Game: F1 2010 - The Game by Codemasters. Click here to buy it directly from Steam
Class: Formula 1
Track: Various Tracks (Ralf Eiden Style = random selection)
Weather: Dry
Opens: 19:00 GMT
Ends: Do we?
Password & Rules: click here
F1 20xx - The Game Leagues (Archive)
- Thread starter Bram Hengeveld
- Start date
- Status
Game: F1 2010 - The Game by Codemasters. Click here to buy it directly from Steam
Class: Formula 1
Track: Various Tracks (Ralf Eiden Style = random selection)
Weather: Dry
Opens: 19:00 GMT
Ends: Do we?
Password & Rules: click here
Statement of the RDF12010C Moderators!
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.
In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement:
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement of the RDF12010C Moderators!
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.
In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement:
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement of the RDF12010C Moderators!
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.
In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement:
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Please all take screenshots of the Results and send them to:
RDF1Results@gmail.com
RDF1Results@gmail.com
Race Starts at: 19:00GMT [ 21:00 CEST ]
it is advisable Driver's are on 20 Minute's before the race so the host can start sending out invites
HOST: David Ross
Backup Host:
Tracy Booth / tbassman / Red Bull
Daniel Szabo / Taylordnl / Renault
Erik Engman / Setesh26 / Virgin
Shuan Zhao / Knockinggg / Williams
David Ross / dirtydave01 / HRT
Darko Petrovich / Dr DarcoN1 / McLaren
John Lennonds / john lennonds / Torro Rosso
Kemal Tasyaran / KeMaLoNsO / Lotus
Radek Wroblewski / AnalogusCash50 / BMW Sauber
Juul Knoops / juulzor / Mercedes
Alexander Krakeli Faina / Alexander Krakeli Faina / Ferrari
Chris Marashall / Cabon bl4ck / Force India
Please all take screenshots of the Results and send them to:
it is advisable Driver's are on 20 Minute's before the race so the host can start sending out invites
Host: Scott Webber
Scott Webber / ImpulsivePlay3r / Renault
Sergio / Toto le Moko / Torro Rosso
Jan-Olov Johansson / Marine5790 / BMW Sauber
Christian Schoeler/ ELITE CHS / Red Bull
Michael Sochan/ misoch / Mercedes
Norm Robinson /RDNorm38 / Williams
Scott Harrison/ dfpredator2009 / Virgin
Paul Mcdermot / ELITE PAUL 07 / HRT
Derek Kind / arathorniii / Mclaren
Paul Wijnen / Grimmie187 / Ferrari
Dan Holland / TGWulfyn / Lotus
Host: Scott Webber
Scott Webber / ImpulsivePlay3r / Renault
Sergio / Toto le Moko / Torro Rosso
Jan-Olov Johansson / Marine5790 / BMW Sauber
Christian Schoeler/ ELITE CHS / Red Bull
Michael Sochan/ misoch / Mercedes
Norm Robinson /RDNorm38 / Williams
Scott Harrison/ dfpredator2009 / Virgin
Paul Mcdermot / ELITE PAUL 07 / HRT
Derek Kind / arathorniii / Mclaren
Paul Wijnen / Grimmie187 / Ferrari
Dan Holland / TGWulfyn / Lotus
Please all take screenshots of the Results and send them to:
RDF1Results@gmail.com
Race Starts at: 19:00GMT [ 21:00 CEST ]
Count Down Timer
it is advisable Driver's are on 20 Minute's before the race so the host can start sending out invitesRDF1Results@gmail.com
Race Starts at: 19:00GMT [ 21:00 CEST ]
Count Down Timer
HOST: Zomacher
Backup host: italianred / joempie
League 2 racers:
Hadadi Zoltán / Zomacher / Ferrari
Marc Thibeault / Graewulff / Renault
Stefan Woudenberg / joempie / Williams
Any Bonar / Bluenoes / Lotus
Ermanno Cargofiglo / italianred / BMW Sauber
Alexandre Panin / BendingUnt1tled / Red Bull
Bartek Wojcik / gootek303 / Torro Rosso
Andrey Antipov / Antique84 / Mclaren
Andrew Moore / Hawkear / Virgin
Paul Lock / devilsixpence / Mercedes
Lee Webber / PwNdBy_WEBZ / HRT
Stefan Woudenberg / joempie / Williams
Any Bonar / Bluenoes / Lotus
Ermanno Cargofiglo / italianred / BMW Sauber
Alexandre Panin / BendingUnt1tled / Red Bull
Bartek Wojcik / gootek303 / Torro Rosso
Andrey Antipov / Antique84 / Mclaren
Andrew Moore / Hawkear / Virgin
Paul Lock / devilsixpence / Mercedes
Lee Webber / PwNdBy_WEBZ / HRT
Please all take screenshots of the Results and send them to:
RDF1Results@gmail.com
Race Starts at: 19:00 GMT [ 21:00 CEST ]
Count Down Timer
it is advisable Driver's are on 20 Minute's before the race so the host can start sending out invitesRDF1Results@gmail.com
Race Starts at: 19:00 GMT [ 21:00 CEST ]
Count Down Timer
Host: Andrew Bortz
Backup Host:
Andrew Bortz / Andrew Bortz / HRT
Steve Stoop / HerMcDerp / Williams
Freddy van Vliet / fjvvliet / Red Bull
Romain Langlois / Kriska93 / Mercedes
Tamas Foth / sziszfusz / Virgin
James Robertson / jamesscotland73 / Mclaren
Chris Butcher / SpeedDemon / Renault
