula 2000
Track: Silverstone (International)

Practice: 18:00 for 135 mins (approx)
Qualifying: 20:15 (15 mins)
Race: 20:30 - 25 laps (approx 40 mins)

Start: standing
1 'fast tow' (reset) available for each driver (available by pressing SHIFT+R by default)

Practice: A server will be available from approx. 19:00 - 23:00 the day before the race

Password: see above (#post_event_password)
Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=243;theme=33)

Here we go guys... a very quick few laps and the 1st laptime in testing is....... drum roll....

Ben Summers          1:39.111


I would say it is probably about 10 secs from an alien laptime, but you have to start somewhere  ;D

1.38.472 with my first few clean laps. Not sure I like this track, not that many clean passing spots, would be happy enough if I get down around a 1:36, can see it being a race of lots of minor spins and off's, lots of run-off room, but plenty of corners that encourage too much gas too soon.

Done a few low 34s after Tuesday's Indy race.  33s are definitely possible.  Top times possibly into the 32s I reckon.

I'll wave at you as you lap me :)

Any chance of sharing your setup Brendan, I'd be very happy with 1m34! Just did a few laps with the default setup and am managing low 1m38's.

Silverstone is so boring to practice with in the Skippy...

Latest Practice laptimes

Brendan Wright    1:34
ross.mcw            1:38
Noel Kellett         1.38.472
Ben Summers       1:39.111

1:36.5 PB for me with full fuel.

I'm not sure I'll be anywhere near that in the race though  :-\

Hmm, maybe I dreamt that low 1:34 because tonight I'm consistently in the low 35s, with a PB of 34.8  :-X  ::)   :laugh:

Setup:    http://www.filefront.com/15812213/BW%20Silv%20Int.sto

Replay:   http://www.filefront.com/15812267/undefined

1:36.3 for me at the moment - 35's are very doable, but low-mid 36's will be where I'm at for the race I think.

Managed a 1:36.004 eventually.

After some tweakings I think I've got a set-up that I can be consistent going into T4 with. Seems I have to set the car up just for that turn so I'm not spinning al the time (or going really slowly).

I'm around the 1:37's atm, hopefully find a bit more before race time.
I normally don't like Silverstone, but enoy this layout of it in the Skippy :)

1:36.4 after 7 laps but more to come.

Latest Practice laptimes

Brendan Wright    1:34.8
Iain Mabbott       1:36.004
Adam Parle         1:36.3
Dave Gymer        1:36.4
Don                   1:37
ross.mcw           1:38
Noel Kellett        1.38.472
Ben Summers      1:38.602

1:36.6 and struggling, as I always do on these big tracks where there is too much tarmac to choose from. I like the track to be narrow, so the racing line is more obvious!!!

Ditto exactly!  I can see I've got some serious practice to do tonight.

Latest Practice laptimes

Brendan Wright    1:34.8
Iain Mabbott       1:36.004
Adam Parle         1:36.3
Dave Gymer        1:36.4
Ken Murray         1:36.6
Don                   1:37
Ben Summers      1:37.010 (wahoo not last :) )
ross.mcw           1:38
Noel Kellett        1.38.472

If anyones still gunna be around for the last hour of practise i'll hopefully try and join when i get home from the footy at about 10ish.

Did manage to get a few low 35's but mainly low 36's

Latest Practice laptimes

Brendan Wright    1:34.8
Gary Hickman      1:35
Iain Mabbott       1:36.004
Adam Parle         1:36.3
Dave Gymer        1:36.4
Ken Murray         1:36.6
Don                   1:37
Ben Summers      1:37.010 (wahoo not last  )
ross.mcw           1:38
Noel Kellett        1.38.472

Practice server is up

That was fun, managed to take 0.3s off my PB and into the 1:35's at last  8)

Nice to be able to join in the praccy on a Monday for a change, cheers guys.

Iain,  Sorry I tack it back.  Your setup is great... doing 1:37s easy :)

It was my wheel.  I seem to have to re-calibrate it every time I go into Iracing

Good stuff Ben, glad it worked in the end.

Latest Practice laptimes

Brendan Wright    1:34.731
Gary Tall             1:35.135
Brian Kerr            1:35.388
Stuart Symonds   1:35.496
Gary Hickman      1:35.517
Ken Murray         1:35.669
Iain Mabbott       1:35.794
Paul Thurston      1:35.805
Ade Bate            1:36.004
Dan Minton         1:36.065
Ross McWilliam    1:36.623
Andy Purdie        1:36.719
Adam Parle         1:36.3
Dave Gymer        1:36.4
Donald Wright     1:36.916
Ben Summers      1:37.010
Noel Kellett        1.37.474
Mark Ekins          1:38.793

Well eventually managed to creep in to the 35's after seemingly being stuck on a flat 36 no matter what I tried. I think it was the final corner that eventually made the difference. I had just been treating it to tentatively and not feeding the power in soon enough.

This was my first time on this circuit layout and I was really struggling. For some reason I always do struggle at Silverstone in all sims.

