18 replies to this topic

[BrunoB]

Are you a serious GTP driver or just a more casual driver wanting to kill some time?
If you belong to the serious group I think if we want to do something before this fantastic sim completely fades away,
then its not enough to try to participate in or arrange a few irregular races from time to time.
Where because of the irregularity nobody but a few actually turns up.
And to make it worse hear a lot of ridiculous excuses from all the nonstarters.

As I see it the solution is that most of the remaining SERIOUS GTP enthusiasts all over the world get together on a
REGULAR basis(!) on a professional server to practice and race for a championship.

1. Regularity
2. Professional (dedicated) Server
3. Internationality

Eventhough Im living in the european timezone (Denmark) my personal solution have been to join THE community in the only
part of the world where there are enough enthusiasm and expertise to run such a  professional server regularly.
Because to the best of my knowledge there is only 1 place in the world where a regular GTP league have a RAISING international membership.

Think about that!

Im talking about the US based community, FSB Racing, where they are actually DOING something to promote this fantastic sim.

This community has 3 dedicated servers where 1 is reserved 24hours a day for the GTP mod!
On the 2 other servers people race different Nascar series through paying memberships and some serious sponsors.
But this income are among other things used to make FREE membership possible for solely GTP drivers.
Thats what I call constructive promoting this sim international!

They have GTP drivers from all over the world. US, Canada, Brazil, even Russia:-)
But the best part is that they have fun.
And I have personally never got so warm a welcome and so much helpfullness in ANY internet community.

If you are accepted as an applicant you have to sign a few urgent rules because they want clean races. Period!
And they dont allow unconstructive whining and moaning before/after a race.

At the moment there are about 25-30 GTP drivers enrolled and in the last race, Watkins Glen, 15 was racing.

I have postponed the best info to the last.
Because its very easy to "remote" control this GTP server from anywhere in the world.
So if a group of european members want to practice GTP online on the server, on a time where the main part of the US members are sleeping,
one of the europeans just remote start the server and the others can then join.
Great, right?

The GTP championship is called American Le Mans.
And the races is run every 6th week. With a lot of online practice/fun races and talk in between:-)

So if you want to exercise your GTP hobby REGULARLY here is the chance.
But if you dont really know if you want to dedicate the time for it - stay away;-)
BrunoB

[SB40]

Looks like a very well organized league...will look into it when I get my GTP issues resolved.  

SB40

[BrunoB]

Im sure you will be very welcome.
Eventhough this initiative was 100% my own I have cleared it with FSB´s corleone, Jim Ray:-)
And yes its VERY organised. But everybody drive mainly to have good old fun.

[SB40]

BrunoB, on Sep 06 2011 - 07:27 AM, said:

Im sure you will be very welcome.
Eventhough this initiative was 100% my own I have cleared it with FSB´s corleone, Jim Ray:-)
And yes its VERY organised. But everybody drive mainly to have good old fun.

I will contact them tonight...just need to find a car number first.  It looks like Laguna Seca will be the next race?  That will be interesting...pretty narrow track.

[BrunoB]

A friendly remark. The Laguna Seca race is on next saturday 10.09-11 and the track is VEEERY narrow. And some of these guys are VEEERY fast.
And dont take my comment about the fun-factor as they are relaxed about accidents. Because they are not!
So if you havent been practicing a lot(!) on this track I would probably postpone my debut in this league until next race (on Spa) if I were you.
But again. There are about 6 weeks to the Spa race so I understand if you are eager to begin participating. I understand it absolutely:-)
I hope this dont sounds patronising. Because you know probably best yourself if you are able to drive consistently on this track.

By the way. Have you checked your timezone against theirs. Or are you living in US so this is not an issue:-)

[SB40]

BrunoB, on Sep 07 2011 - 01:57 AM, said:

A friendly remark. The Laguna Seca race is on next saturday 10.09-11 and the track is VEEERY narrow. And some of these guys are VEEERY fast.
And dont take my comment about the fun-factor as they are relaxed about accidents. Because they are not!
So if you havent been practicing a lot(!) on this track I would probably postpone my debut in this league until next race (on Spa) if I were you.
But again. There are about 6 weeks to the Spa race so I understand if you are eager to begin participating. I understand it absolutely:-)
I hope this dont sounds patronising. Because you know probably best yourself if you are able to drive consistently on this track.

