We always have room for the right kind of people in our league, and becoming a member/participant is easy if you are the kind of driver we are looking for. Let me tell you a bit about what we are so you better can find out if PrestoGP is for you
Philosophy/Vision
A perfect race is defined as following:
- A full grid
- No incidents between drivers
- No personal mistakes, big or small -> consistent lap times
A perfect season is naturally 10 x perfect races, (where it is the same full grid in all races). Obtaining this is virtually impossible, but working towards it makes sense, and how we do this is what I am going to explain.
Full transparency around setup
We have a thread that we use when developing setups for the races. There are no secrets around setups, you can have the same setup as any driver you wish, they will gladly share it. The reasons for this slightly unusual feature are:
- We want the average driver to spend as little time on setup’s as possible (to allow him to use more time practicing consistency etc.)
- We wish to remove the uncertainty that the setups create (believing others are faster due to setup’s etc. does not provide the optimal practice focus)
- It helps promote a friendly atmosphere
Racing guidelines
Our guidelines/rules are very similar to real f1, with a few exceptions. Where a real f1 driver’s main objective when fighting for position is to stay/get ahead, ours is that both parties comes out of it without an incident. We are much less skilled and do not have the real world implications to "scare us straight", so we need greater safety focus and margins in general.
In the case of an incident there are no penalties. As avoiding incidents are so utterly important for all our members, the shame of creating one is punishment enough. Our only focus is to analyse the incident down to the smallest detail to learn what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. This is done openly in the forum (within a few days) after the race and is the responsibility of the involved parties.
Our point system (relative to real f1) is constructed to reward those who complete the race and consequently punishing dnf’s and no attendance, to better reflect our values. In other words there are points for all places from 1st to 25th, ranging from 50 to 1 point.
Pace/Speed
This is not relevant for measuring a members value. If one are able to drive consistent laps one can not be more than 5-7 seconds behind the fastest guy. What we need is members, the more we are the less the average distance between drivers will be. A perfect scenario would be 50 drivers whos laptimes are evenly spread out from fastest (e.g. 1:20,000) to fastest + 6 sec (e.g. 1:26,000). Split the crowd in two divisions based on pace, and we'll have a great league where the top drivers from div 2 will be promoted to div 1 and vise versa. So my point is, we need you regardless of your pace, as long as you can be consistant
A members contribution
This is the core of everything, that it is the sum of members contribution that is the league. If you show up for the race and complete it without causing any incidents and not making (a lot of) mistakes you have made a perfect contribution that round. Do it for all ten races and you are a perfect member. PrestoGP is constructed to help members maximise their contribution, but at the end of the day it is the member themselves that decides how good our league can be.
It does take some time and commitment and a good few hours of track time to be prepared for a race, and if ones race experience is not very good it is easy to lose motivation, practice less, deliver poorer contributions etc. You see the conundrum, that if everybody are well prepared and drive after our guidelines then we will all have such a great time that we have more than enough motivation to put in the practice needed for next race etc.
Epilogue
Do not misunderstand and think that we demand perfect and accept nothing less. Everybody makes mistakes on track from time to time, and sometimes in RL something gets in the way. What is important is that one understands how Presto GP works and has the right intentions in general.
Questions?
Who decides if I can join the league or not?
PrestoGP is more or less a democracy, so at the end of the day it is the drivers you meet on the server who decides if they think you are a good fit for the league. But they are all very keen on accepting new members, so it should not be too hard to convince them
What else do I need to do, besides convincing excisting members on the server?
- Become a licensed driver at RaceDepartment.com·
- Our Live Timing is available here
- Communicate with members in the forum, ask questions and get to know the league
When do I know for certain that I will be accepted?
If you know with yourself that you are the type of driver we are looking for you can be confident that you'll be accepted, because we always want new members. The more time you spend on the servers with other members and the more active you are in the forum the faster the confirmation will come
So to sum up, if you are a friendly guy that understand our way of thinking, and if you are motivated to put in the practice you need between each round we very much would like to have you in our league.
Presto GP has real F1 as a “role model” and we try to simulate it the best we can. However, since our environment is different from real life f1, we sometimes need to do things differently to make it work. One of several fundamental differences is how the grid is filled so to speak, or recruitment if you wish. Simply put RL F1 is a highly attractive job while Presto GP is a hobby. For us to have a large number of members that all show up well prepared for all races throughout the season (and hopefully continuing for many seasons) we need to focus on two parameters (again simplified):
-Obligations and practice time required (investment)
-Level of enjoyment in race (reward)
Obligations and practice time required:
The time you “have to” be present is the duration of all our races. The less intrusive this is to your real life the better it is. Therefore we want to keep the event not too long, not too often, and predictable in time (every second Wednesday night 21.00-22.30pm for most Europeans, with very long summer and slightly shorter winter break).
In addition to being there, you must be prepared. There is no way around it, this can be slightly time consuming, I would say 1-7 hours is required, depending on your skill level and track knowledge. Regardless, we want to minimise the time needed for preparations.
Level of enjoyment in race:
This is the reward for the obligations and time invested. The total level of enjoyment in a race (all members added together) correlates very strongly with number of finishers and the distance from first place to last place, which is more measureable (can you imagine 25 drivers all finishing on the lead lap? The total level of enjoyment must be astonishing!) Of course it is implied that every member are equally important.
So we try to be as close to real f1 as possible, but differ in the places where it reduces the practice time needed and/or increases the total level of enjoyment in the race. I will give some examples:
Lapping slower cars:
Everybody are allowed to solve this as they see fit, as long as it does not cause any problems. However, we reccomend that the soon to be lapped car allows the faster car to completely catch up with him, and then wait for the faster car to make a move (and then leave him space). Whatever way you chose to solve this, make sure you apply the same principals to everybody, so you do not end up "favoring" any of the faster drivers to others (100% fair)
Racing guidelines:
This is mentioned in the above post, but to elaborate; they are constructed to give exciting and enjoyable racing, but at the same time avoiding incidents. In other words they are constructed to improve the level of enjoyment in the race
Full transparency around setups/helpful environment:
This is also mentioned in the above post. This obviously work towards reducing the time needed for preparations.