Before the race tonight I will have to make sure I put in a fair amount of practice.

One thing I noticed last night and I was doing myself, T3 to make sure you were driving straight to apply the brakes for T4 you had to use a lot of kerb and grass.

I'm surprised that iRacing does not flag this as a 1x.

4 wheels were inside the kerb but it does seem to be the natural and safest line with iRacing allowing this line too.

Any official word on this matter?

I was cutting it too, but not to the extent of 4 wheels inside the kerb!! I think if in real life there is support under the grass, as there is here and at some of the Brands Hatch corners, then iRacing must be viewing it as part of the track.

There are a few corners at Silverstone where you can take a large chunk off grass without a 1x.

IIRC, on the inside of T3 is matting (a la the exit of the final turn) so I presume it's part of the circuit and not part of the scenery.

I'd assume that if the game sim allows it, it's fair game.

That's the line the real car take through there - barely touching the tarmac.  I assume that if iR is okay with it then so are we?

I find the game is ok when I first join the server but if the game loses focus for any reason the wheel becomes super sensitive. The options showing th wheel moving 3 times faster than me turning it. Pressing ESC while talking on TeamSpeak is one way it goes wrong.

Mine does the same if I come out of the server and go back in, not sure if even alt tabbing does the same also, I will have to check.


got a G25 wheel btw.

My view is that drivers should make every effort to drive the track within the prescribed bounaries as defined within the game, i.e. not to pick up any 1x off-track incidents.

That's one of the benefits to the incidents being reported, if someone flagrantly picked up a 1x every lap by cutting too much it's pretty easy to pick that up after the race, if it's deemed to be deliberate then a penalty would follow.

In this specific case (T3), as Brian points out, it's safer to ride the kerb there, no 1x is detected so it's perfectly allowable.

Alt-Tab cause the problem for me as iR loses the focus.


Snap, makes no difference if I'm running the Logitech Profiler or not

Its also realistic, as has been pointed out. I'm driving this like I do in real life, iRacing have it right with no 1x here

Gary

Put in another little practice and I'm still all over the place.

I'm beginning to see how fast Brendon's time is. It would not be surprised to see that time more than good enough for pole.

After the recent debate about driving standards I do feel there is still too much focus on hot lap times.

There are a few corners that really bite but hopefully like I'm finding, I get thrown well off the racing line out the way.

I'm still miles off race standard so I will hopefully be on the server early doors tonight.

Lol yeah, miles off Brian!  Doubtless I'll be lapping you at least twice during the race with your 'slow' pace ;)

Struggling here ..just not carrying enough speed through the corners. Using Brendan's set which was a million times better than mine..Cheers mate. ;)

sorry Michael, I over reacted to Don slowing :( i knew you were on my right but didn't realise you were a little alongside  :-\ your car was knackered and when I saw you pit I felt worse! Sorry again

DNF'd.... after the incident but I enjoyed combo and have had quite a bit of practice but still only quali'd 18th with a pb! Setup from Pops was great but I just didn't know how to carry enough speed through the corners (especially tricky T2 and T3!)  ::)

Can't wait to get behind the Dallara which I seem to just click with..... pretty much addicted to power!

My car was so beaten up after the first few laps it's a wonder it still went in a straight line  :'(  Although I had some good racing in the midfield and a massive battle with Ade for 8th, I pushed a mistake from him on the last lap!

That race goes into the "what might have been" pile.

I think you must have seen someone else pit though Andy, I carried on without resetting since the car was still driving OK.

Really painful car/track combination that - I was hopeless in practice but finally managed to pull together an okayish qualy lap.

Spoiled my race at the start with a dumb jump start/black flag/pit which was a shame because I finally found some consistency and could have probably had some fun racing in the mid-field.  As it was I instead spent the whole race on my own and it's not a great track for just hot lapping.

Congrats on the win Brian and to all the other front runners.  Amazing pace!

Cheers, Ross.

That went a lot better than I thought.

A few corners were really getting to me. Impossible to do consistently fast using right foot braking.

Qualifying was hotly contested with drivers up and down the chart all the time.

In the last couple of minutes I slipped from 1st to 4th but could not find a clean lap with all the traffic added with a few errors of my own.

Looked at the lap charts to see Dave at the top of the chart and I almost felt bad for stealing it off him however Paul came through to take 2nd late on too.

I knew there was no point trying to push too hard as at one point or another T3 into T4 would get me. Also the tight right hander at the end of the straight was getting to me. My braking was really inconsistent and I often ran wide.

Paul was never far away and I thought once I found myself 1.5 secs ahead I might ease away. A couple of little errors and Paul was right on my tail for the next series of laps.

Paul was really strong in and out of the tight right hander and was forever taking a few tenths off and could probably see I was struggling with that bend. Looking in my mirrors I could see him about to make a move on the brakes but I read what was going to happen. I just stayed left and let him run on wide.

That gave me an 8sec lead and I just cruised to the finish.

Great race and very surprised to win as earlier I really was struggling badly. Just shows if you forget about fastest laps and overdriving consistency rewards.

