For those of you who raced at SimHQ in the fall of 2006, you probably recall the SimHQ 2.4 Hours of Orchard Lake endurance event. Orchard Lake is a fantasy rFactor track that is similar to the Daytona Road Course.

On October 7, 2006, almost 30 cars took to the grid for SimHQ's first public endurance event, "The Deuce". Simulated Zondas, McLaren F1s, Demons, Protons, and Porche GT cars competed in a 2.4-hour race with 10x time compression. I drove a McLaren F1.

We didn't know it at the time, but there were some problems with the McLaren F1 mod and some problems with rFactor. In the race I would receive drive-through penalties every time I completed a pit stop. I had a bad race and crashed a lot. When I came in for my fifth stop, rFactor wanted to put 306,839,968.3 gallons of fuel in the car, amounting to a pit stop duration of 96,740,696 seconds. After staring at my monitor is disbelief for a while, I briefly reported me quandry on TeamSpeak and pressed ESC in disgust.

SimHQ played around with the McLaren F1 mod in the ill-fated 24 hours of Le Mans and it gave us problems there as well. rFactor has since been patched so that cars cannot receive more fuel in the pits than the car's fuel tank can hold.

The most important achievement, however, occurred yesterday, on November 1st, 2009. This is that day that I noted in my calendar over three years ago. This was the day that that die-hard pit crew finally finished putting fuel in my battered McLaren F1 car. I think for fun I will install this mod again and do some laps at Orchard Lake.

You can read a detailed account of my race woes here, in the SimHQ archives.

I'd hate to have your fuel bill!!!

I'm sure with a bit more practice the pit crew could bring that down down a little.

Just tell them; "Ok guys, practice makes perfect. Do it again!"

Great news Joe.
What place do you think youŽll finish at

Chuckle-chuckle. Good one Joe. Funny, that 2.4, so daunting at the time seems pretty tame now.

Hey Guys,
I was in that race. Seems like longer than three years ago, but that is a long time for a pit stop.

I take you were leap frogged few positions during that stop.
Those darn pit crews, sometimes I think they are paid by another team.
I once had to finish a race at Spa in the rain (F1C) on DRY tires. I had made a new plr file or something or other and forgot to assign pit commands to my n52 mounted on my wheel. It began to rain and I realised I couldn't select wet tires. I made my stop, but came out on dry tires. I did finish that race though. It was tough, but I hung in there.
True story.

I believe that I lost all of the positions during the stop.

Absolutely TOO FUNNY JOE!

Ah yes, the demons and protons and others. It was a great race.

2.4 does now seem pretty tame, I agree. I DO like the 10x time factor, makes for an enjoyable race for sure. With no driver swaps, maybe a Duece-Redo should come in the works at a different track?

Out of interest. Are there any plans to run a 2.4hr race again?

I know we've had some disappointment for the F1 series, but perhaps a fixed setup 2.4 hr race might attract some interest. After all, we had a good turnout at the fixed setup 6 hrs at Bathurst.

I would probably do it, if it isn't fixed setups.
Shared setups, sure, fixed, no.

it's a funny one. I'd like my own setup but cant find the time for getting one done. Obviously either shared or fixed requires someone giving up time, but we did seem to get better turnout when there was a base setup available.

How about it doug? Are there any plans for this?

If we had a great base setup then I would be up for it

I'm hesitant to schedule anything else right now besides the twice-weekly Fun Series and the remaining 3 TCC Series races.

Those two series are a good litmus test to drivers time and interest, and I'm just not seeing much of either right now.

After TCC, I'm thinking we may want to offer the twice weekly Fun Series and a "special event" once ever 60 or 90 days. That way people will have time to prepare and block time in their schedules. Even the "regulars" like Joe, Chunx, Vikz, Papa_K, Chipwich, SpyDoc, Ktel and others who have been racing with for years are missing because of their schedule.

The two hosts for the Fun Series, Weasel_Keeper can't help they're not attending for reasons that are beyond their control -- EnvyODB is ill, WK has only a dial-up connection (for now).

Some drivers have moved to iRacing exclusively.

Others have lost interest in rFactor specifically. That's why we tried the GTR2 based TCC series. Let's see how the next 3 races go in attendance for that series.

In your poll Ian we saw very mediocre to negative interest for endurance sim racing events, and I suppose that is because of preparation.

American saying, "I don't know whether to wind-my-watch or fly straight up."

Hope you didn't break the speed limit on exiting the pits. If they call you in for a 10 second stop / go......

Doug, I think that it's high time for the 2.4 The Deuce Deux. Think about it with the car sets that we have now. Perhaps we can raise Thomas out of retirement LOL!

2 classes, a prototype and a GT. KISS.

The beauty of the 2.4 is that there are no driver swaps. Mano a mano.

See what happens when you pay your pit crews by the hour? They've probably unionized by now, as well.