Handbook for drivers on Golden Era Championship

In this championship we have taken historical grand prix races from 1922-1939 and replicate them with CVR style. The race lengths are tried to keep as original as possible, but we have limited to the maximum of 3 hours. Some are even under 1 hour still, but most are around 2 hours.

This is quite unique championship you have never experienced before and probably never will after that. We aim for as much realism as possible, so this is not a league for every casual gamer.

The weather will be dynamic, meaning each race will have randomly chosen 1-4 weather slots that each will have unique weather. Cars are still very driveable (but somewhat challenging as in real life) in rain and oval races are never held in too wet conditions.

Cars

Car mods are from various sources so they have had really remarkable differencies and even flaws so they have all been fixed and made as equal quality wise as possible. The tyre model, fuel consumption, engines, materials and gauges even some suspension fixes are done to make the lineup similar enough. There are still differencies as some are really high quality and some not. However all are at the level that is still enjoyable. Some mods are also paid so only the patches are distributed to modify those as needed.

Cars will also have some period correct behaviour like mechanical failures that will require you to do extra pitstops. Spark plugs might get damaged and gearbox might get damaged so some gears are not more or less usable. Valves and fuel pump might get malfunction and oil pressure might drop. You will get a system message and audible engineer notification if something happens. Fortunately pitstop helps you with these failures. Brakes will also wear so after a certain amount of wear brakes will gradually start to lose their effectiveness. That is not fixable.

You may also get punctures to the fuel tank so it begins to leak. You can then try to get into pits to fix it or if that seems to be too far, you can stop the car on a safe spot, pull the handbrake and let the riding mechanic run to the pits to get few litres in a canister while you patch the tank. The amount of time this takes depends on how far the pits are from your location.

Also if your front damages a lot, you may lose some power from brakes. Repairing the front also fixes the brakes.

Tyres

Tyres are modified to make them more period correct, meaning that they wear pretty fast and suffer from overheating that also affects their pressure quite lot. So take care of your tyres and drive carefully as they might blow out under heavy sliding. This is especially true on high speed tracks where the tyres don’t have time to cool down. You can drive with blown tyre to the pits, but it’s not very stable or you can carry 1-2 spare wheels and change them on spot without going to pit for it. To do so, stop the car away from the racing line, press handbrake and wait for a wheel to be replaced. You will get notification once it’s done and you can then continue the race. On some tracks and on some cars you may not be able to drive as fast as possible to avoid tyre blow out, so you have to know your car. And also keep in mind, that each spare tyre you carry with you adds 20 kg weight to your car, so carrying 2 adds 40 kg extra weight to your car.

The tyres from early 20s probably blow out after exceeding 160 °C or 75 psi. In the 30s they take a bit more but not a lot still. Especially on silver arrows the tyre wear was an issue. Tyre durability is also more varied and each tyre is an individual so some may stay well long and some may wear out sooner.

There are 3 or 4 different tyre options to choose from.

1. Smooth tyre – is good for high speed tracks like Avus, but it wears out and gets hot easier and it’s quite unusable in rain or dirt roads.
2. Light stud tyre – is good all around tyre. It works in just about any surface and condition, but has less grip on tarmac than smooth tyre and less than heavy stud on dirt
3. Heavy stud tyre – excels in dirt roads and as a most durable tyre also if you want to run a long stint. It has though less grip on tarmac than light stud tyre.
4. Heavy stud Ice tyre – Otherwise the same as Heavy stud tyre, but it has spikes, so you can drive on ice and snow with it. Not all cars have these

Stalling / ignition

Cars have stalling and ignition system, so you need to map Extra A button to start the engine. Press Extra A as long as the engine starts (required time will vary a bit) and remember to use clutch if you’re not on neutral. If you let the rpm go below idle limit the engine will also stall, which requires you to start it again.

Engine

The engines are cooled down with water, but if you damage the front or sides (radiator) of the car enough, the cooling system might get damaged and water temperature starts to raise. You may experience some power loss around 90°C and engine will blow out going much beyond 100°C so keep on eye the water temperatures. Some cars have gauge for that temperature, but some have not. You may also notice that from the steam of boiling water that is coming from the radiator and the engineer will also tell you.

Also if you damage the engine badly your car will start to lose power, so take care of your engine.

Pitstops

The pitstop times are configures as realistic as it’s possible in AC with that slight simplification that older cars were more simple and therefore probably faster to repair if needed when it comes to suspension and body. However engine takes always long to repair. Tyre change was also quite slow in the 20s but started to be relatively quick at the late 30s.

Anyways pit stops take almost every time long so you should avoid them if possible and place them strategically.

Also keep in mind that we will be using some CSP server settings to use CSP extended physics on cars etc, so possibly the pitline speeding is set off and collisions are on for other cars in the pitlane also. Don’t crash them.

Getting stuck

If you get stuck during the race, say to a for example ditch. You can use Extra C button to “push” your car back to the road. Due to AC’s limitation this is done by using CSP’s teleport function, so it disqualifies your current lap (and resets your tyres) so use it with caution.

