Discuss your idea's for a new series here

BOP usually takes a lot of work to be done, and you could end up in a longlasting discussions about it I guess. So I'm totally with you on this point John.

I really dislike to have too many different cars, especially when they're roughly BOP'ed like this. This "GT Legends" mod is kinda much a graphic exercise than an attempt to render justice to its real counterpart on track, and I'd not join a series in that things. Do a single make series, or use a mod that is properly BOP'ed is the way.
As I suffer from dichromatism, my last thinking is to have a coloured grid . That rainbow is not going to improve the fun for the drivers involved in any way...

I'd be more near to what Filip wrote in his previous post, thinking about of a max of 2 or maybe 3 cars to choose, provided that they're well balanced. When you did the GPL67 champ, restricting the choice per car was not the way to render fair that champ, and it simply doesn't work if fastest drivers are going to take fastest cars of the mod. Choice of cars should always be free in my opinion, even if that prevents to see a rainbow of cars during the race.

Just my 2 cents

 

I understand this point and I agree with you on this John. In that case, I would still make myself available to carry out tests to give a rough idea about the difference between car performances. Just to avoid that someone makes his choice based on how "coloured and beauty" is that car, and then discover that it is actually 3 or 4 seconds out of pace compared with the others.

 

I mean, I would get BOP lists/times in a heartbeat and provide baseline setups to everybody if it made the racing better.

And I always vote for a 1-make option if it's available and we always get packs winning instead. Not much more I can do.

 

My idea was only that of being helpful for other drivers in their choice, if I'll have time to test that cars properly on a track like Spa or Suzuka. Then I'd only post my laptimes to give an idea to the others.
I have no idea on how to make a BOP between cars to be honest, so I couldn't be helpful on that point. I can just turn on the track and see if cars laptimes are barely matched with same tyres and amount of fuel, take a look to tyre wear and stop. Just to give a rough idea on car performances based solely on my driving. That's it

 

What I've typically done is picked 2-3 circuits with all different features - For example one all flat out, one lot of high speed, one primarily low speed. Taken each car from the pack, practiced 2-3 hours and done everything I possibly could to the setup to get the car as fast as possible, and myself as fast as possible, then worked from there.

Starting off of whatever the slowest car in the pack is (Or whatever the most common/"Average" one is) I throw Ballast and engine restrictors on the cars server-side until I've got a set that gets the top 3-5 cars within 0.5-1.5 sec/lap of each other at each track while trying to retain their strengths and weaknesses. For example, a really fast car in a straight line I nerf in corners with Weight, so it has a disadvantage that can be exploited. A cornering monster with not much straight-line speed, I accentuate that disadvantage with engine inlet restrictor.

It ends up in all the cars being brought down to a slower speed but can tighten up the racing a bit. It probably takes a weekend of work by 1-3 good drivers with different drivign styles. Not easy. But not impossible, especially in a league setting. I would assist with this process if allowed, but it's too much work to do if SRO would just ignore it/turn down my offer.


I would like to point out, also, that we have quiet awhile until the next series begins. So it would, in fact, be quite possible to get a BOP set made within the allotted time before the season starts

 

been a while since i tried the Prototypes mod, but seem to remember there were certain cars within that could or should be able to race each other, like GT40 v P330. We used the Lolas at SROUK for a championship and they were great fun, tons of power, nice and slidey on an appropriate set of tracks for a Can-AM style season. Maybe just pluck out any car that is stand out too fast/lairy for the rest of the set or just let aliens take it to lessen any out of control 'gentlemen drivers'.

 

Despite I appreciate the effort Ted is trying to put on the BOP side, I have to agree with Mark on this subject. This is not a place for "Pro", so I see no point in BOPing the cars, even because that would require a lot of days of testing that I don't want to put in a series, like it was for the DRM champ on my side, considering I just tried the demo Capri and jumped on it the next day. That's not my job.
My idea was only that of preventing that people ends up to pick a car that is 3 OR 4 seconds out of pace, just to regret his choice during the next subsequent races, lamenting something that he should have discovered on his own. That causes situation like: "can I change my car? That car seems slow compared to the other". This situation can be prevented simply restricting the choice of cars in the mod we're going to use.

 

How does having somebody make a BOP set for the cars so everybody can race more closely make the racing "For a pro" at all? I'm so confused by this attitude. JVD already said if the Proto Legends won he would pluck the 312 and McLaren Out of it because they're wildly quicker than everything else, so he's doing what you suggested with removing certain cars already anyway.

