[Tim Masson]

I gave up on SRS open wheel racing a while back... I enjoy it, but I'm not the fastest, so always seem to end up behind some lap 1 melee... Anyway, we need some sort of criteria to make it work in SRS. I think we need one or more of the following methods (not all possible in AC/SRS) to make open wheel racing "work" nicely:

1. Driver inc. rate limit
   
2. Driver rating limit 
   
3. Enforce yellow flags
   
4. Pre-qualification races / series (ie completion and score criteria // eg before competing in a F1 race you must have completed 1 F3 series) 
   

Worth a discussion / vote? [from Discord chat]
Worth a vote?

[Riley Gallardo]

I gave up on SRS open wheel racing a while back... I enjoy it, but I'm not the fastest, so always seem to end up behind some lap 1 melee... Anyway, we need some sort of criteria to make it work in SRS. I think we need one or more of the following methods (not all possible in AC/SRS) to make open wheel racing "work" nicely:

1. Driver inc. rate limit
   
2. Driver rating limit 
   
3. Enforce yellow flags
   
4. Pre-qualification races / series (ie completion and score criteria // eg before competing in a F1 race you must have completed 1 F3 series) 
   

Worth a discussion / vote? [from Discord chat]
Worth a vote?

Hi Tim, I saw Martin posted this in the discord, I think that open wheel can be chaotic and clean.  First I want to start by saying that an incident rating restriction in my opinion is not a good solution. High incidents in previous series should not affect your ability on future series.  I have a friend who did the Tatuus on Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve (Canada GP) and that was a disaster even though previous tracks were not. This led to him having an 8+ incident average if I remember correctly. He has since brought it down to below 4 and is one of the cleanest drivers for his rating.  Just remember your incidents average doesn’t change very much after you have a lot of starts, and being involved in a T1 crash and going to the back and racing with not as clean drivers, that has gotten my average up to 2.5 and I can’t lower it but I like to think I am a very clean racer.  My conclusion is that I don't think that Incident Average restrictons should exist, at least for the daily series.  I think that having a restriction would decrease split sizes and I don't think it's the solution.  I really hope this does not go through because I would like to continue to race with my friends who have ~3-5 incident averages as they are both clean drivers, just have been involved in a lot of turn 1 incidents and crash's where the blame falls on the other driver.

[Tim Cullingworth]

Interesting ideas.

I do think your poll needs a none of the above option for it to be of any use.

[Simon Meisinger]

Low powered modern open wheelers will always stay a shitshow in sim racing. They're also among the worst series at iRacing. Comparably easy to drive cars that make you feel like Schumacher simply attract the worst kind of sim racers.

But the pre-qualification is still a great idea, regardless of which series it would be used for. I had a similar idea as well: https://www.simracingsystem.com/showthre...7#pid38547

[Tim Masson]

Interesting ideas.

I do think your poll needs a none of the above option for it to be of any use.

Thanks Tim, hoping to stimulate some discussion on this, so please offer alternatives. I'll see if I can put in a "none of the above" option.
Then maybe we can put the consensus ideas to some of the series sponsors for possible implementation.

---

Low powered modern open wheelers will always stay a shitshow in sim racing. They're also among the worst series at iRacing.

Comparably easy to drive cars that make you feel like Schumacher simply attract the worst kind of sim racers.

But the pre-qualification is still a great idea, regardless of which series it would be used for. I had a similar idea as well: https://www.simracingsystem.com/showthre...7#pid38547

Thanks Simon, yes, pre-quali is used in a number of leagues. Would be good to get it onto some SRS series.

---

I gave up on SRS open wheel racing a while back... I enjoy it, but I'm not the fastest, so always seem to end up behind some lap 1 melee... Anyway, we need some sort of criteria to make it work in SRS. I think we need one or more of the following methods (not all possible in AC/SRS) to make open wheel racing "work" nicely:

1. Driver inc. rate limit
   
2. Driver rating limit 
   
3. Enforce yellow flags
   
4. Pre-qualification races / series (ie completion and score criteria // eg before competing in a F1 race you must have completed 1 F3 series) 
   

Worth a discussion / vote? [from Discord chat]
Worth a vote?

