Talk to the hand

Before my race I turned off anti-vir, MSN, and anything else I could think of that might steal focus. It takes about 9 seconds, and pretty much guarantees you're safe.

If he didn't, because he either forgot, couldn't be bothered or whatever, doesn't concern me. It remains his mistake in qually, and therefore I don't look any more kindly at him. Bit of a noob mistake if you ask me (sorry to be rude to you, but quite frankly, if we're going to be in a decent league, you really ought to either take it seriously and try your best, or accept that anti-vir's might pop up if you don't do anything about it in the first place).

I would like to have a short (5min) break after the quali. And I'd like to drive during that period, just some laps to get the feeling for the car before the race starts. Keep in mind that people who go out first haven't driven in the last 40+ minutes at all.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Keep in mind that people who go out first haven't driven in the last 40+ minutes at all.

Fair point. In which case it should be a new session, and not the remaining qualifying time. Either way we'll have to redo the grid manually (until Scawen add's a warmup session that we can shift-w whilst 'saving' the grid automatically), so a 5 minute practice would be great.

I'm so pleased with that suggestion that it is going in the suggestions forum right now!

Quote from Hyperactive :

I would like to have a short (5min) break after the quali. And I'd like to drive during that period, just some laps to get the feeling for the car before the race starts. Keep in mind that people who go out first haven't driven in the last 40+ minutes at all.

It is there... someone complained about it last night though. Hard to please everyone.

Ok here's my last try: This is today's qual session of polish lfs cup.

http://www.storage.4ignition.com/PLLFS/PLLFS_BL_Q.mpr

Poolek was admin there.
Can someone tell me what's wrong with it? All drivers are happy with it.

Session took about 16 minuts..with 16 drivers...

Don't worry, Kamo, qualifying WILL get shorter. Just please bare with me. Its my first time organising this in a league so I'm having a hard time getting the format right. This is why this thread is here, so suggestions are put forward and qualifying can become quicker. Bear in mind, this was a long track (2:15 or so average lap) and the qualy procedure was shorter than last week so we are making progress. Even with the current system, a lot of optimisation can be made. I'm going to try out Tristan's suggestion of letting cars out in quarter lap intervals on Saturday and let you know how it goes.

In my opinion, either the format we used in the last race, or Tristan's suggestion would both be fine.Personally I am not the least concerned about the length of the quali, what bothers me with the '2-cars on track' system, is how much time you spend not driving.
As Hyper, I'd much prefer a totally different type of qualification, but I respect the league organizers decision to use a 1-lap quali system - and I can see the appeal it has to some people.I normally need a few laps to get in a good rhythm, so it'll never be something I like, or excel in..but that's another story

I do have a request though, for the people that are in such a hurry to speed things up during quali and pre-race, that they - in frustration and impatience I suppose- resort to spamming messages, some in caps. I can only speak for myself, but this annoys me a great deal, and it is certainly not conducive to the mood on the server.More importantly though, you are putting unnecessary pressure and stress on the admin, in this case Anton, to get things underway.It's a bit unthoughtful and disrespectful to be honest, and while I do realize some of you may have other things to do elsewhere, it's not Anton's or vMax's obligation to speed up things just because of that.
Anton is still learning, and you can't honestly expect him to become an elite race admin overnight- although I'm sure things will go more smoothly as we progress.

I just want a nice, relaxed atmosphere on the server - it really shouldn't be so hard to achieve.

Lastly, it would be really nice if everyone would speak english

Thanks.

Well im sorry for all this trouble and pressure. I understand now perfectly. But i hope u also understand me. For next race i think maczo will have to find another 3rd driver :} and very soon dtm will be over ( 3 races left i think) so i'll be racing again :}

Hiya,
I'm the noob with the antivirus I always turn off automatic update before any race, because I know it likes to pop-up in the least expected moments. What happened on Tuesday was something rather different - the antivirus "performed an illegal operation and had to be shut down". Now that was really unexpected and had never happened before. So I hope you understand me. Anyway - I was just asking whether it was possible to start from pits again and I was aware that it was not very likely to happen and I'm absolutely OK with that. You know, random things happen - people get disconnected and we wait for them, so I thought I should try my luck

As to the qualy format - I think it's possible to have the session shortened by 50% without changing the format, but just by improving our efficiency. On Aston there was a situation when Anton asked 5 guys to go out of pits and wait for the signal to go. They were standing there waiting, Anton was chatting (or doing something else[?]). Time wasted. Finally the first one started on his own, and when it was time for the second one to start, Anton called out the first guy, who had been already driving for half a minute or so.
Please understand me right - perhaps over the internet I may sound harsh, rude etc. It's not my intention. I would just like to help improve things. So my suggestion is as follows:
Anton can call out 5 drivers at a time (to go out of pits and wait at the end of pitlane), using the connection list and the semi-personal message - the one you get when you click on someone's name. It will be enough just to say the name and everyone will know what that means. It will also have the nice effect of standing out from normal chat, because of the colours. Once the first driver reaches Tx (choose proper number for x), Anton calls out the next driver and so on. When it's Anton's time to go, an experienced driver (we have a few of them in LXCC) can take his place as race director for those two laps, it shouldn't be a big deal.

