The Chicane Podcast
Welcome to the Chicane Podcast, keeping you up to date on everything sim racing. As we venture into this dynamic realm of esports and virtual racing, we'll be exploring a variety of topics, from the cutting-edge gear that's transforming the way we race to the newest games, hardware and software that are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in this virtual sport. We'll also be giving you an inside look into the lives of some of the top virtual racers in the world, through in-depth interviews that will give you a unique perspective on what it's like to compete at the highest level in this rapidly evolving eSport. So, buckle up and get ready for an unforgettable ride as we take you right into the cockpit of this exciting digital racing world.
The Chicane Podcast
Guide to League Racing
What happens when you combine the thrill of racing with the complexities of technology? Discover expert tips from Vlad Sanchez of the Global Racing League on how to enhance your sim racing experience. From the nuances of hardwired internet connections versus Wi-Fi to managing league dynamics, we uncover the secrets to maintaining smooth races when every millisecond counts. Prepare to unravel the tech behind the speed and learn why hardwiring your setup might just be your best bet.
As we navigate the world of digital racing, we take a pit stop to reminisce about our personal journeys from the arcade days of Cruising USA to the modern complexities of sim racing leagues. We reflect on how our passion for racing was reignited during the COVID lockdown, sharing tales of nostalgia and the challenges of online racing. With Vlad's insights, we explore the evolution of the GRL and its diverse offerings, highlighting the vibrant community that keeps the tracks buzzing with energy and camaraderie.
Besides the adrenaline rush of the races, this episode illuminates the organizational prowess required to run a successful league. Dive into the world of spreadsheets, Discord channels, and structured competition as we reveal how the GRL fosters a supportive environment for drivers of all skill levels. Whether you're a newcomer curious about joining a league or a seasoned driver looking to optimize your racing experience, this episode promises to equip you with valuable insights and a renewed sense of community spirit.
GRL Discord: https://discord.gg/fZ29dMT29A
Please e-mail the show for any questions, comments or stories/experiences at thechicanepodcast@gmail.com
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The.
Jason:Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, where we discuss all things in the sim racing world. I'm your host, jason Ribeiro, and I'm joined here by Mr Eric Kelly, jeff Smart and Mr Vlad Sanchez, a GRL admin. How's everybody doing today?
Erick:Doing good man.
Jeff:Doing well, doing well. It's awesome having another guest in the studio Hell yeah, Vlad, what's up man?
Jason:Welcome pal, thank you.
Vlad:Yeah, I appreciate you guys inviting me to the podcast. Thank you, um, yeah, I appreciate you guys inviting me to the podcast. Um, a little bit of me was like I have some imposter syndrome here because I'm not anyone big like your last few guests we're all sim racers, bro. Remember that exactly, and I think that's exactly what I said in my my first email to you guys. We're just all sim racers and pretend race car drivers Want to be real race car drivers.
Jason:Well, sort of, except for the PlayStation guys, anyway. We were doing so good. We were doing so good.
Jeff:We're a minute in. I had to. We went like three episodes without talking Well.
Jason:I'm a little upset and I'm going to let Eric tell everybody why I'm upset. Eric in I had we went like two, three episodes without talking. Well, I'm a little upset and I'm gonna let eric tell everybody why I'm upset. Eric, what happened? To you last week bro what happened so.
Erick:So to let to you know, vlad will definitely elaborate, and I mentioned the last podcast, vlad and the racing league that he's an admin over. They run a very tight ship, which is much appreciated, and one of those rules for that ship actually caught me up, uh, this week for my supposed first race I didn't have a high enough uh rating and um and I racing to race, which I'm fine with. I actually appreciate that because it didn't allow anybody to just buy our racing, join a league and start causing chaos in this country.
Erick:So I'm perfectly fine with minimum requirements. I definitely missed that when I was signing up. If I'd seen it out of the little grinding to raise my level up, which I will do. But no fault of Vlad's, definitely my bad on on not catching that and not hitting the minimum requirement for it. So I did not get to do my first race are you making the next race? That is my plan, so right now we are.
Jason:No, I need, I need clarity.
Erick:So so here's the thing. Right now the clock is ticking. For me it's 1047. We're supposed to get like eight inches of snow. The military base In. Alabama, the Cine. Yeah, imagine eight inches of snow hitting Alabama. Bro, that's our preparation.
Jason:We are like it's about to be a disaster. There's no plow within 500 miles.
Jeff:Plow Bro. They had to ship in salt, just to put on about to be a disaster. There's, there's no snow problem within 500 miles.
Erick:Plow bro they. They had to ship in salt just to put on the roads. Oh, that's and that was yeah, so so basically we're in the state of emergency essentially. Um, hopefully it doesn't freeze over. We had like a week where everybody was like basically this whole city was frozen over. Uh, last year don't think it'll be that bad, but also we've just never really dealt with this much snow. So might be a couple days, might be more, um, just the cold that we're not used to dealing with.
Erick:We've had a lot of people, uh homes, catch on fire because they're trying to stay warm, and I mean it's it's stuff that's like normal in other places, but just here, not being used to it, we're going to see so when is this going down, brother?
Jason:when is this going down?
Erick:it's supposed to start here in like the next 15 minutes and the system that's coming through is supposed to snow for like 12 hours straight you got a solid foundation, you know.
Jason:Yeah, I'm privy to know what your house looked like. I think you'll be fine.
Erick:Yeah, like internally yeah, house would be fine. Uh, we got gas fireplace, gas stove. I bought some stuff that I can at worst case scenario, I can throw on the grill and cook, so we'll be fine. Spectrum sent me a notification that they're predicting internet outages, possibly power outages. Just because we're not a city designed for snow, all of our power lines are above ground. If any trees come down, they'll have to cut power there you go. What's the last time you seen snow?
Jason:Not here In Alabama, baby, all that sunshine ain't good for you, man.
Jason:Well, keep us posted, man, Let us know. And I want to take the opportunity. I know this show is about sim racing and we have our guest here with us. We have our guest here with us, but I just wanted to take the opportunity here and just you know whoever is going through the recent fires in California. So I'm just stay safe out there. You know, evacuate if you have to evacuate. I know this show comes out after the fact. I'm just expressing my feelings on what's going on on TV and stuff. It's not, it's not cool man.
Jason:so that's yeah we got, we got a snow problem in the east and now we have a fire problem in the west, which is kind of crazy for the very start of this year. So hopefully, um, yeah, so, so hopefully that people can find a way to work that out. I just lost the words here. I have friends out there and I've reached out to all of them to make sure that they're prepared. So that's all I can do. But anyways, up to announcements Excited. Up to announcements, excited. Ac EVO next week from well, not a week from now, but a week from the time that this episode will air and that's all.
Jason:I have. We're going to be covering AC EVO when it comes out. I for sure will have first hands on it whenever I can. So stay tuned for that one. So over to Eric or Eric or eric jeff, you guys got anything? Uh, put out this week before we get into main discussion uh, no, my, my announcement was gonna be.
Erick:I didn't get to get to race oh yeah, that was your announcement yeah, so I'm good, I'm disappointed yeah, I, I got one.
Jeff:I was in, um, I got one of the you know, the iRacing forums on Facebook. Uh, one of the groups. Um, somebody was complaining about you know all the net coating is garbage. Um, I missed the car that was spinning out by a foot and I still wrecked and they were complaining, um, and I thought some somebody brought up a little you know paragraph about you know what the net coating it is and cut it a little slack, I guess and I just want to share with everybody.
Jeff:Um, I have not verified these whatsoever, but nonetheless it was a very good way of explaining what the net code does and why it sometimes struggles. So, uh, the dude that was driving was on wi-fi, so just leave that for what it is to set it up. But he basically says at 150 miles an hour, your car covers 2.64 seconds or so in the distance of one millisecond. If your round-trip latency is 50 milliseconds, that becomes 132 inches or 11 feet. The client-side game has to guess and make up data on what's going to happen. Whoa, so the game, the net code, is figuring stuff out in 11 feet. It's just guessing, so like when you miss something in your eyes by an inch, two inches, a foot, two feet and it hits it.
Jeff:I, I guess it's it's doing pretty good, but it is it's just super interesting when you break down the latency, um, that you are going to have into actual distance, that the car is traveling, that the game has to kind of guess where, what, where your car actually is.
Vlad:But anyways, yeah, I just thought that was interesting yeah, dude, that's crazy a lot
Jeff:of people made comments and like that's the best explanation of netcoding I've ever heard. So I thought it was good, I was like no I have not fact-checked this by any stretch of the imagination, so cut me a little slack if it's not right, but I think it explains what it's actually doing pretty well. So, without further ado, I'm done with the announcements that's good man.
