TORA Clubman Cup Meeting 3 - Rules & Discussion - 14th August 2012 - 8pm BST

Lobby A full results (had quite a few lag outs and connection issues, but we got through all the races eventually!). I've got all the replays saved so I can send those over later:

Silverstone Race 1

1. CQR MAGiC
2. PLOW tubbi
3. BG Smithy
4. BG Crunk
5. lfcnicklfc
6. BG Beanz
7. CQR D4N13L
8. CQR HABURi
9. BG regaddict
10. CQR CHRiS
11. Defconluke
12. tsafoot
13. MidEvilKnight3k
14. BG Hainsey

Silverstone Race 2

1. CQR HABURi
2. PLOW tubbi
3. BG Smithy
4. lfcnicklfc
5. CQR MAGiC
6. BG Beanz
7. BG Hainsey
8. BG regaddict
9. CQR D4N13L
10. MidEvilKnight3k
11. tsafoot
12. CQR CHRiS
13. Defconluke (DNF)
14. BG Crunk (DNF)

Road America Race 1

1. lfcnicklfc
2. BG Hainsey
3. BG Smithy
4. CQR D4N13L
5. BG regaddict
6. Defconluke
7. BG Beanz
8. CQR HABURi
9. CQR MAGiC
10. tsafoot
11. CQR CHRiS
12. MidEvilKnight3k
13. PLOW tubbi
14. BG Crunk (DNF)

Road America Race 2

1. PLOW tubbi
2. Defconluke
3. BG Beanz
4. CQR D4N13L
5. CQR CHRiS
6. CQR MAGiC
7. BG Hainsey
8. tsafoot
9. MidEvilKnight3k
10. BG Regaddict
11. BG Smithy (DNF)
12. lfcnicklfc (DNF)
13. CQR HABURi (DNF)
14. BG Crunk (DNF)

Motegi Full Race 1

1. BG Smithy
2. Defconluke
3. PLOW tubbi
4. lfcnicklfc
5. CQR MAGiC
6. CQR CHRiS
7. CQR D4N13L
8. BG Beanz
9. CQR HABURi
10. BG Hainsey
11. tsafoot
12. MidEvilKnight3k
13. BG Regaddict (DNF)
14. BG Crunk (DNS)

Motegi Full Race 2

1. BG Smithy
2. PLOW tubbi
3. CQR MAGiC
4. BG Beanz
5. Defconluke
6. CQR HABURi
7. tsafoot
8. CQR CHRiS
9. BG Hainsey
10. CQR D4N13L
11. MidEvilKnight3k
12. lfcnicklfc (DNF)
13. BG Regaddict (DNS)
14. BG Crunk (DNS)

The Road America race was that good I had to record it

That was some close racing, great to watch.

Also congrats to Adder20 who also got his first TORA Lobby win

Wow, that was really an awesome race..

Racert46 wrote:That was some close racing, great to watch.

Also congrats to Adder20 who also got his first TORA Lobby win

Not exactly.....
I won the second race on Hockenheim in the GT cup ( lobby E)

But yesterday with not a lot of testing, respectable places during the races.
It was a lot of fun so I hope there will be as championship in the future.
Only minus about yesterday was the long waiting times....
I surely can understand the way you guys organise is awesome.
It is just me. I am impatient and I am not the most tactful one......

I know this is gonna sound very negative, but I do mean it constructively (and this is purely my own personal opinion, I'm sure others will disagree, I just wanted to share what I thought) - I was massively disappointed with the Clubman cars and balancing last night - we did have some good racing, but most of it was within the 'sub-classes' within the class which masked what was really going on underneath. Tubbi and Smithy had some good battles (but both retro FWD PI490). Daniel and Beanz had a few good battles (but both modern FWD PI480 ex-TCC) and me and Haburi had some good racing, but again same PI. Between cars of different PI's, it was very unbalanced - might as well been multi-class racing there's so much disparity between them. So many things wrong I don't know where to start really.

PI Spread

A 30 PI spread across cars supposedly of the same class is ridiculous. 75 PI covers an entire Forza class (C425 to B500), so some of the cars in the Clubman rules are the best part of half a Forza class apart from others. The whole point of the PI system is that two cars built to the same PI should theoretically do the same lap time - in practice it's a little off, but Forza 4 is pretty good (to within about 10 PI for most cars) once you enforce weight restrictions, ban centrifugal superchargers and ban drivetrain swaps.