Looks like a few others had a real battle behind too.

That was good fun, had two unforced and silly spins towoards the end of the race which moved me back a few spots, but other than that, really enjoyable and some good close racing. Spent the first 5 or 6 laps doing my best Jarno Trulli impersonation, I was that green mobile chicane that 5 or 6 cars were backedup behind :)

Tipped Adam at the hairpin on lap 10 when I out braked myself, apologies, pulled aside and let him back through, Mike snuk past then too, in a car that was more skip that barber.

Noel

Heh heh, I saw the 34s in practice so I figured I'd have little chance of being anywhere near the front 3 rows; one lap I pushed too hard into T3 and had to drift it all the way through into T4. Thought the lap was spoiled so pushed in the rest of the lap hoping to stretch the limits a bit more on a scratch lap and was shocked to see 1:35.0 come up - and even more shocked to see the "1" in front of it!

Wasn't that surprised to see that that was still only good enough for 3rd but I figured that I'd soon have the 3 or 4 cars immediately behind me, er, well, immediately behind me. :laugh: It was clear after the first few laps that Brendan was going to be the biggest threat, but I had enough of an advantage in the second half of the lap, especially in Priory and Brooklands, to be able to maintain a gap of around 2 seconds.

That was, until I reached Welling to lap him. Without much of a gap to play with, where I caught him was just going to be where it was going to be - unfortunately that turned out to be the tricky T3/T4 combination and my gap to Brendan was wiped out. From there on I had to defend like crazy, my only real advantage being that his strong section - T3/T4 - wasn't a great place to try an overtake.

At one point we actually traded places for a couple of laps; I can't remember now whether this was before or after Paul968 had his moment, but having him struggling right ahead of me didn't help much either. :laugh:

A podium is an amazing result for me, and really only came about because of that freak qualifying lap. Still, I'll take what I can get! :laugh: :angel:

That was a pretty disappointing performance from me tonight :(

After quite a bit of practice I was going pretty well yesterday, getting into the 1:35's and easily running low 1:36's I was nowhere near it tonight. 10 mins praccy wasn't enough to get up to speed and I then struggled in qually.

As usual I only picked up places due to others mistakes but I was pretty consistent and didn't make any big mistakes.

The highlight was a great battle with Adam at the end, we had a small private wager on this race so I was very pleased to pip him ;D

A pint of Crème de menthe and tizer please Adam!

My race report...

Roll on the IndyCar race. :)

Well all the good fortune that came my way in the last skippy race was wiped out in this one. Qualified nicely in mid pack and rounded T1 OK. As we approached the tricky T2/T3 everyone seemed really slow. I did ease off a fair bit myself but as we clipped the apex of the the left handed kink Mike slowed even more just as I had started to brush a bit of throttle back on. I braked hard but still nudged him off track. Obviously all my fault, but was there some sort of chain reaction going on ahead of me? I couldn't see the reason for slowing so much at that point.

Anyway apart from a crumpled nose I was OK so proceeded on chasing Paul T. As we entered the complex on lap 2 Paul went off track. I could see Gary dive to my inside as we turned in to the penultimate corner so I stayed wide and looked to grab the inside line in to the final corner. Out of my view Paul was now rejoining and we just ran in to each other and his car climbed on top of mine!! I was now virtually dead last and had slightly bent suspension. I plugged away and ever so slowly caught the group ahead. Just as I got on Ian's tail I thought I'd got T1 perfect. Just judged it nicely to use all the rumble strip but not the grass. However I had never noticed if you stay on the rumble strip all the way to the end it actually makes you just clip the grass, it doesn't blend back in to tarmac, there is a short patch of grass, and wham it just spun me round instantly. All that hard work thrown away in a moment. There wasn't many laps left after that but I did get some positions due to others spinning.

Sorry to Mike for lap 1, especially after our dressing down by the officials after Brands!!!

Here comes a rant from me.
Dire from my point of view, all that talk about safe driving, all I saw during the Qually session was yellow flags and cars off at the side of the road. The race didn't seem to be that much different for the the 3 corners I managed before my race was finished for me.
I may sit out the rest of the season at least, and use what precious time I have to sim race on pick-up races at IR, the odds of me finishing without any contact would seem to be greater.
Putting 3 hours practice in each week to try run safely here just isn't working out for me.
Good luck for the rest of the season.

IR and SR, hell yeah! lol.

I take it you'll be submitting an incident report then, Don?

I fell off once at the start of qually after which I think I ran incident free despite some major moments. There were an awful lot of cars on track at once compared to an official iRacing Skippy session (max 14 there I think) and with such a spread of abilities practice and qualifying being a short session it was always going to be hectic.

Should we not increase the qually to 20 or even 30 minutes. Why was 15 minutes chosen?

+1 to that Ken.

I was absolutely rubbish in practice, from a 35.1 last night to struggling in the high 35's, it was like I was driving a different car, qually was not much better although from somewhere pulled out a 35.3 and went second for a while.

