During a race if you call for a tow while in your pit lane and near to your stall (such as if you get out of your car without quite having parked correctly in your pit stall), we now allow the pit crew to "push your car" into the pit stall if you're not too far away, more quickly than a regular tow. It will still appear to be a tow, you don't actually see the pitcrew doing anything, but the tow timing is much quicker.
The pitcrew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged. Replacing a part will generally take a fairly long amount of time (particularly if multiple parts are badly damaged), so in short races you may not be able to get your car fixed before the race is over. For instance, swapping in a fresh engine can take just over 30 minutes, and replacing the suspension on a corner of the car will take just over 8 minutes.
Cars listed in notes: BMW Z4 GT3, Chevrolet Covette C6.R GT1, Ford GT, Ford GT GT3, HPD ARX-01c, McLaren MP4-12C GT3, Riley MkXX Daytona Prototype, Ruf RT 12R C-Spec, Ruf RT 12R Track.
Extract from iRacing's 2014 Season 4 Release notes:
TEAM DRIVERS
We now have the ability to have multi-driver teams in iRacing!
Some official iRacing series and special events (such as the World Tour) will be set up for Team Driving, and will be so designated. These sessions will have a defined minimum number of drivers that each team may field, and may also specify a maximum number of drivers on a team.
Hosted Team Driving sessions can be created by enabling the "Team Driving" selection when setting up the session. Once enabled, you can then specify additional Team Driving related options. These include the minimum and maximum number of drivers that each team may field, which rules governing requirements for driver changes are to be enforced (if any), and whether or not only a team's qualifier is allowed to grid the car.
Leagues can host Team Driving events.
Team Driving is NOT currently available for Tournaments.
There will be no Time Trials in any official iRacing Team Driving series.
Driver change rules mostly apply only during Race sessions (see the "Session Behavior" section below). If such rules are enabled, teams that do not follow them during a Race session will receive a post-race Disqualification (see the "Driver Change Requirements In Race Sessions" section below).
REGISTERING FOR THE SESSION
For Team Driving sessions, spectators may register individually, but all session participants must register as part of a team. When registering for the session, you can choose to register as a member of an already-registered team of which you are a member, as a member of an already-registered team whose password you know, or you can register (one of) your own team(s) for the session. You will have a default team, named "Team Your Name", that you may use if you have not yet created any teams. You may also create a new team while registering.
When you register a team for a session, you may choose whether or not you are also registering yourself for the session (a team manager who does not intend to participate in the session might use this). Until the session is launched, you are allowed to withdraw your entire team's registration as long as no other team member is also registered for the session (you can't yank your team's registration out from under your teammates). Once the session has launched, you are free to withdraw yourself from the session, and you are free to register yourself and/or your team for a different session, but you may not withdraw your team from the current session.
It is possible that you could be a member of more than one team that is registered for a session. Prior to the session being launched, you are free to register/withdraw/re-register as a member of any team that is registered for the session. Once the session launches, you will be locked-in to the team for which you are registered - you may not jump back and forth between teams during a session, even as a spotter or crew member.
Team members may come and go during the session. You may withdraw from a Team Driving session, register for and participate in some other session (including other Team Driving sessions), withdraw from that session, and then come back later and re-register for the original session. For example, you can participate in an endurance Team race for an hour, withdraw from that race, drive in some other session, log off and go to sleep for several hours, then come back later for another stint in the endurance race.
At most six members of a team may be connected to a session at any one time, though many more than that may connect and disconnect over the course of a session (the current limit is 64 team members). If your team currently has the maximum number of allowed members connected to the session and you attempt to connect, instead of launching the simulation the web site will notify your currently-connected team members that you wish to join the session. If one or more of them exits the session, there will then be space for you, and you will be allowed to connect.
It is up to the team's members to decide who should be present at various times during the session, and what roles they are to fulfill. All team members with a sufficient license and/or iRating for the session are eligible to drive the car. All team members are eligible to put the car into the garage and make setup changes, become the Crew Chief (and so make black-box changes to be applied during pit stops), or to spot for the driver. Team members may change roles during the session, and could possibly play more than one role at the same time (spot for the driver and act as the crew chief, for example).