The BOP idea is to maybe get the Lola-Chevron, Ferrari 512 and Porsche 917k up at the top a bit closer together so everybody can have more fun in the cars left at the top of the table. Wouldn't be excessive, wouldn't be difficult. And again - we have months to do this.

 

Got absolutely no issue with you trying to BoP the group of cars as it helps the racing here.

Looking at the Prototype set, i would guess that these cars can fight each other historically (especially if BoP'd a little):-
Lola T70 v F512 v P917
F330 v GT40
F312 v T290?
Mclaren M1B v Chaparral v T280?
(Dont know much about the T280&290 hence the question marks).

 

@Mark Johnson

To address this point specifically.

The Pre-race warmup for SRO races is my practice unless I'm just having fun with the car and track combo is enjoyable and I drive about an hour or two before bed late one night just for the heck of it.

I do have a full-time job during the week when I don't have work from the racing school, I always coach on the weekends but sometimes during the week they have me do video-editing for instructional courses or customer service tickets remotely via Email, so I'm juggling 2-3 different job descriptions and doing a lot of subcontracting right now to try and pay my bills because COVID's been really hard on my family. My wife and I both lost our jobs back in March-April around the time of the US's first major COVID lockdown and she's also trying to go to university at night so, life is difficult right now. I'm Asthmatic so I can't really go anywhere and risk getting sick, and really wish I could go out more. But I'm managing to scrape out full-time employment from home, and feel really lucky and grateful for it.

I think I understand what you were trying to insulate about me by saying "Most of us have real-life jobs" Mark, and I don't appreciate it, I have to work really hard like everybody else. And trying to insult me for having the opportunity to do whatever work I can during a Pandemic situation is - to say the least - incredibly disrespectful.

I don't just go around practicing and practicing and practicing. I use the proper form and that allows me to get reasonably competitive within 20-30 minutes of hitting a new track & car combo for the first time. Racing's counter-intuitive to human instinct so people just have to learn a driving method - it doesn't even really matter which one or from which book or school - and they should be able to go as fast as I can, easily. I'm not that good. I'm not special in any way.

 

Okay, well that's your interpretation, but it's incorrect and I've never said that.

 

I speak for some Italian "Pro" championships, in which car balancing phase has endured for months to balance the entire car pack, ending up ALWAYS with never ending discussions about it. In this place drivers attitude is surely more friendly on this, and people don't care too much about slight differences in terms of performance. Just to do an example, I joined DRM champ with the target to have at least some close racing against Tim. So we had a "deal" to try to keep the competition fair at least between us. We like racing each other, so i mean this when I state that the attitude in a place like this is more "friendly". In some "Pro" championship (at least in Italy), the attitude is far more different by SRO. People shares infos just with their teammates in many case, and the competition can become unbalanced towards the people that acquire more "data" during their tests.

Here you have a portal (SRO), that runs races every day with multiple simulators. People don't care too much about training for a race, and simply join these championships with a low amount of training, because they prefere to have more races during the week on different sims, rather than training for a single race or a couple of races per week. I'm truly amazed by people like Tony Talvitie, Michal Mazurek, Laurent Londes, and all the drivers that join every day race on SRO with poor training, jumping from a sim to another with brilliant reults. It's something I'd note be able to do. At the same time, it also reveals the character of the drivers who join races on SRO. "Pro" racers in "Pro" champs need a lot of training to be competitive at high level. I don't trust people that says bullxxits like "I have poor training" in a "pro" champ, cause you have to work a lot on setups and do hundreds of laps to be competitive, when the timing range is matter of 3 or 4 tenths for the first 10 positions on the grid or so.

I repeat I appreciate your efforts in trying to keep the competition more fair for everybody, but I guess that SRO it is not the place where people is interested to the "image of the team", or to their "sponsors", or other amenities like these. This remains an amateur place, and I like it like this. You won't find fertile ground to have people interested in BOPing the cars, cause you'd need very good testers, and I don't see many of them prone to that hard work around here.

I hope to have been more clear Ted.

 

@Matteo Santini - I'm not sure if you've noticed what I said in one of my posts above, but I also take the racing easy here. It's not hard to be fast if your core form is good and I don't sweat out practice or anything.

Also even if other people practiced more than you and ended up being faster. That's not unfair, nor does it hurt the league at all. I fail to see how your argument holds any water since it just seems to be "I don't like people being fast or trying hard" which is a fallacious argument to say the least.

Balancing the cars doesn't hurt the racing at all nor does it give anybody else an advantage over you.