Well, we ended up taking today off. Hoping to have a good turnout tomorrow though. I'm pretty slow, so we'll have to hope for some high attrition, I guess.

Ugh. So my stream of the F1 race was bad so I go to practice, computer won’t get an IP. Router I use as a hub went into switch mode. This takes a while to fix. Don’t count on me for today. This has not been a smooth morning for me.

Good race today? Saw you guys finished 2nd in the other split. We ended up in the top split and qualified in 10th. Sadly we got a 16s stop and go on the first lap when my team mate didn't let off enough after a slow down flag.

Worked our way back up to 11th a couple of seconds behind 9th so it was a bit of a race of what could've been.. but I'm satisfied with the result, probably the highest I've placed in top split anyway. ^^

So it turned out to be the plastic connector on the end of the cable going into the downstairs switch. Troubleshooting network problems is a PITA.

Also congrats on the 2nd.

Yeah, I watched about an hour and a half of that... I think we all know who the MVP of that team is. Good race though!!

Nice one man. Haven't found the slow-downs too bad at Monza, but there always seems to be that one that just won't clear.

We had the pace to properly challenge for the lead in our race, but I couldn't put a good quali lap together and we ended up stuck in traffic losing 1-1.5 sec a lap for more or less the entire first stint.

@mouse had a bit of a crash on his first stint, but it actually ended up costing us very little time with how our stops worked out. After that we were pretty well established in our position and we just brought it home clean.

Hopefully we can get one of us with a better iRating to sign us up next week so we can be back in top split.

Network problems are the worst. Went a couple of days once without internet, not able to find the issue. Turns out I just needed to reboot my switch...

Will we see you this weekend then?

@khann said:

Yep, second week in a row where I touched the grass in a braking zone and spun into a wall. Stupid mistakes.

We actually came close to doing a 2-stop race when everyone else (RUFs and BMWs) were doing 3. I don't think it would have worked though; we would have been short by a few laps. Perhaps if we planned from the start and saved fuel the whole time. Either way, 2nd was a nice result.

Yeah I do wonder if we would have been able to make it, or if it just would have been too much fuel we needed to save. Or maybe even if we'd planned on 3 from the start and come in earlier for the first stop, getting more clean air. Ah well, it all worked out in the end.

Yeah I'll be there on Sunday for sure. I did some practice laps and yikes I'm off the pace. I downloaded the first replay from the MP4 forum and the Interlagos thread. I'm going to blame my pedals. :) I look at what he's doing in the replay and I *think* I'm doing that but seconds off his pace.

EDIT: Oh what do you guys think about the Season 3 sprint changes? Qualifying is now part of the race event and set to 46% max fuel capacity to force a mandatory pit stop and still 40 minute races.

S3 Sprint Schedule:

S3 Endurance Schedule:

Eh, I'd rather there weren't pitstops, but it doesn't bother me that much. I like the in-race qualifying, so that's cool.

There will also be 3 time slots for the endurance series next season:

Saturdays 9 and 19 GMT and Sundays 17 GMT

How does that work out for everyone?

Quali in session is nice, and I enjoy pitting in short races.

Those endurance start times are even worse for me; 5AM, 3PM, 1PM. First one is way too early, and the other two are right in the middle of the afternoon when I usually have other stuff going on.

The two Saturday slots are 9PM Sat and 7AM Sun for me. Sunday slot is 5AM Mon obviously.

Saturday slots would definitely be my preferred (If @sebw is still interested in the series, I'd guess the 9 GMT slot is probably pretty good for him as well), but I can do the Sunday one as well.

@khann: Yeah! So glad they added another slot, but I gather it's terrible for anyone in the US. I've tried a couple of times to go to bed early to get up for the Sunday race but it's too hard!

I like the idea of a mandatory pit stop, but I think it's odd that they left it at 40 mins, should have made it 60 mins to match the real series (though I guess they'd make it a team event if they really wanted to match). Also, it sucks that there's no endurance at Lime Rock, that would have been kinda cool, though maybe a complete mess with so much lap traffic.

I don't understand how they can fuck the times up so bad.

9GMT slot, great. Should work for a lot of Aus/NZ folks. Maybe a little earlier wouldn't hurt?