SESSION BEHAVIOR
In Race sessions, only as many team members as the maximum specified by the session will be allowed to get into the car. In Lone Qualify sessions, only one team member will be allowed to get into the car. In any other type of session, all of the eligible team members are allowed to drive the car.
In Lone Qualify sessions, the time put in by the one-and-only driver will be used as the team's Qualifying time in any immediately-following Race session. In official iRacing series that use separate Qualifying sessions, the driver's Qualifying time will be used to adjust their race-week Qualifying time.
In Open Qualify sessions that are scored as "best lap" (currently this is all such sessions), the fastest lap put in by any of the team's drivers will be used as the team's Qualifying time in any immediately-following Race session. In official iRacing series that use separate Qualifying sessions, each individual driver's Qualifying time will be used to adjust their own race-week Qualifying time.
It is not required that the same team members drive in the Practice, Qualify, Warm-up and Race portions of a session. Each portion of the session is considered individually.
In iRacing official series that use separate Qualifying sessions, a team's Qualifying time is used to establish the starting grid position for the Race session, and it will be computed as the best Qualifying time set by any of the team's members who are fully registered for the session as the session is launched. The Qualifying time of team members who are not fully registered (don't have a [Race in 1:30] type of status on the Race panel) are ignored.
It is not required that the team member whose Qualify time established the team's grid position drive in the Race session. However, a session can optionally be set up to allow only the team member who established a team's Qualify time to place the team's car onto the starting grid. If that team member does not place the car onto the starting grid, then any team member will be allowed to place the car onto pit road and wait for a missed-start to join the race.
DRIVER CHANGE REQUIREMENTS IN RACE SESSIONS
For a team to be considered "Official" in a Race session, and thus for any of its drivers to be eligible for Championship Points, the team must adhere to the "driver change rules" for the session. There are currently two options: "No Rules" or "Drive Your Fair Share".
If the "No Rules" option is selected, then there are no requirements placed on the team for how many drivers must drive the car, or how much each driver must drive.
The "Drive Your Fair Share" rule operates as follows: at least the minimum number of drivers specified by the session must drive the car a "fair share" of the team's laps, or the team will receive a post-race Disqualification. A fair share is currently defined as 25% of an "equal share" of the laps.
You will not need to perform the calculations described below yourself during the session. The Entries tab on the Session screen within the simulation will show for each driver individually a display of the form:
n/r(R)
That is read as
n laps driven / out of r laps required as of now, or (R) laps estimated to be required by the end of the session.
It will be colored red if the team member has not driven enough laps to be considered official at this point in the race. It will be colored yellow if they have driven enough laps as of this point in the race, and it will be colored green if they have driven enough laps that they would be considered official at the current estimate of the number of laps that your team will complete in the session.
Additionally, the driver's F1/Lap Info black-box will have this same indicator, and the F3/Relative black box will have a simple "DC" indicator that is colored red/yellow/green as described above.
In time-limited sessions, the total number of laps in the session is not known ahead of time. The estimated number of laps required for each driver to be considered official will be recomputed periodically during the session. You should always be mindful that these are estimates. If the race runs under caution through much of the session, and runs under green-flag conditions late in the session, the estimated number of laps required per driver could grow. Don't wait to put a driver into the car for the final stint only to find that the number of laps they need has become larger than the number of laps remaining in the session!
Here are some examples of how the "fair share" is computed.
In a 100 lap race with a minimum of 4 drivers per team, an equal share for each team driver would be 25 laps. Each driver's fair share would thus be 25% of 25 laps, or 7 laps (0.25 * 25 = 6.25 laps, but any fractional portion of a lap always bumps the requirement up to the next full lap). It would be unwise to create a race where the minimum number of drivers exceeds the race's lap limit, as it would then be impossible for any team to meet the requirements!
