Without giving prejudice to the current admins' staff decision on future start, the "old" management would not have policed the fact that there was overlap between the cars.
We always took the real live endurance racing as a measuring stick and, as boothy said, they start basically side by side. they don't touch, as the pictures above seem to imply, which might be policable, but as long as the car on the even grid positions is not ahead of the one on the odd side, everything was fine in our eyes. Iirc the starting tool did not do any different, either.
Again, this is not as a prejudice to future decisions, but I find the decision taken by the current admins in the last race acceptable and within the practice of the rules we had taken previously.
You are free to discuss this ruling, but do it in a mannered way. If the discussion gets out of hand, we will close this thread.
Protests against the decisions can be filed until the beginning of qualifying for the Blackwook race, upcoming Friday, Feb, 29, 20:00 UTC. Protests must include reasons for the protest.
The results for the 24h of Aston have been provisional for quite a long time now. The root cause for this has been the advent of longer car damage repair times and the fact that engine damage cannot be repaired under the last patch.
While most teams welcomed this change for the improved realism it brought, it unfortunately gave rise to a certain type of behaviour which we cannot tolerate. It turned out that a few teams used a loophole in the rules to gain an advantage by intentionally disconnecting from the server at favourable spots of the track. The intentional disconnect allowed for the teams to have a second driver reconnect in a very short time which thus saved the team the time of the pit stop, and more importantly gave them a repaired car with no engine damage and no lost lap.
While this activity was not clearly forbidden by the rules, it was nevertheless contrary to the spirit of sportsmanlike behaviour that the MoE organisation has always held up as the main principle of this series. The past seasons' and even the recent 24h race's success were due in large part to the fact that the participating teams bought into this sense of sportsmanship by being fiercely competitive but also friendly and respectful towards their opposition. Even the current issues have not changed this and we are keen to keep it that way.
Therefore, we decided we needed to act upon using this loophole despite it not being in the rules. After lengthy discussions we came up with the following solution:
1. Any disconnect and/or shift-s/-p that a team gains a distinctive advantage from, such as repaired engine damage or the discounted time of the pitstop, will be penalized by deducting one lap from the team's total.
2. If we deem the disconnect/shift-p/shift-s to have been intentional, we additionally deduct 33% of the points the team gained in the race.
For the last race, we will modify this penalty a tad bit: teams who responded to our request for confessions and admitted to their intentional use of the loophole are only charged with 25% of the points gained.
Therefore, the results and standings for the 24h of Aston will be modified as follows:
Team #02: -2L and -33% pts
Team #03: -1L and -33% pts
Team #10: -1L
Team #20: -1L and -33% pts
Team #26: -2L and -33% pts
Team #31: -1L and -25% pts
Team #33: -1L and -25% pts
With the exception of team #10, Pedal to the Metal, the reasons for the investigated disconnects given by the respective teams did not convince the admin team. Team #02, SK-Gaming, admitted one disco which was the one at the end of the race. However, the explanation given for the other one was not convincing which is why the 33% points deduction is applied and not the 25%.
In the future, the 25% points deduction will not exist. We will still investigate suspicious disconnects. We will have to do this manually, so results will be provisional for a couple of days after the race. Since the remaining races of the season are much shorter, we expect the delays to also be much shorter.
Philip Kempermann on behalf of the Admin Team of Masters of Endurance
edit: Additionally, My3id will be given 1 lap back, as their shift-p was due to a LFS bug and not of their own doing.
Last edited by DeadWolfBones, .
Reason : Added 3id judgment
Way back when we started, Tweak designed a logo without us even knowing. He gave it to us for use back then and we didn't even think of a possible situation like we have today. Won't happen again.
A few teams have received an email by us (usually to the address of the person that filed the team's application). The email is about our investigation on that matter. It might sound a bit formal, but as we had to send several mails, I opted to go that route instead of trying to come up with an all personal text every time.
Just so you guys know we haven't forgotten about the results yet: We are still working on getting the known issues handled in a fair manner so that we can post final results. So far we haven't stopped discussing internally yet.
With the ghostcar / saving the state of the car you are forgetting that we have an additional issue here: it is not neccesarily said that the driver who lost the connection will reconnect. How is LFS supposed to know whether lfsaccount b is connecting for lfsaccount a?
Well, we have a not so nice issue at hand after the completion of the race: We have had (and still are doing it) to investigate a situation where a team allegedly used an intentional disconnect to repair their car and save a 1 lap penalty for a Shift-P by that method.
