The online racing simulator
Quote from JPeace :...but you dont have the right to hold them up deliberatly by treating them as if you are defending a lead on the final lap of a race. its astonishing to see some of you saying things like its fair to hold them up and that you "noobs have had enough". enough of what exactly? that some other people are faster than you and that you cant compete with them, and then complain that they have a go at you when you dont let them pass easily. which i think the leader is entitled to have a go at you if you have considrable caused yourself a nousence and gone out of your way to block the leader, which a few of you on this thread seem to be pround of.

Maybe my brain auto-filtered as trolls anyone who posted that kind of garbage, but I really don't recall any such posts in this thread The discussion I thought we were having was not about deliberate blocking by the slower car, but about impatient & dangerous passing by the faster cars. Maybe we're coming at this from different angles (But I've done my share of passing too, I should add!)

By the way, I really think the ultimate answer here (particularly if we're considering IHR, where the multi-class issue is a hot topic) is to take a replay of a particularly good example, post it on the relevant server's forum, and say "Hey admins - is this how you feel the faster cars are meant to behave?". If they say yes, you may want to race elsewhere.
Quote from JohnPenn :Who's winning anyone have the score?
Those Hotlappers are causing all the problems, how dare they set fast lap times, avoid them like the plague.

Hey, John, you know what he meant. That attitude, called here "hotlapper", meaning someone whon can keep perfecting optimal line but fails when has to take ie. overtaking line or takes it as slowering him down.

As I remember there frequently is one rule in racing regulations on blocking: Going out of turn you can choose your line ONCE (inside or outside in next corner). I think it could clarifiy much in overtaking/blueflag situations.
Quote from JPeace :i think only a few of you have acctually grasped intelligence on this thread, what a shame. let me explain myself.

If a faster car is approaching you at 2 seconds per lap, you have the right to go about your own line on a straight or whatever, but you dont have the right to hold them up deliberatly by treating them as if you are defending a lead on the final lap of a race. its astonishing to see some of you saying things like its fair to hold them up and that you "noobs have had enough". enough of what exactly? that some other people are faster than you and that you cant compete with them, and then complain that they have a go at you when you dont let them pass easily. which i think the leader is entitled to have a go at you if you have considrable caused yourself a nousence and gone out of your way to block the leader, which a few of you on this thread seem to be pround of.
of course, you can race on your given line, and the leader cant just expect you yo jump out of the way as if they are god. but i think that you are absolutly not entitled to then turn across the leader, or faster car, as they are alongside you in a corner. the amound of times i have slowly and progressivly came up alongside someone i am lapping, for them then to turn into me as if i am not there, its stupid. i then ask these people why they did it.. and i regognise some of the names from these events on this thread, but i will not name names, anyway, they then tell me that it was my fault. ofc im a bit annoyed by this and ask, how its my fault. and they simply turn around and say that it was blue flag, your responsability to get past me. thats completely the wrong message thats being sent out by this game to racers. i can assure you, you do that in real life and you will lose your licence in a very short space of time.

cheers, J

I'm glad someone understands..

You get a blue flag when the faster car is usually 5 seconds back or so, which is plenty of time to find a safe place to let them pass. Most people wait until the faster car is right behind them, THEN they try to find a place. That's too late.
Neither of the last two posters haver read and/or understood my original post.

Despite constant careful driving and loads of getting out of the way on blue flag...sooner or later I get a fast hotlapper than rams me out of the way and blames it on me. They assume wrongly that if I slow them down at all I have broken the rules...."FAIL"

The blue flag does not always appear with enough warning and I have had several situations where I have had no flag at all...

I am carefully getting out of the way ASAP but when you get little warning (which does happen with a much faster car in multi class race) I have had many faster drivers going for an insane overtake in an unsafe place with no regard to the blue flag rules.

This has then resulted in totally unfair abuse toward me and that is what this "noob" has had enough of. I have no problem with being new or slow but I have had enough of rude and thoughless "fast" drivers that lack skill when it comes to overtaking people that are slower.

I repeat. A whole day of racing on IRacing with the same driving style and the same ability and the same regard for the blue flag rules and all I have had is polite "thanks" as I move out of the way...

Not one person on IRacing has tried to dive down the inside due to my slowness. They wait until it is safe for both of us and then get on with their race.

Sorry to all you die hard LFS fans, but it is a great game that I have seen the worst of over the last week or so and I have had enough.