By the way. Have you checked your timezone against theirs. Or are you living in US so this is not an issue:-)

Between ICR2 and iRacing I've turned thousands of laps here so I'm pretty familiar with the layout.

I just ran an hour of practice with the Sauber and I'm already pretty comfortable.  I will run quite a bit more before the race.  I'm not sure if I will qualify though...I may just start in the back since I'm not familiar with the other drivers yet.  I noticed they had a practice server up tonight...I wish I could have joined however the new modem for my race setup hasn't arrived yet.  

I'm in the US so the time works out perfect.  

[BrunoB]

SB40, on Sep 07 2011 - 07:38 PM, said:

Between ICR2 and iRacing I've turned thousands of laps here so I'm pretty familiar with the layout.
I'm in the US so the time works out perfect.  

OK then Im glad that I made the slight correction that Im not patronising you:-)

Conserning participating in the qualify if you get registrered before that I think that I can calm you down by saying that when you are driving that comfortable I think you will have no prob even in the start. Because people drive really very safely. The 2 accident rule works very good. Even the fastest type of drivers (aliens:-) wait patiently behind you when they come up behind you (lapping?) and only when they can see that you recognise them they start overtaking.

I intend myself to participate in the online practice tonight (03.00 danish night time). And I can see there will be open practice server every night up to the race in the weekend.
If you join then be prepared to join a very friendly and talkative practice. Because wee all use TeamSpeak and your countrymen are talking A LOT while practicing.
And its not allways about racing:-)
Looking forward to see you.

[SB40]

I just got the new modem hooked up today so I should be ready to go.  I have been accepted into the league and I will submit my car shortly.  Due to my sound issues with the Toyota I will be using the Sauber.  Hopefully I will be able to log on to the server and get some practice in tonight.  I would like to make sure I have no problems getting on the server or using Teamspeak before the race tomorrow.  

Good luck in the race!  

[BrunoB]

SB40, on Sep 09 2011 - 01:50 PM, said:

Hopefully I will be able to log on to the server and get some practice in tonight.  I would like to make sure I have no problems getting on the server or using Teamspeak before the race tomorrow.  

Good luck in the race!  

Sounds like a pretty good idea. But I can say that eventhough Ive had all kind of trouble connecting to a german fun GTP race, the connection to FSB was/is functioning 100% from day one.
Its not only their way of organising races that is prof its also their dedicated servers quality.

By the way. I was on the GTP server last night and bragging a bit I can say that I have found some kind of killer setup for this crazy track. So watch your rear mirror if I should get a bad quali:-)

[SB40]

Its only been one race but it looks like FSB is one of the most organized leagues I've raced in.  The server was excellent...my pings were as good or better than what I get on iRacing.  One of the most impressive things was 18 cars at Laguna Seca and no complaining about wrecks!

An 18 car field with GTP is very hard to find these days...if not impossible.  I would not be surprised if we get at least 22 for Spa.  The only negative...racing every 6 weeks...that is way too long to wait!

Hopefully some of the guys from the fun races decide to give it a try...

[BrunoB]

Hey SB40

If you are the new guy who won the FSB Laguna Seca race, you are close to an alien:-)
My respect for your driving in the race. And for your laptimes:-)
I have never seen such a cool driving before. But in the replay I can see that you are not cruising. You are pushing yourself every lap. Pretty impressing.
It will be exciting to watch you in the next race on Spa. Because then the fastest GTP guy, Alex Muniz from Brazil will return. He is the leader of the FSB GTP series, and is extremely fast too.

The target for Jim Ray, corleone of FSB :-), is to get a full GTP field up and running. I think NR2003 can run with 43 cars max, so that is an optimistic target.
And yes the show is handled extremely prof (except the restart of quali because of wrongly yellow flags on).