The determination of whether your team has met the driver change rules in the session is computed against the number of laps your whole team completes in the session. For example, if in a 100 lap race with a minimum of 4 drivers your team only finishes 50 laps, the "fair share" for each of your drivers would be 50 / 4 * 0.25 = 3.125, or 4 laps. Keep this in mind when determining your strategy for the race. If you divide the driving up into the minimum number of roughly equal-length stints, and your second-to-the-last driver crashes your team out of the race, your final driver will not be able to race any laps. Since you then have had too few drivers finish a "fair share" of the race, your team will be Disqualified.
In addition to the "minimum number of drivers," sessions have a separate "maximum number of drivers" setting. In this same example, say that a team wants 6 of its members to drive. Then for all 6 drivers to be "Official" and receive championship points, each would have to drive their fair share of the laps. An equal share of 100 laps for 6 drivers would be 100/6 = 16.67, and a fair share of that would be 0.25 * 16.67 = 4.17, "ceiling'd" to 5 laps. So once you go beyond the minimum number of different drivers in the session, the number of laps required for each driver can be smaller.
It is possible for a team to be Official for the session, even though one or more of its members who drove is not considered to be Official. Taking the prior example, say that in a 100 lap session that requires a minimum of 4 drivers, a team has 6 of its members drive. Say those drivers drove 30, 20, 20, 20, 6, and 4 laps. The driver who drove only 4 laps would not be considered Official since they didn't drive enough laps, and they would receive 0 Championship Points for the session, while the remaining 5 team drivers would each receive the number of points the team garnered.
In official iRacing sessions with driver changes, championship points are computed per-car (team). Each team member who drove a "fair share" during the Race session will receive the full championship points given to the team.
RATINGS ADJUSTMENTS
No iRating adjustments are made in Team Driving sessions.
SAFETY RATINGS ADJUSTMENTS
Incident points and distance driven are tracked separately for each driver. Each driver's Safety Rating will be adjusted accordingly. The only way incident points incurred by one driver on a team impact the other drivers on the same team is if the session has an incident-point limit. If it does, the limit is applied to the sum of the incident points accrued by all of the team's drivers.
CAR NUMBER ASSIGNMENT
A car number needs to be assigned when a team is added to a session. Numbers are given out in order of iRating, so a team with a higher iRating would be awarded their preferred number if more than one team wanted that number. A team's iRating is computed from the iRating of the team members who drive the car (and typically only those drivers that drive the car during the Race session). Since it is unknown at the start of the session which team members are going to drive, the team's iRating is not yet known. Therefore, just as with Open Practice sessions, car numbers are given out in essentially random order.
CHANGING DRIVERS
When in the simulation, the [Drive] button will be displayed to all team members who are eligible to drive in the session whenever the team's car is "available." The car will be unavailable when one of the team members is "in" the car (driving, stopped out on circuit, or stopped in the pit stall), whenever someone has the car in the garage, if the session is over, if the team has been DQ'd.
A team member will be ineligible if their license level and/or iRating is insufficient for the session, or if the team has reached its maximum driver limit in a Race or Lone Qualify session and that member has not yet driven in the session.
It is up to the team's members to decide who should drive the car at any given time. Pressing the [Drive] button registers your request to get into the car. If your request is the first one processed, you will be put into the car. While another team member is in the car, the [Drive] button will be disabled.
Using ESC while out on track operates mostly as before (either the car is reset to the pit stall and made "new", or it is towed to the pit stall in its current condition), and the driver is removed from the car. Using the Car Reset control does mostly the same thing, except that the driver is left in the car. While sitting stopped in the pit stall, using ESC or Car Reset (if it is allowed to do so) will remove the driver from the car and leave the car in the pit stall. If necessary, the pit crew will turn-off the car's motor so that it does not overheat.
A driver change can only occur while the team's car is sitting still in the team's pit stall. Your current driver may exit the car immediately upon coming to a stop in the pit stall, and the substitute driver may click [Drive] and get into the car right after that. But a substitute driver may not drive away until a 30-second "driver-swap" timer has expired. The "driver-swap" timer starts from the point in time when the car came to a stop in the pit stall, so there is no need to attempt to quickly get the current driver out of the car, or the substitute driver into the car. The timer will count down both while no pit service is being performed and while pit service is being performed, but it will not count down either while the car is being towed to the pit stall, or while a penalty is being served.
