NARS 2025 TA2 Australian Championship

The opening series for NARS in 2025 will be a walkabout ‘Down Under’ in a fusion of two of our most popular series in the last couple of years.

The Cars

In a break from sportscar mods, Storm Gang Simulation has produced another winner in the 2022  Trans Am TA2 cars. Built from the ground up with input from Howe Racing Enterprises, Katech Engines and drivers like 2021 TA2 Rookie of the Year, Rhett Barkau, Mike Skeen, Guy Cosmo, Dylan Archer, Tyler Kicera and more, their feedback helped ensure a truly realistic TA2 mod.

The 2022 mod features 3 unique bodies and liveries from the 2022 season and beyond: The Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. Modeled with exquisite detail by the incredibly talented Brian von Beusekom, each car features the curves and cuts of the real body panels down to the frames and subcomponents. Each model has customizable mirrors and engine choices. While the 3 marquees can run with their own homologated engines, there’s also the Choice engine developed especially for TA2 by Trans Am. The LS9-based block has proven reliable without rebuild over entire seasons, making it incredibly cost effective and highly desired.  This year, the mod sounds have been updated by Scar Pope, which returning users will note immediately!

The mod is in the Steam Workshop at https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2967326533 .

The Circuits

The series will follow the same schedule as the 2024 NARS V8SC series, which used the real life V8SC 2024 season as a baseline with adjustments. Competitors must subscribe to the NARS Steam Workshop item and check the links there for additional mods as required.

February

06 Melbourne – Albert Park (2x Sprint)

13 Wanneroo – Barbagallo (2x Sprint)

March

20 Symmons Plain (2x Sprint)

27 The Bend

April

03 Darwin – Hidden Valley (2x Sprint)

10 Townsville – Druitt

May

01 Sydney – Eastern Creek GP (2x Sprint)

22 Sandown

29 Mount Panorama

June

19 Adelaide

Event Schedule – 1 Race

7pm/1900 Eastern – Server Reboot / Practice
8:55pm/2055 Eastern – Driver Brief/Announcements
9:00pm/2100 Eastern – Qualifying (15 minutes)
9:20pm/2120 Eastern – Warm-up (10 minutes)
9:30pm/2130 Eastern – Main Race

Event Schedule – 2x Sprint Races

7pm/1900 Eastern – Server Reboot / Practice
9:00pm/2100 Eastern – Driver Brief/Announcements
9:10pm/2110 Eastern – Qualifying (10 minutes)
9:20pm/2120 Eastern – Warm-up (5 minutes)
9:25pm/2125 Eastern – Race1
10:00pm/2200 Eastern – Qualifying (10 minutes)
10:10pm/2210 Eastern – Warm-up (5 minutes)
10:15pm/2215 Eastern – Race 2

Start

rF2 controlled formation lap to rolling start, double file

Orange Zone (OZ)

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

Championships

The rf2la app will be used to track series standings.  Details on how to log on are available on CMS Discord.

There will be three individual driver championships, PRO, PRO/AM and AM.

There will also be a team championship: each team may have 2-3 drivers from any driver class, with only the top scoring driver in each class scoring points for the team, each race.

Drivers who have raced in CMS before will have been noted in the CMS rF2 license categories for 2025.

TA2 PRO/PRO AM/AM splits (and driver licenses that will compete) will be:

PRO: Platinum/Gold

PRO AM: Silver

AM: Bronze/Copper

Drivers who have not been assigned a license category in the CMS rF2 stratification must start racing in the PRO championship.  After 3 races, their performance will be reviewed and this may involve a change in championship.

If during the course of the series, a driver is assigned a new license as part of the stratification update process, they are to contact the race admin immediately as this may, or may not, affect the championship in which they compete.

Admins retain the right to reassign all drivers up or down a car class if they are not correctly placed based, to balance competition or drivers’ performance.

There is also an additional driver trophy – the “In the Groove” to recognise the driver who drives the most consistently during their races, regardless of car class. These trophies will be awarded at the end of the season.

Points

Drivers will all receive points based on their overall finishing position regardless of class. The three lowest point scoring races for each driver will be dropped from their championship standings.  This means that the each driver has 15 races over 10 nights in which to record their 12 best results.

Minimum race distance to score points is 60% and no points will be awarded for DNS or DNF.

Main races (1 hour)

150-138-129-120-111-102-96-90-84-78-72-69 66-63-60-57-54-51-48-45-42-39-36-33-30-27-27-24-21-16-15 points thereafter

Sprint Races (30 minutes)

75-69-64-60-55-51-48-45-42-29-34-33-31-30-28-27-25-24-22-21-19-18-16-15-13-12-10 points thereafter

In the Groove Cup: Points are gained by drivers driving the most consistently in the race compared to their own fastest race lap as follows: 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.

Details on how to follow championship results are provided in the NARS Discord channels.

Liveries and Numbers

There is a huge variety of default RL and custom liveries in the mod, however drivers are free to make their own for this series to be used as a ‘loose’ livery.  The links to the templates will be noted in the NARS Discord links channel.  The admin reserves the absolute right to refuse liveries that are deemed inappropriate.

Numbers may be claimed using the NARS numbers list for this particular series – the link is available in the CMS NARS Discord channels.

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.
Main Race: 2x fuel, 1xtires
Sprint Race: 1x fuel, 1xtires
Weather will always be live weather conditions.

The server name will be “CMS TA2 [track name]”.

The server race password will be provided when the server is rebooted on race day.

General

The rf2la app will be used to record the hot laps and instructions for following the series standings will be provided at #links-nars-read-first.

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

Race Communications

We will use the CMS Discord rFactor 2 voice channel for race communications.

CMS Discord is available at https://discord.gg/cmsracing

The voice channel is only required to monitor race control during the event. 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.

Should a driver join the event server without being in the Discord channel, they will be reminded in rFactor 2 text chat to so so. If they have not joined the voicechat by the start of the driver brief, they will be removed from the race server by race control until they rejoin with Discord active and monitoring the race channel.

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. Additional track-specific instructions will be provided via a drivers race brief that will be posted on #nars-race-info and summarised prior to the start of the qualifying session on race night.

Pit Entry/Exit Lines: On circuits that a line to indicate the pit entry or/and exit lanes, crossing this line to enter or exit the pits 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.

In the pit box, drivers will be required to centre their car on the outside of the pit box farthest from the pit lane to ensure that two cars can get serviced at the same time in the event of pit box sharing.

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/.

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.