RaceDepartment Historic Club Series Season 9 is Open – We’ve had a Boob Job and Everything.
Welcome to Season 9 of the RaceDepartment Historic Club Series (RDHCS), covering the Autumn / Winter session of 2012. As you can see, we’ve changed our name slightly to allow the rF2 Historic Formula Cars to use the “Grand Prix” tag. After the extremely close and competitive TC-65 Season, it’s time for something with a little bit more of a kick, ie the GTC-76 Class. As I’ve been saying for some time now, the GTL truism is that the cars are better matched the lower the class you run. TC-65 class never lets us down in terms of racing, and last seasons cars were a superb spread of vehicle types. This season however, Knut & I (along with some of you who provided some invaluable data – ruling things out is just as big a deal as ruling them in) have done a lot of testing across a very broad group of cars, and we gravitated to a group that we ran 3 or so seasons ago, and that became the core of this seasons vehicles.
I sincerely believe that the testing event we held recently is a genuine indicator of the closeness we will experience throughout the season. The individual cars showed their (relative) strengths and weaknesses over the 2 test events, but the overall pace was pretty well matched across all the cars. The higher up the Classes you go, the further the cars diverge in their philosophies, so we do have some extremes in the field, but we also have a good variation of track to provide challenges right through the grid.
The car types mean that we cannot use quite as many short course tracks as last season – I think that the Corvette around Gellerasen may well be what the very definition of Hell feels like. We still have a spread of track type, but most have a decent overall length, with not that many short enough to cause a high lapcount.
The season opener takes us to Europe, and a very familiar venue, the Nuerburgring GP track in Germany.
Circuit Notes
Located in the central West of Germany around the village of Nuerburg in the Eiffel mountains, situated roughly between Cologne & Frankfurt, we are driving the modern GP-Strecke. While it has entrances from, and exits onto, the fabled Nordschleife, the modern GP-Strecke was built in the mid-1980’s, and I won’t waste your valuable time talking about a hugely historic track that we will not be using for this race. While considered a pale imitation of it’s historic sibling, it really is a very important track as it innovated and introduced many safety features that are now standard on lots of more modern tracks.
The Nuerburgring GP-Strecke has received some less than enthusiastic reviews in it’s Formula 1 history, but the Historic warriors of the RDHCS, and their less than cutting edge suspensions and grip have always been able to have a right old ding-dong around it’s curves and gradients.
GP-Strecke starts on a long straight, canted slightly downhill, with enough time for cars to get nearly up to top speed. As we pass under the BMW banner across the S/F line, we still have a short piece of straight before the Michelin bridge, where we enter the braking zone for T1R, and what a start to the season it is. The braking zone is crested, slightly turned and so presents a challenge itself before you actually get into the process of navigating T1R itself.
T1R – After getting the car slowed and ready to turn, it’s an absolute monster of a corner to start the League season on. Starting with that non-direct, crested, downhill braking zone, the very tight apex falls away even more down and right, and cold tyres will make getting the nose around here extremely tricky. After getting the car settled on the wide, wide track, after T1R, you have a quick stab of acceleration before standing on the brakes for T2L – Mercedes I.
Mercedes I is a fairly standard Left hand 90, with a fairly wide diameter. The temptation is to be too greedy on the exit and end up running too wide over the rumble strips. Doing so will make life immediately tricky for you, as you need to be settled and in control for T3L – Mercedes II. This is a much tighter corner than Mercedes I, and seems to go on for a very long time. Again here though, patience is an absolute must, as going too quick will again upset your approach to the next, rapidly approaching turn. If you need to compromise any turn on the GP-Strecke it’s T3L, as the following corner has a fast exit that needs to be set up by a nice entrance.
T4R – Mercedes III is entered on the best possible line you can get out of Mercedes II, and opens onto one of the faster sections of the track. Again too much accelerator too soon will cause you to drift wide, across rumble strips and unsettling kerbs, but you do have to attack this corner otherwise you will could well be swamped on the straight that follows.
