Phil Thornton
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« Reply #15 on: November 12, 2012, 09:02:09 PM +0000 » |
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......... After he made his pit stop I passed in 2nd place with Al Heller closing on me very very fast, so I had to stay on gas as much as in qualification to stay in front of him. At last my gap from Al Heller has been around of 5/10th of a sec WOW !
That is what Clive is trying to achieve with the Pit Stop system. Exciting racing with close finishes. There is no other handicap system that can create a situation where cars of different pace can compete in the same race. Over a season yes, but not in a single race. As we have seen it is hard to get the Pit Stop times right, good data is simply not available. Perhaps we should run the same set of tracks next season and use the lap times from this season to calculate the pit stop times? Or we could just ask Hristo to test all the cars and use his lap times .
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blito
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« Reply #16 on: November 12, 2012, 09:24:55 PM +0000 » |
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Years ago in the wireplay GPL league we used a system of handicaps based on driver and chassis performance. Basically the fastest guy would drive the slowest car and set a typical qualifying lap in it create a benchmark. Anyone going more than 1s/lap faster than the benchmark would be DQ'd from the race.. what that meat was that everyone spent a little time selecting the car that was right ( and adding extra fuel as ballast if needs be) and as result we often had side-by-side finishes.... /goes into to rose tint mode.... oh happy daze!
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Jason Blito
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clouds
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« Reply #17 on: November 12, 2012, 11:16:02 PM +0000 » |
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Years ago in the wireplay GPL league we used a system of handicaps based on driver and chassis performance. Basically the fastest guy would drive the slowest car and set a typical qualifying lap in it create a benchmark. Anyone going more than 1s/lap faster than the benchmark would be DQ'd from the race.. what that meat was that everyone spent a little time selecting the car that was right ( and adding extra fuel as ballast if needs be) and as result we often had side-by-side finishes.... /goes into to rose tint mode.... oh happy daze!
Unfortunately ballast gas is not checkable...I think none would base a race on drivers honesty (we in Italy say "raccomandare la pecora al lupo" meaning that you cannot use a wolf like a sheep dog), but on something perfectly definable and controllable. About handicapping I only can say that in the GPFun championship where I raced for some years before UKGPL, were assigned fast cars at slow drivers and viceversa basing the choice on a reference time made from the faster guy with the slower car so the other drivers would choosen a car that would permit them to have a Best Combined laptime not lesser than the reference time in configuration for qualify (very light). That means also that usually the championship would have been won by a slow car with a fast driver like has been for Leo Grandis for instance. During the week preceding any event, the guys would tested the car right for them and they would have posted their laptimes on the forum and eventually would have changed their cars according to the rule of the reference time. In other words, a driver should choose a car that permit him to stay as close as possible to the reference time without going below it with the Best Combined lap time. With this rule often we have had 10 cars within a second and the reference time only a very few times has been beated during the qualify.
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Sergio "Clouds" Lonzar
...Houston, we've had a problem here!
Jack Swigert, April 13rd, 1970. Apollo 13 on the way to the moon.
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BadBlood
Former UKGPL Moderators
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Sassafrassarassum Rick Rastardly!
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« Reply #18 on: November 13, 2012, 10:16:40 AM +0000 » |
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Perhaps we should run the same set of tracks next season
Ooh no... Or we could just ask Hristo to test all the cars and use his lap times . Ooh no...
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BadBlood aka Angel Moose GPLRank +71.5ish GPL65Rank +71.1ish Other ranks? Middlin' Slowish
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Hristo Itchov
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« Reply #19 on: November 13, 2012, 01:16:04 PM +0000 » |
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I think it's wrong to use qualifying lap times for handicap calculations, because it doesn't take tire overheating and reliability into account. You can see how wrong it is if you do that with 67s F1 for example, where the Honda is slower in race pace than it is in qualifying pace, due to excessive tire overheating and the necessity to look after the engine. At the same time though, you cannot take lap times from an actual race either, because some of those are done with slipstream or may not be clean laps.
Qualifying times COULD work if you somehow take into account those other factors, but it will never be perfect.
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garethhall
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« Reply #20 on: November 13, 2012, 03:46:35 PM +0000 » |
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nine cars, have nine races in a season, cars choosen at random, obviously you have use each car once. OR mabe car is own choice, still only use each car once, this would add a tactical emelant. just thoughts.
