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?