T5L – Drop a gear and get the nose in early across this turn so as to keep some pace up, onto the short downhill straight and then another stab of brakes for T6R – Ford-Kurve. Ford is off-camber, with a tempting downhill exit that begs to be taken quick. Put your foot down too soon, and you will very likely lose the rear, as it is very slippery in there.
Getting on the gas on the downhill straight, using the slip road on the left as an additional braking marker get hard, hard on the anchors for T7R – Dunlop-Kehre. This medium radiused 180 degree hairpin is again all about the patience to get on the loud pedal, as going too soon and spinning here is death to a lap. Get in tight on the entry, get as straight as you can and then squeeze the power on up the hill. Depending on the car, you will need either a feather, a dab of brake or even to drop a cog through T8L & T9R – Michael-Schumacher-S. The outer exit kerbs of T8L will throw the rear round under acceleration, whereas the humped inner kerbs will upset the straighter line. Make T9R your priority, as it opens onto a shortish up hill straight.
Give it some hard acceleration up the hill, and then a firm dab of brake, normally dropping 1 or 2 gears to try and drift across the apex of T10L – RTL-Kurve. Again this is a medium speed corner that you can attack, but not at the cost of getting off line for the following corner T11L – Warsteiner-Kurve. Get the nose in as early as you can, squeeze the accelerator on as you drift onto the downhill exit and onto the fastest run of the track. Full acceleration, just enough steering input to navigate T12R – ADVAN-Bogen, bottoming out at full speed and then climbing up the hill, again using slips roads as additional brake markers before you get hard on the brakes, as late as you dare, for T13L & T14R – NGK-Schikane. There are lots of kerbs, panels, grascrete, run-offs etc. in this area, so you need to be aware that your car can be easily unsettled here.
Accelerate out of NGK, and then gently brake, get the nose across to the right for the last corner of the lap T15R- Coca-Cola-Kurve. Accelerate hard out of Coca-Cola, control the inevitable drift wide, and stay hard on the gas across the grid to styart another lap of the Nuerburgring GP-Strecke.
The Race Director has some notes for drivers. Please see the track map above for location of Race Direction note:-
All Corners Without Exception – The kerbs are not deemed as track, therefore 2 wheels must be within the white lines, on the tarmac, At All Times. Again, there are NO exceptions to this rule at any point on the circuit. Any exception to this rule is deemed illegal, any advantage gained by this method must be ceded immediately. Report people deliberately and excessively cutting. The worst offenders from previous seasons have not signed up, so I hope that this will be a non-issue this season.
Racing Room must be given to all drivers – and this works both ways. Divebombing into and across a corner denies people the chance to make the corner correctly just as much as someone obliviously (or deliberately) cutting the nose off of another driver who has achieved partial overlap fairly.
T1R – Especially on Lap 1. Be aware of people as you turn in here, it has the possibility to cause huge problems if drivers don’t respect each other. Be aware that any incidents caused by reckless or over aggressive driving in Turn 1 during the first lap will be dealt with severely, probably with a “no quali” penalty for Round 2.
T4R – Mercedes III. Keep 2 wheels on the main circuit – the green grascrete and kerbs cannot be used as racing surface if you do not have 2 wheels inside the white line on the main track.
T7R – Dunlop-Kehre. This turn is approached under heavy braking after the high speed straight, so you will need to be aware of the differences in braking distances and relative manoueverability of the cars around you as you go into T7R. Going in too hot will drop you into the waiting sand trap, getting on the gas too early will spin you onto the grass. No weaving about to defend lines here. Give people room to race. Care must be taken when rejoining the track out of here.
T13L & T14R – NGK-Schikane. 2 wheels must be within the white lines and on track here. We all know the difference between missing it, and deliberately going straight across the kerbs here. Report people who are treating it as a straight line. Additionally, no weaving or late line changes – give people the room to race.
All points on the track – General Items
Drivers may put on their lights (and keep them on) during a timed qualification lap, so other drivers know to get out of the way when safe to do so.
No lights are to be flashed at any stage, under any circumstances, during the Race Session.
No Chat during the Quali or Race except by Race Control for information.
