Sorry for leaving before the end last night. It was far from a rage quit. I had some distractions when something came up!
No worries mate, sometimes Life happens. Thanks for making the grid look better for the first race, for a while I thought we were just gonna have 4 of us. 👍
So, thought's on the future. I've noticed dwindling numbers lately, as seems to often be the case at the end of a season. Not sure if it's just to do nicer weather, general apathy about the game, an issue with the Festival, or "other" reasons (like balance of performance). If there's anything I need to do differently please let me know.
The easiest thing to do would be to convert the Ferrari Festival into the Stock Car Festival, everything would pretty much stay the same but instead of only racing Ferrari's we could race anything. I'd select a different car for each week, completely stock of course, and we'd continue on like we're doing but with a limitless list of cars to use. I could incorporate simple "themes" into the mix to keep things fresh, maybe each month features a specific manufacturer, or features a category of cars (one month is vintage cars, one month is low-powered street cars, one month is race cars, one month is European Saloon's, etc.). With this method we could keep using the same thread ad infinitum and the possibilities are endless.
The other thought is the parity method we've discussed briefly. I've done a bit of testing with some of the guys and it had mostly good results. The basic concept is that everyone is doing the same lap time and same top speed in the car of their choosing which means the grid is diverse yet equally balanced so everyone has a chance to win instead of the same small group of guys taking the podium spots. Some minor "tuning" is involved, but all that really needs done is to add/remove power or weight to meet a target time/speed. If you want to tune every tenth out of the car, you can, and if you don't want to then you don't have to. You don't need to mess with any of the adjustable bits or know anything about tuning besides "more power = more speed, less power = less speed". In theory you could find a car that's already pretty much on target and really wouldn't have to "tune" anything. In fact, whenever I would set a target time it would be in a completely stock car and I'd list the car used, so if you don't want to tinker much you could just use that car and probably be pretty close to target out of the box.
On the topic of "themes" for the parity, a lot of times the theme would be something as simple and broad as FR 80's Japanese cars, any FR Japanese car made in the 80's would qualify. Or Murican FR Modern Muscle Cars, or 90's AWD cars, or All Estate Cars, these categories have a fairly large group of cars for people to choose from and I can somewhat use the room filters to help "police" it. So if you have some off-the-wall car you've been wanting to race, eventually it would probably fit a theme. Occasionally the theme would have a set list of approved cars, like GT3 or NASCAR's or Vintage Muscle Race Cars, with the goal being to have a specific grid of cars which replicate some sort of real world series. So there would be a lot of freedom in car selection, but there would be some minor focus as to what we're racing at any particular time which helps people find a car and also makes some very nice looking grids.
Those are the two ideas I've been tossing around. Give me some feedback and I'll start preparing for future activities. If you're curious about parity I can set up a couple test races for the next couple weeks so we can get a feel for what it's going to be like and how it will work. 👍
Good job on the rolling start and clean racing at this hairy track. Congrats to @SagarisGTB on his win. 
Not happy with myself for that one!