Jason:We should dig into this more because I mean, like I said, we're not an iRacing podcast, and yet we have a big iRacing topic today, but agenda. I should say but they do Not an iRacing podcast, and yet we have a big iRacing topic today, but agenda.
Jason:I should say but they do have a solid net coat, I'm sorry. Like inch to inch, bumper to bumper, it's pretty damn solid, like even private. Doing private races is freaking good. I mean, it's really. You can ask Vlad how many cars we had on track this race, vlad, how many were they?
Vlad:The first two weeks we've had 41 cars on track, and they're not big tracks, so it's like nonstop action. Wherever you are, rubbin's racing yeah.
Jason:This one was pretty clean. Though. This one was one of the cleanest races, not because people crashed each other, but because a lot of people actually, you know, made it through. You know, it wasn't like a big. I thought I saw a bumper, you know, on the first race, there was yeah it was like a bumper, bro. It's funny. It was like I'm driving and it's like turn one and there's a bumper like on the floor.
Jeff:Like every seat.
Jason:It was three wide so it was a little bit messy, but it cleaned up.
Erick:It cleaned up, yeah, so I'm going to piggyback off of what Jeff was saying for a second as to why it's so important, if possible, to hardwire and not use Wi-Fi. Because Wi-Fi constantly is dropping packets. Because Wi-Fi constantly is dropping packets and that packet has information that the game needs to better predict where you're supposed to be, where you're going, what you're doing. That's why you can see a Wi-Fi player from a mile away. They're kind of like jittery and stuttering all over the track.
Jeff:The best is when they're like disappeared from the track for like four seconds yeah, so yeah, and then they just like reappear, like on the other side of the track, in the air or some shit yeah, exactly yeah, listen sideways across the track, just pop up you know I run on wi-fi I do too. I'll be honest. It's just the way it is. I don't have an option.
Jason:I have a gaming mon, I have a gaming um. Uh, what do you call this Router?
Vlad:Yeah, and it's Wi-Fi 7.
Jason:It does, it does, but it's still. I'm not crushing your info right? Hardware is nothing better than hardware, because with hardware it don't matter what router is connected, you're hardwired. You know what I'm saying. So good point. I don't have a choice. I'm like jeff I'm on a second story and a lot of you know connect. I would have to do some serious modifications to the house just to hardwire pc.
Jeff:I don't think so your wife wouldn't, your wife wouldn't buy. Isn't okay, with you just running cable up the stairs and, you know, across the living room just knock a hole in that drywall man.
Erick:No, I'm gonna. I'm gonna run some conduit bro screw it. But to your point, jason I, I'm sure you're not using the you know a little belkin router from walmart no, dude, no you're, I got a nice asus freaking yeah you got the router?
Jason:yeah, I got some purpose purpose-driven equipment like gaming, but still routers add to the problem, though, because it could be a lag server side, and now I have another ounce of the lag from wi-fi. If you're using wi-fi, that's what I'm trying to say. Like you are correct, hardwire, you eliminate that part of it, unless you have an isp problem and which is you know, but then your eyes are on the server, like what's going on the server?
Jason:it's not me, you know. First thing you do is a speed test and see how, how much you're dropping and what's going on. But I never had a problem. Vlad, I don't know. Vlad could tell you if I'm lagging or not. He could um I.
Vlad:I think you blinked like one time in the last race, but it was nothing.
Jason:Oh no. There's a few drivers on the grid this season I'm going to get a contract over man Don't tell me that when they're consistent blinkers.
Vlad:No, you're good for the most part. Okay, all right, there's a threshold for sure.
Erick:There's definitely a gap between crap Wi-Fi. If you're in a hotel and you're on hotel Wi-Fi, trying to race there'll be a difference.
Jeff:Not an extra stop being in your house, and you're the only person on the network.
Erick:It's definitely a threshold. It's not all or nothing. Wi-fi doesn't equal bad. There are definitely different versions of it. Like you said, best case scenario is wired.
Jason:We're going to revisit this topic because obviously it's an important one and we haven't covered it. However, we have Mr Vlad Sanchez here. He has been a friend of the show for a long time. He was one of the first ones to email us too, I think so you're right, yeah right, it's like a second email, I think.
Vlad:Oh, okay.
Jason:It's like every episode you got to write second on the YouTube video.
Jeff:It's like every other video. We're randomly shouting out Vlad, for whatever reason.
Jason:Yeah, or grilling you just behind the scenes, though. You know what Vlad did? No, I'm just kidding.
Vlad:I appreciate the shout outs. Um, it's always funny when I'm I'm working, I'm listening to the podcast and I hear my name and I'm like, oh hey, kind of takes me out out of like work for a second. But um, yeah, it's it's nice to be a friend of the show again. I appreciate you guys kind of bringing me on here and the opportunity to talk about the league that I help run. I'm not an expert. I'm not an iRacing expert.
Jason:As Jason said, I feel like I'm just kind of an average sim racer, just like you guys, he's the one that got me to save money on iRacing. He's like yo, what are you doing? I was like nothing. He's like buy these two cars why you can get your money back. Why you can get your money back. By the way, it came from vlad bro. Hey, so, vlad, you, you don't, don't sell yourself short here, brother.
Vlad:Yeah, I mean, I help save you money and you help make me, uh, spend my own money, so yeah, no, no, why is it always me?
Jason:look at jeff, look at his setup, it's better than mine look because I hang out with you, amg.
Vlad:Common denominator Yep.
Jason:Well, Vlad, welcome to the show Tell us a bit about yourself, man. Tell us how'd you get into sim racing? You know what's going on. Tell us what's the story, Vlad, what's?
Vlad:going on with you. So sim racing. You know, I grew up playing a lot of Gran Turismo.
Jason:Oh. God and a lot of other old racing games back in the day.
Vlad:You know, when we were kids in the arcade there was always an arcade cabinet with a wheel.
Jason:Cruising USA, bro Cruising USA and some older ones like Outrun Damn. You remember that one?
Vlad:You ain't that old bro, stop playing um so you know it, I always kind of gravitated towards those games. Um, I I just always kind of liked the experience of sitting in a seat, having steering wheel and having pedals, even even when I didn't drive in real life, so that was always fun. Um, I first got my first wheel, um, I think right after I graduated college so I might be aging myself here, but my first wheel was for the xbox 360. It was like the official microsoft uh wireless wheel, so it had force feedback, it had a gas and a brake was it a thrust master?
Jason:what was?
Vlad:it. No, it was, uh, their own branded wheel. Oh, it was an xbox, yeah, xbox microsoft wheel, um, that they they make first party. So, um, you know, growing up I played a lot of gran turismo on the controller, but, uh that, the first time I got that wheel I played forza one and forza two, um, so that's kind of what um for got me in.
Vlad:And, um I I um grew up in Chicago, so, uh, when I moved out to California, where I'm at currently, um I I left my wheel back at home and, uh, didn't have a wheel for for years. So, um, I don't know what, what it was actually. Now that I think of it, I know what it was. So what got me to get my first wheel, or my second wheel? I guess in this case is my girlfriend at the time, fiance now.
Jason:We went to a hey. Congratulations, thank you, thank you.
Vlad:They have these Subaru festivals every year called Subi Fest, and there's a lot of vendors. You can see people's cars. They do autocross, they do ride-alongs with the rally drivers, and then at the time my girlfriend's like how come you don't do that with your car, because I have a Subaru.
Jeff:But as much as I want to.
Vlad:I don't have that kind of disposable income. You know I don't't have a separate car, I only have one daily driver. And if I mess it up, how am I supposed to get to work? So it just was never kind of in the books for me.
Jason:How do we figure this problem out?
Vlad:Yeah, exactly. So a couple of years after that, I think, during COVID lockdown, I started watching more sim racing, because that's kind of all there was. I became like an F1 fan, like I think some of you guys did during COVID.
Jeff:Amen brother.
Vlad:Yeah, I watched Drive to Survive. The story is old as time Saw all the real F1 drivers joining you know online races and it just kind of clicked like hey, hey, I forgot, like that's an option you know, I I used to have a wheel years ago and I, I forget, like I, I need to get caught up. And I, I did some research and, uh, I initially started with a fanatec wheel, um, because, my whole thing was uh, I I pictured myself just kind of playing Gran Turismo.
Vlad:So I got a Fanatec wheel, since it was PlayStation compatible, so didn't go entry level, kind of maybe mid-level, and then played Gran Turismo for a little bit, played a lot of AI races, went through the career mode, and then I got to a point where I was like, okay, I feel confident enough to try online racing. And I did maybe a handful of races and they were all kind of just a mess. You know, I remember my very first race. I was kind of side by side with this guy on a straightaway and then he just kind of gave me a little bump and I went into the wall and you know he didn't get a penalty and I was just done. So not the best first experience for online racing, but you know, maybe it wet my beak a little bit. So just strictly console racer. Then I just started venturing into PC. I had a gaming PC that I had built, so I started playing Dirt Rally.