RWD vs FWD

From all the cars I've racing, tuned as part of the club and attacked the leaderboards and races with, RWD is *slightly* faster than FWD, by about 10-15 PI in most cases (Forza 3 was the reverse, RWD was slower by about 10-15 PI). So the gap from a FWD to RWD car should be around 10-15 PI. And yet modern RWD cars are PI 460 and retro FWD cars are PI 490 - the gap is way too much, so I can only assume that in previous testing and events slower and more inexperienced drivers haven't been getting as near to the limits of the RWD cars as they have the FWD?

Old vs New PIs

I can't understand AT ALL why the older cars get MORE PI - that's backwards. The older cars are lighter and have a better power-to-weight ratio, and if anything, should have slightly less PI. That's why older cars like the Rabbit, Golf Mk2, Mercedes 190E, RS1800 etc dominate the leaderboards (excluding drive train swap cars like the Aygo and cars with centrifugal superchargers).

At most, the PI's should be about 15 PI apart (look at the TCC, all the cars the same and very, very close, same with the GT's, about 10 PI covering the GT3 spec cars and they're really close). Example:

Modern FWD - PI 480
Retro FWD - PI 475
Retro RWD - PI 470
Modern RWD - PI 465

Car Builds

The mandatory race suspension parts just don't work with the production tyres and aero. Building and tuning good cars requires balancing the tyres, aero and suspension, so they all work together. As soon as you fit sport tyres and take off the aero, the race parts are pretty redundant, because they don't help with corner because the tyres and aero don't supply enough grip to work. That's why the cars feel strange, handle in inconsistent ways and are just dull to drive. The number of times I heard last night people complaining that there care "had just done this, or just done that" or did something unexpected - I was following Chris' Clio at one point, and it was fine, under control and then just snapped with no warning, not driver error, just the way the car was behaving because of it's unbalanced build. It's the same blind alley Virtual Motorsports went down their dreadful GP2 Series Hyundai Genesis - that had the opposite: race aero, race tyres and production suspension, and was a complete pig, couldn't tune out what was wrong with it and it just became a hassle to drive each week. I think the same will be true with the Clubman cars, there's very little opportunity in the build and tune to improve the car and find more speed - it is what it is, and generally the faster the car is down the straight the better it will perform with these rules, there's not enough cornering performance to tune anything back in.

Also, the rules on the required parts can't even be enforced. There's no way to tell if someone has fitted a race gearbox or left off the race breaks to take more weight out of the car - can't even really tell if someone has sport tyres on (other than the car might actually go around corners with race tyres).

Accessibily

As a more entry-level category, maybe for newer drivers, drivers looking to improve, find speed, these cars are a complete waste of time. The driver learns nothing about maintaining corner speeds, racing lines are dictated by the lack of tyre and aero grip and there's little room for learning how to improve the car through tuning. Drivers will just drive around the problems these cars have, not really learning anything, just getting frustrated every time the car behaves erractically. The racing between different sub-classes was poor too - some cars were 2 seconds a lap faster around Road America and Motegi Full, simply out accelerate, top speed, brake later and corner at the same speed - the only decent racing was against cars of the exact same type.

--

So overall, massively disappointed - feels like an enourmous step back from the car parity, excellent racing and driver development potential that the TCC spec cars offer. I hope I'm wrong and it turns out the cars are well balanced and offers good racing, I can't see that from what I saw last night, but good luck anyway!

No Magic, I eally appreciate the feedback. At least your looking at the bigger picture.

The whole Clubman cup was an experiment to find a low PI class with a lot of variety in it. As these races have just been for fun and an experiment I have been quite happy to change the rules and regs on the fly, and what is great is that people have gona along with it to help with the rules and make the class really good.

I'll admit, furthering the PIswas a drastic step and one that I was unsure of myself, but I wanted to see the results.

My reason behind giving the older cars more PI to play with was that the older cars do not have the same grip that new cars have. The chassis and general builds of the car do not have the same grip as their modern day counterparts. I can see after last night that it was too much of a gap and the split of classes from the meeting before we're much better. I think a split of only 10 PI between classes is much better and will work out well. I did discuss with my lobby last night that the older cars may not be suited anyway, and I should have just made it 1990 on wards or something.