Dario Fotak / VoteableFox / Torro Rosso
Igor Reshetnik/ Igor Reshetnik / Ferrari
Piet Dekimpe / pietrofantastic / BMW Sauber
Rob Hermans / JackFeelsNerves / Lotus
Statement of RDF12010C Moderators!
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.
In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement:
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wifes, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behaviour of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behaviour, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Hey Jack, just tried at home as well and I still can't access the League stuff. I put the mouse on the Xbox Leagues tab and a little box pops up with Xbox League in it but nothing to click on to take me anywhere.
Statement of RDF12010C Moderators!
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wife's, shouting children and so on…). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.
In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behavior of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behavior, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
Statement:
Dear participants, drivers, friends,
After having read all the posts of the past weeks and especially the last days, we felt that we had to release a statement regarding a lot of issues that have been posted on the forums. This Statement has been discussed and approved in a two and a half hour meeting which was held on the 22nd May 2011.
Starting Time:
After having seen that several different drivers from different groups were not able attend to some races in time, we are going to introduce some additional rules to make sure that everyone understands at what time the races are going to take place and when restarts are permitted.
According to the rules and regulations we advised you all to be prepared for the race and logged into the game about 15 minutes before the race to avoid any problems. The race should then start at 19:00 GMT (London, GBR), not before and not after. This stays the same in future, but an additional 10 minutes extra waiting time is being granted for specific reasons (Failed connections, wheel and or pedal problems, real life problems, insane wife's, shouting children and so on…
). This means that the race has to be started at 19:10 GMT (London, GBR) the latest! If during the lobby time and during the loading process someone disconnects, then “one” restart is permitted, but not more. As soon as the loading into the qualifying session has finished, no restarts are permitted any more. We kindly ask all hosts to act according to the rules and regulations, and to not make any exception.In addition we advise every driver to connect to our RDF1 (PC) channel on the Teamspeak 3 server of the RaceDepartment (ts3server://213.163.72.238 port=9987). We will be on that teamspeak channel from 18:45 GMT (London, GBR) until the races are about to start. The more drivers join this procedure, the more we can prevent situations that have come up in the past. Certainly the moderators will be online, and at least all the hosts of the races should be online too. But as stated before, if all drivers could join on that TS3 channel before the race, the situation would be perfect. As soon as the race starts, drivers can certainly close down the TS3 connection to get the peace and quiet for all the concentration they need for the qualifying and race.
Driver complaints:
In addition to this matter we now want to take the opportunity to react to the complaints from Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) and Piet Dekimpe (pietrofantastic) of Group 1, who both missed out the race because of time issues. We are aware that this certainly was disappointing for you both, but taking into account all the information and facts we have received, you were not on time due to whatever matters. We hope that with introducing the 10 minutes extra time window, which now puts the hosts more in charge of the matter, we can counteract these situations. One thing is sure though, no host deliberately left you out of the race, and we will not accept any accusations like these anymore. If the hosts would have known the exact problems of you both, perhaps being stated before the race on the forums or by private messages, they would have certainly waited or restarted the room. In addition, please take into account that not every clock shows the exact same time, that is why we introduced the rule that drivers should be in the lobby 15 minutes before the race! In the end we cannot restart the game and no penalties can be given, it was your own fault in being late and we hope that in future everybody shows up to the races in time.