Jason:I think I might have mentioned that in my email.
Vlad:So that was a big two I'm a big subaru fan so I you know they're big in rally and I I like dirt rally. So I played that for a little bit. Uh, did some upgrades to kind of get the performance a little bit better, started playing um like a set of corsa automobilista 2.
Vlad:There it is, bro yeah, it's, there's a formula to this, bro yeah, um, I I tested out, uh, the f1 games and it just did not click with me at the time. Um, you know, I I didn't like how it handled you know how we feel about those.
Vlad:It still doesn't click with us so and I love f1 yeah, no, I I do too, but um, maybe as of now I'm not too big on driving open wheel cars just yet. I like kind of popping in um every once in a while. So, uh, maybe I'm not on your level yet, jeff, but but eventually one one day.
Jason:Um glad you're an A-licensed driver in the formula, stop playing. Do I need to look? Do I need to pull this up? I was, I was.
Vlad:A-licensed before and then it split.
Jason:So you know, yeah, it happens, but you got it.
Vlad:If I were to go back into formula, I'm sure that'll drop right back down. But yeah, so you know, I kind of just played some PC games for a bit, Never went online, just played a lot of AI races or you know. Obviously Dirt Rally is kind of you're by yourself and I enjoyed that for a while and I don't know what, what it was, but I did like a free trial for I racing and, um, it didn't click with me at first. I was like I don't know the graphics aren't, aren't all that great.
Vlad:I don't understand, like the handling model. But, um, I gave it a chance and then, um, I uh I pretty much like fast-tracked my way through rookies, through D class, through C class, because in my head I'm also a big Porsche fan. I really wanted to drive the Porsche Cup car. That was the car I enjoyed playing in AMS, acc. I just really enjoy driving that car. So I just tried to fast-track myself to a C license so I could race the Porsche and it was fun.
Vlad:And then, um, I think I just randomly stumbled upon a reddit post about um, a league and they they focus on the porsche cup, and I joined and and I felt like such a noob, like I, I I had a discord account, but I never really used it. So I I had to go through the whole process, um, you know, joining the discord, signing up, getting learning how to use all yeah getting onboarded onto the league and, um, yeah, and I, I guess that's what I'm going to try to, you know, help.
Vlad:Uh, some of your listeners understand, because we we get that a lot. You know, every, every season, our, our league seasons align with I racing season. So every quarter there's a new season. We require everyone to sign back up, even if they're a returning driver, and you know we have a lot of new people all the time asking the same questions all the time. So hopefully I can kind of shed some insight on on that. You know, as we, as we talk about it.
Jason:Okay.
Erick:Nice.
Jason:That's what's up. That's a hell of a story man. It's cool, Sorry, Just it's.
Jeff:It's so cool to hear people's like I know journey and path of how they you know not, I'm living it. Do any of this to like where you are today. That's just, it's so. It's just super interesting to hear every story.
Vlad:Yeah. I'm one of those guys where I was, like I am not going to join iRacing, I'm not going to pay a subscription in order to race and it gets you eventually.
Jeff:Vlad real quick, if you don't mind. What does your rig consist of right now, before? We dig into the league.
Vlad:Yeah, right now. So I didn't do the buy once cry once. It's more like a buy twice.
Jason:I haven't done that, bro.
Vlad:I started off with some Fan attack gear, but, um, I've made some upgrades. I've been doing this for I. I started buying my sim gear in august 2023, so it's been a little over a couple years. Um, currently I have a simucube 2 wheelbase um triple screens, as you can kind of see behind me. Yeah, buddy, yep.
Jason:With the GRO logo. I see you, bro.
Vlad:Maybe two, three, four months ago I just got into an aluminum profile rig.
Vlad:Yes, one of the benefits of the league was one of my league buddies. He said that his best friend was looking for like a cockpit and I previously had the Playseat Trophy and I guess he was looking at that specific one. He's like, hey, are you willing to sell it? And I was like, yeah, you know, I've always kind of wanted to upgrade into a, an aluminum rig. And, um, yeah, so one of my league buddies, um, you know, bought the, the rig from me, or the placey trophy, and I, I got an aluminum profile rig. So I have a track racer TR120. Okay, I was initially going to do the Sim Lab from Micro Center. So I mean, it's good and bad, but I live next to a Micro Center. I work hybrid. I'm only in the office twice a week but my commute directly takes me past Micro Center every time.
Jason:That would be a problem, that would be a massive problem.
Vlad:Yeah, I had to drive by. Oh my God, yeah. So, um, you know, there there's been some spontaneous purchases from time to time, but it's it's really been built up over the last couple of years. Um, as you can see, I've got a GT Neo on the rig. Um, I have two round wheels, I have a Sparco R345 wheel and I use that kind of for rally or, you know, driving old cars.
Jason:I have a great wheel.
Vlad:I have an Asher button box with a Porsche cup wheel, so it's like one of those D shaped rims Got Hewson felt sprints. And I don't know if you can tell in my video, but it's inverted. I always wanted to do inverted, so kind of splurged on that it just feels more like a real car.
Vlad:Currently I have a Fanatec shifter, so that's my only Fanatec gear I have left. I have a Huesingveld handbrake and yeah, and actually the one thing I had mentioned to Jasonason before, um, I'm kind of, uh, I just got a 3d printer and I'm kind of building a diy shifter this is the plug, guys.
Jason:We got his email currently, so this is the plug I'm learning.
Vlad:I'm learning.
Jason:It's kind of a learning experience we'll send you things for you to practice on. Yeah, I mean, if you need a print, let me know, but, um, you know, it requires a little bit of me know, but you know it requires a little bit of soldering, which I don't know how.
Vlad:So it's kind of a learning experience for me.
Jason:And if, if everything kind of works out.
Vlad:I'll have like a, a shifter that feels like a real car, Like you can switch between each pattern.
Jason:Is it the thing you're building? Kind of okay, if you give me like two seconds, I can grab it.
Vlad:Go and grab it, dude you got to see what this guy's building real quick. It's not done, but um, here, let me. Let me give you a sneak peek, all right, okay all right intermission time dude, I think it's a matter.
Jeff:It's a matter of time before either me or you need to pull the trigger on this 3d printer thing.
Jason:You're waiting on me you're.
Jeff:You're actually right. I'm waiting on you. Look what he's doing.
Vlad:This is a temporary shift now um, I'm gonna put I have a sparkle shift now by my current shifter, but, um, this is all 3d printed. Obviously there's some metal parts here. Um, and all the internals in the red is, uh, 3d printed all right so yeah um you clearly like the. I think I've got it on sequential but actually I've got it on H pattern, but it feels chunky, clunky, if you like that feeling Chunky and clunky.
Erick:So did you 3D model that yourself, or did you? Kind of piggyback off of some pre-existing designs Like where'd you get that from?
Vlad:Yeah, I didn't design it myself. Someone online did it. I think his name is lebois racing, so he has a discord and a patreon, I believe. So. I think he used to provide the plans for free, but now it's only. It's five dollars. You know, like how much money do we spend on our rigs?
Jason:yeah, well, five dollars is nothing so you can't even go to starbucks for five dollars. They'll look at you.
Vlad:Yeah, they'll go catatonic on you.
Jason:They'll be like what am I supposed to do with $5?
Vlad:I think all in the plans the 3D filament and you do have to buy some metal hardware. It's about $200, $250 all in. And the best thing too is if you do the clutch lockout, if you don't press your clutch in, you can't shift it into the gear. That's cool, bro. Wow, we'll see. We'll see.
Jason:Yeah, I remember you guys talked about a different shifter. Like a couple episodes. Daniel newman was talking about something similar and when you, at the same time, you were telling you send me a message. You're like this look look at what I'm working on. I'm like dude. We just talked about this.
Erick:So it's only a matter of time, bro. Yeah.
Jason:It's only a matter of time, it looks great, though.
Erick:Thank you. Which printer do you have, out of curiosity? Which?
Vlad:printer. Oh, I have a Bamboo A1.
Erick:That's the one I was telling you about Eric Kelly bro, that's the one.
Jason:So over Christmas?
Erick:Yeah, I know, we were just about to buy that we were talking about it, going back and forth about it. My friend, he has a bamboo lab but he has like an older one it's the one that costs like a thousand bucks. But I mean, he's literally like he's had 3D printers in the past and like he's kind of talked to me about them but he never did anything with them because he's like they're so finicky. It takes so much back and forth and trial and error and he just came to work one day. He's just like hey, find something for me to print for you. And I just went online and found some plans and just sent them to him and he's like pull out his phone, okay, it's printing. And he got home and pulled it off. He's like it's ready to go like I didn't have to do anything.