Now do one that works similarly for the US.

Now do one that works similarly for Europe.

boom.

I guess there are probably a bunch of things they have to account for that aren't immediately apparent.

As for the times I'm with @mouse. Wish they would have made one of them morning US time either day.

On another note, Aston Martin coming to a new GT1 series with the Corvette, Class C with 30 minute races. Could be fund to play around with.

I'm alright with the new times. Well, the super early Saturday one is no good, and the second Saturday one is the same as now. The Sunday race being later on is kinda nice so I don't have to get up early, but also now it will overlap with real racing. So yeah, they're not great, but I can definitely at least do one race per weekend still.

At least until I complete my transformation into a social person who goes out and does stuff :P

Do we have a setup for tomorrow? Looks like we'll have 4 or 5, so I'll register GBeast as well. I'll be on mumble in the morning. I might try to get another sprint race in tonight while following the 24 hour race here.

I used the race setup from Patrick Bachelard here, added fuel and did one click on the front ride height to make it pass inspection.

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/25/3313599.page#8954130

(It seems like 115-120 liters is enough for a 1-hour stint; I had way more fuel than I needed with the full tank)

I saw the results earlier this week and was gonna congratulate you guys on the win, but then I watched the stream and oh my good slowbird. You murderer!!

Lol, actually probably best stream so far. Two cars and lots of contact and finished with a win and a shameful slowbird. How could you ever top that?

Oh and my week was poop.. got dq'd with 50 minutes to go when I was in like 20th in top split.. Was stressful as hell to be in that split. Want to go back to the lower again! :(

And this week I'm out because I'm going to Germany to watch Formula E!

@phouchg: I was in denial during the race but after I saw the replay I saw how obvious it was, lol. I swear from the driver's seat I couldn't even tell I hit him, it didn't play the contact noise for me. I just thought he braked too late. Also netcode :P

Anyway, who's excited for Philip Island this week? I KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE.

@slowbird: Phillip Island is best

ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND GUYS, I WON'T EVEN WATCH IT

No endurance this week due to for some reason the virtual Deathrace 500 being in the year long road warrior series. I'll have to get in a sprint race on Monday since I'll be busy on Saturday and Sunday.

Oh man yesterday for some reason I got really mad for like 5 minutes about our race on Sunday. Out of the blue I just had the thought, "That dude drove right through me!" But yeah last weeks news and still had a good race despite getting murdered twice.

@datarez There is endurance this weekend. Next weekend is the 500 for iRacing and no Blancpain. ;)

Either way, I won't be here to race this weekend. Maybe I'll do a Sprint race.

@mouse: Ah shoot. Well I won't be able to make it this weekend for endurance.

One more race for the season, at Laguna Seca. I wonder how many iRacers will miss the Saturday race for the Champions League final; definitely me. I'll be in for Sunday though, and don't worry, the race ends an hour before F1. :)

Summer is in full effect for me already and we're off camping this weekend so I'll miss this endurance race. :(

Laguna is an old favourite for me so I'll go for the race on either Saturday or Sunday.. depending on team mates. Hope to see you there. :)

Woah, looks like they're making basically a Pro Endurance series for 2016. Your team first has to qualify by being one of the top 40 teams in 2015 Season 4. So that must mean team scoring should be coming, right?

Forum link: http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/3314670.page (iRacing subscription required)

Blancpain GT Series

Earning a WC Endurance License

• iRacing will pick the Top 40 Teams from the Season #4 Blancpain Endurance Series

• Teams must have a minimum of 2 drivers and can have a maximum of 3 drivers

• Teams cannot drop or add drivers.

• Teams cannot change car manufacturer during the season

o Teams may apply to change car manufacturer at the completion of the season and prior to the start of the world championship season if qualified.

Blancpain GT Series

 SRO/Blancpain

o Actively involved in the promotion of the series

 Teams

o Teams must have a minimum of 2 drivers and can have a maximum of 3 drivers

o Teams cannot drop or add drivers.

• Cars/Manufacturer

o We would like to have a mix of manufacturers and so iRacing.com reserves the right to assign cars to teams or by other processes such as a lottery.

o Teams cannot change car manufacturers

• Field Size

o Single Race with 40 cars depending on race venue.

o Race field will be determined by qualifying.