What I would not like to happen, is calling people out on track continuously. Just let the whole group finish and then let the next 5 join. "Why?", you might ask. The answer is pretty simple. It would mean pit-lag for someone on their flying lap. Definitely not nice.

As to outlap pace - I think we can rely on common sense here. Believe me when I say that in Polish LFS League (PLLFS), which Kamo mentioned, there are not a lot of people with lots of experience, but there are no incidents during qualy and it really takes a lot less time.

Quote from maczo :

Stuff

I didn't intend to get personal, so I hope you don't feel too offended. As your incident was a one-off, I'm willing to reconsider my opinion of the events

And about asking - if you don't ask you don't get. I did the same in Round 1. I could either sit there on my side and retire, or reset, finish, and hope I get something. My DQ meant I was no worse off than if I had just quit. But I think we all have to pretty strict about this - there is never an excuse to have another go at qualifying (at least that I can think of).

All the stuff about efficiency is true - chat less, pay attention, and get the laps done. No need for the other time-wasting.

About the pit-lag - good point. Needs to be addressed, in which case groups of 4 or 5 cars won't take much longer.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I didn't intend to get personal, so I hope you don't feel too offended.

Not at all.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But I think we all have to pretty strict about this - there is never an excuse to have another go at qualifying (at least that I can think of).

Agreed.

Aaaaand... now when I think about my incident on Tuesday, I recall that it was in fact my antivirus's auto-update that made me hit the wall :slap: The program itself crashed later, when I was watching the other guys go (lucky it wasn't during the race, eh?)

Tonight is the first of the 'Endurance' races (don't sniggér you MOE lot!), so it's gonna be a long'un.

For this reason (and the fact I have an engagement afterwards which I don't want to delay) it is important that everything happens swiftly tonight. If we are strict and efficient, we could have the race over by 9pm, which would be ideal.

To do this, I think we need to do the following:

Prompt start of qualifying at 7pm. The first car should be leaving the pitlane by 7pm and 30 seconds. AS we have a very long track I suggest we get as many cars out as possible. Being a 3 minute lap, I think we can easily get 5 cars out at once, at say 25 second intervals. This would mean that each 'group' takes about 8 minutes. If the first car of the second group is ready to leave the pits when the last car of the first group finished his hotlap, and we all work together to be quick, then we can have all four groups done and dusted in 25 minutes.

There should be a five minute break at this point for people to drive if they want to.

The race will then start at 7:30 +- a bit. Assuming the 'average' lap to be about 2:46, then the race will be 1hr23 minutes, and therefore finish at 8:53pm

I see no real reason, other than inefficiency, inattentiveness and too much chit-chat/pissing about for the race to finish any later than 9pm.

I would appreciate that, even if my above suggestion isn't adhered to, that we ALL make the effort to work together to finish in good time. To that end, I think the qualifying order (assuming correct attendance) needs to be posted prior to the event, so that we all know when we are going out for our laps.

I know it's partly selfish (wanting to go out afterwards), but I hope you don't think that's my only incentive for trying to speed up the process.

Alright.

For a change I wont be pissing about tonight.

Let's see what our league admin, axus has in his mind

...axus...?

Same format as last time, except executed better. We did it at Aston North on Saturday and qualy took 25min, and I still have a few ideas to speed it up... mind you, shorter track than tonight and 4 less cars but I think it should take no more than 30-35min tonight. After that, it will be the usual 10 min break (I trust no-one will complain this time seeing as we have a 1.5hr race after ) and onwards with the race.

Doing the math, assuming all goes to plan, it should be about 30min tonight, and that's for a big track and a full pack of 20 cars.

Quote from axus :

Same format as last time, except executed better. We did it at Aston North on Saturday and qualy took 25min, and I still have a few ideas to speed it up... mind you, shorter track than tonight and 4 less cars but I think it should take no more than 30-35min tonight. After that, it will be the usual 10 min break (I trust no-one will complain this time seeing as we have a 1.5hr race after ) and onwards with the race.

Doing the math, assuming all goes to plan, it should be about 30min tonight, and that's for a big track and a full pack of 20 cars.

The qual on Saturday did go smooth, IMHO that's the way to go.

Ant

With regards to qualifying, how did you guys think it went last night? - apart from my initial time-out costing about 3 minutes and my second time out causing a bit of a mess, I think it went really well. Without those issues it would have been ~25min on a long track 9 teams. Do I still need to make an effort to shorten it? I'm slowly but surely running out of ideas.

It was ok for me. It's short enough

It was okay actually. I would only suggest attempting to start more promptly at 7. In real motorsport they don't delay sessions because someone is on the toilet or just plain late - sessions start when they start, and sod the competitors.

Just a shame that even with the slick qualifying and everything I just didn't have enough time to finish the race. I'm quite gutted by it to be honest, but real life unfortunately has priority nowadays.

We should defenately try to start at 7pm sharp.

Other than that, I think it works pretty well. It is just a fact that this kind of quali takes a bit more time

I think it's not that important to qualify in order of registration, when someone's late. In such a case, instead of waiting, we can start with the first 5 teams present at the start, going through the list from top to bottom, and then if someone joins late, he goes in the second half of the qualy session (for each class that is). That way we can start when we're supposed to.