Erick:I don't have to like it's the best printer. Yeah, that that he's had. It's like it's just so simple when you have some good plans, and so that's.
Jason:That's confirmation, jason go ahead, you go. So listen, let's not steer. Yeah, we're going way left here. So this is great, lad, let us know. Great design. Let me know when it's finished. You know I might have to talk to you about this.
Vlad:We'll see If I don't mess up the electronics. I'll let you know.
Jason:Yeah, because that clutch thing, that alone has got me interested, anyway.
Jason:So give us a brief, so we learned what you're racing on and we just learned about what you just built, which is awesome, um, and we know that you got into the league. What is the league and what does it consist of, as you know as of right now, like, what kind of? What kind of events can we expect out of that? Is it just the Porsche League? Is it different options? Is there any different options? You know we struggle because we live in Hawaii and it's hard to find a time to race. I have a little bit more free time than Jeff, but Jeff sometimes is up late and he's like man, I really want to race with a group but it's late, you know.
Vlad:So, if you can walk us through, uh, what GRL consists, uh, so, um, when I first joined the league, uh, I think it was September of 24. No, sorry, september of 23. Um, they, um, were primarily a Porsche cup league. I think it was called the Porsche Cup Challenge at that point, oh so it wasn't GRL, it was no, it was oh OK.
Vlad:So so they had two different series, both with the Porsche Cup in iRacing. So they had one series kind of meant for people in the Americas, you know time zone, so North and South America and Central America we have a lot of drivers from, from all over the place.
Vlad:Wow, you know kind of says it in the name global racing league. And then we also have a, a European series running, you know, the same tracks but at a different, on a different day, at a different time to kind of accommodate to their time zones. So we kind of call it the Porsche Cup Americas and the Euro Porsche Cup. So that's how it was initially when I first started in the league. And then recently well, I shouldn't say recently, but maybe like about a year ago we introduced an MX5 league, which is what I helped, uh admin to begin with, and then we also introduced an f4 league. So currently we've got four, or I should say, series. So we have four different series two with the porsche cup, one with the mx5s at the time and then, uh, one with f4 okay, and and now you've got a good pretty good.
Jeff:It's good peanut butter spread of cars.
Vlad:Yeah.
Jeff:You know you got open wheel. You know a pretty high performance car. You know. And then something that you know, the entry level sports car.
Vlad:Yeah. So the MX-5 was meant to be kind of geared towards newer drivers. Obviously it's a free rookie car geared towards newer drivers. Obviously it's a free rookie car. So for the first three seasons it was primarily just an MX-5 League or MX-5 Series. Last season I kind of pitched the idea hey, let's make it a multi-class and let's bring in the Toyota GR86. They're pretty similar in pace, depending on the track. Sometimes the Mazdas are quicker, Sometimes the Toyotas are quicker, and I think that did pretty well last season. But then they introduced the M2, which is another free rookie car, and I was like we need to get rid of the Toyota and bring in the BMW M2. M2 um, there's a bigger pace difference. It's kind of more true to like a real multi-class experience.
Vlad:Um, it's kind of lapping about four to five seconds faster per lap and it brings in a lot of traffic and that's kind of like the the fun with multi-class. You're kind of running two different races at the same time on the same track. So you've got the bmws racing together, you've got the mazas racing together and when've got the Mazdas racing together and when there's traffic? That's just part of the strategy. You're just trying to navigate through traffic, whether you're the faster car or the slower car. And you know, sometimes you have, like the leaders of the Mazdas getting laughed by you know mid pack BMW drivers and it introduces a lot of, you know opportunities for you know Chaos, chaos and shenanigans on track.
Jason:Yeah, because eventually it happened to us last race. Eventually you start lapping the Mazda and you're going to have to pass all of them and that could be a. It could be a pain, because now they updated the game and there's a bunch of gravel on the road and the tires are kind of done. I know my tires were cooked, bro at the end. At the end I was struggling for grip on the BMW, but yeah, man, that was so much fun. So those are the four if you make it Currently.
Vlad:we're always looking into adding more I think more in the European time slots, because there's always people that join and then find out, you got to make a Hawaiian league for Jeff.
Jason:Okay, we need to bring this up to the council.
Vlad:I'm in California and you know a lot of the guys are on the East coast of the U? S, so they're three hours ahead. So I'm trying to get home in time and eat a snack and I hop in my rig and I'm trying to like kind of reset my brain before a real or before a league race starts. And it's tough sometimes. So I get it.
Jason:Yeah, like me, dude, I was, yeah, I was, I was. I was racing to get back home to jump in. I thought I had five minutes, but then daylight savings I didn't know, so I had a whole extra hour.
Vlad:So, okay, so you covered the league, what it consists and its current state, and we know that it's being represented in many different countries you know the number no you know, um, we've been talking about um doing some sort of um survey for for the league, because we we kind of want to know, like, what are the different age ranges, what countries I I couldn't give you a number, but in in our um sign up sheets, you know, you kind of have to put the country you're from or you're in we, just because we are the global racing league and they got the puerto rican flag in there. So don't you count us, they do there's definitely a lot of flags.
Jason:We're. We're not a state, but we're our own thing almost a state should be a state okay, yeah, we should be all right. So, uh, eric or jeff, I'm gonna let you guys. I got one eric, if you're.
Jeff:If you're not real, let me jump in. Hey. So, um, what's a good step you know for for me, for example? Um, I have a b license. Um, what is a good step for me to join any league? You know global racing league or you know, know, whatever it is. Is it, what is it at? Is it a good idea to get in with my B license or should I just go in as a? You know into their, you know their D equivalent, or did you set it up with? You know your I rating or your safety? How does that work and what would be your recommendation? You know, for me who's never raced a league race but has decent experience, a couple seasons of iRacing experience.
Vlad:Yeah, so, um, obviously I can only really speak towards. You know the league that I'm in, um, but I I know a lot of other leagues operate pretty similarly. Some of them are a paid league, some are free. Ours is free. Some have a minimum iR requirement. We don't. So what we have is a license requirement. So, regardless of your I rating, you can't be a rookie. You need to be minimum. In the MX-5 and M2 series that I'm an admin in, our minimum is a D license, 2.0 safety rating. So that's all you need for our series, since we're kind of geared towards the newer drivers. The other ones, I believe, are D 3.0. You know off the top of my head, so it's a little bit higher. Um, sometimes we have guys that kind of drop down, you know, in officials and and we just kind of have to tell them, like you need to grind a couple of races, kind of like what I told you, eric, get back up, because if you're, if you're not at that level, it's only fair, honestly.
Vlad:You can see the session, but it won't let you join. Um, so that's sad. I I would say, uh, jeff it. You know you have a B license, just just pop in. You know we, we have guys that are fresh out of rookies coming in, whether it's the, the series I I admin, or the M4, or I'm sorry or the F4, or the Porsche cups, uh, people will come in cause. It's, it's, it's kind of a wide range of talent in our league.
Jason:You know we, we have guys that are under 1,000 eye rating up to 9,000 eye rating.
Jeff:We have a lot of eye rating guys. One of them is a coach. You said nine, right?
Jason:Yeah, one of them is a coach, right.
Vlad:Yeah, we have a handful of guys in that 6, 7, 8, 9,000 range and that's the thing. I don't want people to sound like it's intimidating, because it's not. I tell people all the time you're going to have a bad time if you're just comparing yourself to a 9K iRating driver. You're just going to frustrate yourself because you're not gonna be at that level like right away yeah.
Jeff:I always say, hey, you might have a higher iRating, but nobody has more fun than me out there racing.
Vlad:Yeah it's like when you don't have a fast car you say smiles per gallon that's there you go absolutely 100 that's a good way to look at it yeah, currency honestly it's.
Jason:Anything can happen in a race, though, regardless of I rating. You know things happen. I've seen people spin out and they come back, and sometimes they don't make it in time. That's just the way it is, you know.
Vlad:I would join right away. Um, don't feel like there's any requirements other than your license and your safety rating okay being the minimum. We have guys that are brand new. They'll come in, you know, maybe their first couple races are a little rusty. They, they crash themselves out, they caused a couple incidents, but a lot of people are, you know, apologetic. They, they take responsibility and accountability and that's kind of the main thing.
Vlad:And then they come back and you can see, like a lot of the older guys in the league that have been around longer than me, they tell me the same thing.
