Round 2 of the NVIDIA Challenger Series opens tonight at midnight UK time.
Enter via the Community Events screen in-game, on all platforms. You will be driving the Corvette C7.R from the US Race Car Pack at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Only teams which registered during preseason will be eligible to score team championship points.
All drivers are eligible for driver championship points.
In the 2016 season, there are separate Divisions for PC and Console players. The PS4 and Xbox One physics/handling code is the same. There are some minor differences between the two consoles and PC, which is why we have separate Divisions for PC and Console.
Event regulations
Please read the FULL regulations on our Esports website. It is your responsibility as a competitor to read these. If you breach the rules either deliberately, or accidentally, ignorance is not an excuse.
TRACK LIMITS
It is critical that you obey the rules on track limits.
Drivers must use the track at all times. For the avoidance of doubt, the white lines defining the track edges are considered to be part of the track but the kerbs are not. A driver will be judged to have left the track if fewer than two wheels remain in contact with the track.
It is possible that you can cut the track or run wide without the game penalising you, and therefore your time & ghost will still appear on the leaderboard. SMS staff will review all of the ghost laps in the top 30 positions on all platforms to check whether drivers have stayed on track for their entire lap.
If we can see from your ghost that you cut the track or ran wide at any point, then we will not include your time in the official results.
In exceptional circumstances where many drivers go off track, we may have fewer than 20 valid times in a Division at the end of the event. However, to avoid further confusion this season, we will no-longer consider times from outside the top 30 to fill out the remaining points positions if these circumstances occur. Only the top 30 event ghosts will be considered from now on.
You must obey the track limits rules around the entire circuit, but please pay particular care on all wide kerbs, on any tarmac/concrete/painted run-off areas and in any areas of sand, gravel or grass.
At Laguna Seca you should be particularly careful in the Corkscrew. From the cockpit/helmet camera it can be very difficult to tell for certain if you have cut this corner or not, due to the steep elevation change. If you are concerned about this, please consider driving this corner from the hood/roof camera instead. You should also be very careful about using too much of the outside of the track on the run down to turn 1, cutting the blind apex at turn 6 or running wide on the exit, and running wide on the exit of the final corner.
If you are unsure which corners these are, please see this circuit map.
Improved times with track cuts
If you improve your time on the leaderboard, but exceed track limits on your new lap, then your time will be eliminated. If this happens, we do not roll back to your previous valid lap time. Only your fastest lap on the leaderboard at the end of the event will be considered for the final results.
Therefore, if during a lap you think that you might have cut a corner or run-wide even slightly, please back-off & abandon the lap, rather than set an invalid lap for the leaderboard. Otherwise you risk setting an invalid lap that you cannot replace with a faster, valid lap before the end of the event, meaning you miss out on possible championship points.
DISPUTES AND APPEALS
If the SMS staff decide that your ghost is marginal on track limits, we may contact you to ask for additional evidence. The only additional evidence that we will accept is chase camera footage of your actual lap, not of the ghost.
If you think that your lap is close to the limit of the track at any point, please save the replay. Then if we ask you for any additional evidence, you will be able to provide us with chase camera footage of your lap.
Failure to provide this footage can result in your time being left out of the official results.
We may also request this same video evidence if you claim after the event that a lap deemed to be invalid by SMS staff, was valid. The procedure is the same as the one above. Failure to provide this footage will result in your time being left out of the results.
Force Feedback
In the NVIDIA Challenger Series, you will use the default setup for the chosen car. This will override any car-specific, custom FFB settings you have. If you wish to adjust your FFB settings for this event, you will need to do so using the universal settings available in "Help & Options."
Assists
You should be able to run with assists on. In "Help & Options" if you turn the individual assists on, or set them to "Real", you should get these same settings in the event. Only the chosen car's real-world assists will work.
UPDATE 20/04/2016: Only the car's real-world assists will be available in the event. Please note that this GTE Corvette does not have ABS in real-life.
London Motor Show
Finally, please note that the official results for NCS Round 2 may be posted a little later than usual as AndyT and I are working at London Motor Show for most of next week.
That's all the boring stuff out of the way now. Good luck this weekend!