Hi everyone,
Starting on April 1st at 9pm UK time (4pm East Coast time, 1pm Pacific) we are going to be running an IMSA series using the GT cars from GTLM and GTD. We currently have around 10 people signed up from our F1 series we run on the F1 game, but we ideally want to pad out the field a bit more to around 16 people, so we’re looking for about 6 people who will be committed to turning up each week and race cleanly, we also are all adults from early 20’s to mid 50’s so although there are plenty of clean racing young people out there, as we’re an older crowd we’d prefer people in a similar age bracket.
ICR has been around since 2010 when F1 2010 came out, since then we’ve ran mainly F1 but during FM4/5/6 we’ve also ran events on there too. This will be our first FM7 series which I’m really looking forward to after doing an IMSA series on FM6.
If you are interesred in taking part then please add me on xbox ‘richard1973’ is my gamer tag, or reply on here and I’ll send you a friend invite, any questions also please reply on here.
We have our own website which you can join up to and post on, there is a section on there for this event, it’s in the :
‘Forza Tournaments’ section then scroll down past the ‘stickies’ which are all the ‘standings pages’ and click on ‘IMSA GT Coming Soon’
Once there you will see the below post which has all the event details :
Introduction
One of my favorite events, and others too was the GTLM series and IMSA mixed class tournaments we had. The GTLM series was based on the GT cars from IMSA, where as the IMSA series we did on FM6 was a mixture of two classes from IMSA, the GTLM/GTD GT cars and the Prototype DP cars in the faster class.
To do the mixed class option we really need a big grid of around 14 minimum, so for this series to keep the pack busy, I think it would be best to focus on the GT series. If we do have a large grid then we could plan in the future a mixed class group with the fastest half being promoted to Prototype cars, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.
So what is the difference from GTLM and GTD? Ok in the real IMSA these are again broken into two classes, the GTLM are a higher spec car than the GTD, so because of this they are broken into two classes. The GTLM features GT cars that also take part at Le Mans, hence the name, the GTD cars stand for GT Daytona, which take part at Daytona 24, but so do the GTLM cars, just to confuse things. GTD is also a more cost effective series, and the GTD class has a much bigger particiaption than GTLM, so in my eyes I think it’s twice as impressive for a team to win that over GTLM.
At this point you might be thinking ‘it would be obvious to pick a GTLM car than GTD to get a lap time advantage!’ Fortunately there is something called ‘Homologation’ which is a ‘BoP’ (Balance of Performance) setting. In real life both of these classes have their cars tuned to meet matching or balanced specs so the cars average out fairly equal together, sure some tracks at times will benefit one car, but at other tracks they won’t, so overall it becomes balanced.
On Forza the GTLM and GTD cars are homologated, and both of these classes on Forza end up falling in line with one another, and I have tested this by running all the cars to compare lap times.
Tracks and Cars
FM7 has nine of the twelve tracks from IMSA, the ones it does not have are :
Mid Ohio Sports
Belle Isle Park
Canadian Tyre Motor Park
To make it a full season we can replace these tracks with other Nort American tracks. To see the real full schedule click on the link below :
https://sportscarchampionship.imsa.com/ … e-schedule
The Cars : Again Forza has the majority of the cars that take part in GTLM and GTD, and because Forza has homolagated them fairly equal. Some of the cars are older models as FM7 isn’t quite upto date on all of the cars, for example they do not have the Ferrari 488 GT car (they have the road car) but they do have the #62 2014 GTLM Ferrari 458, so if picking Ferrari, that would be the car to pick. Below are the cars you can choose from :
Audi R8 #45 (GTD)
Corvette C7R #3 (GTLM)
Ferrari 458 #62 2014 (GTLM)
Lambo Huracan #63 (Although the game has IMSA Gallardo from 2014, currently IMSA uses the Huracan but the game has the Blancpain livery, but it still is balanced)
Mercedes SLS AMG #84 2014 (Again only a Blancpain livery, but the car is balanced, real life its now the GT AMG, but the game does not have it)
Porsche 911 #92 2017 (Blancpain livery, but once again it’s balanced and livery design same as GTLM)
FORD GT GTLM
BMW M6 GTLM 2017 DLC car.
Some cars automatically are homologated when you buy them, if they are not then just go to the ‘Tune’ section and select ‘homologated parts’ or words similar to that. Using the pre set ‘homologated parts’ (i.e. do not use manual homologated) keeps the ‘PI’ the same as what they started, this way I know the car hasn’t been upgraded and the only things that would of been changed would be settings like aero, springs, gearing etc. Do not add or change car parts.