The Track must be re-entered safely so as not to ruin other peoples races.
Car damage must be assessed realistically to know if it is possible to make the pits or not.
Incidents, Investigations and Penalties
As it’s Round 1 of a new season, everyone comes into it with a completely clean slate.
As last season, 2 consecutive no-shows will mean removal from the League.
Please remember, the League staff will only review incidents if they are reported to them.
No report = no review.
Please try and remember the incident reporting guidelines: review, cool off, review again. Only after following the above process, and if you are convinced you still need to report it, should you let the League staff know. Please give as much information as possible during the report (time of incident, drivers involved etc.) Accident reports made within 24 hours of race completion will be ignored.
Any accusations or complaints aired in the Chat during or after a race will mean a penalty levied on the person complaining or making the accusations, even if a subsequent official complaint gets found in their favour. I simply will NOT tolerate any post race finger pointing.
Liveries
You have chosen your car and livery already, and you must only drive your chosen car at any time during an RDHCS event. Every driver has a unique livery in this season of RDHCS.
Reporting Attendance
As GPCOS seems to be down, I will be sending a PM with the round password to all Signed-Up drivers. I will also be running an “Attendance” post. If you are definitely driving, you need to “like” the post. If you are NOT driving (or if you are unsure of attendance) you must post a reply to say so. If there is no response, or if a response is posted after 2 hours before race start time on race day, it will be treated as a No-Show. As before – 2 consecutive No-Shows will mean removal from the league.
Scoring System
Points are scored down to P20 (75% distance completion required) so people can fight for some points no matter where they are on the track, and hopefully have a season long battle with people around them in the League.
The Distribution is as follows for 100km events :
P1 - 25 pts
P2 - 22
P3 - 20
P4 - 18
P5 - 16
P6 - 15
P7 - 14
P8 - 13
P9 - 12
P10 - 11
P11 - 10
P12 - 9
P13 - 8
P14 - 7
P15 - 6
P16 - 5
P17 - 4
P18 - 3
P19 - 2
P20 - 1
1 point for fastest race lap
1 point for qualifying on Pole
Welcome to Season 9 of the RaceDepartment Historic Club Series (RDHCS), covering the Autumn / Winter session of 2012. As you can see, we’ve changed our name slightly to allow the rF2 Historic Formula Cars to use the “Grand Prix” tag. After the extremely close and competitive TC-65 Season, it’s time for something with a little bit more of a kick, ie the GTC-76 Class. As I’ve been saying for some time now, the GTL truism is that the cars are better matched the lower the class you run. TC-65 class never lets us down in terms of racing, and last seasons cars were a superb spread of vehicle types. This season however, Knut & I (along with some of you who provided some invaluable data – ruling things out is just as big a deal as ruling them in) have done a lot of testing across a very broad group of cars, and we gravitated to a group that we ran 3 or so seasons ago, and that became the core of this seasons vehicles.
I sincerely believe that the testing event we held recently is a genuine indicator of the closeness we will experience throughout the season. The individual cars showed their (relative) strengths and weaknesses over the 2 test events, but the overall pace was pretty well matched across all the cars. The higher up the Classes you go, the further the cars diverge in their philosophies, so we do have some extremes in the field, but we also have a good variation of track to provide challenges right through the grid.
The car types mean that we cannot use quite as many short course tracks as last season – I think that the Corvette around Gellerasen may well be what the very definition of Hell feels like. We still have a spread of track type, but most have a decent overall length, with not that many short enough to cause a high lapcount.
The season opener takes us to Europe, and a very familiar venue, the Nuerburgring GP track in Germany.
Circuit Notes
Located in the central West of Germany around the village of Nuerburg in the Eiffel mountains, situated roughly between Cologne & Frankfurt, we are driving the modern GP-Strecke. While it has entrances from, and exits onto, the fabled Nordschleife, the modern GP-Strecke was built in the mid-1980’s, and I won’t waste your valuable time talking about a hugely historic track that we will not be using for this race. While considered a pale imitation of it’s historic sibling, it really is a very important track as it innovated and introduced many safety features that are now standard on lots of more modern tracks.