Vlad:They saw my improvement. Uh, you know, throughout the year and a half I've been in the league and same thing. I see that now that I've been in the league, I've been seeing guys that will join and then throughout the seasons you can tell like they're, they're faster, like there's guys that are are there, that are slower than me to begin with, and then then all of a sudden they're much quicker than me and now they're competing with like the five, six K I rating guys and just kind of leaving me in the dust, which is fine. You know that we have. We have people to kind of compete against, whether you're you're like, as I said, like a pretty much a professional to you know, pretty much a newbie. So I feel like you know, you're you kind of have your feet wet you're, you're you're racing, you're on the service, you can. You know there's no, no better time to join a league than than now really Well said brother.
Erick:Yeah, you kind of answered. One of the questions I was going to ask was which was how much does the league cost, which is free, which is amazing, and when you go over just the layout?
Jason:I like how you said that.
Erick:Sorry, yeah, just the layout of everything you guys have thought of as far as admission to the league and the structure of it. That being free is going to be kind of crazy. Like that being free is going to be kind of crazy. But you test them a little bit. But what are some of the advantages of being in a racing league versus just going online and racing? Obviously, I'm very familiar with the Gran Turismo woes you mentioned guys crash you off and just driving off into the sunset and not caring and how you guys kind of minimize that. But what are some of the other advantages of racing in a league versus not racing in a league?
Vlad:Yeah, so the biggest advantage I would say is just the accountability.
Jeff:You know as.
Vlad:I said, they're not public races. So a lot of people kind of have that. You know, a lot of people don't want to ruin other people's races because because you're going to see these guys again next week, you know um you kind of throughout the week everyone kind of has conversations amongst each other in the discord. So you're kind of building a rivalry, kind of like how Jeff says like you know, steve from Texas, or whatever.
Jason:It's funny.
Vlad:I think you mentioned someone from Kansas and we do have a Joey from Kansas and I remember like thinking about that. That's kind of funny.
Vlad:But, yeah, you kind of learn, like the different people in the league, how they drive and there's a lot of accountability.
Vlad:People will crash and you'll hear it right away on the chat, like oh, I'm so sorry, like I locked my break, like I, I didn't mean to do that, and and people kind of have a reputation like a lot of the regulars.
Vlad:They're they're all very clean drivers. Obviously some are a little bit more aggressive than others, bro, um, sometimes you have, um, I I would say in the first week, two, maybe three weeks of a new season. It's a little obviously because we have a lot of new drivers that come in and the ones that are maybe a little too aggressive they end up kind of filtering themselves out. You know it's not like we kick people out of the league, but I think they see if we hold them to like a higher standard than public races, you know it's like hey, drive cleaner. Or you know you you're not gonna really have a good time here, um, because a lot of people are are kind of on the same page, right like you, you have a full-time job, you have a family, you know you've kind of been waiting all all night for for this race and and you, you want to have a good time.
Vlad:You know, regardless if you're on the podium or not, like just battling, like in the mid pack, or even in the back, it's, it's a, it's a really fun time and and it is just the accountability is nice, and then just kind of building you know, like friendships and and like kind of friend friendly rivals, um, as you race throughout a season, you know, I I kind of have the same group of guys that I'm always telling you battling with every single week.
Jason:There's pink car. I don't know who he is, but you know, because they use their own custom skins so you know for me. I just been watching out. I know your skin, vlad. You got the stars in the back and I'm like that's freaking vlad up there.
Vlad:Yeah, it's kind of cool yeah, it's a, it's a big community feeling. Um know, everyone kind of hypes each other up. Uh, on race day people are posting gifts, like it's race day. It's race day, I'm excited, and you know, everyone comes in. We have like an hour, hour and a half practice prior to qualifying and people are just kind of running laps, kind of chatting, catching up with each other and it's it's fun. It's fun to kind of hear from the same people every week and I would say that's the biggest thing accountability and just kind of the community within the league.
Jason:It's more like a club is what it is I say Like a big car club?
Jason:Yeah, because a league, you know, when you say league it's kind of like different players against each other. But even though we're kind of competing against each other, but there's a lot that goes into. Like, when you're racing I'm hearing comms the whole time from people and you know, at one point you know I'm just sharing my own experience with it I was struggling with fuel and you know you guys helped me out and yeah, I had to use the bathroom during a live stream at 30 seconds like go, go, go go.
Vlad:That shit was funny anyway yeah, and it's, it's a very positive um atmosphere. You, you're never, really hearing people go like, like, oh you know, like this guy I don't like racing against this guy. It's usually like oh man, you had a really good race today. Um, you know, like this guy, I don't like racing against this guy. It's usually like oh man, you had a really good race today.
Vlad:You know we we just had our Porsche league race tonight. I was just mentioning that I think it was my best finish so far in this league. You know we had 34 cars on grid. It was at long beach, so it's a.
Vlad:It's a track that you guys had covered a few weeks ago long beach in the Porsche Cup and we had 34 drivers and I'm usually like a solid midfield racer, but there were a couple of accidents but I avoided them and I would have to say it's kind of my home track because I'm about 20, 25 minutes away from there. It's a road course, so it's not like I can really race there. But, I'm near Long Beach and I finished in P6 out of 34.
Jason:And that was my best finish ever, my man Vlad Dang.
Vlad:We just had it before this recording and I was a little bummed because I usually post race.
Jason:I'm telling you my man is celebrating. He even busted out the Hawaiian shirt on us. Man, Look at that.
Vlad:Yeah, I had to kind of pay homage to a couple of you guys in Hawaii, so brought the Aloha shirt little shaka.
Jason:there All you need is a bottle of champagne bro.
Jeff:I see a little bit bigger smile than you know a normal person's smile. So yeah, I'd be smiling too if I was a top. You know P6 and 30 plus people Hell yeah, it was fun.
Vlad:I'm usually not that high, so a lot of it was just some of the top guys just got caught up in incidents. But hey, that's like racing.
Jeff:P6, buddy.
Jason:It's just like F1.
Jeff:Look at the real life F1,. You know, when you know someone like Even Lance Stroll gets a top 10 occasionally. There you go. I'm not comparing Vlad to. Lance Stroll and his driving ability whatsoever. Just bring up a point.
Jason:That Stroll out of all people Jeff. I know. Anyways, that's what's up, man. So the next question well, it's more of it's a bigger question. So, now that we know and understand what the league is, can you walk us through, like do a mock on how to sign up? How do we sign up? How do we get there? How do we sign up? How do we join races, how do we view them, everything what's going on, vlad?
Vlad:Sure, yeah, so I can try to run kind of through the process a little bit to kind of um show everyone how it's. It's very simple, um. I mean, I like I said I I don't want it to kind of sound intimidating, it's. It's pretty, pretty straightforward. Once you have like the proper links that you need to kind of click on, right there you go, so um yeah, we'll be sharing all this in the description below, and you can email us at thechicanepodcast at gmailcom for any questions regarding the league.
Vlad:Yeah, so I can share my screen and kind of do kind of a quick run through of you know the onboarding process.
Jason:Hell yeah, man, let's see how we get there. So, we can get more people. The goal is to get more people in there, man, because it's good. It's a good community. It's big already, but the more the merrier, I'd say.
Vlad:Yeah, definitely. Actually, that is not the tab I wanted to share. Okay, no worries, got a lot of tabs open here. Sign up form. There we go, so you know. Before every, can you see the screen?
Erick:We can.
Vlad:So, before every season in iRacing we have separate admins for each series. So, obviously, as I said, I'm one of the admins, I'm the lead admin for the MX5 M2 series. I have a co-admin, tom, so him and I will post on Reddit pretty much We'll kind of share a link of hey, this is our league, kind of high-level bullet points of what day of the week it is. It's free. These are the cars, this is a schedule that we run. You know, if it's, if it sounds interesting to you, you know, click, click this link. Uh, join our discord for more info. And you know, see, if it's something that kind of, uh, you'd be interested in joining. So, uh, we, we have a, a form that you have to go through. So, um, you can see, it's our league signup form. It was for this season that just started. Um, another thing I failed to mention is, um, you know you can sign up anytime, like we're.
Vlad:We're already, you know, mid season we're about four weeks into the iRacing season, Um and um, you can join anytime. So some people that is one of the most common questions say, hey, you guys already started, can I still join? And we're like, yeah, you know, like you can join anytime, you could pop in. You know we don't require everyone to show up every week. Obviously people have lives. But you know, if you're not really trying to gun for that that league championship for the season, you know you can pop in here and there. And even if you are competing for or if you want to win the, the league, uh, we offer three drop weeks so you can miss three weeks and um, or. Or you know, if you show up every week, your three lowest scores are dropped.
Jeff:So that's pretty cool. Makes you a little bit of flexibility, rewarding.
