TORA TEC Bathurst 12H - Rules & Regulations

Welcome to the 2016 Race Tech Magazine TORA Endurance Championship - the ultimate test of team work on Forza Motorsport 6.

The fifth stop of the season is the TORA 12 Hours of Bathurst which takes place on the weekend of the 6th and 7th of August,

The race will start at 3pm BST (9am CDT) on Saturday the 6th and end at 3am BST (9pm CDT) Sunday the 7th.

Teams can consist of up to 5 drivers. Ideally you want the full five to make the 12 hours less challenging on yourselves and your consoles. Teams must drive in the same car throughout the event. If any team members switch into different cars throughout the race then their session will not be counted in the team's overall distance and will be an instant stint DQ. The fewest drivers a team can register with is 2.


Team Championship
Each round of the TEC will score towards the overall Teams Championship. Teams must register with the exact same name for each round of the TEC in order to continue scoring points. If a Team name change occurs at any time during the season, it will be classed as a new Team and will not tally up with the previous rounds (unless the name change is due to exceptional circumstances, examples being but not limited to: loss of sponsorship, teams disbanding). Drivers are not forced to race in the same team for the entire year, they may change out when required.


Car Choice
Teams will register for each race individually, meaning car & class choice are open to change between rounds, however builds are expected to be altered at least a little between each round to ensure a very close balance throughout the season.


Race Rules / Procedure
Joining the race
Joining the race is your own responsibility, the lobby hosts will try their best to get you into the lobby by sending you game invites, should there be any communications issues with xbox messages / notifications and you haven't got an invite by 10 minutes before the stint, you should then find the host / backup host and try joining their game yourself, if you then still cannot get into the game, you should message the host / backup host on xbox to advise them. Both the main and backup host details will be found on the live timing page and it is recommended to add them as a friend before race day so you can find them quickly should you need to.


Qualifying
Qualification for this event will be held throughout the week leading up to the weekend. Each qualification round will last 45 minutes. The team will qualify as a whole, so out of the 5 possible times that could be set by the entire team then the best 2 times will be taken and added together. For example, if Driver 3 and 5 sets a better time then Drivers 1, 2, and 4, then Driver 3 and 5's time will be taken and added together to make the best time. Each driver may only compete in one qualifying session. There will be lobbies hosted throughout the week to accommodate racers in European time zones and American time zones (See qualifying thread for dates).

Race
The race will be split up into six stints that will be set to 2 hours. Each stint will be competed by one driver from each team, so you will not be racing on track with your team mates during the event. Driver changes take place when the stint is over, where we will have a new lobby setup 15 minutes before the next stint (unless there are a shortage of hosts and the host is double stinting).

all TORA GT drivers must make a total of 4 stops in their stint. This stop must be made before the final 5 minutes of the stint. Failure to fulfill this requirement will result in a 10,000 foot distance deduction from the stint.

Safety cars will not factor into the race as the entire event is based upon your endurance. If there is a crash you will have to recover and continue to the end of your stint and deal with any damage that you pick up. This should be incentive enough to stay out of the wall. Damage will be set to Simulation to replicate fuel and tire wear.

Should you damage your car / start running out of fuel, you must continue to drive the correct way around the track, anyone driving the wrong way at any point in the race will receive an instant full stint DQ.


Stint 1
The first stint will start under a Rolling Start following the TORA pace car. The pace car will take the grid around at 80mph Maximum, with all cars being in single file, and once they pull into the pits the race is green, there will be no overtaking the pace car or any other drivers before you reach the start finish line, doing so will incur an instant penalty of 10,000ft.


Stints 2-5
For the remainder of the stints, drivers will get into single file order on the "Mountain Straight" (CLICK HERE for an image of the corner names) before setting off on the first lap, and will begin racing once you approach the Pedders sign on the "Mountain Straight", everyone will bunch up and the leader will start racing on exit of "Griffins Bend" and everyone will follow, no overtaking until after "The Cutting", this is an endurance, no-one can win it in the first corner. The field is to begin racing no later than 1 minute into the session, to ensure there is balance over both lobbies. The grid for each stint will be taken by the order in which you qualified in as we cannot always get the data quick enough to continue in your current positions.


Stint 6
Stint 6 will be the same as stints 2-5 with the only difference being a full 2 hour stint, race set to 2hr 15 and still stopping when the timer reaches 15:00


End of stint procedure
When the race timer runs down to having 20 minutes left, all cars will stop where they are on track, the host(s) will then take down the following details, Total miles the car in P1 has traveled (if displayed in KM this will be converted to miles afterwards), each individual drivers distance behind the car in P1 in ft (shown at the bottom left). If you cannot hear the host to communicate your distance, please send them a message / post on the forums in the live timing thread, and take a game record (screenshot won't work without kinect or chatpad as when you being up the menu the pause menu overlays the data we need to see).

Once this is collected the car in P1 will move forward slowly until they reach the place where the next mile ticks over, then the distance between the cars in P1 and P2 will again be taken to accurately calculate P1's total distance in ft (See Live Timing for exact calculation details). If the host is unable to hear P2, they will fall back to P3, or to anyone they can hear.

Once the host announces that they have collected all data you may then back out of the race / wait in the lobby, those that are double stinting and stay in the lobby to collect credits, risk being missed from the next stint as we will only wait so long between stints to reduce delays.

To accommodate for the stint changes a 20 minute turnaround will be applied for 'a pit stop with driver change simulation' so in reality the stints only last 1 Hour 40 Minutes. We set the lobby to 2 Hours to allow the host 20 Minutes to retrieve the information needed at the end of the stint.

We can't credit you for any distances without this information as the pause screen and end of race leader board simply does not give the information we need, so we ask all drivers to work together at the end of these stints as game chat is currently making it very difficult.


Settings / Assists
Please refer to the Lobby Settings post for full information: CLICK HERE


Livery Requirements
- Its not offensive
- It doesn't include any direct tobacco sponsorship
- It has sponsors

There will be no mandatory Number boxes for this series, however suggested decals and sponsors for the championship will be shared.

The cars number, as well as the TORA url (TheOnlineRacingAssociation.com) must be displayed on both sides and the top, or hood of the car.


Car Numbers
Each competitor in the team must be registered with TORA and have a TORA Race Number. This is for admin purposes only. The number that is displayed on the car during the 24 Hour event must be one of the competitors TORA numbers who is present within the team. Whichever driver's number the team uses is up to you.


Lag Out's
It is unfortunately not uncommon for races to be decided by a disconnection during a stint, resulting in a loss of distance traveled. A driver that unfortunately lags out, must collect their distance traveled at the time of lag-out to properly credit you for your distance traveled. To collect this information we will need either the data from your live stream if you are streaming, or you will need to record a game clip right at the time of lagout (10 minutes of video can be collected if you go into the game DVR and choose end clip instead of using the quick record). If you cannot provide any proof of the time of lagout / miles traveled you will unfortunately score a 0 for that stint. Lag out data must be provided no later than 12 hours from the event finish 3pm GMT on Sunday the 7th (9am CDT).

For a lag out you will be given the mileage you covered before lagging out. Full details of how the race distances are calculated can be found in the Live Timing thread


Track Limits
Unless otherwise stated, what Forza considers 'invalidated' is what is not allowed. There will be exceptions throughout which will be defined clearly. To see full details of track limits please refer to the Bathurst section of the track guides which will be added no later than the week qualifying starts.


The staff reserve the right to make amendments at any time throughout the championship.