Last Update: 12/21/2008 16:31 GMT  
2009 IIRS Dirt Survivor at Eldora

Event Overview:
This year will be the same Survivor event, but at an other moment. Instead of finishing the season the Survivor will be the starting event of each year! Again we will be racing sprintcars around Knoxville to determine who is going to be the IIRS Dirt Survivor 2009. The goal is to simulate an entire single day winged sprintcar event that is going to be very similar to the way these are run in real life. Opponent numbers, weather and race distances will vary during the event, about the only thing that will not change is the track. In this case, the home of Sprintcar Racing, the world famous Knoxville Raceway.

Participants:
We encourage everybody to join in the fun of this event. Don't think that you would not stand a chance against the regular runners because racing on this very fast half mile oval over very short distances is going to be so much different from what we are used to in the IIRS that anybody could win this one. The format in itself will probably make for a couple of surprises. Even keeping your car in one piece is a challenge all on its own! There is no need to sign up in advance, just make sure to submit your results before the first deadline, which will be the 2-lap quaifying run.

Procedures Overview:
As mentioned before, we will span over a few weeks what would normally be dealt with in a day. The winner of the last and main part [called the A Main] will be the IIRS Dirt Survivor 2009. But, only the fastest drivers will be allowed into the A Main and all of the other parts of the event are geared towards making up the starting field of the A Main. So the main goal from the get go is to get 'locked in' to the A Main.

You will get two chances to get into the A Main and race for the title. The first one will be in one of the 4  Qualifying Heats, of about 5 cars each, where the fastest 2 will go directly to the A Main. Who goes in which Heat is determined from the Qualifying results and all will be posted on the Qualifying Results page once the scoring has been completed and when you know in which Heat you will be competing you can download the appropriate settings file from the table at the bottom of this page.

The drivers that get to transfer directly to the A Main will be racing for the Pole Position in the Dash while in the same round drivers from all the Qualifying Heats that do not get to go to the A Main directly will fight over 4 remaining places in the B Main.

Procedures - Additional Pointers:
1. The game will report your laps in seconds and not in mph which is what you would expect on an oval. But although the lap times are very close to reality the lap speeds are not so that is why we chose to do it like this.
2. The qualifying procedures will be as normal on the ovals, 2 laps and the best time counts.
3. You will start at the back of the field in all of your races.

To help you keep track of the different rounds here is an example of the procedures we are likely to follow:

Again, this is just an example and some small things may change depending on the number of competitors, we chose 20 in the example above.

POINTS:
As this is a one-off yearly event, no points will be awarded.

PRIZES:
The following honours will be handed out:
- IIRS Dirt Survivor (the winner of the A Main);
- Top Qualifier (the driver that has the highest qualifying time);
- Polesitter (winner of the Dash);
- Hard Charger (the driver that makes up the most places in the A Main).

RULES:
The rules are the same as in any other IIRS race. The only added rule is that the competitors HAVE to use the supplied cockpit, sounds, track and carset during ALL the parts of this event (see the bit about Files that is next). You are allowed to use a different Opponent Strength each race.

FILES:
To ensure fair competition we have decided that everyone has to use the same cockpit, sounds, carset and track. So we have made a mini-sprintcar patch of our own. Download the iirs_sprintcars.zip(6,3 Mb) and extract it to your main game folder, when asked to replace files and folders just click yes because it will only add some new files and leave your old game intact. Now you can switch to using a sprintcar patched game and back to your old game by simply running a .bat file. Sprintcar sounds and the Knoxville Raceway that we are going to use for this race, a special edition IIRS sprintcar cockpit and a version of the 2001WoO carset with an IIRS paintjob on the players car are ready to be used. The only thing you need to do manually is select the IIRSWOO carset from your carset menu. More is explained in the readme file inside the .zip and if you need more help you can post in the IIRS forum or email Tjerk who put this .zip file together, assisted by Tony Krist who helped him edit the cockpit among other things.

SCHEDULE:

TIPS:
1. Opponent Strength: Pick the right opponent strength. With lap times under 15 seconds it is crucial to not be lapped so don't set it too high. On the other hand, when you set it too low you will be slowed down a lot by traffic. If yo

2. Setups:  The default setup provided with the track has all gears set to the same ratio to simulate the single speed transmission of sprintcars, you are however encouraged to use any type of setup you want. 

3. Tires: The longer the races are getting as we go along, the more your tires will suffer towards the end of the race. In races that will last 15 minutes maximum a pitstop will put you way back so try to make a setup that saves your tires somewhat so that you have some tread left in them towards the end of the race.

4. Accidents: Keep your eye out for any accidents in front of you. The laps at these little dirt tracks are so short that there is a good chance that a car that has crashed or spun in front of you will still be on the track the lap after. So in those cases in particular, keep your eyes open and keep going. You can't really afford to slow down but you can not afford crashing either so pick a side and go for it. Whatever you do, keep going, this is a Survivor event after all!

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Sander Maas
IIRS director
Email: iirsracing@yahoo.com