The race was better, settled down to chase first Brendan and then Stuart, after about seven laps I learned how to drive again. Just a shame I had a bright red Skippy stuck in front of me. I think Stuart and I were around half a second apart for the first 23 laps and then finally the mistake came and I nipped past young Simmo whilst he attempted to grasstrack round Woodcote. I then drove 2 fairly slow laps to ensure I kept the place.

Great fun Stuart.

So I did not spin in the race this time, next time I really must get qually right ::)

Congrats to Brian, Paul and Dave

Gary

Bugger - think I might have had a chance at the win there. Qual was pants again but sneaked 2nd late on to put me between Brian and Dave on the grid. Brian and I slowly eaked out a lead and once it was a couple of seconds Dave seemed to drop back a bit more quickly. It was really intense for the first 20 or so laps chasing Brian as at first he was so consistent. Then he started making a few slips, mainly into the hairpin but also at maggots/beckets. I had a few trial runs into the hairpin and knew I could brake deeper there but his car was always in the way. When I got a chance I felt there was a gap on the inside but stupidly I missed the braking point by concentrating on Brian's car, which sent me into the gravel and left me only 1 second ahead of the Dave/Brendan battle. I needed a lap or 2 to settle down and make sure the tyres were OK by which time Dave was pretty close. Luckily he was pushing pretty hard and making the odd mistake too, so I could drive just within the limit and keep 2nd to the flag. Grats to Brian and also to Dave who was very quick in the last section. I think I will have a look at my lines in the skippy as I lost out to Brian there too.

12.02 Mr T? It must be almost nearer breakfast than bedtime for you!

Still here, I get a lay in now on Wednesdays as I work up North, don't need to get up until 6am then.

Off to bed now!

Gary

Did you race with Brendan's setup?

The 1 ARB helps a lot through T3 and T4 but I find that corners where you were heavy on the throttle it would not turn in well enough for me in the last section.

I was a tad disappointed with qually.  Couldn't hook up a decent lap and lined up 5th on the grid with a 35.1. 

Start was clean and I followed Simmo for 3 or 4 laps until he ran wide at T1 and gave me 4th place.  I then set about trying to reel in the 2 second gap to Dave which proved a lot more diffcult than I had anticipated. 

By about lap 15 the gap had reduced to around half a second and when Dave made a small mistake into T2/3, I took the opportunity to nip by on the inside.  I didn't get a great run onto the back straight and promptly out-braked myself at the hairpin and gifted Dave the place back.  The duelling continued over the next couple of laps and although I nudged infront a few times, I couldn't make it stick.

So, hats of to Dave on a fine drive under pressure with very few mistakes and grats to Brian and Paul also.

Yep - this goes into the "what might have been" pile too ....

I was pleased to finally break into the 1:35's at the end of qually, can't really complain wiht a new PB - especially given how busy the session was.

The race started ok, although Shark got past me into Bridge early on, side by side, I had to lift to get round the corner, and the let Simon carry more speed round the corner and safely past.  I seemed to lose focus, and never got close enough to attempt a pass, although we both made enough mistakes to keep things interesting.

A lack of consistency through T2/3 cost me dearly, barring the tap from Noel that's where all my IP came from, one silly spin and a few off tracks.

After my spin I was behind Pops - nooooooooooooooooooooooooo.  With a beer to the victor I did my utmost to get back in front, and we had a few cracking laps - and a very close finish - for some really enjoyable driving.

Without the mistakes it could have been very different .... but isn't that always the case.

Looking forward to the next race.

No, I ran a modification of my silverstone setup from last time which had 4 ARB. The place I seemed to lose out was bridge, which I think was down to line. You and Dave carried more speed through it and compromised the line for priory a bit, whereas I was trying to stay right to open up priory. This is a longer line though and I think it showed. What I would say though is that it was possibly a safer race line, as if you mess it up there are more options open to you.

Replay from last night;

http://www.legendsracing.net/iracing/SRouk_Silverstone_I_Skip.rar

I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The standard of driving in the front gaggle was very high.  Only 10 seconds between the top 6.

I had a scruffy qualifying, spun on the first lap and decided to wait until everyone went by to get some clear air.  After a few laps settling in again I put in a PB of 1:35.1 which to my surprise put me on pole!!  In my shock I binned it on the exit of T4 so decided to park it and watch as there were only 4 minutes left.  Ended up 4th which was ok.

Got a good clean start and everyone was very sensible round the first few corners.  Struggled to settle for a while and was losing ground to Dave but keeping Brendan at bay. Made a mistake on lap 4ish at T1 letting Brendan by but following him actually helped me settle.  Gap to Gary in 6th was fairly stable at about 0.6 for the first 20 laps.  When we all caught Welling it helped me get back onto Dave and Brendan and when they started squabbling I had a look at Brendan into the tight hairpin but he slammed the door shut.  I stayed between 1-2 seconds behind Brendan until the penultimate lap when I ran wide at the last corner allowing Gary to sneak passed!!  Gutted!!