• Season

o 6 to 8 Week season conducted from April to September

o Race Length to be 3 to 6 hours

o No drop weeks

o Races will be held Saturdays at 9:00 AM EDT/14:00 GMT (Will not be same day as other WC series races)

o Races will be broadcast

o Live Officials in each race

o WC Incident System in place or other type of race review

o iRacing officials will only communicate with team drivers about incidents, race rules, and any series related competition questions

• Championships

o Team Championship

o Driver’s Championship

o Manufacturer’s Championship

• Prizes

o There will be prizes. (To be determined)

o There will only be a first place prize for manufacturer’s championship

Yeah that sounded pretty cool. High octane will do our best to qualify. ;)

How are the new changes so far? I haven't gotten a chance to do any testing, I should this weekend. Looks like all the GT3 cars got a BOP change.

@datarez: The new UI changes seem pretty good so far (although I'm a bit bummed out you can't manually choose a practice session) and otherwise it's the usual Week 13 madness. A lot of first corner crashing.

I didn't get to try out the GT3s but I hopped in the Aston at Monza. Those things are loud. Also I've gone soft and am way used to ABS now. Just browsing the official forum looks like a number of GT3 drivers are moving over to GT1 this season. I wonder if that's going to end up being a Aston race with a sprinkling of Corvettes?

Coming off the 24 hours of Spa iRacing took the chance to advertise the upcoming GT3 pro endurance series and the qualifying series for it, which is 2015 Season 4.

With the second half of 2015 Season 3 upon us, it’s time for sim racers and sim racing teams to start turning their attention to the Season 4 Blancpain Endurance Series, the qualifying series for iRacing’s newest professional sim racing series: the Blancpain GT Series. Running from April to September, the 2016 Blancpain GT Series will award cash and other prizes to the top finishing teams and drivers as well as to the first place finishers in the manufacturer’s championship.

Only those drivers and teams with iRacing’s new World Championship Endurance Licenses will be eligible to compete in the 2016 Blancpain GT Series. And the top 40 teams in the Season #4 Blancpain Endurance Series will be awarded World Championship Endurance Licenses.

See the forum (they mean the iRacing forum) for complete details on the 2016 Blancpain GT Series.

Not to mention the speed and luck to be a top 40 team, the big thing here is the commitment and consistency. You're locked into your 2 or 3 team members for the year and your car for the season. Here are the currently proposed rules for the series:

So, who's interested in trying to make top 40? :D

Kinda want to try. ;) I mean, way better shot at this versus a pro open wheel license.

If we could get people genuinely dedicated, I'd definitely be interested.

If we were to make it, the 9am time for the 2016 season is really perfect for me. It's the S4 times to qualify that might be shit again. It'd be worth trying; we'd at least have a good time in the process.

Would be cool if we could get two teams going, the 3 driver limit is getting in our way of doing one team (at least that what it looks like at the moment?), also having two teams would be fun from a competition standpoint and increases the chances of someone making it in there. Team BMW reporting in!

Some more updates from the forum. Good news on the team driver count possibly getting upped to 4 or 5. Gives teams a better chance of making every race safely. Also the schedule getting out really early will help with planning too. http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/100/3314671.page#9137260

Hello

The recent news story was just to refresh interest globally as people may have never seen the original story and enough detail existed tin that initial document to give a good idea of the new series.

In the meantime we have been working on all the details for both the season 4 qualifying series and next year's WC level Series. Will post all those details next week. Those details will also include the schedule for next year's races so you can plan ahead.

To answer one question we are going to move the team count up from 3 team members to at least 4 maybe 5. The minimum driver count for a race stays at 2 so you can have any or all of the of the 4/5 race so long as there are 2 drivers.

I did a GT3 sprint race yesterday at lunch. I am in the slow lane at Silverstone. Also my talent ran out trying to catch a slide halfway through the race but eh first race back in months, stuff happens. I hadn't done a race with the new server changes that make a practice session that lead into the race yet. That was kind of cool. I'm a big fan of the qualifying session as a part of the race session, that is cool. I'm not sure about the mandatory pit stop in the sprint race though.

