That's a great idea, I really like it. You got me going with a long post again, so brace yourself
.
Perhaps there could be a special one off race during the weekend of the last week of an SRS season. Maybe 2-3 that day so that there would be a suitable time slot for Europe, America and Asia as with the 1 hour endurance championship series SRS provides, this of course is very dependent on interest as there is no point in running a special event at a timeslot where only 2-3 people will be there. That way there would one day every 6 weeks for this type of event, which would help make it feel significant and unique, but not too infrequent that we'd be waiting an incredibly long time for the next one. It could be announced at the start of the season, which would allow everyone plenty of time to prepare for the event, while still having time to practice and race in the daily and weekly races of that season. Or instead of every 6 weeks, the special events could be run and themed around certain events in the real world calendar year, as you suggested and Tim mentioned with the 2.4hr Le Mans event .
Some possible ideas that I think might be liked are:
- A 2.4 hour race at Le Mans or other significant endurance events like at Daytona, etc. (I wasn't there when it was done last time, so I don't know how it went)
- A full length F1 race on the weekend of the first race of the real world F1 season (it could be on any F1 supported track, doesn't have to be the same as the season opener).
- An Indy 500 race (if there is mod track of Indianapolis that is allowed and of good quality, although oval racing and AC is not a good combo)
- A race on the anniversary of a significant moment in racing (Maybe the anniversary of a death, but also more positive anniversaries like that of a famous race or championship win).
- A team event with driver swaps (anywhere from 1-3 hours long I imagine, I don't think there would be enough numbers here to do something longer). I know this isn't supported officially by AC, but I have seen events with mods/plugins that allow for races with driver swaps in AC. It could always be done on ACC or other sims that officially support driver swaps.
- A multiclass style race, which again isn't supported officially in AC but I'm nearly certain of there being a mod/plugin available. It is officially available on other sims like ACC, AMS2 and R3E which SRS supports. Some of the events in previous bullet points could be run as multiclass events as well.
- The Inopinatus race idea from this thread: https://www.simracingsystem.com/showthread.php?tid=9185
and there many more possible event ideas that I haven't listed. They don't have to be run exactly as I said above, but it would be nice to see something along that line provided here.
While I've never been on iRacing, I do think they are a good example of providing these type of one off events. What's more, they generally set their seasons as 13 weeks in length, where the first 12 weeks of a season have the competitive racing and the 13th week has lots of fun focused events that use more unusual car and track combos. However, there are still competitive, ranked races available on that 13th week though, so there is still racing options for people who don't want to partake in the more usual races. Having 13 week seasons, means that these weeks with fun events happen four times a year, since 4*13=52.
(They do sometimes have a 14th week in a season as a maintenance or update implementation week, so it isn't strictly that 4 seasons fit exactly in a year. There is also the fact that 52*7=364, so even if every season was 13 weeks, there is still one day left over from fitting exactly in a calendar year, two days on leap years of course. Excuse me for being pedantic, but you can see that there is essentially a week with fun events every three months roughly) .
The fun events are not ranked and don't influence iRating or Safety rating from what I understand, but you still have to drive respectably and not wreck others on purpose of course. Since ranking is not affected, these fun events can have a more casual and relaxing racing atmosphere, which can be a nice stress reliever from the other weeks of having only competitive racing. Although I'm sure others with actual experience on that platform would say iRacing is never nice and relaxing no matter the week, I'm fully aware of its reputation for often being a hostile environment
.
Perhaps a week with fun events could be implemented into SRS's calender? Since a season is 6 weeks long, this could be done the week afterwards, i.e. every 7th week. Although that would mean there would be no competitive racing options available unless some championships were extended by a week. Instead of running it the week after a 6 week season, maybe one of the daily championships could be set to be only 5 weeks in length and then on the 6th week it gets replaced by an unranked, fun event that could be run all week. Maybe, instead of replacing all the time slots of that daily championship in that 6th week, it might replace only a select few so that the daily championship could still be 6 weeks in length. Or even, instead of completely replacing those select time slots, maybe the daily race event and the fun event could be provided at the same time in different servers, although I would be worried that this might cause low numbers in both races since people will have to chose one event or the other if they want to race at that time slot.
The fun event could change up the car and track combo each time it is run that week, to keep up the variety. It could also be run in the style of the Inopinatus championship idea to make things really interesting and could be a good way of test trialing that type of event, were it ever to be considered to be implemented for an actual championship .
The week of fun events doesn't necessarily have to be done at the end or after every single season if that is too frequent. It could be done every 2nd season possibly and so it would occur every 12 weeks (if its on the last week of every 2nd season) or every 13 weeks (if its on the week after every 2nd season). This would give a similar time spacing between these fun weeks as in iRacing.
I'm not saying SRS needs to copy iRacing and try to do the exact same things as it. I do think that its not a bad idea to look at what types of events it does provide that aren't on SRS (the one-off special events and a week of fun, unusual races), and see if something similar can be provided here should there be enough people interested. Of course, it also depends on the limited time and resources available to SRS, to be able to organise and run those extra events in the first place, I imagine it would take a good deal of effort on top of all the work that is already required to run this service as it currently is. I am part of other communities that often do fun, unusual racing combos and one off special events, so I don't have a dire need for it to be provided on SRS. However, if those type of events were to be organised on SRS, then I would be more than willing to take part and enjoy driving in them with everyone here.