I’m happy for people to make their own tunes, or if you are not confident tuning, then just run the ‘install homologated parts’ option. The idea behind homologation is to have a balanced playing field, so for the most part you don’t have to do anything. I reckon the most advanrage someone would have for doing their own tune would be at Daytona if reducing the aero or changing the gear ratio so you can get more out the car on Daytona’s banking section, but remember what you gain there you’ll make the car trickier to handle in the infield section.
My original plan was for everyone to run standard homologation, unfortunately Forza’s multiplay lobby cannot lock it to standard homologation, it can only remove tunes, but the game considers standard homologation a tune too, so due to this I can’t tell if someone is using a tune or not, thankfully though in the game lobby it does show if you are using someone else’s tune. With all this in mind, I think the best and fairest option is to either run the car as standard homologation, or run your homologated car with just adjusting setings like tyre pressure, gear ratio, ride height, aero etc. Please keep the ‘PI’ the same as standard homologation though, as some cars have room to increase the PI (e.g. R831 to R835) so if I see its been increased I know a car part has been added or changed. You don’t have to share your tune if you are making adjustments to gearing etc, but you cannot use someone elses, so in the lobby I either want to see your own tune, or ‘tune unknown’ (which is what is shown if you either don’t use a tune i.e. regular homologated or if you have not shared your tune).
So quite a range of cars to pick from and plenty of time to test them and buy them with in game credit or free winnings on the spinny wheel if you don’t have them all. Like I said they are all balanced well, so you can’t go wrong. When testing try them on various tracks A good all rounder is probably the C7R and if you are new to the game you can pick this up early on in the career mode!
Once you have picked your car, ideally I want you to keep the same car throughout the series. I will make the exception if a car comes out as a DLC during the series, so for example if the Lexus or NSX or Ferrari 488 comes out, then in this case as it maybe a car you’ve been waiting for, then you can switch cars and then run that car till the end of the series.
Format
Unlike F1, Forza doesn’t have an obvious qualifying mode. In the multiplay lobby settings however you can set the grid order to line up in the order of the previous race, so we run a 5 lap race to get the grid in order and we run the 5 lap race with no collisions/contact so we can all set clean laps. Then it’s back to lobby where it remembers the results for the grid order. The main races will run for about 30 laps, or whatever laps would make it last around 45mins. Due to petrol tank sizes most races will have one pit stop, or two if it’s too tight for some cars. The 60 lap races will have a minimum of two pit stops
Settings
In the past I’ve always said anyone car run whatever assists they like (besides racing/braking line off of course) as Forza punishes you for using them, so providing you were efficient and good then you could run faster without assists, however if you took the assists off like traction and stability or ABS then you could quite easily make things worse for yourself. So I’m going to go with that same thinking for this series too, mind you FM7 compared to ALL previous Forza’s, the assits off aren’t as tricky as it was before, so I say try all the assists off and see how you get on. As most of you will be from F1 where we run assists off anyway, I can’t see you having issues.
Car view can be set to whatever you want like we do in F1, I prefer cockpit but just go with whatever works best for you.
Any questions then please respond, also state if you would like to take part and I will add to the list, so far we have :
rich
grantos
LMR Hybrid
Tillj
mancscouse
chancee
glen
Jamie90
Jamie90’s brother
Krnch
Sonic
Portable
Tracks
Daytona 24hr Night - 60 laps with 2 quick stops (this race is much longer due to real one lasting 24hrs)
Sebring Full Circuit 50 Laps with 2 quick stops (real life 12hr race)
Long Beach Full Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop
Indianapolis Layout TBA 30 Laps 1 quick stop (This is to replace Mid-Ohio)
Sonoma Full Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop (This is to replace Belle Isle Park)
Watkins Glen Full Circuit 45 Laps 2 quick stop (real life 6hr race)
Maple Valley Full Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop (This is to replace Canadian Tyre Circuit)
Lime Rock South Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop
Road America Full Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop
VIR Full Circuit 30 Laps 1 quick stop
Laguna Seca 30 Laps 1 quick stop
Road Atlanta Full Circuit- Petite Le Mans 50 Laps with 2 quick stops (real life 10hr race)
(Rest of the tracks run for around 2hrs 40mins in real life). Our races (minus qual) will take from around 45mins to just over 2 hours for the longest race (Daytona).
Scoring
This series will be based on the old 2 point system that has worked well in the past. If you are new to it, it goes like this : 2 points for last place, 4 points for 2nd last and so on. This way if one week the grid is smaller, the points dished out are less. This means someone who missed a race has a better chance of not falling too far behind. Point also for pole and point for fastest lap.
