Season 3 Qualifying

Season 3 will introduce pre-qualifying to start the season. Drivers will get two 5 lap attempts at Road America to make the limited 32 man field in either class. There will be 16 GS cars and 16 ST cars allowed in season 3.

Official qualifying will be open with any IFCA Race Official beginning Saturday April 13th and ending Saturday May 4th midnite CST.

After the opening round/first race at Road America, qualifying for the remaining 3 races will be done just prior to the race itself. Pre-qualifying only applies to the first race of the season. There will be no late entries. If you didn't qualify to get into the season, you won't be able to come in later in the season.

The field is limited to 32 cars. Only the top 32 qualifiers will make the race, and season. The pressure will be enormous as more and more drivers qualify and begin to push their rivals down the grid and out of the race. A reserve list will be created for those who qualified outside of the top 32. In the event that a top 32 driver or team can not compete, a reserve driver will be bumped up.

Here are some stats for the curious. All the GS cars were tested to do at least a 1:33.1 at Laguna. The average time produced in the race was a 1:33.4.

If you did not do a low 1:33, you were not getting the most you could have out of your car. With additional tuning and practice nearly all the cars could dip into the 32s.

The Porsche Cayman was particularly well suited for Laguna Seca setting the fastest lap in the race by Brizzo at an astounding 1:31.909, though it lacks the top speed of some of the other cars.

With further tuning and concentrated practice of our own, we were able to push it into the 32.6s. It was the car that team AAR was going to go with until we saw the ST class could use more drivers, so we switched to the Bora, a car considered to be uncompetitive in season 1. The Bora was unchanged for season 2, and because the faster cars from season 1 were slowed down, the Bora became more competitive in the right hands.

The dominant GS car in season 1 was the Mustang GT (and not the Challenger as many had feared) which had good speed, good handling, breaking, and acceleration. The other cars were as fast, but lacked the handling of the Mustang. As a result, we tuned the Mustang down in terms of speed, but actually improved the handling. The Porsches were the opposite and under performing in season 1. We gave them a small dose of extra handling and power in some cases. The Camaro was slowed slightly in exchange for better handling, as was the Challenger, Boss 302, and Shelby GT500. The 2 AWD cars were left exactly the same, because all the other cars were brought closer to their performance level.

The race result was favorable. The Cayman performed as expected winning in both lobbies. The Aston was more the surprise taking a 2nd place. It was uncompetitive in season 1, and relies on huge top speed to get the job done. The Camaro netted a 2nd and a 3rd place even though it lost a lot of it's top end speed from season 1. The lone WRX of Bear Gillz did very well with a best lap of 1:32.918 leading for 5 laps at the start, and finishing 2nd in points.

What all of this really means is that the cars are so close that the track becomes the determining factor as to which car will have the edge. We will make a few adjustments in light of the longer track selections for season 3.

AAR GTDon wrote:

The field is limited to 32 cars. Only the top 32 qualifiers will make the race, and season. The pressure will be enormous as more and more drivers qualify and begin to push their rivals down the grid and out of the race. A reserve list will be created for those who qualified outside of the top 32. In the event that a top 32 driver or team can not compete, a reserve driver will be bumped up.

Interesting idea! I'd can't wait to see how close those times will be.

so with qualifying being 3 weeks, do we get more then one chance? or is it just one time?

Good question. You'll get 2 shots at it.

Challenge accepted

we can qualify anytime between the 13th and the 4th? Also how are we going to qualify, as in how are you going to know what times we get?

LMR Scantraxx wrote:we can qualify anytime between the 13th and the 4th? Also how are we going to qualify, as in how are you going to know what times we get?

IFCA Officials will be able to qualify you. myself, abe, kickrocks, vator, nelly, cobrajet, rodmasterr, corwinKB, and Oneshot, can all help you out. They will set the room for 5 laps, no collisions, best lap. In effect you'll have 4 flying laps. (no backing up)

Any IFCA official can conduct qualifying. Officials have yellow names on this site. We will report results to Don for recording. Don may have to crack the whip on us to get us focused on his concerns... My procedure is to announce to my friend list that I will be running a room immediately, and will keep it open until just prior to receiving divorce papers from the wife.
Work and instruction obligations haven't given me the time to participate as much as I would like lately.

AAR GTDon wrote:

LMR Scantraxx wrote:we can qualify anytime between the 13th and the 4th? Also how are we going to qualify, as in how are you going to know what times we get?

IFCA Officials will be able to qualify you. myself, abe, kickrocks, vator, nelly, cobrajet, rodmasterr, corwinKB, and Oneshot, can all help you out. They will set the room for 5 laps, no collisions, best lap. In effect you'll have 4 flying laps. (no backing up)

Serious

Finally, I am done with adjusting the builds for season 3. I should have the new builds posted in the next 12 hours, for your driving pleasure.

All the cars were re-tested at the first round track of season 3, Road America. Every GS class car was tested to run at least a 2:18.000. If you aren't running a very low 2:18, then you should check your tune, or practice more, because it ain't the car. Same goes for the ST class cars, they will all run at least a 2:24.200, if you aren't, it's not the car, it's you.

The truth is, each and every one of these cars can go faster than the tested times, but you'll have to have it dialed in, and be a solid 2250 rated driver or better to do so.

edit: we were unable to add the Aston Martin Vantage as hoped, it proved to be just too fast for the GS class, again. We did add the one car that was missing in the ST class, the 2012 Scion tC

AAR GTDon wrote:it ain't the car.

LOL!

I will be testing season 3 cars at R America for roughly next 2 hours if anyone wants to qualify, hit me up on XBL

Sounds interesting. But since I am on the list of officials I am assuming that I cannot qualify myself. Meaning I can't host a lobby, set the room up for 5 laps at Road American knock them down and then send you a pic. Someone would have to be there as a witness to make sure the car builds, settings are correct right?

corwinKB wrote:Sounds interesting. But since I am on the list of officials I am assuming that I cannot qualify myself. Meaning I can't host a lobby, set the room up for 5 laps at Road American knock them down and then send you a pic. Someone would have to be there as a witness to make sure the car builds, settings are correct right?

Yeah, just grab anyone we know as a witness.

updated

updated

DC67
Ford Focus 13
ST
2.28.302

As Roscoe already set a qualifying time for our team, do I still need to do a qualifying run?

How many GS cars will show tonight?

If I can change to GS, how it proceeds?

I´m runnin 2:18,8 on a Audi S4

There is no race tonight, it is next Monday.

AAR GTDon wrote:There is no race tonight, it is next Monday.

Ohhhh, i confused dates. Thx!

Holy doodoo... I lala ran folks over to get home kinda on time... lololol

Online for a while if ppl want to qualify tonight