rFactor 2 BTCC Winter Cup Series Info

I appreciate any feedback we get from members, positive, negative, critical or otherwise, so many thanks for your thoughts Kahel.

It's never clear cut how an online race/series might turn out when it's being put together, especially when mod developers have their own ideas on the many variables available to them when designing a mod. Expending inordinate amounts of time in testing something until you have explored all the many possibilities, is of course a luxury most of do not have the time for. So the net result is we sometimes end up with a compromise which is not necessarily perfect. The nature of online sim racing is that somebody will always be unhappy about something.

Debating every opinion raised in public is in my view counter-productive, especially when a path forward has already been identified. After the next race at Oulton, we will analyse the results to see if any of the series format options need to be changed in the interests of fair competition.

 

I dont understand your 180 degree change of opinion Roel when you said this in post #43 above:

"I really dont understand why there should be so much disccussion about this subject. If decide to alter your tyre choice in the tuning menu, it says as much as : this tyre choice is now mandatory for this track.
So stick with it and manage your tyres. It is all about that or go and make a pitstop and do the math."

 

As promised, a review has been done of the results at Oulton Park. It did not show that the Subaru had any advantage over the FWD car types in terms of final race positions, with three of each FWD & RWD cars finishing in the top six. The winner was in a FWD, who ran Medium tyres and did not stop for new tyres, which suggests there is no advantage to using any particular car available in the mod.

Unless somebody who ran in this race submits any compelling evidence to prove otherwise , then the use of the Tyre Tuning options as outlined in post #34 will remain in force for the remainder of the series.

 

The "rules" for this series were clarified because it became clear at Race 1 that some drivers were either abusing, or planning to in future, the intention of the Tyre Tuning options in the mod by leaving the sim after Qualifying and switching to another Tyre Option. This is the same as using an Indycar mod and changing the tuning option from an Oval to a Road configuration after Qual is finished, which nobody would normally do, except with this BTCC mod there is an unfair option to be gained by doing it and it does not leave a level playing field for everyone to compete on.

The change was done becasue before the start of the series, it was not envisaged or visualised that anybody would take this action, which if anything creates unfair competition.

 

We missed the intent of the mod developers when they built in the Tyre Tuning Options which clearly identify which tracks they had created these options for. If they had put soft, mediums, hards and wets in one package we wouldn't behaving this debate. From memory either one or two drivers left Qual at Donington to take the hard tyres for the race and as mentioned one member has withdrawn from the series because he cant run the combination of softs/hards he would prefer. So it would seem that some think there is an advantage to be gained in doing it.
Nobody mentioned "cheating" and my reference to "abusing" tyre choice was based around changing the tuning option which is outside the options available when you are on the server, on the track.

 

As per post #3 here https://www.simracingonline.co.uk/threads/round-1-donington-natl.3010/ the following drivers have been unregistered from the series. If you want to race in future races you will need to re-register.
Matheus Marcal
Nuno Gaiteiro
Craig Jones
Simone Porcu
Alexander Meshkov
Joao Botelho de Sousa

 

With the recent update of the BTCC NGTC mod to v0.95 there are two things to take note of.

1. The Ford Focus has been added to the cars in the mod. If you want to try it in the remaining races of the series, feel free to do so.
2. The Tyre Tuning options have been renamed/amended to: Soft/Medium/Wet(was called Standard); Medium/Hard/Wet(was called Medium); Hard/Wet(was called Hard); All (new option including all tyres)

The Tyre option to be used in the remaining three races hasn't changed and I've amended post #34 in this thread to reflect these new tyre naming options.