Was a very enjoyable race and it was great watching the fight between Dave and Brendan, I was sure you were both going to come off when you went side by side though Bridge!!

I had a terrible qually session, dunno what happened to me  :-\ so started a bit down in 11th.

Start was good and a few spun which put me in 8th. Got up to 7th and was kind of staying with Gary and Stuart for pace but 2 secs behind and i just couldn't close the gap even though i was banging in mid 35's which was as fast as i had gone in any session. After lapping Welling i was a bit closer to Gary and i started to push but i realised i had started with 3.8 fuel and it might not be enough so i slowed down to make sure i finished  :-[  i started spluttering at T3 on the last lap so was pretty close.  Bit of a shame coz i might of been able to race the two ahead in the last few laps if i had enough fuel.

Grats Brian, Paul and Dave

I'm with Don to some degree, and it's not just a matter of protests...

There were a lot of spins and yellow flags in qually, if someone self-spins a few seconds ahead then it's not really protestable but it *is* off-putting, at least, it is to me, maybe you faster guys don't notice it as much?

I saw a couple of occasions during the race when guys put themselves in bad positions due to being overly aggressive (imho), one ended in disaster for two of the drivers, the other, they escaped unscathed.

I dunno, seems like guys are still pushing a bit too hard tbh :-\ Once again, I only had a 'fastest lap' faster than 3 other drivers but I still finished in the top half.

Yeah, I don't feel that protesting is helping things too much :( How many turn out to be racing incidents. Don't get me wrong I think the Mods do the best job they can. I don't know what the answer is.
Maybe I have just been guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? but it's been 3 out of the last 4 Skippy races where I have come a cropper. It might just be my outright lack of pace thats getting me in trouble, I won't force a move on anyone till I'm 100% sure I can make it stick and the other way round if someone has me clean I'll let them go. So I don't really get what all this contact stuff is about? Especially in the Skippy where one small tap can mean game over.
Freetime is valuable and maybe I should look for a more rewarding hobby, like collecting stamps :)

I tried to stress before the race to ignore all these charts going up about fastest laps. There is too much focus being placed on them.

It's good to have a target to achieve but little point spending hours trying to make that one big lap stick.

Fastest laps really mean little in the scale of things as both Pops and myself(4th fastest best lap) show if you race wisely results happen.

Last night for some strange reason I found my car to be faster in practice with 4.5g over the lighter 1.7g which is highly unusual. The best time I did with qualifying setup was 1.34.9 but my race setup had 1.34.7 and a few .8s too.

However I knew that T3 into T4 was a real pain for me and it was not worth pushing too hard. Easing off a bit earlier and sacrifice maybe 0.2 per lap was more than worth a big off.

I always felt at ease knowing if I had to up the pace I probably could do a little more but was aware of the risks.

I guess everyone enters the race thinking they are going to be sensible but as soon as you see that car just ahead, you feel you have to go that little bit harder.

Also if a car is chasing you unless you make a mistake he is not likely to get past if you drive well and hold the racing line.

I don't mean to sound rude, but how you can judge the "protest" system as not working when there have only been 6 reports in total for the 5 races this season? 6 reports for many laps of racing with decent sized grids (well in the Skippies anyway). Those stats don't highlight any issue at all and that's the point. This system needs incidents to be reported and if you want a working system you have to contribute to it. It's like moaning about the government but when it comes around to election time you don't even bother voting. The Brands Hatch race had ONE incident report for it, but I think from what I've read there were a lot of incidents, why weren't they reported?

Seems like you guys aren't giving the system that was put in place to sort this kind of thing out a chance to work. People don't like to get reported so even if they don't get a penalty, reporting an incident does help because it's a socially bad thing to have been involved in and makes people think harder about what their doing.

I would also like to voice my loathe for the overly used "I was the victim but don't want the other person penalised" option on incident reports. I've hated it ever since it was implemented. It's utterly ludicrous and we should get rid of it. I know it can be disregarded by a moderator, but it should be the job of the moderator alone to decide one way or the other and his decision should not be swayed by some silly checkbox. If we don't penalise people no one will learn. At the very least, if it's a team mate involved then the option shouldn't be available at all to select because of how it can be used to bias the outcome to the benefit of that team.

If you really want to crack down and the system we have in place has been used properly and it hasn't worked then you have to REALLY crack down. Hand out harsh punishments for car-to-car contact. 2 place penalty for any car to contact for the person responsible for example. There is nothing wrong with a bit of draconian, dictatorial leadership and don't be afraid to use it for fear of upsetting all the wet blankets.

Couldn't agree more with the comment re the 'I was the victim but...' checkbox. The problem is though that the system has another way to get the same effect - don't report. While you rely only on incidents reported you will always get this problem imo as there is a culture of not reporting unless the offender is someone new or known to be a problem. If you want the incident system to work properly then mods need to find the incidents themselves and not let mates decide amongst themselves who gets punished.