The Nuerburgring GP-Strecke has received some less than enthusiastic reviews in it’s Formula 1 history, but the Historic warriors of the RDHCS, and their less than cutting edge suspensions and grip have always been able to have a right old ding-dong around it’s curves and gradients.
GP-Strecke starts on a long straight, canted slightly downhill, with enough time for cars to get nearly up to top speed. As we pass under the BMW banner across the S/F line, we still have a short piece of straight before the Michelin bridge, where we enter the braking zone for T1R, and what a start to the season it is. The braking zone is crested, slightly turned and so presents a challenge itself before you actually get into the process of navigating T1R itself.
T1R – After getting the car slowed and ready to turn, it’s an absolute monster of a corner to start the League season on. Starting with that non-direct, crested, downhill braking zone, the very tight apex falls away even more down and right, and cold tyres will make getting the nose around here extremely tricky. After getting the car settled on the wide, wide track, after T1R, you have a quick stab of acceleration before standing on the brakes for T2L – Mercedes I.
Mercedes I is a fairly standard Left hand 90, with a fairly wide diameter. The temptation is to be too greedy on the exit and end up running too wide over the rumble strips. Doing so will make life immediately tricky for you, as you need to be settled and in control for T3L – Mercedes II. This is a much tighter corner than Mercedes I, and seems to go on for a very long time. Again here though, patience is an absolute must, as going too quick will again upset your approach to the next, rapidly approaching turn. If you need to compromise any turn on the GP-Strecke it’s T3L, as the following corner has a fast exit that needs to be set up by a nice entrance.
T4R – Mercedes III is entered on the best possible line you can get out of Mercedes II, and opens onto one of the faster sections of the track. Again too much accelerator too soon will cause you to drift wide, across rumble strips and unsettling kerbs, but you do have to attack this corner otherwise you will could well be swamped on the straight that follows.
T5L – Drop a gear and get the nose in early across this turn so as to keep some pace up, onto the short downhill straight and then another stab of brakes for T6R – Ford-Kurve. Ford is off-camber, with a tempting downhill exit that begs to be taken quick. Put your foot down too soon, and you will very likely lose the rear, as it is very slippery in there.
Getting on the gas on the downhill straight, using the slip road on the left as an additional braking marker get hard, hard on the anchors for T7R – Dunlop-Kehre. This medium radiused 180 degree hairpin is again all about the patience to get on the loud pedal, as going too soon and spinning here is death to a lap. Get in tight on the entry, get as straight as you can and then squeeze the power on up the hill. Depending on the car, you will need either a feather, a dab of brake or even to drop a cog through T8L & T9R – Michael-Schumacher-S. The outer exit kerbs of T8L will throw the rear round under acceleration, whereas the humped inner kerbs will upset the straighter line. Make T9R your priority, as it opens onto a shortish up hill straight.
Give it some hard acceleration up the hill, and then a firm dab of brake, normally dropping 1 or 2 gears to try and drift across the apex of T10L – RTL-Kurve. Again this is a medium speed corner that you can attack, but not at the cost of getting off line for the following corner T11L – Warsteiner-Kurve. Get the nose in as early as you can, squeeze the accelerator on as you drift onto the downhill exit and onto the fastest run of the track. Full acceleration, just enough steering input to navigate T12R – ADVAN-Bogen, bottoming out at full speed and then climbing up the hill, again using slips roads as additional brake markers before you get hard on the brakes, as late as you dare, for T13L & T14R – NGK-Schikane. There are lots of kerbs, panels, grascrete, run-offs etc. in this area, so you need to be aware that your car can be easily unsettled here.
Accelerate out of NGK, and then gently brake, get the nose across to the right for the last corner of the lap T15R- Coca-Cola-Kurve. Accelerate hard out of Coca-Cola, control the inevitable drift wide, and stay hard on the gas across the grid to styart another lap of the Nuerburgring GP-Strecke.