Hi Tim, I saw Martin posted this in the discord, I think that open wheel can be chaotic and clean.  First I want to start by saying that an incident rating restriction in my opinion is not a good solution. High incidents in previous series should not affect your ability on future series.  I have a friend who did the Tatuus on Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve (Canada GP) and that was a disaster even though previous tracks were not. This led to him having an 8+ incident average if I remember correctly. He has since brought it down to below 4 and is one of the cleanest drivers for his rating.  Just remember your incidents average doesn’t change very much after you have a lot of starts, and being involved in a T1 crash and going to the back and racing with not as clean drivers, that has gotten my average up to 2.5 and I can’t lower it but I like to think I am a very clean racer.  My conclusion is that I don't think that Incident Average restrictons should exist, at least for the daily series.  I think that having a restriction would decrease split sizes and I don't think it's the solution.  I really hope this does not go through because I would like to continue to race with my friends who have ~3-5 incident averages as they are both clean drivers, just have been involved in a lot of turn 1 incidents and crash's where the blame falls on the other driver.

Thanks Riley. Yup, I was the same, had a few horrendous races very early on in SRS, before I understood what type of races to avoid and how to deal with the crash and smash crowd. I agree that inc. rating (as it's recorded now) limits wouldn't apply to daily or even weekly series. I hope this idea will also stimulate some more discussion on inc. ratings to make them useful in SRS.

[Akhil Rao]

I gave up on SRS open wheel racing a while back... I enjoy it, but I'm not the fastest, so always seem to end up behind some lap 1 melee... Anyway, we need some sort of criteria to make it work in SRS. I think we need one or more of the following methods (not all possible in AC/SRS) to make open wheel racing "work" nicely:

1. Driver inc. rate limit
   
2. Driver rating limit 
   
3. Enforce yellow flags
   
4. Pre-qualification races / series (ie completion and score criteria // eg before competing in a F1 race you must have completed 1 F3 series) 
   

Worth a discussion / vote? [from Discord chat]
Worth a vote?

I don't agree with any of the suggestions from the poll- there should be entry level series where people can make mistakes and learn and if not get reported for it. If someone is driving stupidly and not learning they can be reported and their incidents reviewed. I do understand where you're coming from, especially on nights some back marker tries to defend during blue flags, but we have the ability to submit incidents for review and pm drivers directly to clear up issues.

Keep in mind, I'm referring to the entry level open wheel series (tatus, F3, Tark etc). The current F1 (Formula Hybrid) does have a rating limit and either suggestion 1 or 2 would be fine for these kinds of series where there is only 1 race a week. I don't think any of the daily series should have these requirements.

I'm concerned adopting any of these will make SRS feel more like league racing in iRenting.

[Tim Masson]

I gave up on SRS open wheel racing a while back... I enjoy it, but I'm not the fastest, so always seem to end up behind some lap 1 melee... Anyway, we need some sort of criteria to make it work in SRS. I think we need one or more of the following methods (not all possible in AC/SRS) to make open wheel racing "work" nicely:

1. Driver inc. rate limit
   
2. Driver rating limit 
   
3. Enforce yellow flags
   
4. Pre-qualification races / series (ie completion and score criteria // eg before competing in a F1 race you must have completed 1 F3 series) 
   

Worth a discussion / vote? [from Discord chat]
Worth a vote?

I don't agree with any of the suggestions from the poll- there should be entry level series where people can make mistakes and learn and if not get reported for it. If someone is driving stupidly and not learning they can be reported and their incidents reviewed. I do understand where you're coming from, especially on nights some back marker tries to defend during blue flags, but we have the ability to submit incidents for review and pm drivers directly to clear up issues.

Keep in mind, I'm referring to the entry level open wheel series (tatus, F3, Tark etc). The current F1 (Formula Hybrid) does have a rating limit and either suggestion 1 or 2 would be fine for these kinds of series where there is only 1 race a week. I don't think any of the daily series should have these requirements.

I'm concerned adopting any of these will make SRS feel more like league racing in iRenting.

Thanks Akhil, perhaps you misunderstand me. I'm just a sim racer like you. I'm just trying to promote a discussion and get ideas. The reporting system just doesn't seem to have had the desired effect in the years I've been here in open wheel racing, the racing discipline just isn't there. I'm not promoting any of these options myself, or wanting any as a "blanket" approach to all open wheel series. Just trying to get a consensus, or find other ideas that we could try one of these options in one series, and see if it brings better racing.

[Martin Warmington]

Hi Tim interesting ideas!
I stopped doing any series that has a FIXED set up some time ago as I just kept getting involved in T1 -3 pile ups. I thought it was just the MX5 that was a nightmare but I realised that most of issues are with the slower / easier to drive cars and they are usually in in the FIXED category so I stopped doing them most of the time. I broke my rule to try the F3 this time and boy is that fun! BUT my incident rating has taken a battering and was 1.8 before this series. Most races have about 5 incidents for me and that's usually the first lap crashes. I'm not perfect but I try to slow for incidents to avoid getting involved and making it worse. However I dont know the answer as I see people from all levels having issues and some of the accidents are accelerating too early or braking too late and even some of the quicker guys seem to be caught out sometimes.

[Martin Smith]

The eternal question of sim racing, isn't it? How to clean up the racing.

Obviously SRS is a huge step forward from open lobbies as a few newcomers have stated, and as the size of our membership can attest. But there's always room for improvement, of course.

There are 2 steps to cleaning up the racing, the first is to identify risky drivers and the second is to teach them to drive safely or isolate them from the rest of us.

For the first step the SRS incident rating system actually does a fair job of identifying the riskier drivers.

The biggest shortcoming of the current incident rating method is that the further back a driver runs in the pack, the more incidents they will be exposed to even if they are very clean drivers. So there is a bit of a bias against them there. If needed, maybe there's an 'adjustment factor' that can be devised to reduce the incident rating of drivers with lower performance rating? Then the relative safety of given fast, medium or slow drivers can more evenly be compared to each other.

But I think what we have is good enough to use to separate out the worst offenders. And if we ever manage to produce cleaner racing then that problem might just fix itself.

So the next step is reforming or isolating drivers.

1) As it stands we don't actually use the incident rating for any pupose, which is what your first option suggests we do. I had suggested this before >link here< but Henrique indicated he's not in favour of a restriction that would shrink the field on server 1. But now that I look at it again, maybe the 2nd server could be formed by incident rating rather than performance, so the 1st server is always full?

Either way, I don't think there's ever a need to remove high incident drivers from a race, they just need to be isolated.

2) Same with this suggestion. There's no point in removing drivers by performance rating (especially if we filter out the risky ones), they only need to be split in groups together when possible so they race each other as much as possible, not faster or slower guys. That's what SRS does already.

3) Enforcing yellow flags could be a good way to reform bad drivers, the ones who are a bit clueless to how racing works. But I don't think that's technically feasible with AC. More techy guys can chime in on that, I'm just guessing.

4) I'm a little confused on this one. There seems to be blurry lines between a licensing system, pre-qualifying system, and simple safety or performance rating splits as discussed above. I mean, aren't we pre-qualifying with every race we do? And isn't the rating a type of license if used to differentiate drivers? Serious question, I just don't know. Besides, I wouldn't assume that just because someone did well in an F3 series, that they want to progress to F1 rather that compete in clean MX-5 races.

So the idea of saying you have to complete 'x' within certain standards in order to be eligible for 'y' is very complicated, and inevitably a bit arbitrary, and perhaps even futile. Better to simply use each person's performance and safety ratings to establish who they race against compared to the ratings of everyone else who signed up, in a more seamless way.

[Tim Masson]

Thanks Martin, that's great.
Again, I'm not suggesting any of these solutions as a catchall for all SRS series or races, as part of the joy of SRS is that we have a low bar to entry, that encourages folk to join in, be active and enjoy the racing.  My initial brain dump / thought on Discord was really to wonder whether it might be worth an experiment with one open wheel series, say a weekly or bi-weekly slot, and use some sort of additional filter for that series. Then see how it goes for a few months.
I love the fact we have a Discord channel to encourage community, discussion on racing etiquette, and reminding folk that we are all human drivers, and I think that does a lot to educate those that chose to engage, alongside the incident reporting and bans. However, there's a group that choose not to engage and some that continue the same style of driving even after a short ban. And there's only limited options available to us if we don't have live stewarding. 
Also, I'm coming from a place where I did drive at a club for a couple of seasons a quarter century ago, and we had such a great sense of community there. We even went "on tour" together around the UK to race other amateur enthusiasts. I love the fact that we can recreate a portion of that community here in the sim racing world, and I'm trying to find a way to get more of that club feel in SRS, (which is still the broadest church for the sim racing community I think). I'd love to see it continue, but we've seen a lot of fracturing of this community over the last 12-18 months, so I'm hoping we can find a way to keep SRS relevant and attractive to that broad church.
I hope we can continue this discussion beyond my little poll, and perhaps redo it soon to include some more suggestions we get here in this thread.