Having said all that I still don't think it is that bad. The skippies are much harder to control than GTR cars and are very fragile. Most of the incidents we are seeing would just have the GTR cars bumping off each other and carrying on unaffected. The majority of the contact last night was also unintentional and caused by drivers missing braking points or not anticipating a car ahead slowing.

I agree with some of your sentiment Shark.
I can only judge that the protest system hasn't been working in as far as the 3 personal incidents I was referring to have all been logged, but the damage has already been done and a 2 position penalty for a possible wreckless move is neither here nor there imo....
Plus there are always 2 sides to any accident so having your name socially dragged up if you are free of blame isn't always giving out the right message either.
As I said in my previous post, I think the mods do the best job they can and that reviewing accidents is the way to go and maybe in some cases it will get people to re-think how they are driving, but I just feel Personally at this time that filling out an protest form each week isn't getting anything changed out on track... and as I mentioned earlier it could be my style of driving that keeps getting me in trouble.

I don't really want to go on anymore and seem like more of a jerk or bad loser ;) so that's all I will say on the subject.

For me that is the core of the problem. I drive the Skip just as I do GTR cars. But my conclusion is a bit different: I'm not sure I want to drive these cars that so fragile - I certainly don't enjoy it. :(
Like I said on a Legends forum - I'd probably react the same in the situation between me and Burtoner in the next race, as my (GTR2) feeling dictates to do it - I would make the corner and there would still be enough space for Burtoner to come out of the corner side by side. Sadly, I can't see this kind of close racing is possible in iR - at least I don't seem to be able to do it.  :-\

Two reports on me this time. I collected Don after mising my brake point - pure guilt with no plausible reason to justify the event. Sorry Don. :(
The other - with Burtoner - is the one I talked about. I was positive the outcome would be safe for both and side by side action, with me on the inside in the next corner. :)  
Well, the outcome was different and after seeing the replay it seems to be my fault - it lookd different to me in the fray. Sorry, Robert. :(

The development in this series gives my instinct a suggestion to quit out. Things might be different if we had 107% rule.

Not at all Don. There is nothing worse than putting in lots of effort practicing and then not actually have the opporuntunity to use all that practice.

I agree about the 2 place penalty being a bit of damp squib when it comes to actually being a penalty cause it's only a penalty for the people that get it and finish. A lot of the time when an incident occurs, especially in iRacing, it's game over for both parties so dropping from 17th to 19th is neither here or there. I believe actually having it reported at all will make the parties far more uncomfortable than a place penalty though, so reporting it at all is the important bit because people will want to avoid that bit more than anything else.

I think we also have to remember that this is new to a lot of people still and getting a real feel for the limits of themselves, the cars and so on takes time when the game is this hard. GPL took me a very long time to be competant enough to race with others and iRacing is quite similar in how hard it is. We also have to remember than nearly everyone here feels the same way and that there are very few "get out of my way" type drivers and intentional accidents so maybe we just have to accept a bit of learner driving whilst we grow.

I'm as guilty as anyone in qually sessions and practice sessions, but I do know that when it comes to the race you have to be a lot more reserved and I prove that week in week out. My excuse for so many incident points in pre-race sessions is that I do no practice at all, so they are my practice, which is no excuse at all and something I personally will reflect on.

It doesn't have quite the same effect - something that's been reported as a "but..." where the drivers have privately kissed and made up can still be reviewed and others can learn from the report before they make the same mistakes.


Which is all very well, but as you well know we (and UKGPL) struggle to get mod reports done at the current level - when we used to try and review the races more completely we frequently didn't get them done at all.

There's no reason the iRacing races can't be reviewed more completely with the aid of the lap charts (there's a link to the iRacing page in the title bar above the race results) but it's so labour intensive I can't see it being done...

Yes, you are right on both counts, but I still prefer the old system and always have done, even if it is more work. The effect of the odd reported incident being reviewed and reported by a mod is negligible imo - people see it, see no penalty and move on. I think the newer sims also make it easier to find the incidents. iRacing tells you all the laps that a driver has contact on, which is a big help. The replay controls also help a lot.

A mod doesn't have to guarantee they will punish every incident anyway, but the drivers should know that there is a good chance they will be dealt with if they transgress. At the moment I think the culture of the league is that the odd slip will be ignored, which is fine in GTR land but perhaps less appropriate in skippy races.

One other thing that used to happen but I don't think does any more is yellow card points (correct me if I'm wrong). The principle makes sense to me but only really works if most if not all of the incidents are modded.

The system is still there - 1 'point' for a warning and 2 for a 'penalty'. It's been a while since I've noticed anyone rack up enough to start getting extra positions lost though.

I'd have to say last night I found the level of racing way better than what I was used to in the iRacing skippy series, which I gave up on in January this year (after huring my headphones across the room and cursing solidly for about 3 minutes), and I've moved to the Radicals, which seem to attract a more careful bunch of drivers. I thought the general level of ettique was pretty good last night.

If it comes to it, I'd be happy to do some modding on races I'm not involved with, I did in in the UKGPL for a few seasons many moons ago. Yes it takes time, but if you'd 4 people to review a series (4 people who were not in that series), each would only have 4 or 5 drivers to watch for a race, pass the incident points to the "marshal of the course", and they'd make the final call. Spread the load, a number of people finding the incidents, one senior mod calling the punishments.