Vlad:So kind of skipped ahead a little bit. But, um, yeah, we have this sign up form. Uh, you just go in. It says like I applied to this league. Here's a link to our league on the iRacing ui. You go in and then you click um, join um. So I'm going to go to the next page here, um, and it says like, type your exact name on iRacing. So you would just type your, your name. I'm just going to type test for our demonstration purposes. And then the next screen is a number choice. Some people don't care, they'll put whatever. Some people have, or they're attached to a number and they want that number, bro, who got 22, man?
Vlad:Who got 22?
Jason:I'm about to I think it's an admin.
Vlad:I think it's an admin in our European league.
Jeff:That's tough to be an admin, yeah.
Jason:Let me know how much it costs if you let that go I think you need to become an admin.
Vlad:So, um, you know, we we have three man, three spots where you can put your number choices. Um, I'm just gonna, let's see, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to scroll yeah, do you, brother. I'm just gonna put some numbers in just just to test. And then it says you know what leagues are you applying to? Do you want to join the Thursday league? Let's say yes. Do you want to join the Sunday Porsche league? Let's say no, you know.
Vlad:so it's kind of a very what do you want to what do you want to race? Essentially, you can say yes to all of them. You couldn't say yes to one. Look at all these series. You got yeah and then, and then if you're in in the series that I, I uh help. Admin, you know we're a multi-class series. We try to um make everyone kind of stick to that one car for the season, um so don't you do it.
Jason:Don't you do it, so let's click M2.
Vlad:Otherwise Jason will yell at me. And then here you can select your nationality, and this is where we see all the different flags in our league, puerto.
Jason:Rico. We are the global racing league.
Vlad:We kind of rebranded once we introduced F4 and the MX5.
Jeff:So I'll just quit how many seasons have you been running the F4?
Vlad:F4, I think we're in the fourth season, so this is almost a full year of the F4.
Jason:You know, and before you go any further, the tracks that you guys use, are they all free tracks?
Vlad:So for the MX-5 and M2, those are free rookie cars. So, to keep it simple, we run the rookie schedule. So they're all free tracks.
Jason:There you go you don't have to buy anything.
Vlad:You don't have to buy anything other than, you know, the subscription that we all pay for, um, and what we do for our series is we run on a one week delay. So so, uh, tracks change every week, um, and our races are on Tuesday. So, um, you know, people practice during officials for a full week and then, um, to kind of round out their week, then they have a league race.
Jason:So, that's such a good idea. Yeah, ample opportunity for for practice.
Jeff:Yeah, because you're practicing. Yeah On the open races, yeah.
Vlad:Yeah, so you go through this, you hit submit and then it comes to like a, a google sheet spreadsheet for us admins, and then we can go through, see who signed up, um see what leagues that they've uh signed up for. Uh, let me kind of bring in a uh another.
Jason:This is very professional, by the way v I like what I'm seeing here, yeah super squared away.
Jeff:Thanks.
Erick:That's what I was saying, man. I was shocked. I haven't even done a race yet.
Vlad:And I'm like, so I'm not going to click through all the tabs here, but that form kind of all gets you know consolidated into this form responses. I'm not going to click because it just has everyone's name and discord info. So I'm going to try to avoid showing that. I did want to show this available numbers tab just because you know people are like hey, like I want this number, and we're like hey, check check out the spreadsheet and you can see what numbers we've got. You know, I think for this season we've got almost 200 people signed up amongst all four of our series. So numbers are hard to come by. You can do triple digits. I think we try to avoid leading zeros, so like no 002. But yeah, some people care, some people don't care. So just wanted to kind of show that and then let me kind of uh look at the formula in that sheet somebody knows their excel uh formulas yeah, and and um, I, I need to give credit to, like our, our spreadsheet master.
Vlad:Uh, philip, he, he's the one that you know put the standings together. Um, you know, I, I didn't put it together.
Jason:Um there's always somebody bro.
Vlad:Yeah, you can go to our spreadsheet master, so I'm gonna um bring in, trying to bring in, um, yeah, just to kind of give you a quick look at at our discord, you know we've got our, our server guide. You can see the admin team, kind of like a mission statement in a way. And then I do kind of want to show one thing just to give Jason some props. So every time we race we have different channels here. Obviously I have some, because I'm an admin, some extra ones. So, like Eric mentioned, we've got different sections channels here. Obviously I have some, because I'm an admin, some extra ones. Um, so like like eric mentioned, you know we've got like different sections for everything. You know, just general discussion you know, off topic stuff.
Vlad:You know um porsche cup discussion, um mx5 discussion, m2 discussion, um post race. We always do, uh, we, well, we do a pre-race announcement. You know this is the track tonight. These are different pointers. This is our race format, um, and then, uh, post race, we, we show. You know who finished on the podium, and I don't know if Jason's had a chance to see this, but, um, on our last race at um, on the MX five, m two league, you know um my other admin, tom, he'll kind of do a little write-up there was a lot of gravel on on the course, so you know he was saying that safe flight auto glass but I did want to show this, so um we've got jason there in the amateur, amateur division for m2 so
Jason:came in um third look at me.
Erick:I'm number 69 good for you, dude.
Vlad:Good for you, it's kind of another way to kind of, uh, add to, like that I racing experience, you know. So like we don't get that with public races, but you know we want to give people props when, when they do well, dude, hell, yeah, yeah yeah, and, and I think that's why a lot of people keep coming back. Right, I come back.
Jason:You know what it is. I come back. This is all great, by the way, but I usually come back for the people. The people there are so awesome, love joining the chat and sharing stories and stuff.
Vlad:And then we go on track and we're're complaining about the gravel so we tell people during the races for the in-game iRacing chat, um try to kind of stay off of it unless you know you have like an important announcement like, oh, you know, I'm sorry, or just just something you know like, but if you want to be, you know um talkative and talk. We we have a discord voice chat that people will join during the race and most people keep their mics open and it's just kind of a random conversation as you're racing, people in front of you, people behind you. Today people were like, oh, there was an accident at the hairpin, watch out for the hairpin. And people are like, oh, thanks for the heads up.
Jason:So yeah, that was kind of a little bit.
Vlad:What you guys got going on is really special bro yeah it's really like a vision statement yeah, so we we have a rules document every every series that we run, um has, I would say, about 90 the same rules. Uh, we kind of tweak little things here and there, but you know, we'll talk about kind of what what we're kind of expecting from people that join and and essentially it's, you know, be nice to others and race clean and don't be dirty, and that's really, I think, all you can really ask of people. And then you know, we show like general conduct your license requirements.
Jason:So do you hit them with the under section two, paragraph eight? No, I mean every once in a while.
Erick:You have been reprimanded.
Jason:I'm just kidding.
Vlad:We're not that strict about that.
Jason:I know, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding.
Vlad:But but we we do want to, kind of, we we link people to this document like hey, thanks for joining. You know, have have a look at at our um, our rules document. You know we can't expect everyone to read through everything, so obviously sometimes you know people don't follow certain rules. But you know it's, it's kind of a learning experience and you know it. We just try to make the best of it. So it just kind of dictates, like all the different things. So, um, I I didn't mention, but we have um different race formats. Um, you can see, like, uh, we we use the yes, certain setups for each car.
Vlad:Uh, we follow the official schedule.
Jason:I'm a huge fan of your dude, of all that the superheats your heart is pounding and then you got like a minute break.
Vlad:Yeah. So what? What we say is you know, like, maybe you get taken out turn one. You know, um, you're, you're nights not over, we're going to have another race in 15 minutes, or even if you have a clean race. You know, you're, you're, it's a 10 minute race. You're, you're battling with the same guys and, um, literally when, when the race ends, um, you don't have to do anything in, in, I iRacing, it just kind of brings you back to the pits, and then we, we grid for the next heat, so it kind of moves through that whole process for you. So, um, people that join the league, you know they don't have to worry about anything once they join the actual race session, like everything kind of progresses from there automatically this is eric.
Jason:I'm sorry to butt in. Remember, eric. He was watching my live stream and I was yelling out to you, yo, how much fuel do I need for this next heat? You dipped out on me. I was like Eric, where'd you go?
Erick:I put it in the chat.
Jason:I'm trying to scroll up.
Erick:I had the screen going and my wife. She was like Jason's calling for you. I was like, are we in the bathroom?
Jeff:Those are super cool heats. I guess you rotate them every week or so.
Vlad:Yeah, we kind of have a discussion amongst admins like this track is probably better with this format. So we try to switch things up and obviously when you're kind of stuck using the rookie schedule, there's going to be overlap from season to season or repeat tracks. So we try to switch up the formats to kind of uh, bring a little bit of variety, um, you know, for a multi-class, we do rolling starts.
Vlad:So this is kind of this has been like a big um uh, it's kind of fluid because it's kind of changing every race. We're kind of tweaking it. Um, because there there is a little bit of a limitation in the iRacing um uh, software when, when we have heat races, it won't let us check the option to have all the cars grid together. So we we can't, when we're running multiple heats, we can't have all the m2s, so we can't, when we're running multiple heats, we can't have all the M2s and MX-5s gridded together. So, unfortunately, if there's some M2s that have slow qualifying laps, they're in the back with the MX-5.
