CMS NARS 2023
Virtual Road to Indy Championship

For our final “short” series of 2023, we will be touring around North America for some tracks very familiar to NARS, but with a new challenge for the drivers to conquer.  NARS will be going ‘open-wheeling’ with one of the feeder series to Indycar, the Road to Indy, equivalent to the USF2000.  Training ground for drivers with Indycar dreams, the cars and tracks are a great combination for some close-matched, exciting sprint action.  Predominantly featuring road and street courses, a wildcard short oval provides for the full range of racing venues to keep drivers on their toes.

The series will be using the S397 Tatuus USF-17 (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1782916300).  Equipped with the Mazda naturally aspirated engine producing 175 bhp, the car has identical build spec as the F4-T014 with a bit bigger brakes to handle the heavy road-courses the Road to Indy championships race.

The NARS championship will be based on the real life 2023 season, but with a couple of tracks used in previous years also added for some additional challenge and bring us up to year’s end.  Each race night will comprise a practice session, qualifying of 10 minutes, a warm-up of 5 minutes and then races. For races 2 and 3, different reverse grids will be used to provide additional challenge and excitement

Non-Steam Workshop tracks will be available through the NARS Workshop item (you need to be subscribed!) while the Steam content necessary for the series will be listed on the NARS item as well.

Calendar:

September

14   St Petersburg (2 races, 20 laps)

28  Sebring (2 races, 11 laps)

October

05  Barber (2 races, 17 laps)

12   Indy Road (3 races, 15 laps)

26  Lucas Oil Raceway (1 race, 75 laps)

November

02  Road America (2 races, 12 laps)

16   Mid Ohio (3 races, 20 laps)

30  Toronto (2 races, 20 laps)

December

07  Portland (3 races, 25 laps)

14  Laguna Seca (2 races, 16 laps)

Event Schedule

7pm/1900 Eastern – Server Reboot / Practice
9:00pm/2100 Eastern – Driver Brief/Announcements
9:05pm/2105 Eastern – Qualification (10 minutes)
9:15 pm/2115 Eastern – Warm-up (5 minutes)
9:20 pm/2120 Eastern – Race 1
As soon as possible – Race 2 and Race 3

Start

Formation lap, rolling start, double file.

Tires and Fuel

With minimal crew in real life, pitstops are not possible. So, no pitstops are permitted for this series; cars will need to start with enough fuel to finish the race. Slick and wet tires are available, but again, no pitstops are permitted.

Gridding

Race 1 will grid using the qualifying session results. Race 2 will grid use the reversed results of qualifying while Race 3 will use the reversed finishing order of Race 2.

Orange Zone (OZ)

There will be an OZ designated for each race in the driver notes that will be posted to the NARS #road-2-indy-info channel and noted again in the pre-race brief. There will be an automatic review of the OZ post-race.

Registration

There is no pre-registration for the championship or races and drivers are free to join the series at any point.

Regardless of driver class, each driver showing up on race night are expected to have completed all their preparations, including reading the series and race instuctions, d/l and installation of the required mods, confirmation that their system and connection are working properly plus have completed enough single player and online practice on the CMS server to race competently and safely.

PRO & AM Drivers

To minimize frustration and encourage drivers to participate for the full series, there are separate groups of drivers based on performance. Drivers are free to choose their class, PRO or AM, based on their skill level and ability to prepare.

Drivers who consistently finish in the top 1/2 of their races or believe that they are capable of competing for outright race wins should classify themselves as PRO. All other drivers should classify themselves as AM.

This ensures that the two driver classes have strong levels of competition within the classes with drivers running in the classes most appropriate for their demonstrated abilities.

Admins still have the right to reassign a drivers’ class up or down if they are not correctly placed based on special circumstances or drivers’ performance.

Championships

There will be two individual driver championships, PRO and AM.

Points will be awarded each race for championship standings with four ‘drop’ races (the equivalent of missing two road event nights completely) for each driver over the course of the series.  This means that each driver has 22 actual races to record their top 18 results to count towards their championship standing.

In addition to the individual driver championships, there will also be a team championship, with pairs of drivers, one PRO and one AM.  Teams must register on the #road-2-indy-teams channel and will count points as a team from that point forward. Team points will be awarded using the overall race standings points, not driver class points.