Noel

Just one suggestion - why not make it mandatory that any car to car contacts during qualy or the race must be reported as incidents otherwise all parties involved are struck out of the results.

Cheers, Ross.

For one thing, somebody might simply forget. For another - and more importantly - it would be as labour intensive as simply reviewing all cars for the whole race.

I'll reiterate - we struggle to get enough reviewers to moderate reported incidents. Any notion that we can review more is, to mix metaphors, up there in cloud cuckoo land with the flying pigs.

I'm not sure I agree with that. It took about 30 minutes to get a pretty good picture of the main incidents by looking at the replay and the results data. If this work was shared out it wouldn't be that onerous. I have no problem reviewing more incidents - I have hardly done any so far because there haven't really been enough to do.

Chicken and egg... surely more incident reports are needed in the iRacing league so that it can be judged how many moderators are needed.  I understand that moderator resources have been an issue in the past with the other leagues, but iRacing's reporting and replay facilities hopefully make this a slightly easier task than in the Simbin based sims which should help.

My suggestion above was simply to make sure that car2car incidents do actually get reported (them not being reported seemed to be an issue at the start of this thread).  I'd hope that those all involved don't forget - at least they have an incentive to not forget!  Making it a requirement simply removes any obscurity on the issue of whether something should/shouldn't be reported.

PS.  I've obviously not moderated before myself and realise that I may be talking carp in which case, feel free to flame/ignore me ;)

Cheers, Ross.

The Brands incident report shows what a joke the current system is.  I have no complaints about my penalty, but am extremely unhappy that I'm the only one on there.  That element is totally unfair.  It seems that if you are in a huge team or are an SROUK stalwart and are chummy with everyone, then you have a massive advantage as you are far less likely to get a complaint against you  There were loads of incidents that deserved a penalty in that race.   Its laughable.

We're certainly not going to ignore incident reports just because there are other incidents that are unreported. What you didn't see is that a number of drivers were contacted privately after that race.

In an ideal world the mods would go through every lap in every race from each drivers perspective but that's not going to happen, it's simply too time consuming.

Anyone is free to file a report that they think justifies it. You don't have to be directly involved or affected. You didn't even respond to the incident you were involved with Stuart, it seems to me like you are in the group you seem to be criticising.....

Like I said, I have no problem with my penalty and don't think it should be ignored, in fact I'm asking the contrary, the other incidents should not be ignored just because nobody complained.  I didn't respond to defend myself of my incident as it was indefensible, the replay said it all.  I take it on the chin.

The problem is, as some others have mentioned, there are groups of friends on track who have raced against each other for a long time and won't raise an incident against each other.  People are more inclined to raise an incident against someone they don't know.  Thats not equality.

I saw quite a few incidents at Brands when I watched the replay that I consider to be worthy of a penalty yet they get no mention.  Its frustrating to be the only one singled out in public in such an incident filled race.  You must see my point?



I have no idea what you mean?

What's laughable is that no one bothered to report anything but one incident. It has nothing to do with being chummy or being in teams and in fact I would say team mates can actually get a harder time than people you don't know. Even if you kiss and make up with people via PM I believe the incident should still be reported. The more we see the more is visible. The more is visible the more effect it has on not just that one person but everyone else too.

This is a voluntary organisation and getting people to trawl through every incident in every race is not going to happen so you can't expect it. You are not paying anything for this league so don't expect a service from it. You get out what you put in.

Actually Simon, Stuart has paid for a fair number of the practice sessions for this seasons skippy races out of his own pocket.

Gary

You are upset that incidents didn't get reported yet you didn't report anything yourself, not even the incident you were involved with ??? You can't have it both ways.

Also as driving standards were raised after this race why did it need incident reports to go in, what triggered the request for improved driving standards if there was only one incident raised.

Not trying to cause trouble but I can see why Stuart is a little unhappy and before anyone says anything, yes he is my friend and I did recommend he joined here.

Gary

I raised the issue over driving standards.

I noticed after the race that an inordinate amount of incidents had occurred which matched what I saw in the race, I passed driver after driver who had left the track.

I don't see that as protestable if no-one else is affected. However, those types of spins / off-track excursions can easily end someone else's race so I wanted to raise my opinion that some people were over-driving and that could have undesirable consequences.

Stuarts incident was based on car contact. If there were other incidents of car contact I'd expect them to be reported. I didn't see any during the race.

Just looking into this a little bit, it seems like it would be reasonably straightforward to programmatically pull a complete list of incidents for any session as the lap chart refers to data at this URL:-

http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/GetLapChart?&subsessionid=1789702

...and the 'flags' variable is available for each driver for each lap where each bit of the binary version of flags is:-

2 = "pitted"
4 = "off track"
8 = "black flag"
16 = "car reset"
32 = "contact"
64 = "car contact"
128 = "lost control"
256 = "discontinuity"
512 = "interpolated crossing"
1024 = "clock smash"
2048 = "tow"

This would at least allow automated highlighting of what needs looking at although you'd potentially still have to look at the whole lap to locate the incident.

