IMPORTANT INFO ON SEBRING

Hey everyone and welcome to the beginning of the biggest Endurance race TORA has ever held. This is the third Sebring endurance, and with their being 58 so far confirmed drivers and 19 race outfits competing to take the Central Florida circuit things won't be easy. The FIA World Endurance Championship has just begun, with Audi taking a 1-2 to take the P1 honours, with also strong showings from Rebellion, Muscle Milk and JRM. GT had the closest of finishes with the BMW just managing to take the win in the late hours.

But how will round one of the TORA Endurance Championship compare?

Qualifying begins in earnest tonight with 4 drivers confirmed to take their speedmachines round the 3.7 mile track in the hope of a decent lap time that'll put them as high up the grid as possible. 3 of the British Gamers GT team and JustOZ71 representing the Mushroom Kingdom Racers LMPC team.

Qualifying will then continue throughout the week as more drivers take to the track for a 45min sessions. The quickest time for each team will then be the qualifying time to set the grid, for this coming weekends TORA Twelve Hours of Sebring 2012.

PS - NOTICE TO TEAMS
As the week progresses, the teams will have to enter their cars for qualifying for those who have not done so. There may be a penalty for those not qualifying, but nothing is yet confirmed. They will also have to state which drivers will be taking to the track for which session as failure to do this may result in drivers not being invited for racing due to not know who it is!

Ok, here's how the day goes for all in todays epic race. (As taken by the Rules and Regs thread.

The race will start at 2pm GMT on Saturday the 24th and end at 2am Sunday the 25th.

The race is split into 2 lobbies. To find out which lobby your in, and who the host is, click here for live timing

Please be online and showing online at least until your in the lobby, 15 minutes before the session begins. So if your racing at 2pm, be online at 1.45pm. To prevent delays in the overall race, if you are not online by the time your session is due to start, playing another game, or have attempted to contact your host via Xbox Live of any problems, then you will not make the stint, as the sessions will begin at the time slots allotted. If there is a delay in the stints, the subsequent lobbies may have to be delayed to accommodate those double stinting.

Stint 1 will start as a 2 by 2, side by side rolling start. Stints 2 - 6 will be a single file rolling start. Driver changes take place when the stint is over at the 2 Hour mark, where we will then go back into the lobby and the drivers and lobby hosts will change over. At this point the host will enter the distances covered by the drivers into the database which will be combined for the final results at the end of the race. The race will be scored on "distance driven" where bigger is better. To accomodate for the stint changes a 10 minute turnaround will be applied for 'a pit stop with driver change simulation' so in reality the stints only last 1 Hour 50 Minutes.

Effectively, everyone stops exactly where they are at the 1 hour 50 minute mark, and the distance is taken from where you stop.

Other points:
- There are no safety cars
- You must be able to communicate with your lobby during race conditions due to lapping and pitting

- Only banned driver aids are ABS and STM. All others are allowed.


For updates on the race progress, or any announcements from race control like delayed lobbys, please keep an eye on the TORA twitter feed, and also a designated "Race Control" thread will be active.

Happy racing guys, see you in 3 hours!