There are also two additional driver trophies – one “Hard Charger” per class to recognise drivers who make the biggest gains from their starting positions and the “In the Groove” to recognise the driver who drives the most consistently during their races, regardless of class. These trophies will be awarded at the end of the season.  No ‘drop’ rounds for these trophies – drivers will always be able to compete for points in these trophies in each race competed.

Points

Road/street courses: 30-25-23-19-17-15-14-13-12…..

Oval: 45-38-33-29-23-21-20-18-17-15-14-12-11-9-8-6-5-3-2

Hard Charger Trophy: 2 points per class to be shared between the drivers in each class gaining the most grid-to-finish positions in the race. Minimum of 1 point to be awarded per driver if there is a tie of two or more drivers per class.

In the Groove Trophy: Points are gained by drivers driving the most consistently in the race compared to their own fastest race lap as follows: 5-4-3-2-1.

Details on how to follow championship results are provided at #links-nars.

Custom Liveries and Numbers

The mod only provides one ‘default’ livery and so drivers are strongly encouraged to paint their own custom liveries. Templates are at the top of the #road-2-indy-info channel and will contain the numberplates that must be used.  Check #road-2-indy-info for further instructions.

If you miss the submission date for the start of the season and still want to run your livery, custom skin uploading is welcome and encouraged, but please log onto the server a couple of days before to mitigate server load from skin transfers on race day.

The use of the NARS numbering system is required for custom liveries and drivers not yet holding a NARS racing number may choose from those available.  Simply follow the directions contained in the #nar-links channel in the CMS Discord.

Settings

We will use the latest stable build of rFactor 2.
The damage setting is 75%.
Crash Recovery is off. Drive carefully!
Driving View is open.
Auto Clutch, Blip, Lift and Brakes/Clutch are the only rF2 global aids available.
1x fuel and tires.
Weather will always be live weather conditions.

The server name will be “CMS R2I [track name]”.
The server race password will be provided when the server is rebooted on race day.

General

Hot laps and race results with full championship results will displayed in the rF2la app – available through #nars-links

The race will be live-streamed on YouTube at our channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Kdp07PvIeW47f0_sM0emw

We will use the CMS Discord NARS voice channel for race communications. CMS Discord is available at https://discord.com/invite/4ckmjPX.

The voice channel is required to monitor race control during the event and if you are not present on the correct channel, you will be booted from the server before qualifying. You will not be allowed to race until you have joined the NARS voicechat

You do not need a microphone if you do not want to speak. If you have a microphone, please set it to “push to talk”. If that just doesn’t work for you, PLEASE set the voice-activated audio level up considerably so your coughing, wheezing or sim controls grinding isn’t “shared” with everyone else. Don’t be “that guy/girl”.

Chatter during free practice is permitted and encouraged! For qualification and races, please be brief in your communication on Discord and talk only if absolutely necessary. One sentence then quiet is requested. No text chat AT ALL during qualification or race.

Abusive and/or profane in-game chat, Discord, or forum post language may lead to that driver receiving a sanction up to and including a ban from CMS.

Competition Rules and Stewarding

This series will conform to the CMS General Competition Rules that may be found on the CMS Discord Server. All drivers are expected to know the GCR and shall be required to abide by them.

Pit Entry/Exit Lines: On circuits that a white line is drawn at the pit road entry or/and exit, crossing this white line to enter or exit the pit is prohibited unless specifically permitted in a pre-race brief. Otherwise, it is permissible for tires to step on the white line, but crossing the line with one tire completely will result in a post-race Incident Review Request and penalty.

There are no live stewards. A post-race Incident Review Request may be submitted for adjudication with any resultant penalties to be served in the next race competed by the driver(s) at fault. The IRR form may be found at https://cmsracing.com/incident-report/.  Penalties from the last race, or not served by the end of the series will be converted into time penalties in the final race.

rFactor 2 system assigned penalties during races must be served. The Race Director will only have the capability to clear penalties and driver DQ during practice on the race server and then AFTER qualification but before the race.

Connection Notes

Drivers are strongly advised to reboot their computer just before joining the server on race night.

Don’t use a WiFi connection. Only Ethernet cable connections are permitted for NARS events.