RicME85 wrote:I think adding in more tyre wear and engine changes isnt the right thing to do, think it would put KVRC into the realms of the jokes Formula Sketch....
I'm not sure it does... regarding the fuel usage idea; the actual LMP1 rules already have a fuel flow per lap limitation: if the drivers exceed that fuel usage in any given lap then that lap time is cancelled (see table APPENDIX 4 – Article 65. E of the WEC Sporting regulations). That means you can pretty much guarantee that on the final straight before the finish line all cars will be increasing power output to ensure that the full fuel allocation is used (minus a little margin of course!); what we're suggesting
as an option is that we could do the same thing: to make the KVRC more in line with the real LMP1; i.e.
make it more realistic....
I just want to make another attempt at explaining how this actually affects the competition though, as it really isn't the big change that people think it would be:- Virtual Stopwatch has a whole host of different parameters "behind the scenes", all of which are used to determine the lap times when you add in your aero coefficients... When we moved to the second half of the season we decided to "play" with these parameters slightly; obviously the track data changed, but we also changed the engine power curve; this was done to promote a slightly more efficient car design than we would have had with the track change alone. Would people consider that to have been unrealistic? Many real racing series already impose power restrictions for different tracks (a direct air restrictor in Indycar at Speedways and slightly less directly via a change in fuel allowance per lap in the WEC for example) so it had a precedence set by real life, and therefore could be considered to be "realistic".
At the end of the day tyre characteristics, fuel usage, power curves, gear ratios, etc, etc, are all parameters that are open to us to achieve a desired trade-off between the aero-coefficients and lap time (Just as in real life; governing bodies such as the FIA, the ACO etc write rules and regulations to ensure that the cars achieve lap times within a certain performance bracket).
To the competitors it doesn't really matter which one (or more) parameters we change to achieve that desired trade-off between the aero-coefficients (instead of reducing power for the second half of the season, we could have changed the tyre characteristics to achieve the same effect in terms of aerodynamics vs lap time and the competitors would have been none-the wiser)....
... So when people say "could we allow a low drag car to make use of the extra fuel they are saving?", what they are in effect saying is "can we have a track (or tracks) which promote an even more efficient design than we currently have?". If that is the desire then the organisers and I will work together to achieve that desire: whether it be via selecting different tracks, or a change to one or more of the "hidden" parameters then it is up to us to achieve that,
but rest assured that we won't do any changes to the parameters without giving the competitors sufficient time to take account of those parameters (most probably via the Virtual Stopwatch Test Track), and
we won't change the parameters in such a way that we end up with counter-intuitive results (such as a low drag design being faster at Monaco than a high downforce one).
EDIT: and one thing I think we're all dead against is adding any kind of "randomness" to the results, so I'll never introduce random engine failures, tyre blow outs, or driver mistakes to Virtual Stopwatch, the lap time will always be a direct correlation to the technical inputs.
I hope that is sufficient explanation on this issue and we can now take it off-line.
so ill use sketchup. what plugins do i need btw?
