Sorry to Jen and Ken for that incident on pit entry. I was out of fuel and desperate to coast back to the pits, and I couldn't slow in time. That was my race over. Completely my fault. By the way, what happened on that first caution? I was told to give up an entire lap to Ricardo even though he was in the pits when I passed him!
I screwed up big time. While driving into the pits one of my wheels caught the grass and I lost control. Ended back up on the track and in front someone. Not sure who it was but I owe them a huge apology and I deserve a penalty at my next event. I feel terrible that I ruined someone's race. Please forgive me. The race started off wrong. I was following Ed but on the last pace lap the sim decided I should follow Robert. But he was following me so when I crossed the start line I got a stop and go. Very odd. And then I tried to serve that penalty but the sim thought I was making a regular pit stop. And the race went downhill from there. Again I am very sorry for the accident. I expect a protest to be filed against me. If not, I will file it against myself.
After the first Pitstop I was awarded a stop and go and got 2 laps down. With some lucky yellows I was able to get back in the leader's lap... in a podium position. Then someone hit me when I was stopped at my pit stall. I've got terminal damage, suspensions and rear wing... 150s to repair. WTF? That's exactly why I stopped racing, and I'm not intending to be back soon
I understand your frustration, Pablo. It's a shame when something like that happens. I think I ruined someones race today but I have not watched the replay. I'm afraid to. Don't stop racing! You are a great driver and we will miss someone of your talent. We all have a passion for this online sport and it's a worn out cliche to say "it's just a game". I don't think it's just a game. I take it seriously otherwise I would not put in many hours over the past years programming this website for free. It's my passion. I love it. I rarely race anymore because I spend my free time working on this site. And because I don't race much, I make rookie mistakes like I did today. UGH! Some of us are still new to the game and will make mistakes and unfortunately somtimes it's the veteran drivers, like yourself, that feel the pain. I feel bad for you, man. Just like I feel terrible about the driver I crashed today. Come on Pablo. Shake it off man. Don't leave us! We need you. Hope to see you on track soon.
I am not sure how the internal algorithms within the software work but, under yellow I was told to follow a certain person, which I did. That person went in to the pits as we went green and I got a stop and go and a deducted lap for passing under yellow. He was in the pit lane already so I am not sure why i was penalized. I also did not understand why people were wizzing by me and the pace car when I was following the pace car. The whole yellow situation and following the pace car seems to be totally screwed. I just seemed to be going backwards even under yellow. very confusing. I think there maybe some issues with RF2 pit and yellow flag situations.
Well this is just a waste of time and energie. After a very good quali I expect a good clean race. That's exactly what happen at the beginning with Georgy we got a really good fight. Then yellows come scrap everything. When SC was out 3/4 or more of the cars are stuck behind someone who's doing shopping or something else instead of catching the pace car. The result of that everybody except the leader was a lap down. Worst part for me I try to stimulate the guy in front of me to go faster to catch the SC but instead he brake and to not make contact I put my self in the wall with the result, lost a lot of speed. Unexpectedly I found a way to come back in the leader lap and at one point I have myself a lap over everybody. So I say to myself lets play it safe. Yeah right... when the game wants to screw you, it will do with style. Was the leader and i'm catching the pace car on turn 1. I saw someone in pit exit lane crawling slowly. So the game tell me let him pass witch I obey. So I let the guy pass so is right in front of me and the game ask me to let him pass. HE JUST PASS ME AND HE'S IN FRONT OF ME !@#$% ^&ctor2. Guess what stop and go for 20 sec. So lost my lap advantage + have to do my penalty puts me a lap down again, well my race was ruined with no fault of my part. At the end of the race I gambled for a late yellow to stay on the lead lap but of course it never came. I did not have the guts yet to watch the replay but I saw a lot of mistakes like wrong pit entry passing before start/finish witch was warned before the race so lets wait for decisions. My advise for future oval races is, if there's no new plugin who manage the yellows correctly, everybody as to be on TS or discord or something like that to follow the instructions and an admin need to be there to apply or remove penalties and play the role of police for the race. If not this will be another waste of time and energie, and I will think twice before redoing it.
under yellow both the car entering pit and the car behind on track may not pass any driver before the car entering the pit has passed the pit line, that is a bit furter down where the wall start. maybe use more laps behind the yellow to let the field set, many starts the field was very spread. this event had uncommon amount of strange yellow issues.
