We can’t say we came up with this idea all by ourselves, but we did get our inspiration from WDCR-SCCAs bracket racing program that started in late 2017; while theirs caters more toward Club Racing; It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be modified for a VRL. The commishes got to work adapting the system to fit the Virtual Racing world, and here’s what they came up with.
Brackets remove antiquated classing complexity – especially with respect to scenarios like classic vs modern cars, engine swaps, forced induction upgrades, etc that make classing cars very challenging, or very subjective. Forza does a decent job of trying to group vehicles by using a system called PI (Performance Index), but sometimes even that can be manipulated to the drivers advantage with tuning – 210hp Miata Mazdaspeed vs 500hp Mercury Marquis : both PI B-600 – therefore you still end up with an imbalance in the system. Some would argue that Power:Weight and other complex classing restrictions solves the issue – and we’ve tried that – and that’s a time consuming effort to determine all the possible combinations for the over 700 cars in the game. More importantly, it’s very difficult to monitor/enforce throughout the season.
So what does all that mean? … Probably that we take this league way too seriously, but … the base line for brackets is designed to remove the vehicle from the equation and take past lap and driver performance data (which we have years of information on file) and determine a high and low value for a given course/lap.
For example: let’s say we have a ~2 mile circuit (like Laguna Seca); and the fastest recorded time (for our group) is 1:15.000 and the slowest time in the system is 1:50.000 – that’s 75 seconds (low) and 110 seconds (high); In our case we decided to stick with 6 brackets that corresponded closely to Forza’s PI system (B1 = X; B2 = P; B3 = R/S; B4 = S/A; B5 = A/B; B6 = B or lower) from there we carved up our windows, or indexes, or brackets depending what you want to call them; which exist between the high and the low values, as seen below.
Now that you’ve taken the car mods off the table for classing; its solely up to the drivers performance as to what bracket they end up in. This levels the field so that a v8-swapped Miata, stock C5 Corvette and a street prepped Civic compete on lap times rather than some arbitrary PI. Scoring then falls into 1st-Nth in each bracket. With a solid algorithm in place we moved from track to track and most people fell generally in their same bracket (if they used the same vehicle). Meanwhile, If the driver makes a bunch of mods, or gains more skill, there is a chance they will move out of one bracket to another or the reverse if you are having issues, where you will move down a rung. In the end we gave the drivers the power to choose whatever car they wanted, make whatever mods they wanted, and download all the tunes they needed… but their times don’t lie – they are what they are.
What about “sandbagging”? – was the next challenge… If you let drivers just throw a lap time down, most will try to put down their best. Since the core of Series 9 was a lot like Time Trials (a sport that entices us to drive our very best lap times), there was no doubt that some folks would try to sandbag and win a lower bracket. To combat this, we added a rather elegant solution that always seems to motivate folks to really go for gold; we added a “drivers championship” as alternate scoring. This scored the drivers on overall position using the same rules as Formula-1 (from 2009-ish forward). Pride usually gets the best of most of us, so shooting for those top spots sometimes means more than winning your class. I would rather be 6th overall in the drivers championship than 1st in the last place bracket … as one of our drivers so delicately put it.
The checked flag has dropped on Series 9 of GTM’s Virtual Racing League (VRL)!
Time to announce the winners in our Multi-Class Bracket Racing Series (#9) of GTM’s VRL! We had a total of 18 drivers participate in the series and the competition was definitely fierce. Official / Final Standings can be viewed here.
Bracket 1 – X Class (Open Wheel)
Winner: Dave S, 2nd Place: Kerwin W, 3rd Place: Pete B
Bracket 2 – P Class (LeMans/Daytona Prototypes)
Winner: Don C, 2nd Place: Eric M, 3rd Place: Ben S
Bracket 3 – R / S Class (IMSA/ALMS + Touring Cars)
Winner: Dave S, 2nd Place: Brad N, 3rd Place: John C
Bracket 4 – S / A Class (Modified)
Winner: Sam H, 2nd Place: Judd G, 3rd Place: Tom W
Bracket 5 – A / B Class (HPDE+)
Winner: Tom W, 2nd Place: Tania M, 3rd Place: Andrew B
Bracket 6 – B or Lower (Street Cars)
Winner: Matt Y, 2nd Place: Tania M, 3rd Place: Tom W
HONORABLE MENTION – Points Scored in ALL Brackets
Winner: Brad N
BRACKET CHAMPIONSHIP – Total Accumulated Bracket Points based on Times.
Winner: Dave S, 2nd Place: Tom W, 3rd Place: Don C.
DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP – Total Drivers Points based on position at the end of the race.
Winner: Don C, 2nd Place: Eric M, 3rd Place: Dave S
Congratulations to everyone that participated!
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for news on Series 10 “the Arrive&Drive Mystery Bus Series” 😉
Interested? – Details on the GTM VRL can be found here.
