How to: Line up

[Sascha Henken]

Hi everyone,

on public servers I see that most people that have ARCA Sim Racing, just don´t have a clue, how they have to line up on a racestart or restart during a caution period. If people never played NR2003 before or any other kind of stockcar simulation, then I hope I can bring in some tips, how you have to line up properly in a race event.

First of all it IS important, that you turn on the vehicle labels (or player names). You can do that online while pressing the TAB key on your keyboard. You should see on every car the given player name. If that does not work, then you should verify your key mappings in the game settings menu.

A race event will always have 2 laps as a warm up lap, until the green flag is shown. During the warm up laps the sim will tell you, where you have to be in the field so you have to obey to the orders, else you may get a DQ or End Of Longest Line.

The Lineup should be seen this way:

We have a field of max. 43 cars. If all cars are lined up properly, it will look like this example:

 
  P|C    Pacecar leading the field!
 
|#1
              |#2
|#3
              |#4
|#5
              |#6
|#7

and so on. The LEFT is the so called Inside Line and the RIGHT is the so called Right Side Line or Outside Line. When the pacecar is entering the pits, the field leader has to maintain the speed until the sim says: Green Flag. There are absolutely NO jump starts allowed to gain advantage. If this isn´t beeing followed a Race Official may speak out a penalty.

The race has started and the first few laps are beeing run. Now a situation comes, where someone crashes and the so called Full Course Caution is getting active. That means: Every driver has to slow down properly and line up BEHIND the pacecar and maintain their position. Whenever the Yellow Flag is out, the entire driver positions are freezed/saved so you cannot gain an advantage if you overtake other drivers during this time. If everyone passed the S/F line, the sim well tell every driver, where to line up again, to get a sorted field together.

As long as NO driver has lost a lap, it will be a so called Single Line Up sequence:

    P|C     Pacecar leading the field!
 
      |#1
      |#2
      |#3
      |#4
      |#5
      |#6

If cars are one or several laps down, it still remains a Single Line Up UNTIL the sim says: One Lap To Green. When this comes up, the sim well tell every lapped car to line up on the Inside Line behind the leader, so that we get again a stackered formation like the first example in this post!

There can be a situation, where the first car which is one lap down but behind the leader, may get the so called Lucky Dog. That means, the lapped car will get one lap back and should pass the pacecar and line up behind the last lead lap car.

I hope I was able to give you a few explanations of how to behave on a Line Up sequence. If you have question, please feel free to ask them here and i´ll try to help as good as possible. I know that not everyone will get all this directly managed because everyone needs to know this for online racing events but give it a few events and people will get used to it and it will bring us lots of fun together!

[James Johnson]

might need drafting guide since many people in public servers cant do it without spinning guy infront :p

[Ramon van Rijn]

Can you please explain 'End Of Longest Line' ? Thats new to me.

[James Johnson]

you will be sent all the way to back of the Line which is longest and you will be last car of that line

[Christopher Aponte]

actually that rule is sometimes when (if not mistaken) they caught you speeding down pitlane while in caution, you will be send at the end of the longest line @ restart (which depends if it is the left line, which where the (multiple) lapped cars line up behind the pace car before the green, or the right line, which is where the leaders/current lap cars line up behind the pace car before the green flag)

[Ramon van Rijn]

Clear explanation! cheers.