I may even have a go at a webpage myself to do this.

And there was I thinking a donation was a donation. :-\ As soon as people start expecting something from their donation this becomes a business and I don't believe that's the direction this league ever wants to go in.

I didn't see it as my place to report incidents between other drivers where I wasn't involved?  Isn't that for the drivers involved to report or the moderators to raise? How would a driver feel if I raised an incident against them but wasn't involved and wasn't a moderator?

There were plenty of other contact incidents at Brands, some race ending.

Simon, I expect nothing from this league except parity.  The current incidents system doesn't give us that. 

Simon I never said he was expecting anything, I was just pointing out that your statement was wrong. I do agree that it does not mean he should expect anything, but I did feel that as he had willingly started the server for people a number of times using his own cash that your comment was harsh.

Gary

Just to say that although I don't necessarily like it in this case, it is far from uncommon in motorsport to see this sort of thing happen. Take the F1 rules - cars running close to the rules are normally only looked at by the stewards if another team protests, for instance the wing stalling saga at Mclaren.

Not with on-track incidents though Paul.  Thats the Clerk of the Courses job, and he has to treat everyone the same.

But we have no clerk of the course! Competitors can bring incidents to his attention, and this is the only mechanism that is used here.

Of course not - and it isn't meant to be. The system is designed to educate first and punish second; where drivers have kissed and made up already they often won't raise inident reports, because firstly the driver who caused the incident has (hopefully) learned from it, and secondly they know that the system is overworked as it is.

As Paul says, we don't have a Clerk of the Course - moderating incidents is hard and thankless work and none of us are getting paid for it! The only practical alternative to the current system that I can see is some SR-type malarky, and I don't think any of us want to go there!

If we had the ability to identify points where car contact occurs (as Ross seems to suggest is possible if I correctly?) I'd be happy (as a mod) to look at each of those incidents as if it were submitted as a report.

That seems fair?

Pops, you would need the whole replay hosted somewhere to do that wouldn't you?

We might need to ask people to save the replay so that we have several copies available, but with our field sizes we get most of the drivers on a client replay anyway. I think mine had all the major action at brands.

I haven't had a problem identifying any incidents so far on the replays.

As Paul points out, we can identify the cars and laps that have car contact from the results output. It's not in the most usable format but we could give it a go.

I'll have a play at getting a system that can parse the data into a more readable format from just the SessionID.  From looking at it, it seems pretty do-able.

If a replay is available to all the mods that need it and the identification and submission of incidents for the mods to then look at can be automated into the existing system it can't be a bad thing.

Sounds great, lets hope its do-able.

I too have no problems viewing the entire race and all cars on a replay.

Okay, I confess. I bought another G27 (a working one this time!) last weekend and it's definitely easier to manage my braking and make smoother, more controlled steering inputs than my "on it's last legs" G25.

Now if you could all wait a moment I'll buy shares in Logitech before you all rush out and buy one each...

They are £25 off this week at Overclockers, bringing them down to, well not really much less than the staggering amount they are normally selling for! :-\

Im suprised no ones done a review on overclockers yet.

Brian intimated in another thread, that if you already owned a G25 and it was not performing as it did when it was new, then it might be worth contacting Logitech and it wasn't unknown for them to offer you a G27 at half price.

Really  :o  Mines completely worn out ,might be worth a phone call.   ;)

Always worth a try, might save you £150.  :)

You guys must really cane your G25s, mine still feels the same as it did the day I got it out the box. :D

Maybe you should plug it in?  :P

Yup. My shinny new G27 is sitting in the house for when I get home today.

I had a little guilt trip about it as the wobble on my G25 really is not much to complain about.

It's not perfect but it has made no difference to my driving.

I better highlight mine was free as my G25 was still in within warranty.

I did read outside warranty they have offered a G27 at half price to G25 owners.

thats it.... G25 on eBay and the G27 will be ordered  :laugh:

considering it costs less than one front slick tyre i can sorta justify it!

Buy me one too and run with two worn tyres instead of one then. ;)

I do hope that Dave wasn't just having a 'good race' ;D

The incidents from this race have now been moderated (see top). We decided to review all the car contact and also to impose penalties when required even when drivers requested that a penalty not be applied. Please pm me if you have any issues with the moderation.

Huge work here, Paul. I apologize to everyone for my jackbutt driving. I feel iR is too different from GTR2, so I'm now in the period of tranzition and evaluating my place in iR - at least here.  :-\

Even so, there is one thing I have to say: never, and I mean never, in 12 UKGTR Seasons did I ever answer anyone's pm - no matter how xxxxxx angry I was at the time - with a report. I answered first, after cooling down, then wrote a report. To be clear: any incident deserves a report.

xyz: tried to add something sensible without sounding like a whine, but it didn't come out the right way. So: add whatever you like here. ;)