On a side note we want to give you some extra information.
There was a certain driver from group 3 who on the evening of Friday the 20th May 2011, one day before the race in spain, once again experienced problems with his Thrustmaster GT Experience Racing Wheel. With the past 4 races having been very unlucky for this driver and the 5th league race just being hours away he decides to get his by now 4th version of this racing wheel, for which he has to take back the old broken wheel to get it replaced. This costs him 2 hours on Saturday the 21st May 2011 of the weekend his daughter is staying at his place. After having chased to the shops to get that stupid wheel replaced, he flies back to his home, preparing the barbecue for him, his daughter and his parents, takes care of everything very fast, to ensure his participation in the race that is bound to be held. The barbecue is finished, the daughter is ready to go to bed, the parents have been removed out of the flat as quick and polite as possible, only 15 minutes left until the race starts. Daughter has some questions, got to deal with them, she knows that she has to be quiet during the race and is anxious to follow her fathers race for the first time. Short text message to one of the ELITE members via TS3 to inform Scott Webber, the host of the drivers league, that he has a problem with the wheel and has to install the new one but that he will be there to participate. Installing that pile of plastic crap called GT Experience as quick as possible, nearly ripping it apart and breaking the screw as it already happened once before. Sweating and on the verge of collapsing he makes it into the race lobby at 18:58 GMT, pumped with adrenalin and looking forward to this race for which he had the opportunity to train for more than 30 minutes.
Confident that his unlucky streak will stop in this race and awaiting the strong competition with the other group 3 drivers, he chooses his setup and drives out of his box, only to discover that the key bindings are not working at all. Nothing is working, he is parked just on the outside of the pit out lane. He tries everything to get the wheel and pedals working again, sweating like hell through awaiting the penalty that is about to come for illegal blocking but the game does not seem to want to let him change any of the settings in the option menu. After a few minutes he disconnects in the hope to get everything sorted out after a restart of the game, hoping the other players will let him rejoin, but still being aware that this could upset the other drivers. He quickly checks everything in the time trial mode of the game, but still not every key binding is working as it should. During this whole procedure several private messages got sent to the host and to arathornIII, who sent a private message as well, to ask if the driver had any problems. First a short reply from the unlucky, then a second message stating that they should continue without him because it could take some additional minutes and he does not want to effect the game for the other drivers in a negative way. So he pulls out of the race, knowing that again he could have done well in that race, now being frustrated like hell and his daughter being sad that she doesn’t see her father race.
Did you see any of this, his situation posted in the forums? Did he accuse anyone of not letting him join again? Did he want to retire from the league, although he is one of the moderators and could not race although he was there, ready and prepared, as motivated and hungry for points as ever? Did you read or hear one remark of him?
NO
This is just an example how other drivers deal with these things.
The general behavior of some drivers on the RaceDepartment forums and especially of Tamas Foth (sziszifusz) regarding the above mentioned circumstances are not acceptable in any way anymore. Tamas, you may be a good driver, but you are a bad character if you act and react like you have done in the past on theses forums and against drivers, hosts and moderators of this league. This is now the second time you have signed out of the league because of small problems which could have been dealt with in a different, more mature, exemplary and appropriate way. You disrespect the drivers and moderators of this league and even the founders of RaceDepartment with their rules and regulations with your comments, as well as threatening to leave when the slightest problem occurs, we do not want you to come back this time and regard you as having retired completely. Now we know for whom we have some pampers left over in our cellar.
Regarding Piet Dekimpe’s (pietrofantastics) comments, we will accept his apology for getting hot headed in the situation, as we have done with Tamas Foth once before, but we want you all to know that this is the last time we will tolerate this in total. We are all old enough to behave properly and act according to the rules and according to the spirit of competition sport.
Although “under investigation”, we accept Chris Butchers apologies related to the incident in the Catalunya race in group 1 and expect him to drive more careful in the future.
