There really should be a way to poll the league through iRacing or something for that kinda thing.

For the GT3 Endurance series, I'll be available for the first race each week, which will be starting midnight my time on Saturday night/ Sunday Morning. I won't be able to talk on voice chat but my mic sucks anyway so no real loss there.

Edit: Thanks for the sweet photo spread Maxx! It was a fun race trying to keep that damn thing under control.

Why not focus on just one short league per season. That way you won't spread out your userbase or burn out people trying to compete in everything GB does?

Would anyone who still checks in here be interested in doing a Skippy league like you guys used to do? I've been trying to find one to join and might just end up starting one if I can get a big enough interest.

@connorpoz: Even though I enjoyed every series we did, the first two seasons with the Skippy are still my favorite GBGT memories.

I'm in. Not sure how many GB duders will want to go back to that car though (I know a few don't like it), even though it's much improved since our last time racing it.

I'd probably be in for a Skippy league, especially if it included some short track ovals, that thing is an absolute blast on those.

@sebw: I would absolutely love doing Skippy oval races. The free ovals would work well, and Lucas Oil Raceway (with it's variable banking) would be perfect.

Yeah I'd probably show up to Skippy races if the times worked out.

I hate the skippy! But I love the skippy... I'm so confused.

Count me in for a new GBRL skippy season.

Do you guys prefer running the races within our league (small fields of only duders), or opening them up for anyone to join (possibly small fields with a chance of random jerks)?

I think for our return to league racing we should keep it short and simple; 6 weeks? I'm willing to organize and host this if we get enough interest. :)

It depends on how many regulars we have, I like the full grids so open might be good?

I also had like 4 or 5 guys from reddit who were interested in a skip league so I'll point them this way

@connorpoz: Open would probably be fine, I don't think we'd have any problems. Definitely point your friends over here!

By the way, I know this thing was your idea so I'm not trying to step on your toes. If you want to set it up It's all yours, but I'd be glad to host if you want. ;)

@mouse: Haha no worries, if you need any help organizing and stuff I would be down to ho but having someone else organize only makes it easier for me!

So, I have some ideas for a short Skippy league. Any thoughts/ideas are welcome.

15 minutes open practice, 1 lap lone qualifying, 30 minute timed race. Fuel limited to force a strategic pit stop, 2 fast repairs. Standing start. Races on Friday 9:00PM EST (our usual time slot).

Possible Schedule:

I chose these tracks because they're not very big and lack long straights (with the exception of The Glen). Modern, F1 style tracks are boring in the Skippy and tend to be draft heavy, so I left them out.

I'm interested, though I'm one of the ones who really dislikes driving that car. Friday nights works great for me, so I'm all for that schedule.

That schedule and format looks good to me! I like the idea of one forced pit stop. Although I can tell you now I'm gonna be out for race 2 and 3.

I also liked the team championship we had going in the last two seasons, even if its just to see fun team based liveries.

EDIT WITH MORE THOUGHTS: I think the shorter practice is a good idea. As much as I enjoyed the 2 hour practices/ mostly just hanging out, this will get everyone in the room at once and then we would only need to get a 1 hour session. For some reason I feel you can only get chunks of 2 hours? If thats the case maybe like 30-45 minutes of practice and then use the rest of the time to make sure we never run out of time.

@mouse That all looks good to me, only thing I would change would be swapping Laguna for Summit Point, me and Laguna Seca just can't get along. I've had good races at all the other tracks, very good selection in my opinion. Times are (probably) good for me too, if this is how it's gonna roll, I'll be there!

@maxx77: When was the last time you ran the Skippy? Since our last GBRL race with it, it has been changed a fair bit. It's much more forgiving now and you can slide it around. Definitely more enjoyable than before!

We'll keep things very lighthearted (like the good ol' days), though I'll track points. It'll be very simple; 1st-25, 2nd-24, 3rd-23 ect... Not going to track people who aren't Giant Bomb duders, so anyone else who joins will just be spoilers (consider beating them "bonus" points). No drop weeks because who cares. :D I'm keeping the practice/quali times short to make it all more simple and fun, with an option of possible double-header nights (like doing Fig-8 or some other dumb thing after).

Feel free to do team paints and such, but that stuff never seemed to work out very well before so I'm not going to track team points.

Looks good! Fun/light-hearted is the way to go.

@mouse It's been a while since I drove it. I'll definitely fire it up in a day or two to see how it handles. I haven't hardly raced in a while (last one was our Monza race). The Skip might be a good car to get me back into sim racing. I'm looking forward to it whatever the case. Lighthearted all the way.

I only drove the skip for about 2 seconds when you guys switched away from it and it was hard, but it gets easier and easier with every build to drive.

There's nothing more I hate than the shitty Skippy. But I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to race with you guys again, so...

I just did a couple of laps around Interlagos with the Skip and it's definitely more drivable than I remember. It's possible to go sideways around corners and still manage to save it. I remember that car spinning around on me constantly when I first raced it. I was new to iRacing at the time though, so it's hard to say if it was mostly my bad driving or the car. Seems controllable now at any rate. I dare say that racing with it might actually be... fun?