I know there will be lots of people that hate me for this thread so sorry. If you could see replays of some of the stuff I am talking about you would agree with me and be ashamed of some of the fast drivers that think they own the road.

Back to IRacing for me and I will not be checking this thread again. I am glad I started it though as I found out about IRacing and have had lots of people agree with me.

Read my original post carefully before replying to this.
Quote from voight kampff :Neither of the last two posters haver read and/or understood my original post.

Maybe so, but as I mentioned you really should try some servers that are not public and if you must race a public server dont race on Ironhorse, that type of server does LFS no favours as you have experienced yourself.

My simple advice try deadmenracing one of the First real servers and still going strong, real gentlemen on there. Try entering a leauge of some kind. Dont let the Idiots spoil your enjoyment.
Read this post carefully I vill say zis only once. Come back with some replays otherwise it's just trolling with anecdotal evidence (options, game > autosave incase you get kicked/banned). Given there will be about 6 LFS races per hour to iRacing's 1, and there is no in-built global penalty for hitting other cars in LFS, then it's more likely people will be more aggressive especially in short races. Looking at your recent stats, pbs, and races you aren't that fast or experienced to start off with so multiclass racing might not be for you.

To all those in the thread, LFS' blue flags are just warnings when a car with more laps than you catches up. There are no rules, except those enforced by server admins.
Quote from cobra193 :
You get a blue flag when the faster car is usually 5 seconds back or so, which is plenty of time to find a safe place .

Aston National has three curves where you have to wait, because you maybe not able to pass a slower car. And you will tell, on these three curves you can not slow down ? You have to know it because you have done more than 160000 km only with Fzr on this track. Or is this some kind of Ego trip ? You have done so much kilometers on this simulation, and now other drivers have to respect you and have to hide in a hole when you in their mirror ? Tell me ..

Quote from voight kampff :. If you could see replays of some of the stuff I am talking about

Yes i would like to see some of the replays. After starting this thread you have not done one single lap online. Maybe i am wrong ,but i assume you where coming from elsewhere only to troll around here.

Sorry for my english.
#83 - mdmx
Quote from AndRand :ermm... but trying hard to stay off the line you will make silly moves, ie. when going from lefthander to right corner you have to cross racing line I would rather propose to stay off the apexes Not saying that to argue but I dont claim racing line to be all mine when I see backmarker.

You should not try hard to stay off the line, just take it easy, use your common sense (you can do that only if you take it ez) and give room when it is needed. Here is the ultimate work of art diagram showing howto safely give room in corner.



If done properly, you hardly lose that 0.1s by yourself, as a slower driver.
Quote from voight kampff :Neither of the last two posters haver read and/or understood my original post.

Despite constant careful driving and loads of getting out of the way on blue flag...sooner or later I get a fast hotlapper than rams me out of the way and blames it on me. They assume wrongly that if I slow them down at all I have broken the rules...."FAIL"

The blue flag does not always appear with enough warning and I have had several situations where I have had no flag at all...

Read my original post carefully before replying to this.

I read your post carefully.. What I'm trying to tell you is that on MOST servers it IS against the rules to slow a lapping car down period.

In F1 it is a warning, but on almost every LFS server (which is what we are talking about) it is a rule.

The blue flag ALWAYS COMES OUT WITH PLENTY OF WARNING. Please don't say that it doesn't always come out in time because it comes out the same ALWAYS.

You may be gettting confused when there is someone that is behind you mixed in with people that are about to lap you. In that case you might get a blue flag when someone is right behind you, however that blue flag might be for someone that is pretty far back and the person right behind you is someone that is NOT lapping you.

It can get confusing which car is about to lap you and which is simply about to pass you (for position) when there are a lot of cars behind you.

Using the map helps a lot in that situation.
Quote from cobra193 :I'm glad someone understands..

You get a blue flag when the faster car is usually 5 seconds back or so, which is plenty of time to find a safe place to let them pass. Most people wait until the faster car is right behind them, THEN they try to find a place. That's too late.

That purely depends on how much attention you are paying. I say this because, taking blackwood for this example, you come out of the chicance onto the back straight. You are on the straight and you get blue flagged with the car 5 seconds behind. If you are not paying attention to lap times, how do you know how much faster he is than you? 5 seconds can either be alot of not much at all. If you joined mid race and the leader is only 0.5 secs quicker you could easily do a lap or 2 more before you need to think about places to let him past. However if you are a novice, maybe he gains at 2 seconds a lap at which point you have very little time. I say this because if you don't know how fast they are gaining you can only judge it from the mirrors as you go, at which point maybe he does catch you at a bad place on track.