If you have any problems, race incidents or anything else, please approach the stewards with a private message including the evidence if needed and available, or contact the moderators of this league via pm or even on their private ELITE Gaming TS3 server: 77.250.216.197 on the standard port. To be able to login to our TS3 server it is mandatory to write a private message to one of the moderators and ask for the password, which will then be sent to you. Without the password there is no access to that TS3 server.
Official List of race stewards:
Steve Stoop (HerMcDerp – Group 1)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Stefan Woudenberg (Joempi – Group 2)
Jan-Olov Johansson (Marine5790 - Group3)
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
David Ross (dirtydave01 – Group 4)
League Moderators:
Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r – Group 3)
Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz – Group 1)
Christian Schoeler (ELITE CHS – Group 3)
If you do not place an inquiry to any of the stewards or the moderators, we cannot and will not be able to take any action. Providing evidence is a key to making a good inquiry possible, because of this we ask all of you that have not yet started recording their races through MSI Afterburner or Fraps, please start doing so, the more evidence we get, the more we can react according to the rules and regulations. If you have any questions related to the recording and editing of the races feel free to contact Scott Webber on this subject. He well then explain everything to you. Up until now we have had not one “official” inquiry due to the fact that nobody entered an “official” request according to the rules and regulations.
Although there has not been an official inquiry request we are aware of several drivers complaints during the last few races against the driver Alexandre Panin (BendingUnt1tled – Group 2) from the Red Bull Racing Team. Although there is no real evidence, one could still see in some of the last videos, that you have an aggressive driving stile and sometimes overestimate the chance of overtaking other drivers without contact. Because there were so many different drivers stating the same issues, we put you “under investigation” for the future races and appeal to your more anticipatory, clean and fair racing style that somewhere rests in you. Because of this and for the future a new rule has been implemented into the rules and regulations:
If a driver has 3 complaints put up against him during a race, or over a period of several races, the Stewards will follow the protocol as seen below.
“The player who has had 3 Complaints against them will be sent a private message by one of the stewards to tone down his driving style and be more considerate for the rest of the drivers on the track. If the driver in question fails to do so in the next race they will be kindly asked to miss out on the next race on the calendar, this is to ensure a light punishment and to ensure the fun & fair gameplay is still within the league which is our main goal.”
Because of the above mentioned problems with Alexandre Panin another driver has to our knowledge left the league – Marc Thibeault (Graewulff – Group 2).
We want to give you the last opportunity to rejoin the league because you are a good and fair driver which we all respect and we don’t want to loose you only because of some small issues with other drivers or the reason that you feel you have no chance of winning a podium in your group. Please contact the moderators with a final statement on that matter as soon as possible. We do need to get an exact overview on how many drivers and who is still in the league. We really cannot really believe that we have to ask this in this statement, but it is most important for future changes to come to the league very soon. We will go into detail later in this statement.
Bad behavior, ranting and raving at other drivers and disrespecting the work of the hosts, stewards, moderators and admins of RaceDepartment in the way it has been the case in the past, will get punished with an instant sign-out of the league with a private message from the moderators and a short statement on the forums. Have you ever thought about how all this effects all the people that invest all their precious private time into this project? Do you think their motivation and fun factor is growing through this behaviour? Do you think it is easy to organize such a league with drivers leaving since the beginning of the league because of different issues and new drivers being integrated so that all of you still have your motivation and fun of the game and the league? Do you think new drivers will be interested in a league where so much whining, ranting and raving is going on? We appeal to your common sense, your character, your spirit of sport, your fairness and your tolerance in the way of sport to be a good example and not a bad one. The main thing is that we stick together, enjoy the races and everything that comes with it, the excitement and sometimes the frustration. That is all part of the only important thing about it - being a part of it, taking part in it!
We all know that the game has so many issues which has made this whole league very difficult to run, we know about the connection issues, about the totally insane penalty system inside the game and all the other bugs that we have to live with every day and we are trying our best to make this league a good and exciting experience to us all. Is it so insane to expect drivers to be punctual? What would happen if some real life driver came too late to his race? He would be able to be a spectator.
Now we want to deal with a problem that has been part of the league since the beginning and probably will never change. We have read about a lot of requests for new drivers to fill up free spaces in certain groups, especially in group 4.