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« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 03:49:32 PM +0000 by Gareth »
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Hristo Itchov
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« Reply #21 on: November 13, 2012, 04:00:27 PM +0000 » |
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nine cars, have nine races in a season, cars choosen at random, obviously you have use each car once. OR mabe car is own choice, still only use each car once, this would add a tactical emelant. just thoughts. That is no handicap though, since everyone has the same cars overall (though I guess there is no real handicap with pitstops either), and at some tracks you're most likely to see spec racing, such as at Spa, Monza, etc., because people would be preserving their fastest cars for those tracks. Not that it's a bad thing, it may lead to intense racing with slipstreaming battles. With pitstops as we have now, the only time battles happen, most of the time, is at the start and at the end of a race. In the middle of the race everyone runs pretty much on their own due to differing pitstop lengths.
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« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 04:02:11 PM +0000 by Hristo Itchov »
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garethhall
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« Reply #22 on: November 13, 2012, 04:07:09 PM +0000 » |
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ok point taken. with the two variables of driver ability and car pace i doubt there is a definitive answer. mabe just the homogeneous approach and refining stop times is the best way. Also if a driver missed a race they would in effect not have to use the porker, drivers joining mid way throuht season etc..............ok bad idea lol
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« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 04:15:33 PM +0000 by Gareth »
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clouds
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« Reply #23 on: November 13, 2012, 07:04:00 PM +0000 » |
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GPFun always have raced 67's F1 with that sort of handicap (Fulvio could say something about this) and this is the 11st season ! The goal has been to keep the cars closer from start to finish overcoming the difference in performances of each one. The difficulty is to get a good reference time, good in the sense of realizing the best performances of the best driver with the slower car. In this condition, it is very difficult to realize a RBL better than the qualify lap time by the front row drivers maybe because there were also drivers in training all the week long. Slower drivers were always in the back rows with fast cars and this has always been a danger because often they are not good car managers so for this reason GPFun adopted rolling starts. Honestly speaking I've seen only 3 drivers winners of races in a Honda, Leo Grandis, Cosimo Monti and Paolo Minotto.
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« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 07:24:11 PM +0000 by clouds »
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Sergio "Clouds" Lonzar
...Houston, we've had a problem here!
Jack Swigert, April 13rd, 1970. Apollo 13 on the way to the moon.
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BadBlood
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« Reply #24 on: November 13, 2012, 09:47:29 PM +0000 » |
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And GPFun are all REALLY quick. Nice guys though.
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BadBlood aka Angel Moose GPLRank +71.5ish GPL65Rank +71.1ish Other ranks? Middlin' Slowish
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Phil Thornton
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« Reply #25 on: November 13, 2012, 09:56:00 PM +0000 » |
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We are confusing things a little here. The Pit Stop system is about levelling the cars not the drivers. The GPFun system is about levelling the drivers.
It all depends what we want to achieve. If we want a system where the drivers are treated equally and are free to take any car they choose then Pit Stops or Tokens is best. If we want a system where the fast drivers are handicapped to give the slower drivers a chance to win then chassis allocation, chassis restrictions based on championship position or the GPFun system is best.
Ideally there would be enough drivers to have numerous divisions of the same mod so that drivers of similar ability could be grouped together and a system aimed at levelling the cars is all that would be required to precipitate close racing (just like UKGPL in the early days when we had 6 divisions running the 67 cars). Personally I prefer systems that level the cars; I don't want to win just because a better driver has to compete with "one hand tied behind their back". I like to win on merit but if I can't I'm happy to try to compete with someone at the same or better level who isn't handicapped in any way. I'd much rather be second to Rainier, Hendy, Dave Curtis or Bernie et al in a fair fight that beat Hristo or Evil et al because they had to take the BT14 when I was allowed a MS7.