Side note, there's a new Dirt game on Steam. There's your random public service announcement since Codemasters hasn't advertised it. A couple of GBRL members are saying it's good on the game's forum here. I'm about to try it myself. Side note end!

For this friday at Laguna are we doing a normal race schedule and just not counting it or is just going to be a longer practice? Also have you thought about how fuel will work with the limited amount?

Also I definitely need to pick up that Dirt game, I think Slowbird and Ironic have been playing it a lot from the looks of twitter.

@connorpoz: It's going to be the same as the league race. It's a test, so if something doesn't work it won't matter, and I can fix it for the first real race.

I still have to do a full test of fuel, but it will be ~50% maximum (2.6 gallons). I'd want drivers to be just a few laps short, so they can pit near the end of the race if they want, or early. Won't need tires so it will really be just about getting in, splashing some fuel and getting out as fast as possible. Strategy!

I'll be making a new topic here after the test race, with every detail needed. I'm not going to change the schedule since people seem to like the track selection.

EDIT: Fuel will be at 38% for this week's race. That's 2 gallons of fuel, and it will get you about ~23 minutes. That should work very well for half-hour races. Tires are of course not an issue in the Skippy. :P

EDIT 2: Oh yeah, we'll use default weather to make it simple to practice during the week.

Is there a way to set it to 2 gallons instead of 2.1 while practicing? Not exactly the hugest deal cause I can just pretend the .1 isn't there.

Also I'm not gonna be able to make it to the test session, so more time with Donnington for me! It's a super fun track in this car

@connorpoz: I don't think there's any way to set specific fuel like that in practice.

You need roughly 2.5 to do 30 minutes, so pit stops won't take any calculations; just splash about half a gallon and go.

That was a lot of fun. I think the practice session should definitely be longer though. I spent the first 14 minutes setting everything up (just installed iRacing onto a new computer), and even then managed to not get the spotter to an audible volume. Went half the race before I realized I wasn't hearing my Australian buddy (although I could hear Khann, so that sorta made up for it I suppose).

Since this was a test race, I went ahead and risked using the Rift for it. The Rift is great for open cockpit cars, but sucks for being able to see anything behind you. There's still no virtual mirror in iRacing in VR mode. You have to rely on your side mirrors. I had unprecedented view in front and beside me, but was almost completely blind for anything behind.

Anyway, I had no clue anyone was behind me at the start. I didn't pay enough attention to the Relative box when we gridded up. I'm amazed I didn't kill anyone. I sorta ran poor 44 off the road at turn 1, but there were cars on both sides of me so I don't feel too awful about it. That was a blast racing with @slowbird for a while, going side by side through the turns and passing each other a couple of times before he finally got past. Slowbird, you either must have thought I was doing a good job holding you off, or you thought I was driving like a mad man. It was a little bit of both. When you were directly behind me you might as well have not existed. I could only see you when you were beside me. I somehow didn't ever hit you though, so there's that at least.

I'm up for more next week. Gonna stick to the headset, but I think I might skip the qualify sessions to hopefully grid up on the back row. 30-45 minute practice is what I'd recommend for the remaining races. Also, thanks for hosting @mouse!

That was a good time, I had fun racing the good ol' Skippy with you guys again.

Next week I'll make practice longer. It will start earlier too, so that the race ends before the GT3 sprint race if anyone wants to do that right after. I'll post all the final details for the series in a few days, though nothing's going to change apart from the longer practice session.

Did not enjoy driving the Skippy for one second, very much enjoyed the stuff afterwards :D

I actually enjoyed driving the Skippy with you guys again. It's not a super thrilling car to drive, but it's pretty fun to throw around.

glad you guys had fun. I have another fuel question, since like Mouse said you really need just the smallest of splashes to reach race distance is there anyway to add less than 1 gallon of fuel? I tried to do a macro with .5 but it rounded down and gave me 0 gallons instead.

Also Max I really hope they add some sort of virtual mirror to the rift before the consumer version comes. Even though technically thats much more realistic the extra mirror tends to be extremely useful.

@connorpoz: Nah it was 1gal minimum. It'd only be a tiny, tiny amount of time difference to add that .5 gal anyway.

@connorpoz: You can uncheck the "Begin Fueling" box to stop fueling if needed. Might be helpful, but it'll barely save any time. Don't worry about it for this series; just take a gallon. ;)

@connorpoz: I really hope so too. The virtual mirror is something you don't really see in other sim games, but when the sim is 100% racing against real people, it's absolutely crucial to have. The reason why they disable it is because the virtual mirror is a 2D rendering. The in-car and side mirrors are actually 3D renders. You can't tell from looking at a monitor, but in the Rift you can move your head around and see the image in the mirrors shift accordingly, just like how actual mirrors work. iRacing has been doing 3D rendering on the mirrors all along. But since the virtual mirror is static, they didn't think it would look right in VR. The guy who implemented Rift support didn't have an easy way to code the virtual mirror to behave like the others, so they just disabled it and decided to come back to it someday. Maybe whenever they finally get the DX11 version working they'll revisit this.

New topic created: Skippy League 2015