That makes things much more doable for us. If someone isn't around or not feeling comfortable at a certain track, we can just rotate them out if I understand that correctly.

The revised rules are out for the BES WC. They did go to 4 per team and you're locked in to your team as well as the car. There may be a new car (probably Mercedes right?) so I'm guessing you may be able to move to it if it's available. So notes I guess, I thought it'd be 8 races, 6 seems short for the 2016 pro series. The cash payouts seem nice for the amount of races. How can you actually spend $2000 iRacing credits if you're to the point that you're Pro and winning? You have got to probably already own most of the content already. I still think just finishing the entire season 4 will get you close to the top 40 possibly.

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/3326727.page

2016 BlancPain GT Series

Published August 12, 2015

Earning a WC BlancPain GT Endurance License

Teams

o iRacing will pick up to the top 40 finishing teams based on performance from Season 4 2015 Blancpain Endurance Series starting in September 2015.
o Teams must have a minimum of 2 members/drivers and can have a maximum of 4 members/drivers.
o There cannot be more than 4 different drivers.
o Teams are allowed to start with 2 or 3 drivers and add 1 or 2 more for the Season 4 Endurance Series as the series goes along.
o Teams cannot drop, replace or trade drivers. Drivers cannot drive or be registered for more than one team.
o Teams must notify the Competition Director via E-mail of their initial teams and any addition to their team roster at (removed the email to save them spam).
o The team driver roster at the end of the season 4 Endurance series will be the official team for the Blancpain GT Series in 2016.
o Teams cannot change car manufacturers during the season 4 Endurance Series. The GT3 cars will be the McLaren, BMW, RUF and Ford. After the Season 4 Endurance Series, teams may switch cars if they choose for the 2016 Blancpain GT Series.
o Each race week any or all of the drivers can race but there must be a minimum of any 2 team members driving.

Racing

o There will be 6 races, one race every other week starting in week 2 with three time slots during those race weeks. The 3 time slots will be the same as the season 3 endurance series.
o The highest score for each race week will count per standard iRacing scoring. Standard iRacing scoring and race splitting will apply.
o The fair share rule will be on for all races.
o Qualifying will be attached to the race sessions.

Blancpain GT Series

Series

o This is an official World Championship level series. It is the highest level of team endurance racing in iRacing. Official competitors will be awarded a World Championship Endurance License.
o Competitors and teams will be expected to display excellent sportsmanship and treat fellow competitors, officials and all involved in the series in a respectful manner.

SRO/Blancpain
o Actively involved in the promotion of the series.

Teams

o Teams must have a minimum of 2 members/drivers and can have a maximum of 4 members/drivers. Each race week any or all of the drivers can race but there must be a minimum of any 2 team members driving.
o Teams cannot drop, change, trade or add drivers from the end of the Season 4 Endurance Series all the way through the end of the 2016 Blancpain GT Series. That is a no driver/member movement period.

Cars/Manufacturers

o Teams cannot change car manufacturers during the 2016 Blancpain GT Series season. The official GT3 cars will be announced prior to the season but will very likely include all the current GT3 cars including the McLaren, BMW, Ford, RUF and but an additional car might be added.

Field Size

o Single Race with 40 cars depending on race venue
o Race grid will depend on qualifying

Season

o 6 week season. If a race is cancelled for whatever reason, it will not be replaced
o No drop weeks
o Races will be held Saturdays 10:00 AM EDT/14:00 GMT (will not conflict with other WC races)
o Races will be broadcast
o Live officials in each race
o The fair share rule will be on for all races
o Most races will be around 3 hours long but 1 or 2 races may be up to 6 hours in duration
o Points and scoring. Will use standard iRacing scoring or adapt a customized scoring system.
o WC incident system will be in place or some other type of review. Driver penalties could impact the whole team just as it applies to this series
o Race director will only communicate with impacted team drivers about incidents, race rules and any series related competition questions.