I know the rules can't been enforced, and this series revolves around a high level of trust. I think we are all grown up enough to follow such rules and that the reason we stick to rules that are set out is so we can have good racing. It's not something new and it is hard to monitor but we have done it in the past.

I will have a look ate race suspension parts. I don't know a thing about tuning, so I put them on the list thinking it would help people and not hinder them.

The only thing I will say in the current rules defence is that going by the lap times from last night and also from what people have been posting in the Britcar thread, they are relatively even, especially when people are only a few tents apart in a large selection of cars around one track.

I do like the critisim though as it help me create a better class of cars. The racing I think in the first meeting when the cars were only covered by 10 PI was the best racing I had overall in the Clubmans. Maybe it's time to go back to that.

What I dont like about the current setup is the fact the modern cars even with a higher PI wont compete on the same level as older ever. The straight line speed just means forget about cornering and floor it on the straights makes for some really boring racing. The laptimes may look close for qualy but stick them on the track and everyone is just tripping over each other because of the difference of say 20-40ft later in the modern cars braking zones.

My recommendation is race tyres, springs, and full aero as mandatory. Ban Superchargers. Power of 201-240bhp and weight of 2300-2700Lbs.

At least that way even with trusting each other over whats ran there is no doubts. The power and weight restrictions should also ensure all cars are race cars and not 'missle' cars as people describe them. Thats just my thoughts on it from testing alot of cars since forzas release in that class.

Richy59 wrote:I do like the critisim though as it help me create a better class of cars. The racing I think in the first meeting when the cars were only covered by 10 PI was the best racing I had overall in the Clubmans. Maybe it's time to go back to that.

I think that would solve most of the problems and bring most of the cars to within 0.5s of each other, which is about as close as you can expect to get a wide range of cars. I don't like to be critical, cos I know how hard it is to balance cars, drivers, PI's and everyone has their own views and opinions, just think a closer PI spread would close up the differences between the cars

Making some of the chassis parts (brakes/suspension) optional could free up a few PI that would enable some cars to fit a sport transmission or slightly wider tyres, to help compensate for the lack of race tyres and aero, rather than having race suspension and brakes that are somewhat redundant given the lack of tyre/aero performance being generated by the car. Same thing with the older cars really, they're lighter and accelerate better, but have less overall grip - but because grip is lower all round for everyone, it's less of a handicap and the better acceleration and lower weight is more of an advantage for those cars, so they don't really need a PI boost over newer cars.

I will make sure this list is better for the Britcar, I had a quick look today and added Race Tyres to everything but keeping the power and weight bands the same. In general the cars all seemed to have close BHP and weight, as I brought the PI down from what was possible. Adding slicks gave me PIs of:

FWD - 495
RWD - 490

Regarding aero, this is something I don't want on these cars. I am quite 'for' putting aero on cars as when we drove the original Production GT list the cars had no aero and were terrible to drive. Now with aero they are fun and usable. I would say the same would happen if we add front aero to the TCC cars, but for the Clubmans its just something I really want to avoid.

If Race Tyres doesn't help then making parts optional would be the way to go. As I said I don't know how to tune, so I thought in the best of interest that adding loads of tunable options would make things better, not worse.

Would it be better if we were using Sport Tyres that we didn't allow race parts on the cars, and so no tuning can happen, or make it optional incase some people don't feel comfortable without some adjustment?

I had a little play with the MR-S today to see what I could do to it.

The Sport Aero (non-adjustable downforce) gives more grip and the extra couple of HP you can add made the car about 3-4 tenths faster on every track. Because this isn't available on all cars i'd recommend mandating stock aero or race aero.

Sport Tyres are fine imo but it depends if you want something that is a bit of a challenge when pushing hard or something that is nearly infallible with race tyres. With 245s on FWD cars, that should be more than enough with these modest power levels - I would even suggest trying 235s.

I'll throw it up on my SF as "Test" incase anyone wants to test it.

I tried a Fiero but bad gears ruled that out. I tried an RCZ and it had mega handling but a rubbish powerband. Both were about 2+ seconds slower than the MR-S despite the higher PIs.

We all know by now what the quicker cars are within such a large car selection, why else would there be Hondas/Acuras/Golfs/C'eeds/MR-S etc. all in lobby A and the more unusual choices like Minis/Polo/Cygnet in lobby B? If you want to encourage people to use the 'other' cars then the best way to do it is to remove the 'usual suspects' from the car selection.

