[Sven]

It's been a bit quiet around this series...

Since the turnouts on Wednesdays have been a bit lacking, I thought it maybe would be interesting to race about once a month on a slightly more flexible schedule? That way it's maybe also possible to keep people vacation plans in mind and keep numbers as high as possible.

Feel free to discuss below, please give your opinion!

[DIMAVIKA]

In my case, it's all down to work scheduling if we are doing weekdays. I wouldn't mind a Saturday series.

[stephen_hill]

It's honestly hard for me the commit on weekdays. My daughter has a number of after-school activities. Mondays or Wednesdays would be the best for me, but even then, I may not commit to every week.

[Kuffy]

Again, very interested but work is all over the place during the week. Even at the Monthly race I can't say until the week before pretty much (I'm supposed to work at night Mon-Thu but sometimes it's quiet and I can go in early)

As for turnouts, it's kinda chicken and egg thing, if we don't do it people who join the community might struggle to find time to race on sunday, midweek might keep some of those new members?

In the meantime maybe we could have an unofficial, open to public midweek test session every Wednesday, using Sunday cars. It'll give us a chance to utilise the server and maybe attract new members. I need help getting my 40 hours practice in !

[Yellowthingy]

I'm happy to try and race any time I can, Mondays and Tuesdays I have usual evening plans and my daughter has brownies Thursdays. Even with those plans I am usually back and potentially available for 8pm (UK time) and after most days.

[NRTH]

My problem is that i'm sometimes available but if you start racing (in VR) i'm not reacheable for my wife. We work both full time and have both a very busy job. At this moment it's fine for my wife that I race every sunday. No stress about that, If I'm gonna race two nights a week I think she won't be happy. So at this time i'm not available during the week.

[Sleepwalker]

I am not at home on many weekdays on different schedule because my girlfriend lives an hour away, and we don't really have a schedule for when we are where.

Also as I've said a couple of times before, racing at 21 means that we are done at 22:30-23ish - and I am usually not able to sleep right after races because of all the adrenalin So racing at 20 (19UK) would make things more managable for me. I choose to race Sundays despite this, but missing a lot of sleep more than once a week is not a good option. This does not fix the availability problem though, so no reason to race at 19UK on weekdays on my account

[stephen_hill]

I'd like to throw some random ideas/suggestions out there (This is just me brainstorming)

- Like Kuffy said, we could just have a weekly session which is open to the public. Maybe it's possible to automate this session, making sure practice starts on time.
- Extend the series from the typical 8 races to 16 (or more) to give a greater window for people to attend races to gain points.
- Maybe have no defined season, just single races and publish the results (no points)
- You could even just not have any fixed season and just have a random single make race once a week.
- As a trail you could maybe run the races at different times every week and see what the actual take up is.
- Maybe we could run the series just before the race on Sunday.

Personally I'm more likely to attend a race that is scheduled weekly rather than monthly.

As a side issue, but I only mention it because there is talk about times, I think all race series times should be specified in UTC rather than UK time (GMT or GMT+1). I'm not sure, but I bet most people can convert from their own timezone to UTC easier than the UK, especially when they might not know if UK is GMT or GMT+1.

Cheers

[Sven]

I'd like to throw some random ideas/suggestions out there (This is just me brainstorming)

1) Like Kuffy said, we could just have a weekly session which is open to the public. Maybe it's possible to automate this session, making sure practice starts on time.
2) Extend the series from the typical 8 races to 16 (or more) to give a greater window for people to attend races to gain points.
3) Maybe have no defined season, just single races and publish the results (no points)
4) You could even just not have any fixed season and just have a random single make race once a week.
5) As a trail you could maybe run the races at different times every week and see what the actual take up is.
6) Maybe we could run the series just before the race on Sunday.

1) This is the main thing I've considered as well, the question would be whether we like to race with the public
Automating in this case is likely possible, but I still like the hand crafted text files where everything can go wrong. Usually it's not difficult for me to set up practice a few hours in advance though, but if I wouldn't race we would likely need some kind of mod-in-charge role for when less enjoyable folks join the server

2) Still doesn't really solve the issue of empty grids and some races having only two or three cars, and after a while you might get slightly bored of the car. Switching cars could be a bit unfair considering advantages on certain tracks, etc, etc..

3) I have the feeling most of our members are more interested in racing for points than turning up just to race; this has been the way since we raced on Forza. Off season races here sometimes also only generate half the number we see in series.

4) This is the other thing I've considered, combined with (1), as it would require less upkeep for me and avoid possible balance issues on tracks not ran before (and I don't want to test stuff for every single event).

5) Yeah, that's what I did before sometimes as well, and the results don't seem to be very consistent, which is understandable also if the group gets a bit smaller.

6) This is something we've done a few times, but pretty much always results in people either skipping the side dish, or (even worse) skipping the main series for a side series because they like the cars more.

So I think a combination of 1 and 4 would be easiest to run; then people who want to race a bit more can still do, but with the caveat of having to deal with "the public".

Appreciate the feedback by the way!

[Sleepwalker]

I like on and off season races equally I think. Off season races could easily be one make races to avoid any balancing complexities and work. Off season races are of course easier to skip because it is only one race, and there isnt any championship concerns - I try to not miss Sunday races if part of a team or in contention for the championship.

An idea might be to have an "off season championship" spanning 8 different races in different cars across a whole year or half a year, with the same 6 out of 8 race point scoring as the on season races? There would not be any requirement to participate in the championship, but it might be an incentive to participate in the races?

[Yellowthingy]

I'm with Sleepwalker on this, The fixed Sunday series is a known time (by the family too) that is set to my racing time.
Having the (side) races as a single make makes the least effort for setups but with points might encourage people to participate more. Plus a longer season would mean more members (or even the public) could make at least 6 or 8 scores across the season, but even those of us that show up alot would still match the 6-8 race points total.
Other than practices and learning new tracks for the races I don't race much outside of Cosy as the wife has started to complain, I think the FFB over the Kerbs (or grass in my case) really rattles the wheel up.

Edit: The single make of car for the race could be changed across the season too, I did not mean to suggest the same car throughout a long series as this might put people off if they don't like the car.

[Stewart4444]

I enjoy the cars that usually run in the midweek series, but I have kids clubs every evening except Monday. It’s shared with the wife but there’s no set routine as to who is doing pick-up or drop off so committing to a particular day is tricky.

[Sven]

So, for the moment I think it might be best to do occasional mid week races, single make and fixed setup, and leave the server public. I'll make sure I can make it so I can live admin the server in case people misbehave. To make it good promotion I'll stick close to the cars we normally run, with the occasional extreme.

Thanks for all of your feedback!