TORA TEC Nürburgring 24H - Rules and Regulations

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

The final stop of the season is the TORA 24 Hours of Nürburgring which takes place on the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of December.

The race will start at 3pm GMT (10am EST) on Saturday the 3rd and end at 3pm GMT (10am EST) Sunday the 4th.

Teams can consist of up to 5 drivers. Ideally you want the full five to make the 24 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 and party invitations. Should there be any communications issues with Xbox messages/notifications and you have not received an invite by 10 minutes before the stint, you should then find the host/backup host and try joining their game manually.  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. It is suggested, not mandatory, that the entire team takes part in qualifying so out of the 5 possible times that could be set, the best 2 times can be taken and added together as the team's qualifying result. 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 twelve stints that will be set to 2 hours. Each stint will be competed by one driver from each team, meaning you will not be racing on track with your team mates during the event. Driver changes take place in between stints where we will have a new lobby setup 15 minutes before the next stint (except for cases when there are a shortage of hosts and the host is double stinting).

To accommodate for the stint changes, a 20 minute turnaround will be applied for 'a pit stop with driver change simulation'.  Meaning that 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.

All drivers are required to make a number of mandatory pit stops during their stint.  GT drivers will have to stop 4 times while TCC drivers will have to stop 3 times.  All stops 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.


Stint 1
The first stint will start under a Rolling Start following the TORA Audi R8 V10 plus pace car. The pace car will take the grid around at 80mph Maximum, with all cars being in double file.

Grid
To set the grid, the grid will be called off one by one and instructed to turn around and drive the track backwards towards the Gantry on the Dottinger Hohe (CLICK HERE for an image of the corner names).  The hosts will begin by calling out the last place TCC car and will end with the pole sitter in GT. The last place TCC car will be instructed which side of the track to line up on- Everyone will then line up accordingly. Once the entire grid is set up, the field will be led by the pace car in the correct direction towards the GP circuit. Once the lead car drives under the staging on the start/finish straight, 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.

Please note that the only time a car will be allowed to drive the reverse direction of the track will be to set the grid in Stint 1. Should you damage your car or start to run 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 once the race is green will receive an instant full stint DQ.


Stints 2-12
For the remainder of the stints, drivers will get into single file order after the Yokohama S (CLICK HERE for an image of the corner names) before setting off on the first lap, and will be in order before Valvoline Corner. Once the leader exits Ford Corner, the leader will proceed to start racing and everyone will follow, there will be no overtaking until after Dunlop Kurve. 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 Stints 1&2 will be based on the initial qualifying order. For Stints 3-12, however, the grid order will by overall results with a 1 stint delay. This is to say that Stint 3 will be based on results through Stint 1, Stint 4 will be based on results through Stint 2, and so on and so forth. Doing this will allow the grid to somewhat follow the standings as they run and also to keep the race running on time.


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.
  
• Each individual drivers distance behind the car in P1 in ft (shown in the HUD 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).  If distances are displayed in KM, please let the host of the lobby know and it will be converted to miles after the end of the stint.

Once this data 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 or 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.

We cannot 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

• It's 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. Whomever's driver number the team uses is up to your team.


Lagouts
It is unfortunately not uncommon for races to be decided by a disconnection during a stint, resulting in a loss of distance traveled. As voted for by you, the community it was seen that the majority were in favor of a lagout rule to be implemented to reduce the amount of distance you lose should the worst happen.  


The Lag Formula
The lag formula used will be as follows.  After you lagout, at the end of the stint the lobby host will check the pause screen and take note of your lap count.  The lap you were on when you lagged out will be taken and entered into the doc along with DNF.  The formula will then take this and subtract 1 to get the total amount of laps completed (when you start the race this is on 1 but you haven't actually completed a lap yet)  This will then be multiplied by the track length to get your distance driven before lagging.  Then the distance driven will be subtracted from your team's lowest, non DNF stint mileage to calculate how far you could have driven after lagging out, and this will be multiplied by 0.75, and added to the distance driven.


So in simple terms if you lagout, you will get the distance driven, plus 75% of the potential mileage you missed out on by lagging.

By calculating this by your teams lowest stint, this is the only way we saw fit to make it fair to everyone.  If we start calculating base on another teams performance then this was seen to skew the formula in favor of some teams.  This is a fair representation of your team, and also gives incentive to push hard until the end, because if you get a bad stint later on, your DNF stint will be negatively affected by this.

Due to using the lowest stint in this formula, we will no longer have a long stint at the end of the race, this will allow for all stints to be taken into account for this rule, and also help us gather the race data from the final stint before the 24 hours is up.

Track Limits
Please refer to section 7.5.11 though 7.5.16 of the sporting regulations found here.
7.5.11 “Track limits” as defined by the MSA refer to the two white lines at either edge of the track. This may also include kerbing or the edge of the tarmac (or other racing surface) dependent on rules specified in a championship’s Rules & Regulations.

As stated in 7.5.11 copied above, this may also include kerbing. The Nordschleife Full layout does not feature astroturf but it does have some large kerbs, particularly at the exit of Brunnchen. Using kerbing on this track is at the driver's discretion, as runoff zones are few and far between. The standard is to have 2 wheels on track at all times- Failure to do so can result in penalties from the Steward's Office.

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