Jason:So what we did in the last week-, bro, if you had the MX-5,. Sorry man, I'm going to shut up right now. All good, don't?
Vlad:let no.
Jason:MX-5 out-qualify a BMW. Come on man, what's the world coming to?
Vlad:We do have some newer drivers, I know.
Jason:I know. That's why I need to Don't listen to me.
Vlad:We have some aliens in the MX-5.
Jeff:Okay so there's some MX-5 drivers that are-. There's some MX-5 drivers that are BMW.
Vlad:Yeah. So again, it's a rookie car, but you're you're going to have, like our, our nine K guy races in the MX five.
Jason:Yeah, he can, he can.
Vlad:Yeah, dude yeah.
Jeff:Beat me at an F4 car.
Vlad:Yeah, one thing I do want to mention here is you know kind of a way to have you competing with people in your skill. You know kind of a way to, um, have you competing with people in your skill. You know, skill group is that we have pro and amateur division. So, um, I say we don't have an eye rating. Uh, you know minimum or maximum and we, we don't. We don't do pro and amateur based on eye rating, cause you know you could be like me, I don't race a lot of officials.
Vlad:So if anything, my I rating is a little lower than it probably should be. But you know that doesn't bother me. I primarily do league races and that's kind of what I'm here for. But, um, what, how we do it is based on your qualifying. So we, we, we classify you on pro and amateur based on your, on your actual pace rather than your I rating, because I mean you could be like a 3k I rating guy in one car, but not a different car, obviously so that's, that's our way of of trying to um, get it.
Vlad:You know more specific to the cars we have in each series. So we say you know, if you qualify in the top 30% of the field, um, you're, you're a pro. And um, that happens in your first three races. Um, and then the second way to be pro is if you set a race lap within 1% of the fastest lap. So today they were joking in the Porsche league that, hey, you're probably a pro now Cause you did so well, but I'm not you know I as as well as I did, I'm still two seconds off the top guys, you know, per lap.
Vlad:So um you know I I like racing with the other amateur guys. I'm just going to be in the back of the pros.
Jason:Um, I remember you know qualified, you qualified in one of the races. You're like shit, I qualified, I did.
Vlad:Yeah. But we do have one thing where you know you could have just been really good at that one track, but you're not really pro pace. That's fair. After the first, I think, four or five weeks you can kind of message one of the admins like, hey, I'm not really a pro driver and we'll kind of look at your results and if that makes sense we'll drop you into amateur. Okay, yeah, and then just kind of quickly, you know we have our rules and regulations we talk about holding your brakes, and that's our main thing we try to stress that when you lose control, you crash.
Vlad:Hold your brake, because then at least you kind of have a predictable path. And you know this goes, you know, also to officials like you. You always hear it when, when people like roll back onto the track and take people out, everyone yells at them hold your brakes. So I I would say for the most part everyone follows this pretty well. And yes, you know, we also have cornering rules. We we talk about like what, what, what um is like fair overlap into the apex, and we kind of you know we try to.
Vlad:As I said, we're all make-believe race car drivers and I think having these rules kind of makes us all feel like. You know, we have the FIA kind of governing our league in a way we kind of do bro.
Erick:Yeah, we kind of do. This is awesome, look. So I want to elaborate on this. So I didn't get to actually race, but when I went in to do some tests, do a test drive, and I saw the description of the corners, like they actually have the corners on the track of the track pop up in our racing, with the track limits highlighted like so, on this turn, this is the area you can dip two wheels off.
Erick:If you do more than that, then you're, you know, off track the track limits, highlighted every single corner, telling you what the corner is, what you can do. I was like man, this is crazy to be free to be able to get this type of stretcher.
Jason:Yeah, it's I think, eric, just I think that data is part of iRacing, though the whole threshold of the tracks. I think it's part of iRacing, like in general, I think okay, so that's already like freely available for every track.
Erick:Yes, okay, I just saw these are what?
Jason:and, vlad, please correct me please. I don't want to step over your toes or anyone's. These are rules on top of those rules, correct?
Vlad:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and anything with like track limits. You know, obviously I don't think we can change it from like the official iRacing track limits. Okay, okay, yeah, but yeah, I mean, we try to also enforce, you know, people like if you can kind of take a turn a little wider and then you can get a 1x to give yourself a better exit, we try to, you know, frown upon that as well, and that's in our rules document somewhere here and kind of that leads into our penalties and stewarding.
Vlad:So I think the thing with iRacing officials, you know, obviously you can submit a protest and we do the same thing. You can submit a protest. So what we always say is all of our first lap incidents are automatically reviewed. So you know anything, that first lap, usually that's the messiest, especially, you know, a turn one cold tires. There's more lap one incidents. So we'll automatically look into that. You don't have to submit anything. But after that, you know, we give everyone 24 hours to submit. You know, if there's an incident and we always say, if it kind of, if there was an incident and it upsets you, um, you know, feel free to submit it like a lot of people will cause incidents and they'll apologize on, on, you know, discord or on the voice chat and they're all good, like it doesn't really bother them. But sometimes, you know, there there's some egregious things and I I'm not going to say it happens very often. You know we can't promise like 100% clean races, but they are by far a lot cleaner than officials.
Jason:So I can't remember what race it was. I don't know if it was this last one. I think it was the one before. I forget the track we were on Vlad Refresh, it was right before. Say again Osher Slebin.
Vlad:Probably um refresh, um, it was right before sleeping. Say again, osher sleeping, probably are you talking about for the, the mx5 m2.
Jason:Yeah, it was right before christmas. Remember the one I joined. That was olton park olton park yes yeah, we were just talking about olton park too. You already know how I feel about on park, so and and it was dope, because when we, when we finished, the one of the guys I can't remember if it was Michael or whoever they pulled up the replay and he asked everybody that was in the chat. Is there any incidents in in all of our um series? I?
Jason:I think, uh post race we'll always have someone share their screen, and then yeah, we were all looking at it at different angles in slow motion, and everyone's like yo this is sick bro hey, go to the third race.
Vlad:Uh, second lap, this turn, like can we take a quick look at that? Oh, oh, okay, it's just net code, or oh, you know, I bumped into him, so my bad, and that's kind of what kind of helps build the community as well. You know, like we all kind of want to find out like was it our fault, did we mess up? Where can we be better? And that's fun, like that's the fun part about it, and that's fun, like that's the fun part about it. And then one other thing I think this might be like the last thing I want to share is we have a spreadsheet.
Vlad:I think you guys have alluded to this. I hid the names of the drivers, but you know, after every race you can see. You know here's a lot of different flags, as you can tell.
Jason:Look at that team slow and slower.
Jeff:Yeah, so we but he's in fourth place.
Vlad:Um, you can see, like we've had, uh, we have 82 people um signed up for for this MX five and2 series. I think iRacing has a limit of like 60, but you know, I don't expect 100 people, 100 of the people that signed up to join, and that's not what we've seen. You know we've seen about 41 cars the first two weeks. So, um, you know, you can see, uh, this here, everyone always tells us like hey, your spreadsheet's awesome, like how do you guys do this? And again, I can't take credit for it One of our other admins, he created this and everything feeds into it. You know we export the data from everything it gets imported into here and you can see the attendance.
Vlad:You can see how many rounds they have attended. Penalty points that they've accrued throughout the season warnings that don't add up to penalty points. But if you have enough warnings, that will equal penalty points at one point.
Jason:You also have the explanation right Of what happened, like car 40 impacted car 30 in the third turn, and they tell you we're going to award the penalty to this guy because of x and blah, blah, blah or whatever.
Vlad:I'm not gonna share that one because it's kind of a boring spreadsheet, but it's exactly. You know, we, we consolidate all the turn one incidents and any submitted incidents because we can read them, dude, I'm sorry for interrupting, but we can read them.
Jason:I read them. I find that entertaining to read and find out what happened behind me that there was a crash, you know it's kind of cool yeah, there's somebody from north korea that's bro, that's probably, that's probably bullshit
Vlad:it's, it's one. It's one of the guys in the league and he kind of just did it as a joke okay, Okay, I was like how the hell did he do that? But the funny thing is, we have two guys that did it and I'm sure the second guy also did it as a joke, because he's like, yeah, oh, I have one of my other comrades in here.
Jason:Any North Koreans watching the Chicane podcast? Bro, you better not.