Tracks

Some tracks are somewhat modified also and especially in the early 20s the dirt road versions have been made for the tracks that were unpaved on the historical race date that we try to replicate. That is done by making a new layout for the track, adjusting road surface to match better dirt road and making a skin to change tarmac into gravel, so remember to activate skin also on such races. We will utilize also CSP’s SurfacesFX for that.

Rules

Qualifying

Qualifying as we know it was invented as late as in 30s and it took several years before it started to be the norm in grand prix races. Before that the grid was formed randomly by a ballot. We do the same in this championship on those races that had it in real life, so check the race schedule if there’s qualifying session or not. It will vary from race to race.

Starts

Races in 20s and 30s had quite varied starts. Some had even rolling start, some had intervals between each driver and the modern day like standing starts started to be common just on 30s. We will vary them also. Standing start at 20s is done in this championship so, that each car is given like 1 second gap from next driver to avoid mayhems at start. Meaning that the pole driver can start after lights go off, then 1 sec later 2nd driver and and 3rd driver waits again 1 sec before leaving and so on. That way drivers start in solid line without too much mayhem. But there will be more race specific guides when it’s more actual.

Passing

In 20s there weren’t too much 2 wide battles as the racing was so dangerous that crashes were to be avoided at all cost so the slower driver always took the right side of the road and let the faster to pass on the left without blocking or fighting the position or racing line. While we don’t have to be as formal let’s try to still be gentleman and remember the grave danger that crashes will do to the finances of each participant driver. This is more endurance like racing than modern “esport” racing.

Finances

The championship uses its own financial ecosystem. Each driver is given certain amount of championship credits that he will then use to buy and repair cars and register to races and to pay possible penalty fees. The system is designed to favor clean drivers as every collision big enoug will mean repair fee and thus reduces the drivers’ budget. Crash a lot and you may be declared to bankrupcy but race cleanly and your budget will flourish.

During inter war era it was mandatory to finish the race to get points. We award points to every driver that are on the grid, but to reflect that we reward credits of only finished races.

Drivers can also form teams of maximum 3 persons. Then their credits are handled as one. If the team breaks, its credits are divided evenly to each of its former drivers.

If driver/team can’t afford the entry fee, driver will be declared in bankrupcy. Driver can start all over but will lose all the cars he/she has at that point.

Driver/team can also sell their owned car to fellow competitor with the reductions mentioned in the table.

The race organiser will keep books about each driver/team financial actions and situations.

Repair fees

After each race drivers/teams are required to repair their damages made to the car. The race organiser checks from server logs all collisions to cars and environment and will announce them in #gec-transactions thread on Discord and automatically reduces the amounts from the drivers/teams credit balance.

Purchasing cars

Each car has its own value that is based on its performance abilities so better car will cost a lot and weaker ones are more cheap. cars can be bought and sold on specific thread (#gec-transactions) in our Discord. There each driver/team is obliged to announce their purchases. If the transaction isn’t written there, it doesn’t exist.

Selling cars

Just like purchasing, selling ones owned car is done in #gec-transactions channel. Either buyer or seller can write about the deal and the other party will react with thumbs up to the transaction to indicate it’s a deal both parties agree. So no reaction, no deal. After reaction race organiser will register the deal and transfer the money from buyer to seller.

Strategies

It’s quite probable, that most drivers won’t have enough credits to purchase always the best car on the market, so you may want to think strategically, drive one or two races with cheaper/older car and focus on safe racing to save for more expensive one and clear the table with it.

Racing

Racing happens on CVR or Interwar career servers. There will be different server for practice and different for race/qualify. This will be updated when the urls are clear.

Training

The training server will be always open for you to test out different cars and compare other drivers pace. As the championship relies so heavily on CSP and SOL/Pure it is essential that each driver will test the cars on server well before the actual race to be able to solve possible technical issues.

Car owner’s manual in a nutshell

Here’s the complete car owner’s manual – what to do if shit happens:

• Stalled engine – Press Extra A as long as engine starts
• Overheated water – slow down OR stop and wait it to cool down OR stop in pits to get water temps down to 80c
• Radiator damage – fix body
• Brake damage – fix body
• Brake fade – just drive more carefully, not fixable
• Spark plug failure – fix engine
• Valve problems – fix engine
• Oil pressure dropping – fix engine
• Gear failure -make a pitstop and Press Extra B
• Fuel pump problems -make a pitstop and Press Extra B
• Valve problems – fix engine
• Blown tyre – IF you have spare wheels, stop and pull handbrake for 5 sec and wait OR ELSE go to pits and change tyres normally
• Leaking fuel tank – stop and brake + pull handbrake for 2 sec and wait OR make a pitstop
• Stuck in a ditch etc – Press Extra C for 4 seconds so you will be pushed back to track (not available on ovals)

Interested in joining our races?

You can join by filling the registration form and joining our Discord. Make sure to also read the race info page for finer details.