Conserning connection issues I can only see a few problems in the drivers ends. It looks like the russians have really bad connections. But thats not really an FSB issue.
Because Im driving from Denmark with the slowest(!) connection my provider offers (4K/0.5K) and I have often ping values better than some of the US citicens (probably out in the country:-)
So looking forward to se you at Spa.

[SB40]

Thanks for the kind words Bruno but I think my pace had more to do with the fast guys driving slower cars.  I don't have much experience with this mod and I thought the Toyota was the fastest car followed by the Jaguar and then the Sauber.  I guess I got that wrong and the Sauber is the fastest car.  I will switch to the Toyota next season...I actually enjoy driving it more anyways.

Did you paint your car?  I didn't know there was a Porsche 917 class in GTP...I would have definitely picked that over the Sauber.

[BrunoB]

Hahaha. A Porsche class in GTP. You must be joking.
No its ofcourse a Sauber chassis. But actually the Toyota chassis looks much more like a 1970 Porsche but contrary to you I prefer the Sauber handling.

And yes I have painted it myself. 100%. It took me 2 month because it was nearly impossible to get the curved "hippie" paintings on the side of the car to fit smoothly to the painting on the upper side of the car. There are 2 other GTP painting of hippie cars in circulation but without bragging they look like jokes compared to mine. But as you can hear Im probably not 100% objective in my assesment here:-):-)

[Arturo Pereira]

Hi Bruno
Would you mind to post the links to the FSB and the danish league? I need to check the startimes and all that stuff
In my league, we have a server with GTP installed so this may also help, when the server is not being used, to get some practice.

[BrunoB]

Arturo Pereira, on Sep 13 2011 - 06:35 AM, said:

Hi Bruno
Would you mind to post the links to the FSB and the danish league? I need to check the startimes and all that stuff

Hey Arturo.
It would be great if you (and maybe some from your league:-) would join the FSB GTP league too.
Because as I arguments in my 1st post its much smarter to go together on 1 professionally managed server than running a lot of servers with only 3-8 members.
Thats one of the reasons GTP is slowly dying evewhere else than on FSB.

Here is the link:
https://www.fsbracing.com/
Just contact Jim Ray the manager of FSB. He is pretty helpfull.

Conserning a danish league???
You must have been misunderstanding me. Because my only membership is at the FSB league.
Hope to se you in the league. Because we are having a really great time racing.

[BrunoB]

Check this video out if you want to know how a FSB GTP race is going on.
The video is showing the exciting first lap of our latest FSB Spa GTP race.
I have included som info about FSB Racing and am working very hard with my best english:-) to make a kind of intro.

Attached Thumbnails

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[BrunoB]

GTP Spa Race. New revised video.
I have just uploaded a revised version of my Spa video.

Spa_GTP_FSB_racing_v2.avi

Attached Thumbnails

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[BrunoB]

EDIT 06-02-2012
Check this FSB starting grid out from latest FSB Daytona Race 04-02-2012.
30+ cars! Where do you even get half of this.
And now with a nationality spread of 9 countries.

[BrunoB]

BrunoB, on Aug 25 2011 - 05:32 AM, said:

Im talking about the US based community, FSB Racing, where they are actually DOING something to promote this fantastic sim.

This community has 3 dedicated servers where 1 is reserved 24hours a day for the GTP mod!
On the 2 other servers people race different Nascar series through paying memberships and some serious sponsors.
But this income are among other things used to make FREE membership possible for solely GTP drivers.
Thats what I call constructive promoting this sim international!

They have GTP drivers from all over the world. US, Canada, Brazil, even Russia:-)
But the best part is that they have fun.
And I have personally never got so warm a welcome and so much helpfullness in ANY internet community.

If you are accepted as an applicant you have to sign a few urgent rules because they want clean races. Period!
And they dont allow unconstructive whining and moaning before/after a race.

Just checked today that this GTP league still existed:
https://www.fsbracing.com/lemans.html

By the way. The GTP video mentioned above has been edited and moved:

Edited by BrunoB, Jul 13 2013 - 02:21 AM.