Schedule

o Rd #1 - 16 April 2016
o Rd #2 - 14 May 2016
o Rd #3 – 11 June 2016
o Rd #4 - 23 July 2016
o Rd #5 - 20 August 2016
o Rd #6 - 3 September 2016

Championships ($13,000 in cash and up to $28,750 in cash and prizes)

o Team Championship
o Driver’s Championship
o Manufacturer Championship (McLaren, BMW, RUF, Ford, etc)

Team Championship - $13,000 in cash

o First Place: $6,000 dollars to be split and paid equally to ALL team members(Example: If 4 team members each will receive $1,500)
o Second Place: $4,000 dollars to be split and paid equally to all team members
o Third Place: $2, 000 dollars to be split and paid equally to all team members
o Fourth Place: $1,000 dollars to be split and paid equally to all team members

Driver Championship – $5,750 in iRacing Game Credit

o First Place: $2,000 iRacing Game Credit
o Second Place: $1,500 iRacing Game Credit
o Third Place: $1,000 iRacing Game Credit
o Fourth Place: $750 iRacing Game Credit
o Fifth Place: $500 iRacing Game Credit

Manufacturer Championship – Up to $10,000 in iRacing game Credit (assuming 5 cars and 4 per team)

o $500 of iRacing Game credit for each member of winning team for each manufacturer
o You do not have to actually drive to be awarded prize, just part of the team

Note: This document is subject to change.

I took @iron1c / @slowbird 's idea for the schedule and made one for the BES. Sign up here: BES Schedule Driver Availability

I left room and we can divide up between team 1 and team 2 on the sheet if we get to that point.

I'm really into this idea. I'm gonna sit out this season because a) I'm still waiting to move, and b) I need some immense practice before I would be okay racing.

Maybe by season two we would have enough interest for 3 teams. Either way I'm sure I'll spectate and mumble with you guys, doing that during the 24 Hours was really fun.

Just dropping in here because I saw you guys in a couple of races this weekend. Both went pretty much shit for me and had one really messy try at letting Michael by in to Ascari.. Anyway, we are back for the final race this evening and I'll try my best to not crash out this time. :)

/ Joakim

Ps. Nice to see you guys trying out for the WCS as well. Hope we can both scrape in to the top 40.

Hey guys. Wish I could do the races with you, but the start times are still so shitty for me. Also, I'm moving and wont have my main PC set up for a bit. Hopefully I'll have a new machine in a couple months (before Petit Le Mans is the goal). I'll try to get in a few S4 races to help the team qualify even if I can't race the championship next year; start time is perfect for me, but only 4 guys allowed and I'd be #5 it seems.

I guess you guys saw me in the sunday race. Didn't quite go as planned when I got rammed on the second lap. You might have seen me claw my way back up in the top ten, but then I did an own mistake and fell down to 21st. Was a fun race though, always is when you have to fight like that. How was yours?

/Joakim

I started us off and had a slow qualifying lap so I was like in the 20s. I thought I was mostly through the first lap mess but then tried to avoid stopped cars by going on the grass and then slid sideways and hit a stopped car. That made a long road back. When I passed off to @iron1c his wheel rotation messed up and he only had 240 degrees so he was fighting that. I didn't get to stay until the end but looks like we ran into another problem and then @khann brought it home.

@datarez That first accident was a bummer, but it could have been a lot worse.

@iron1c was dealing with the 270 degree problem well, but then it suddenly started working as normal again. If I remember right, that's what threw him off and he ended up going off in Ascari. The accident itself didn't actually cost that much time because we were close to the pits, but we were outside our fuel window so had to convert to a 3 stop.

Pretty uneventful after that until the end. We were catching 16th, but me and @slowbird got the fuel calculations wrong for the final stop and I ended up doing the last two laps on fuel mode 2 in 6th gear (mostly). Engine died coming out of Parabolica and we rolled over the line. 18th was way behind, so we didn't lose anything there. All things considered, I guess we finished OK.

@phouchg yeah, saw you guys in the pits again and wasn't sure what had happened. Bad luck man.

@khann: @datarez:Yup, all of a sudden my wheel rotation was back to normal and I crashed horribly out of Ascari. Got it back to the pits without towing and we used the fast repair, so everything worked out okay-ish. First time I crashed in a team race since the very first race we did (which was also in a McLaren). Oh well!