Mark ... It might have been me who you hit at the pit entry. If so then it was simply an accident and there will not be a protest filed, please do not give yourself a penalty.
weird game, I know from experience that the game is not really a bad game but this time it just screwed up everybody. first I get gifted the first place with 1 lap but then I got in someone spinning in turn 4 and was done. in that pile up I had engine damage which I couldn't fix so I lost so much top speed and then in the damage. I had also 2 times a weird drive-through and was needed to serve once again so I was then 4 laps down. there is no wave around and being so far in front I just gave up and left. A shame my first race went like that but what can you do. wanna thank the organizers any way and the Almeida for pole and hard racing when being I tried to lap you that was fun hahaha. and hopefully, many more races to come
Well it was entertaining, not always in a good way but oval racing always seems to need a good amount of luck. I've never spent so much time cruising pit lane... Started with needing to stop for fuel on first lap of yellow, but penalty was a D/T rather than EOLL as it should be. Had some warping and stuttering too at times. I might have been involved in Pablos pit incident, I pulled out and cleared the car in front of me, but remember looking in mirror and seeing two cars and smoke. Apologies if that was something to do with me, but I missed the visible cars also didn't get any damage, but remember thinking it was odd. I wonder if there are different rules files or settings that would help, they ran The Race there and I presume had less issues? Still a fun race
There were definitely some weird things going on with the rF2 program code logic for yellows etc. which we haven't seen to that extent before in previous SRO Indy Oval races. Yes we all know the program is not perfect in the way it manages these situations and can give some odd "follow that car..." type messages which don't make sense, but it was really off-kilter yesterday. Having said that its possible that some of the penalties were given for accurate reasons, but I'm only guessing. It seemed to go wrong at the start when two cars didn't leave the garages and then caught the field up during the two formation laps, but the reply shows they didn't appear to take up their correct starting positions in the line-up, which could have been due to confusing game messages about who to follow. As Jens has suggested it could've been because although he was in the pit lane when you actually passed him, he had not yet crossed the yellow entry line which is further down the pit-lane after the start of the pit wall, but only guessing. I got that twice during the race. I cant remember the specific words used, but basically I was told to pass the Safety car under the Yellow and join behind whoever the car ahead was. I think some guys didn't realise where the displaced pit entry line was as I got caught out once when the car/s ahead seemed to slow down way too early, resulting in a slight hit and spinning my car around which effectively blocked the entry and caused problems for three cars behind me. I also saw I had a S/G penalty at one point and also a D/T, but when I took the D/T the S/G disappeared. A bit of luck for me in an admittedly unsatisfactory race for the majority of us and I can only apologise humbly for it happening. It was disappointing to see and hear the problems we encountered, when the test races we ran did not show any similar issues. I'm now guessing it was due to the lower number of cars running in those tests. We will have to study the options carefully for any future oval races that we run, to try and minimise the problems. I'm going through the replay today to see what else might show to help understand the situation, if anything.
I was one of the guys that did not leave the garage area in time as I didn't know we didn't get put on the track as in most other race formats. Also when i joined the formation lap late there was no prompting who to follow or where to line up so I was guessing as I did not memorize who was in front of me. I apologize if I screwed things up, but it is a very confusing race format. My mistake. When it comes to passing the guy under yellow that is exiting to the pits, it is pretty difficult as he slows way down so as not to get a speeding violation. so you actually have to slow along with him if you don't want to get a penalty. I tried that and I was almost at the start finish line before the notification went away and then I got the penalty anyway. As for the rules on passing the safety car, it is normally the cars not on the lead lap that are told to pass the safety car. I was never told to pass the safety car and I was a couple laps down. I saw guys from the front passing the safety car after they had pitted. The whole logic to enforcing and applying the rules seemed to be completely wrong. I think the only rules/penalties that were applied properly were the speeding in pit lane.
Have done a few oval races and had not these issues, increase the number laps for the safety car might help. With a bigger field it takes longer before everyone is behind the safety car compared to when testing with fewer cars.
So I've spent too much time this afternoon cross comparing the results file to the race replay and can confirm that in the majority of incidents I checked, a penalty was correctly applied. These are the penalties the sim uses for the type of offence listed: Pit lane closed to your car - Drive Through Passing before the green - Stop & Go Pitlane speeding - Stop & Go Passing before the pit entrance (under yellow) - Stop & Go Lapped field under yellow (?) - Stop & Go From the replay I saw many cases of cars passing under yellow when entering the pits. This was by either undertaking cars running on the track, or overtaking cars who were in the pit entry lane anywhere between the Turn 3 entry and the pit-lane proper. This could have been avoided by reading and adhering to the pre-race comments about the correct pit entry point under green & yellow flags. There did appear to be a problem with how the sim dealt with cars on track passing cars either approaching or already in the pit lane before reaching the S/F line. Some guys were given a penalty for Lapping the Field under yellow, but comparing the timestamp in the results file to the replay I saw no evidence of that happening, so this does seem like a bug in the code. The instructions given out by rF2 "race control" about who to follow, pass the safety car etc. also seem to be bugged, which may have contributed to penalties being given, although I couldn't directly correlate this as those instructions are not saved within the results file. Overall a large number of the penalties were correctly given, so we can have no argument with that, but it was the unexpected penalties which caused the problems.
The replay showed your car lagging quite strongly during the whole race. The hit I saw was when you lagged between T3&4 and got a "ghost" hit from Ricardo which wrecked your car, whilst he didn't know anything about it. Or was that another incident?
I just watched that video and I do apologize for the formation lap. I had to drive out of my garage and catch up the field and try to guess where i was supposed to be so I was trying to count and place my self. I did not see a countdown or anything so I will learn from this experience and hopefully do a better job next time. Maybe me joining late had something to do with the screwing up the RF2 race instructions. Sorry!