The Race Director has some notes for drivers. Please see the track map above for location of Race Direction note:-
All Corners Without Exception – The kerbs are not deemed as track, therefore 2 wheels must be within the white lines, on the tarmac, At All Times. Again, there are NO exceptions to this rule at any point on the circuit. Any exception to this rule is deemed illegal, any advantage gained by this method must be ceded immediately. Report people deliberately and excessively cutting. The worst offenders from previous seasons have not signed up, so I hope that this will be a non-issue this season.
Racing Room must be given to all drivers – and this works both ways. Divebombing into and across a corner denies people the chance to make the corner correctly just as much as someone obliviously (or deliberately) cutting the nose off of another driver who has achieved partial overlap fairly.
T1R – Especially on Lap 1. Be aware of people as you turn in here, it has the possibility to cause huge problems if drivers don’t respect each other. Be aware that any incidents caused by reckless or over aggressive driving in Turn 1 during the first lap will be dealt with severely, probably with a “no quali” penalty for Round 2.
T4R – Mercedes III. Keep 2 wheels on the main circuit – the green grascrete and kerbs cannot be used as racing surface if you do not have 2 wheels inside the white line on the main track.
T7R – Dunlop-Kehre. This turn is approached under heavy braking after the high speed straight, so you will need to be aware of the differences in braking distances and relative manoueverability of the cars around you as you go into T7R. Going in too hot will drop you into the waiting sand trap, getting on the gas too early will spin you onto the grass. No weaving about to defend lines here. Give people room to race. Care must be taken when rejoining the track out of here.
T13L & T14R – NGK-Schikane. 2 wheels must be within the white lines and on track here. We all know the difference between missing it, and deliberately going straight across the kerbs here. Report people who are treating it as a straight line. Additionally, no weaving or late line changes – give people the room to race.
All points on the track – General Items
Drivers may put on their lights (and keep them on) during a timed qualification lap, so other drivers know to get out of the way when safe to do so.
No lights are to be flashed at any stage, under any circumstances, during the Race Session.
No Chat during the Quali or Race except by Race Control for information.
The Track must be re-entered safely so as not to ruin other peoples races.
Car damage must be assessed realistically to know if it is possible to make the pits or not.
Incidents, Investigations and Penalties
As it’s Round 1 of a new season, everyone comes into it with a completely clean slate.
As last season, 2 consecutive no-shows will mean removal from the League.
Please remember, the League staff will only review incidents if they are reported to them.
No report = no review.
Please try and remember the incident reporting guidelines: review, cool off, review again. Only after following the above process, and if you are convinced you still need to report it, should you let the League staff know. Please give as much information as possible during the report (time of incident, drivers involved etc.) Accident reports made within 24 hours of race completion will be ignored.
Any accusations or complaints aired in the Chat during or after a race will mean a penalty levied on the person complaining or making the accusations, even if a subsequent official complaint gets found in their favour. I simply will NOT tolerate any post race finger pointing.
Liveries
You have chosen your car and livery already, and you must only drive your chosen car at any time during an RDHCS event. Every driver has a unique livery in this season of RDHCS.
Reporting Attendance
As GPCOS seems to be down, I will be sending a PM with the round password to all Signed-Up drivers. I will also be running an “Attendance” post. If you are definitely driving, you need to “like” the post. If you are NOT driving (or if you are unsure of attendance) you must post a reply to say so. If there is no response, or if a response is posted after 2 hours before race start time on race day, it will be treated as a No-Show. As before – 2 consecutive No-Shows will mean removal from the league.
Scoring System
Points are scored down to P20 (75% distance completion required) so people can fight for some points no matter where they are on the track, and hopefully have a season long battle with people around them in the League.
The Distribution is as follows for 100km events :
P1 - 25 pts
P2 - 22
P3 - 20
P4 - 18
P5 - 16
P6 - 15
P7 - 14
P8 - 13
P9 - 12
P10 - 11
P11 - 10
P12 - 9
P13 - 8
P14 - 7
P15 - 6
P16 - 5
P17 - 4
P18 - 3
P19 - 2
P20 - 1
1 point for fastest race lap
1 point for qualifying on Pole
