AC Le Mans Series | Friday Night Events with Assetto Corsa

Gareth Rhondda · Jul 26, 2021

Welcome to the RD Racing Club. In this new SGP series we will be starting our own endurance series inspired by the real worlds WEC, IMSA and ELMS. This means that we'll have a month long competition with not commitment as you can sign up separately for each round.

Sign up for the any of the events in this series here:

https://beta.simracing.gp/series/OaBgC6LNUBm82Y_guQ4V_

These longer format, multiclass races, will use the ever popular GT3 class along with the exciting and exhilarating LMP1 class which saw it's last full season of competition last year. They will test our race craft and take us to some of the most fantastic races around the world including the legendary Le Mans!

In our second month of the RD LE MANS SERIES we will be travelling to Bahrain, Silverstone, Sebring and Barcelona.
We will also be stealing even more time from practice to add to qualifying to make sure more people can set a lap that they are having with!

Everybody can sign up for this event and slots are limited so make sure to tag a friend! This event will take place on the newly developed platform Simracing.GP and it's extremely easy to join!

(It has been mentioned that it wasn't clear before that there is a mandatory pit stop on SGP this is shown in the Event Configuration as the Pit Window start and end times, I will mention this not being clear enough to the SGP devs)

I shouldn't have to say this but please, if your connection is bad enough to be causing issues for other drivers, DO NOT RACE. If your connection is clearly not good enough and you continue to race you will be removed from future events.

Please do not no show! If you know you can't be there please sign out to give others a spot. Anyone found no showing multiple times will go on a blacklist and will be removed from any events they join.

Format

18:00 UTC | Practice (40min)
19:00 UTC | Qualification (30min)
19:10 UTC | Race (1 hour +Pit Stop)

Bram Hengeveld · Jul 26, 2021

Pumped, ill join you guys as soon as I can

demetri · Jul 26, 2021

@Gareth Rhondda , Any particular reason Audi 2016 is not available?

Gareth Rhondda · Jul 26, 2021

demetri said:
@Gareth Rhondda , Any particular reason Audi 2016 is not available?

Yes, because I'm stupid and got the two Audi's the wrong way around!

will fix now! Thanks for pointing this out!

The Almighty Snark · Jul 27, 2021

Exciting! Joined the only race where I won't have to work, looking forward to experiencing some of that ELMS racing myself! It's the first year I've been following most of the races live and I really love it endurance racing.

demetri · Jul 27, 2021

One more thing, I can see that qualification is set to just 10 minutes and it seems that both LMP1 and GT3 are doing it together. Maybe we could have 20 minutes and split by half between both classes otherwise it's gonna be difficult to avoid traffic especially on shorter tracks like RBR.

random2k4 · Jul 29, 2021

demetri said:
One more thing, I can see that qualification is set to just 10 minutes and it seems that both LMP1 and GT3 are doing it together. Maybe we could have 20 minutes and split by half between both classes otherwise it's gonna be difficult to avoid traffic especially on shorter tracks like RBR.

Was thinking the same, maybe reduce practice time and add it to quali

Gareth Rhondda · Jul 29, 2021

Yep, totally agree with all your feedback and I will remove 10mins from Practice and add it to Q.

I'm personally not a fan of Q going on too long, I like it to reward consistency rather than binning a bunch of laps and finally getting one. But you guys are totally right, 10mins isn't enough for two classes.

We wont be splitting Q between the classes as it's a bit much to enforce every week seeing as I can't promise to always be there, but I agree that would be superior. If we keep doing these and have more admins there in the future we might be able to add that.

davejevons · Jul 30, 2021

last minute joiner here. Really looking forward to it

. A bit of a step up from MX5s so I'll try not to be a mobile chicane.

Kek700 · Jul 30, 2021

100% damage one corner did nothing wrong at all , out of race.

random2k4 · Jul 30, 2021

Kek700 said:
100% damage one corner did nothing wrong at all , out of race.

Unfortunately, had to pull out today. I am volunteering in an animal shelter at the moment.

Happened to me a couple races prior. Was surprised by 100%, slided out on worn tires and hit the wall, race over after 50 mins in P1. Have to say I am not a fan of 100%, 30-50% seems decent, you still get damage when you just yeet into a wall, but light to medium contact just not ends your race (and most likely the others too) in an instant.

demetri · Jul 30, 2021

I'd like to apologize to Panos Souris for our collision that was mostly my fault. I got disoriented after someone who doesn't know how to use their brakes punted me hard in T1 and I half-spun and then didn't realize you were there beside me. I thought I left more than enough space on the right, but apparently we were going on very different trajectories. When I'm alone or going inside, I always cut the shortest straight way to the right-hand kink after the second pit entry because that is the quickest way and I expected any car on the right to be doing the same. Should've paid more attention.

I also think some people behind got caught up in that mess too, my apologies to them as well.