If new cars are available for use, a [Request New Car] button (located below the [Drive] button) can be used to remove the current car from the pit stall and replace it with a new one.
If the team's car comes to a stop out on track, the [Drive] button for all the other team members will become a [Return To Pit] or [Tow Car] button, and any teammate can use the button to request the action (just as if the driver hit ESC or Reset). If the team's car is at a stop in the pit stall with the driver in the car, the button will become [Remove Driver], which will pull the driver from the car (just as if the driver hit ESC or Reset). Generally, the driver should be allowed to call for the tow or exit the car on their own. The car must be stopped for at least 5 seconds before these buttons become available for the teammates to use. Their purpose is to allow the team to recover the car if their current driver becomes distracted, or walks away from their computer.
So long as it is allowed to make changes to the car in the garage, any team member may remove the driverless car from the pit stall and put it into the garage. Whether or not any changes are made to the car in the garage, the car is left off-track until the next team driver uses [Drive] to put a "new" car back on-track.
WEBSITE:
TEAM DRIVING
- Now you can create up to five teams to race with your friends and take turns driving the same car.
- Invite / Promote / Remove team members from the team administration section.
- Manage external member applications to your teams.
- View sessions for teams to see what they're doing, and join them (when able).
- Make each team unique - set up custom paint schemes for each team's cars and race suits.
- Search the directory of all teams where you can apply or join team sessions.
- View all sessions teams are active in that you are able to join.
- Manage all your team applications and invites.
- Spectate Team Driving sessions.
- Join Team Driving Official Series as your own team or join another team and help drive/spot/crew.
- Join and Host your own Hosted Sessions with your own team, or join another team and help drive/spot/crew.
WEB UI
- Be on the lookout for stripes on racing session windows:
· Yellow indicates team driving.
· Teal indicates multiclass.
· Black indicates a fixed-setup race.
- Re-ordered the layout of the main member-site template:
· The updater is still in the upper-left portion of the site, but is redone.
· The primary navigation is moved to the upper-right portion of the site, away from the license.
- The data refresh mechanism now remembers where you were on a page, and when you continue refreshing will take you right back to where you were to continue a seamless experience.
- A content bar on the Cars, Tracks, and Account pages show how much content you own. Can you fill the bars and join the 100% club?
- When hosting a race, you may now select as much Qualifying time as you like (previous cap was 30 minutes).
- Added additional race-length options when purchasing a Hosted session, both shorter (1 hour) and longer (9 to 25 hours). Options are now 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 14, 17, and 25 hours. The longer sessions have discounts from the usual 2 hours per $1 rate:
· 1-hour sessions are $0.50.
· 9-hour sessions are $4.00 instead of $4.50
· 14-hour sessions are $6.00 instead of $7.00
· 17-hour sessions are $7.00 instead of $8.50
· 25-hour sessions are $9.00 instead of $12.50
- Hosted sessions now allow up to 8000 laps.
- Hosted and League session admins are allowed entry into sessions regardless of iRating or license restrictions.
- Spotter passwords must now be only upper/lower-case letters and numbers (alphanumeric) - please take a moment to reset your spotter password (if you use one) to avoid potential issues with people spotting for you.
- Driver search forms now support international character input (e.g. Cyrillic).
- Registration forms now support international character input (e.g. Cyrillic).
- Fixed a glitch where buying new content then updating content would result in a broken frag page.
RESULTS
- View Team Driving race results broken down by Team and Team Members involved.
- New interactive Lap Graph.
- Results pages are now 100% width.
- Results pages now display certain events that occurred during the session. Drivers getting in/out of car are recorded during Qualify and Race sessions. Penalties applied/served are recorded during all session types. Caution periods are recorded during Race sessions. Lead changes are also recorded. You can highlight particular types of events, and events associated with particular teams.
- Added a new "DQ Scoring Invalidated" "reason out", which will appear in the Results pages. This is needed so that League scoring can distinguish this type of disqualification (where your score card is ripped up), versus a normal disqualification, where your prior laps are counted but scoring is ended for you.