I love the way the cars are and personally i don't think the PI's etc need to be changed! I enjoy the challenge of racing with sports tyres and having no aero on the cars it makes it very exciting, i don't mind the idea of having race tyres too much and the PI gap between the FWD and RWD cars has been a bit too much between modern RWD and older FWD so if you go back to the old 10pi difference between the two classes then that would close up the speed difference between cars.

I think if you want to use sport tyres aero is a must to compensate for a car that is well not feeling at all realistic without it. With race tyres this should allow for perfect balance with no aero. Race suspension to me is a must in all cases for me without aero because i find the damping and rebound are the main contributers to the handling without it. (Springs dont really do alot without it imo)

I think race tyres and no aero would give the best racing, with FWD having 10 PI more than RWD. Older cars will gain more from the race tyres as they have less grip to start with so don't need different PIs for older FWD and RWD cars. Making race suspension and brakes optional would allow each car to play to its strengths, some need better brakes, some need better gearbox, some don't need any so can spend the extra PI saved on saving weight instead.

I originally removed the race gearbox to try cap the cars speeds, however as I found some of the cars have terrible gearboxes. Would allowing the option of any race parts (including the gearbox) and Race tyres but keeping the powers and weights the same be the best course of action?

Luke, I will check it out. I used the MR-S in the first meeting we had and was going very quick in it, probably quicker than I should have been. I was using a bodykit, so might have been down to that.

I was considering removing the obviously fast cars, and some have already been removed. As I am not a lobby hopper or know the ins and ours of what are the best cars I really had no idea that some of the cars were that good.

Yeah, freeing up race parts will help bring some cars that are otherwise uncompetitive into the mix, powers and weights are fine. You've essentially got a bit slower version of the TCC cars then, but with no aero and RWD allowed which adds extra variety. It's the centrifugal supercharger and drive train swaps that unbalance the cars and create 'leaderboard' cars, without those and with restricted power and weight the cars are pretty level at the same PI.

I agree with all the points above, but would like to re-iterate the fact of just how quick the older FWD cars were down the straights, my car handled sweet as, but it just wasn't enough to bridge the gap to those cars, they were just missiles on the straights no doubt about it.

Yeah but if you take away their straight line speed then you'll get the other side of the argument where your car is so much better round the corners and then just as quick on the straights, some cars will always have an advantage in certain areas, take your Sentra for example compared to my Seat in the TCC!

Yeah that is true, but the amount of an advantage they had showed by the results. Even the cars that handled good couldn't bridge the gap back, whereas in the Sentra, even though it was super quick down the straights, all the other cars handled so much better they could deal with it...

On the race springs/sport tire/no aero combo, I'd be very happy to see sport springs as part of the equation. That limits the tuning, and in many cases would minimize the gap between well tuned cars and not so well tuned cars.

The difference between Sport and Race suspension at this level is going to be fractions of a second unless you really, really, really screw up your settings with the Race part.

What's more important is car choice and car build. Those two can find you whole seconds.

Defconluke wrote:The difference between Sport and Race suspension at this level is going to be fractions of a second unless you really, really, really screw up your settings with the Race part.

What's more important is car choice and car build. Those two can find you whole seconds.

I dont really agree with this. Build can change from track to track but overall CQR in the touring cars found more time tuning the suspension for each individual track. The track we originally tuned it round as many others will find by the end of it there was probably minimum of 1second faster found in suspension setup alone.

I would like it tighted up a wee bit but I'm very happy with the Clubman rules as they are already, you talk about cars at the same builds battling each other, yet in lobby B it was great racing, Silverstone saw 1 new FWD/1 new RWD/ 2 old RWD cars all very close and fighting for the win, If you see the video Richy put up the cars again different yet close. Plus at Mogeti Slider and I had a huge battle with again mixed cars involved.

This had the makings of a great championship and my fav class is old RWD reminds me of 80s/90s BTCC!

I agree Chad, after having such good racing between the old FWD and RWD 1980s cars I think that would be more suited to a championship of its own, rather than a 30 odd year spread of cars. I think 1990 onwards would have been better for the Clubman.

Maybe try 1969-1989? I could see the old Z, 510, 2002t, Porsche 914-6, maybe even the Pinto and Mustang II, fitting in better with the 1980s cars than the newer cars do.