Kek700 · Jul 30, 2021

It is not the real world, there are not teams having to fork out £100k + in repairs, drivers getting the chop, team manager loosing it at the driver, just someone being silly and everyone sufferers.. I don’t mind a 100% going into effect on the second lap, most who are directly effected are usually completely innocent.
I did not practice for this event, so lost little, but it was still annoying, luckily I missed two cars as I just rolled across the track, steering ineffectual, so that would have been two more innocents out. Waited for a restart, nothing.
10% damage is the correct amount.
PS
You don’t need to apologize Dmitry I could see you were a victim too, will look at the replay, even though the above may not be correct it does not change the silly 100% thing and it not really effecting the one that caused it all but a load of innocent drivers.

demetri · Jul 30, 2021

Kek700 said:
It is not the real world, there are not teams having to fork out £100k + in repairs, drivers getting the chop, team manager loosing it at the driver, just someone being silly and everyone sufferers.. I don’t mind a 100% going into effect on the second lap, most who are directly effected are usually completely innocent.
I did not practice for this event, so lost little, but it was still annoying, luckily I missed two cars as I just rolled across the track, steering ineffectual, so that would have been two more innocents out. Waited for a restart, nothing.
10% damage is the correct amount.
PS
You don’t need to apologize Dmitry I could see you were a victim too, will look at the replay, even though the above may not be correct it does not change the silly 100% thing and it not really effecting the one that caused it all but a load of innocent drivers.

No, I feel I do. If I was more careful after being hit the first time it would've been fine. Well, sans me driving with a badly damaged rear-end for half a race it would. I think the guy I hit over-corrected (the first touch wasn't even that bad, I barely moved my wheel to recover) which made him hit me back in the rear quarterpanel really hard and it all went downhill from there. Sorry you couldn't avoid it, you did absolutely nothing wrong, but there was no escape for you.

I can't recall last time I got shoved like in Spa T1. Probably on some public server years ago. Didn't see it coming there and wasn't prepared for the banzai dive at all, I was mostly focused on not hitting some LMP that could've bottled it as they were pretty close. I thought the first race in a championship series meant something serious, but no. I won't bother joining the rest of the events, the time is not great for me anyway and the skill spread is way too big for a meaningful championship. I can have my battles with Patrick here in club races.

davejevons · Jul 30, 2021

Well that was an eventful opening lap. No idea what happened but it all went wrong after the first hairpin before au rouge. Having started last I picked my way through the carnage and gained a chunk of places. Sadly I then couldn't hold a good pace. I had a couple of offs so got to practice pit stops. I previously didn't know how to pitstop to fix damage, so that was useful to learn.

@Gareth Rhondda For the subsequent races It might be worth asking everyone to be on the RD Discord and giving a reminder about the Golden rule, careful into the first corner etc... Han's little speech at the start of Audi TT and MX-5 races each week is very effective.

It wasn't clear to me, and a few others, if a pitstop was mandatory or not. The info above and on simracing.gp seemed to suggest not but the text before the start seemed to suggest it was. A note in the description either way would be great.

The concept of LMP1 and GT3 together for an hour on WEC circuits is great but perhaps just needs a bit of expectation setting at the start over Discord to bed in. Those LMP1s looked awesome as they came past

Kek700 · Jul 31, 2021

Just looked at the replay, shrug shoulders, just one of those things that can happen.
Did not feel that way at the time.

Still agree with my 100% moan though.

Gareth Rhondda · Jul 31, 2021

A few notes on tonight:

1. I am shocked that people are surprised by 100% damage, I've never known sim racers to not race with damage and to me don't understand why, damage is part of racing after all.
However I spoke to some of the other staff at RD and they told me that it is usual in their races to have reduced damage, I will consider changing this in future if it continues to be something that people want.

2. I'd like to ask that everyone attempts to avoid venting immediately after the race, it's common even up to the level of the mighty Schumacher to have a different view of an event while involved and easy to get caught up in the emotions of a perceived wrong. By all means vent a little and criticise the format ect, but try to give yourself a bit of a cooldown period before you do so. I am likely to give little credit to most feedback given in these sort of ragey posts.

3. I'll see what I can do to improve the quality of racing, although I think apart from the lap one incident all seemed fine to me (correct me if I'm wrong). We will obviously need more reminders about avoiding lap one incidents in the future and will try to push people into being on Discord for these sort of things.

4. I have asked the SGP staff to edit the Event Configuration to make clearer that there is a mandatory pitstop and have updated the main post to make it more clear.

5. Having looked at the incidents in the replay myself I'd like to remind everyone about the idea of yellow flags, I do not believe that you are an innocent party if you are taken out after flat footing your accelerator into an oncoming incident. As much as the lap one incident was one silly mistake that lead to a large pileup, most of your would have gotten penalties if you had been racing in ACCSS (the league that I help run on SGP) and had treated the incident as you did. Most of you were largely innocent in your demise, but you also did yourself no favours in how you reacted to the incident and the one person I saw lift and slow through the whole incident is one of the few who survived.

It's sad that so many of you were caught up in that early incident as it did thin the field a bit more than we would have wanted, thank you all for coming I hope to see many of you again next week in Road America. I had a good time even if I was hopelessly off of the LMP1 pace.

random2k4 · Jul 31, 2021

As an RD event, you can also add a link to the current rules.
Basically everything is written there. Golden Rule, Blue Flags, T1 etc
Also when there are so many drivers included I would make discord voice chat mandatory, so everybody
gets a reminder of the most important rules each race.

I am on @Kek700 side with the reduction of the damage. If you just drive race after race you might not be bothered and just start the next one. But many drivers I came across here dont have unlimited spare time, so they make their practice count and want to have a fun yet competitive racing experience maybe 1-3 times a week.
Getting taken out T1 can be very frustrating and the practice for the event feels like a waste of time. At the end of the day its a game not real life and in this kind of club races I would always argue fun comes first.