Vlad:So I know we're kind of getting a little inside baseball here. But yeah, the spreadsheet that Jason alluded to is our penalty reviews. So after every race I'll go through and I'll record any incidents and then I'll upload it to YouTube you know it's unlisted and then I'll post the links in that spreadsheet. And then I'll post the links in that spreadsheet and then, you know, we'll talk about, like it was, these drivers that were involved at this turn on this lab. And then we have a certain set of people that are stewards. You know, some admins are stewards not all stewards are admins, so we have a lot of other people that are, you know, not part of that series. So we kind of have you of have some unbiased opinions, and then we'll have discussion throughout the week, like hey here's the incidents from this race.
Vlad:What do you guys think? And then we kind of have our rules of like was this a two-point incident? Was this a four-point incident? Like, how egregious was it? Was it just like, oh, they messed up? Is it just a racing incident? Like you know, we can't really attribute fault to one driver over the other. And then you know, as you can see on this spreadsheet here, you know a few people already accrued, you know a good amount of points, as you can see, and yeah. And then I think one other tab I did want to show, so it's going to show a couple, a couple of our drivers, but you can see like every, every week, you know, like we did Alton Park, Look at the weather, look at the humidity, look at this.
Jeff:I just want to give a quick shout out here. Like cause, this is what's coming. Like I'm taking from this is like this is free. I'm taking from this is like this is free. Like you get the like I can't believe this is free. The level of support and back end you know, support that it takes people's time during the week to do this stuff. This is cool. This is super cool.
Vlad:Yeah, and we, we, we all do it for free. I, you know I can't speak for all the admins, but I always say, you know, like, as long as people have fun and they're enjoying themselves, like that's kind of like what means a lot to me. You know, I I'll, I'll feel I'll take it personal if they're like I'm not having fun, like I got crashed out, like I'm not having a good time. But I think, for the most part, everyone, everyone has a good time and and, um, you know, we, we all, do it for free, just because this is kind of like what we enjoy doing right, like like this is our hobby and this is kind of.
Vlad:This is another way to kind of level up your iRacing experience, in my opinion.
Jason:Well said bro. Yeah, I mean, what else can you say? Look at this.
Jeff:Look at this. You convinced me to try to figure out a time to get in the F4 class.
Jason:Well you know what he said Jeff is, you can join. There's no penalty from like if you had a random day and you can do it. Yeah.
Jeff:And it's predictable. Right, that's the thing that helps, is it's predictable?
Erick:Yeah, the schedule, the tracks.
Jeff:I'm super impressed.
Vlad:If you can only pop in once or twice during the season, go for it. We're not requiring everyone to show up every week. We will have lives outside of sim racing.
Erick:Yeah, my biggest takeaway from what you said was just the respect for people's time, understanding when you have a couple of hours to race, there's no telling when you'll have more time to race. So just making that time as productive and meaningful as possible by making sure that you have people that are all kind of having the same goal, which is to drive clean, have fun, create a positive environment. I would take a couple of hours once a week doing that than that.
Jeff:then you know, 20 hours playing bumper cars with some random guys all day yeah, I'm more interested in the quality right now because I don't have a the quantity yeah, definitely and um, obviously, you know, we're not the only league on iRacing I can speak towards my league.
Vlad:Um, you know, not everyone wants to drive the porsche cup or the mx5 or the m2. There's other leagues out there that you know focus. Not everyone wants to drive the Porsche cup or the MX five or the M two. There's other leagues out there that you know focus on prototypes or open wheelers. Um, I think a lot of them generally operate similarly but, um, you know, I I think our spreadsheets are kind of what set us apart and we have a pretty good community. Um, everyone's very tight in in our discord, you know, people will just chat about random things, about the races. Everyone's very supportive of each other, you know, I I mentioned, I did a, I had a good race this week and and a few people, like unprompted, just pinged me and they're like hey, great, great race today and, and I think that's kind of like hell yeah.
Erick:You want to keep coming back.
Vlad:Everyone is supportive of each other.
Erick:Yeah.
Jason:Yeah, that's dope man, that is dope as hell. Yeah, how do you? How? What better way to end your day with something like that? I don't know. I'm just saying, uh, I love it. I've been trying to, you know, talk about the league a little bit here and there, and I reached out to you and you know you're doing this. You're coming on on the show and presenting something that people can use to get better without costing them anything other than the subscription. But everybody pays a subscription. I mean there's no way around that, but it's a great tool. I mean, it's way better than racing on your own. I promise you that Way better own, promise you that way better.
Vlad:And and the nice thing as opposed to, uh, public races, let's say like the official races is, since we have such a wide range of skills in our league. You know, sometimes you find yourself in front of the the 9k guy or behind them, and it's a. It's a different, you know lesson. You know how am I going to defend against this faster car? Or on the flip side, if you're behind um, you know a nine K guy, six K, whatever, whatever, someone you know more skilled than you. Follow them.
Jeff:You could see their lines you can see where they're breaking.
Vlad:So you're learning something different, because you may not necessarily get that experience in your split Um or you can watch him.
Jason:You can go in the pits when you're practicing and you can spectate him and see what he's doing.
Vlad:Yeah, I upload the replay every week and you can. You can download it from me if you don't download it yourself, um after the race and you can review it and and kind of see what the top guys are doing I mean, I don't know what else to say, bro.
Jason:I mean, if you guys are, if we got a plenty of racers of followers here, you guys needed to have a look at this, and I will definitely make sure to include all the links in the description. I think we got time for one more question. I'll give that to jeff for the final one.
Jeff:Uh, for this to close this out all right, glad we asked this to, I think, most of our guests. You have 30 minutes to race. What car, what track?
Vlad:30 minutes to race what car, what track I honestly like it's not because we just did it tonight in in the league, but porsche cup at either long beach or laguna seca. Those are two of my favorite tracks. They're they're two california tracks. Um, I know those tracks well enough that, um, you know, if I just want to zone out and and run some laps, that that's what I'm going to do, all right, all right, good.
Jeff:Good Well said.
Jason:Well said, I just I mean, vlad, you know, I want to thank you again for making the time to come here. I know you just got done with a race and then you had work, then you had a race, then you had a podcast. It's kind of like back to back, okay. So I really appreciate you coming on and being a friend of the show, being a supportive. Every time I message you, it's not that it's quick, it's just that you're always helpful, you're always trying to help, and you even looked out for Eric, too, when he was joining in on the league. So we need to get him in there. We need to get all of us in there at some point. I think it'll be at some point, um, I think it'll be good for us, um, but yeah, man I just wanted to thank you again and thank you so much for the presentation.
Jason:It was awesome. No, I love to see what you guys are doing out there, um, and to have a little bit of behind the scenes. I think it helps a lot. It'll help a lot with newer uh people coming in. If they have questions, they can reference the video or you know, you know you could take it and see it, see it, see something that can guide you through. You know what I mean, so thank you for that.
Vlad:Yeah, and, and I think one other thing I just wanted to highlight before we kind of move on is I said I was kind of a discord newbie when I first joined the league. Everyone is so like willing to kind of like help. Newbie when I first joined the league Um, everyone is so like willing to kind of like help you navigate, like hey, where do I find the signup, where do I find the rules? How do I do this? And it's not always admins that are responding, it's other people in the league and and you know, if you're not familiar you might think they're an admin. But it's just we have so many different people that are always so helpful.
Vlad:Uh, whether you know, like, hey, I need some suggestions for my rig or my computer or upgrades or anything, or how do I use discord, how do I join the voice chat, like, no one judges you negatively. So you know, it's it's been fun and it's it's made me enjoy the iRacing experience, or just sim racing experience, a lot more, like I I never thought I would kind of be at this point. Um, you know, two and a half years after starting sim racing, but uh, this kind of uh, you know where I ended up and and I'm enjoying it hell.
Jeff:Yeah, that's awesome, man, it's a cool story. You guys have a great, great, great league there.
Vlad:Roundtable. I have nothing. I have nothing more. But just thanks again, vlad, for coming on and walking face to face through here and you know it's, it's. It's a little surreal because I listen and watch, watch you guys every week, you know on Mondays, and to kind of see you guys and hear you guys responding to me feels odd because I've never been on a podcast before and and it's it's pretty great.
Jason:I told him you're coming bro. He's like he's like am I going? And I'm him, you're coming bro. He's like am I going? I'm like, you're coming bro.
Vlad:That was in the game chat.
Jason:I had a few drinks that night, bro. I hope you know, anyway anybody else Eric.
Jeff:Jeff, no man. Oh let's not screw it up again. Drive fast, Break late everybody.
Jason:All right, all right. So with that said everybody uh blad, thanks again thanks buddy. Thank you to all you listeners and viewers out there. If you're an I racer, you need to check out this league. If you're new to I racing, if you have any questions for the show or for blad, you can email us at thechicanepodcast at gmailcom or drop a comment. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and have a great start of your week, thank you.