Taking into account the 5 race rule due to real life issues we were not able to sign-out drivers for not participating<br>. This could only be done if a driver clearly stated his retirement from the league. With the 6th race now taking place in Monte Carlo next weekend, which we are all looking forward to, we can now retire the drivers that have not taken part in the first 6 races, which is against another new rule implemented. As soon as a driver misses 6 races, this driver is going to be disqualified for the rest of the season. With a league like this the goal must be to have good and fair drivers that want to compete against each other and take it serious. We cannot and will not except drivers that sign-up but never show up and with that attitude take away the places of other drivers more interested in competing with us all. We are looking into these things very closely, but only after the 6th race it is possible to make the following changes.
From midnight on there will be a new sign-up thread created in the forum where new, good, clean, fair and competitive drivers may take their chance to sign-up for the rest of the season. The sign-ups will be open until Friday, 27th May 2010 - 00:00 GMT (London, GBR).
For the drivers that sign up it is mandatory to compete in the two time trial session which will be held on the tracks of Silverstone (Overcast) and Marina Bay (Heavy Rain). Several time trial sessions will be hosted by Scott Webber (Impulsiveplay3r) and Andrew Bortz (Andrew Bortz), just contact them via private message or look in the sign-up thread for the times announced. The hosts of the time trial sessions will provide the necessary photo evidence of the times, but we still ask all the drivers to take their own screenshots as well, but wait to the end of the session until the time counts from 10 seconds down.
Depending on how many drivers sign up and how their times compare after having been added together, we are going to merge the groups together in the best way there is. The new groups will then be presented some time after the Monte Carlo race and will be active for the forthcoming race in Montreal (CAN) on the 11th June 2011. Additional information will be released as soon as available.
Please be aware that this is the last new sign-up and last merging of groups because it produces so many problems and so much work that we cannot cover it in our spare time.
We hope that this league can now continue with its core elements and that the changes that have been made will find acceptance and that everybody will act and react according to these new rules and regulations. Certainly we are open to any form of motivation, constructive criticism, as long as it is done in respect, constructive discussion, but we ask you to keep this in the threads still open for Catalunya and not to export this discussion into the very soon newly created Monte Carlo threads.
We wish all drivers good luck for the next challenging race at Monte Carlo, hope to see clean and fair, but still competitive driving throughout all groups in qualifying and race and hope we have many interesting and fun races in the future.
RDF12010C Moderators
Scott Webber
Andrew Bortz
Christian Schoeler
ok i think it may have something to do with your system but i will fix it in a min
Please do let me know how it is
Will take a while...as I don't have it yet, but plan to get it soon so I can try it out next week thursday. You may have tried it out yourself already before then
Jamie-Lee Mayers
PS4 F1 Lead Commentator
DAMMIT Tom!!, i was rather hoping you wouldnt be back soo quickly lool oh well there goes my saturday front row streak at least i can still pass Darren for 3rd in the championship
at least i can still pass Darren for 3rd in the championship 
Barcalona mate, the time i posted valataded all the others i kept spinning off at turns 1,4,5 and 11
Okay, I have read the statement and have a question about the 'missing 6 races' rule. Does this mean that if you miss 6 races during the course of this championship, that you will be disqualified, or do you have to miss out on 6 consecutive races to be disqualified? For example, Steve has missed the first 3 races I believe...which means he would already be halfway to being disqualified... I sure hope you won't miss many more races Steve!
Admins, thanks for the work you're doing trying to keep the league organized and running smoothly. I'm sure it's not easy!
Glad you're clarifying the rules heading into the next race, and I look forward to seeing if we can get together 4 leagues of racers who actually show up regularly.
Glad you're clarifying the rules heading into the next race, and I look forward to seeing if we can get together 4 leagues of racers who actually show up regularly.
The race will start at 20:00 GTM or 20:00 London time? Because you confuse this two things.
London time = GTM in winter
London time = GTM +1 in summer
so
20:00 London time = 20:00 GTM in winter
20:00 London time = 19:00 GTM in summer
I think you should use only London UK time.
London time = GTM in winter
London time = GTM +1 in summer
so
20:00 London time = 20:00 GTM in winter
20:00 London time = 19:00 GTM in summer
I think you should use only London UK time.
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