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clouds
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« Reply #26 on: November 13, 2012, 11:00:47 PM +0000 » |
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Uhm...I don't agree very much about the cars or drivers or both leveling that you said, just because in any case the best driver won the championship, the most regular, the fastest, in other words the best one despite his handicap and pay attention that each race was long 90 mins with further 30 mins of qualify time having a 2 hours event each race. I never have seen an amateur driving a Lotus or an Eagle win more than only 1 or 2 races at max and absolutely not the whole GPFun championship and last but not least...Fun is to be intended as Fun to close compete with others, not sailing alone in the ocean like Sir Francis Chichester. Cars are not all equals and drivers are not too. Making divisions is only a further fragmentation of the community leading to have races with no more than 10 drivers when things go right. Actually the GPL community is slowly dying because there are simulators games modern with graphic more advanced that are a call for people.I think you can manage things encouraging drivers to have a motivation to persist in their skill enhancements but, securely, this will not happens if a driver finishes a race lapped 3 or 4 times. If a driver is better skilled than you his state will not change also if he will use a slower car but...you could at least finish the race nearer him and...if he will make a mistake, you could also have your chance to win.
Edit: To complete the scenery and just to have an idea of what happens in GPFun, we have 5 or 6 car classes and each class is composed by 3 cars (i.e. class A: Cooper; BRM; Honda. class B: BRM; Honda; Brabham. class C: Honda, Brabham, Ferrari. class D: Brabham, Ferrari, Eagle. class E: Ferrari, Eagle, Lotus. Each car in a class, has a proper percentage of success of being chosen). In each car class there is a car considered a bonus(faster low percentage of success of being chosen), a normal and a malus(slower with high percentage of success of being chosen) car. When the reference time has been decided, each driver will choose a car class and a program randomly will assign him a car taken from a list of the 3 that compose this class. The driver begins his test with the car assigned and if he is far from the reference time, he CAN request to try another car extraction from a faster class or, if he is below the reference time, he HAVE to request to choose another car from a slower car class. In any case a driver can choose the car class not directly the car because each car is randomly assigned. If a driver is faster than the reference time, also with the slowest car, the reference time is established by his lap time subtracting a few tenths of a second. The last thing is, we have a Low reference lap time and a High reference lap time (usually 1.0 or 1.5 secs above) thus a car assignment is considered good when the best combined lap time of a driver is in this range of lap times. Like has already happened, someone has tried to cheat adding considerably fuel to the qualify car and keeping the reference lap time high enough to avoid the other guys would have used faster cars. In race, coming low on fuel, such a car have got advantages, having lap times in race faster than in qualify. Those people were banned from the championship.
I hope I was clear enough.
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« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 01:09:40 AM +0000 by clouds »
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Sergio "Clouds" Lonzar
...Houston, we've had a problem here!
Jack Swigert, April 13rd, 1970. Apollo 13 on the way to the moon.
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Hristo Itchov
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« Reply #27 on: November 14, 2012, 10:21:57 AM +0000 » |
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That won't work here, because not everyone practices or not everyone enters the server at the start of practice, nor are times in Qualifying always actual flying laps on low fuel. Some people want to just turn up and drive, some only practice with race fuel load and so on.
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BadBlood
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Sassafrassarassum Rick Rastardly!
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« Reply #28 on: November 14, 2012, 01:14:17 PM +0000 » |
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And some of us try race load and quick laps and find that the mistakes manage to make them both the same I agree with Phil though. If I win I want it to be because I did the best job. Amazingly I have actually won one scratch race and that felt awesome. If I had won because the other guy had to start from the pit lane it wouldn't have felt so good.
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BadBlood aka Angel Moose GPLRank +71.5ish GPL65Rank +71.1ish Other ranks? Middlin' Slowish
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Phil Thornton
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« Reply #29 on: November 14, 2012, 06:53:03 PM +0000 » |
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I hope I was clear enough.
Yes you were, thank you for taking the time to explain. Obviously a lot of time and effort has gone into organizing the GPFun races and I'm sure it resulted in some very exciting battles. I wasn't trying to criticize the GPFun system I was only trying to point out that it differs from the system Clive is using and in what it is trying to achieve. If you take out the random element, then the nearest system we have to the GPFun system would be chassis allocation. When doing chassis allocation, the moderators put in a lot of effort into trying to place drivers in cars that will result in evenly matched races. They use their judgment and knowledge of the driver's abilities in order to do that. I suggest the GPFun approach does the same thing but with a methodology rather than relying on the moderator's assessment of driver ability. So in UKGPL terms it is like saying do we want to use Pit Stops or Chassis Allocation for the GTs. Which system produces the better races is another question .
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