Generally speaking, if you are ahead then drive normally until it is safe to let the lead driver through. If they suddenly gain on you under breaking then take a wide line leaving the inside of the corner open for them to pass.

It all comes down to common sense, racing etiquete and manners and through a mix of anonymity of the internet (manners) and people not knowing better (racing etiquette) it causes problems.

And finally, one thing that people should always remember in these situations is you can't talk to the other person, people have to 'read' the body language of the car which does involve risk and accidents do happen due to this. With public races there will be another in 5 mins and its a game (not a real highly expensive racing car) so relax.
Quote from cobra193 :The blue flag ALWAYS COMES OUT WITH PLENTY OF WARNING. Please don't say that it doesn't always come out in time because it comes out the same ALWAYS.

You obviously haven't raced in an XFG on the IHR server then, which is where the OP just happened to have spent most of his online races. The difference in speed between the XFG and a GTR car is so huge that there is less than a second (ONE second) between you getting the blue flag message on your screen and the GTR car flying past you, on faster parts of the track. I've done a couple of races there and I found it to be downright frightning. There is no way you can anticipate on a car coming up behind you at that speed. One instant you look in your mirror and there is absolutely nothing there, the next you get a blue flag message and before you even have time to check your mirror or map again the car flies past you. In those cases it is simply impossible to move out of the way in time and it's entirely the faster car's responsibility to overtake you safely.

Any rule that states that lapping drivers should not lose time when lapping cars is ridiculous beyond words. I understand that that is, in fact, the way many servers are run but it ridiculous nevertheless. And I can very well understand how the OP has gotten a completely wrong impression of LFS racing by racing on the IHR server.
Quote from cobra193 :
Again, don't state something you believe is fact unless you can back it up. Just post a link to any rule (real or game) where that does NOT have a line something like this in it MUST NOT HOLD UP THE FASTER CAR?? Bottom line is to NOT hold someone up you MUST get off the driving line and let the faster car pass.

Please read rules carefully before arguing with people. And, as typical with posters like YOU, it turns into a personal attack because you have no arguements.

Man, you're taking it wrong.

When blue flagged, you have to let the faster guy pass. Although, you don't have to jump out of the way! If you're in a chicane or in a corner, you do it, keep pace and in the next decelation zone, you let the guy pass.

It isn't in any rule book that you have to move away, to jump off, to stop your car or to slow down instantly. You can still battle for your position (if your in a position discussion, being for 4th or 34th place) while being lapped and noone will forbid you of doing it only because someone is lapping you...
Racing motorcycles don't have mirrors, so it's quite simple: riders ahead are not expected to be aware of what's behind them. Whether it be a trackday or a race, the rider ahead is responsible for maintaining a predictable line, and the rider behind is responsible for not colliding with the rider ahead.

I don't see why the addition of mirrors should complicate things so much.
Quote from Forbin :Racing motorcycles don't have mirrors, so it's quite simple: riders ahead are not expected to be aware of what's behind them. Whether it be a trackday or a race, the rider ahead is responsible for maintaining a predictable line, and the rider behind is responsible for not colliding with the rider ahead.

I don't see why the addition of mirrors should complicate things so much.

But you can hear them?
Not all the time. I've been surprised by riders passing me plenty of times, especially at high speed (>100 mph) when the wind and the sound of my own bike are quite loud.
Quote from Forbin :I don't see why the addition of mirrors should complicate things so much.

That was probably one of the most sane things said in this thread.

It should not be that hard really, not for anyone! the problem has been stated more than once already... the problem is a too big EGO combined with poor racing skill and lack of respect.

Im currently working on the rules for an upcoming league, and i am holding the Lapping driver fully responsible for any accidents occuring while passing UNLESS the blue flagged racer does not hold a predictable line and/or attempts to block.

Insidents happen even the best drivers, and sometimes there is just no ones or both drivers fault...
Respect the drivers around you and you can tear up the rule book , racing hard for position or a win is fine and expected but to hold up another driver just because a rule says your allowed to.. be honest.


I sense this subject is rearing its head again comes from drivers racing Skoda's and Ferrari's at the same time?,

I would make everyone drive XFG at Blackwood .. 20 lap races, no toilet breaks, or beverages until you finish
Quote from JohnPenn : 20 lap races, no toilet breaks,

Only a challenge if you are a pregnant girl

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG