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What's everyone's opinion on adding a staggered start to the qualifying race?

IMHO I don't think drafting/slipstreaming should be part of a proper qualifying session.  

Also, perhaps we ask the last person that readied up for the qualifying session to start their qualifying after everyone else has finished.  Instead of starting qualifying right away, he could drive back to the chicane, park on the inside curb, and make sure no one cuts it.  I just say that because cutting the chicane on the Donnington National track can be worth up to 3/4ths of a second in a lap because it sits between two straights.

It could use some refinement, true. We could set the laps higher and go one at a time with the rest hanging out at questionable points like you mention. 1-car, 1-lap, like F1 was a couple years back.



Now to play devil's advocate, and only ChITty need pay attention to this part :) I know you're into F1, so stretching that analogy further - current F1 Quali format permits drafting - so if it's a permissible technique there, why not here?

I was just thinking about the staggered because I think it would be too slow for people if every one waited while people go one at a time (personally, I think I'd be fine with it).  That would add a lot of time depending on how many people showed up, probably an additional 10+ minutes just for qualifying.  A staggered 5 second start would probably have the same effect, without the additional time commitment.  

Hmmm good question.  I guess I would say that it's different because F1 teams have some choice about when they go out on the track for their session, which we don't.  So while they could technically draft other cars on faster sections, because the teams purposely choose not to put them out in situations where they could get involved with other cars, the drafting effect doesn't occur in practicality.  Whereas, we're forced deal with it as a factor potentially skewing our results, if we continued with the current format.

Just to reiterate, I'm totally fine either way.  I think last week's solution was a very good one, given we don't have the ideal structure to work with.

Excellent thoughts...I'm all for the staggering idea, i think 10sec gaps would work well. So the modified system would entail:

- Qualifying takes place in a 3 lap race (collisions still off i guess).
- Players launch from the start line one-by-one, at 10 sec intervals.
- Lap 1 is warm-up.
- Lap 2 is everyone's single flying lap on which their quali time is set.
- Lap 3 players pull over somewhere before the finish line so the end of race 30sec timer isn't invoked.

The risk of providing draft to the car behind should be good encouragement to not fuck up imo.
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sounds good to me

I think there's a problem with a 10 sec stagger if we have 6 or more people, at least for this track.  Quali lap times will probably be in the low 52 second area, which means we might have the first person's flying lap getting tangled with the 5th person's warm up lap (the 6th person would be the chicane watcher who is going last obviously).

k, i guess Demo Derby doesn't allow for much in the way of drafting anyway, lol.

5sec it is for this track.

Wait... are we just doing the TC tonight?  I was talking about GP for Donnington.     :oops:

Yes, just TC tonight.

http://www.teamrip.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4124

Basically, we will be switching to GP and TC in one night, but to do so this week creates problems with a staggered schedule AND is basically just too short notice for people. So we'll do the TC round 1 race tonight, and then people will have a week to notice the new schedule (it's updated on the calendar now btw).