The team upon inquiry admitted to doing so and we are currently discussing how we will handle that situation for the past race and for the future. At the same time, we will be investigating disconnects during the 24h of Aston if they seem to be similar.
If any other team intentionally disconnected to repair engine/clutch damage or save repair time due to a damaged car, we ask them to come forward and admit doing so. That would save us a tremendous amout of time, however, we will still be doing investigations, teams coming forward or not.
If you think you should contact us, pls do so via the usual email-address admins _at_ mastersofendurance.eu. We do not ask you to publicly post in the forum, but to contact us privately.
I am leaving this thread open for now, but I will close it quickly if the discussion gets out of hand. Be civil, please.
We know the rule isn't perfect. However, it helps strengthen the team orientation as that way we can force the teams to use 3 drivers at least. It has its weaknesses, yes, but it isn't the most important rule of the series. We think it works quite well for what it is thought to be.
No, we can't cause we cannot judge laptimes just before the tank is empty. We all know that this can be a decisive phase in a stint due to tire behaviour. If you have done some testing and/or speccing, provide us some numbers. That is something we can take a look at, saying it's not fair is not.
The point is: (a felt) imbalance seems to be okay to a number of FZR drivers as long as it is not to their disadvantage. I am not saying they should be "punished" because they had the better car in the past. I am saying they should live with the small issues they have.
However, I am also saying that the differences in the speed that are definitely there without measures by us outweigh the negative effects brought up by patch Y.
Maybe you should have participated in the tests then, shouldn't you?
The values of the XRR are from the team that has proven to be fastest in the car with work on their setup. The values of the FZR are not. They are not even a full stint. The fastest boys chose not to participate in the test (with the exception of Chriskart who did some work for the first testing session).
We are not trying to force a XRR-win. If we did so, we'd simply have put back on the weights of Patch X. However, we are trying to use the given data and also imply the improvement in setup and practice that will be there with the development. As I said before, the number is not 100% final, but we have yet to see conclusive evidence that our assumption is wrong. Why don't you guys go out, develop a set and show us a couple of stints that prove we are wrong? Your testing of a couple of days ago, Jay, was based on 5 lap runs. Andy has simply whined about how hard it is to drive the car, has not shown any values yet, though. Vykos has not said anything but "too late". What are we supposed to work with? You guys know us admins arent the folks that should be doing the driving for evaluating since we don't have your talent. So get in the car and show us we are wrong, then we are more than happy to change things.
I find it quite interesting how FZR drivers now get vocal about the harder to drive stuff after XRR drivers had to put up with the slower, harder to drive car for two seasons.
Besides, we've been discussing this topic for more than 2 weeks now, stating it's too late in a one-liner (or two one-liners) when nothing has been said before is a bit a weak argument.
For right now, all of you should expect +20kg on the FZR. It is not 100% final yet, but we still have to see conclusive arguments for why it should be less (or more, for that matter).
Getting stuck is not really on our minds. Yes, it's ****ed up that only XRR gets stuck. However, we cannot really do anything about it and a good racer shouldnt get stuck anyways. I take it you were running 23% restriction on FXR when you say it is closer now?
Doesnt change positions, though, as we don't recognize gross negligence in that case and therefore do not give an additional penalty of a lap deduction.
#7: SK Gaming (#02): +30s for avoidable contact with Mercury Racing GT2 (#22). Normally, this would have been a Drive Through, but the penalty couldn't be given until after the race. The protest was deemed in time even though it was filed more than an hour after the initial end of the stint of the respective driver. However, since the very same driver had to jump back into the car almost immediately due to technical problems for his teammate, the stint of the respective driver is deemed to have ended with the race at approximately 18:15 CET. The protest was filed at 19:04 CET (board time) which means it was within an hour of the end of the stint.
As long as the "illegal" driver does not do quali sessions or race for another team, he is not illegal. Of course he should be part of the regular team (meaning the team that entered the car), but if a team decides to hire another driver purely for qualifying reasons, it's up to them.
Teams enter cars, not drivers. Needing to announce the drivers before a race only has one reason and that is that we need to get the tracker working.
Missed that last night, but: While it could be argued that the protest deadline was not missed due to the technical issues and the "jump back" of the driver with the replay, we could not find an incident in lap 150. We found one situation in lap 142 (and it is not our obligation to search for the actual incident), however that was nothing to penalize for.