Hello everyone,

Recently the Steering Committee focused on developing the PCA Sim Racing Mission Statement as follows:

PCA Sim Racing provides a quality sim racing experience, including opportunities for all levels of driving experience, competitive intensity, and sim racing interests, in a friendly environment for all Porsche Club of America members.

PCA Sim Racing has had many changes since it began in February 2019. We continually try to incorporate good ideas based on results from surveys and through discussion with you, and our community. It hasn’t always proved to be as successful as hoped yet other changes have been very positively received.

We are at another point in the evolution of PCA Sim Racing that will provide some new features and strengthen some functions that are currently not getting appropriate attention.

(Re) emphasizing eDE

The eDE group has done a fantastic job with onboarding, classifying, training, and supporting drivers from the diverse group of participants who have shown interest in PCA Sim Racing. We believe it’s time to strengthen eDE further as a core component of the PCA Sim Racing program.

Starting later in September, there will be two scheduled eDE sessions. One will be for “East” and the other for “West”. These two sessions will run on most Monday nights.

East will include the Eastern and Central time zones and will start at 8 PM Eastern / 7 PM Central. The East Manager will be Chris Braun.

Joining Chris will be multiple Instructors / Coaches who will cover the needs of East drivers.

  • Nikki Chan – Lead eDE Instructor / Coach
  • Leif Peterson – Instructor / Coach
  • Jacob Shum – Instructor / Coach
  • Marc Nistor – Instructor / Coach
  • Carey Brooks – Instructor / Coach
  • Rafael Amorim – Instructor / Coach

West will include the Pacific and Mountain time zones and will start at 7 PM Pacific / 8 PM Mountain. The West Manager will be Randy Lervold.

Joining Randy will be multiple Instructors / Coaches that will cover the needs of West drivers.

  • Nikki Chan – Lead eDE Instructor / Coach
  • Mark Frost – Instructor / Coach
  • Logan Grado – Instructor / Coach
  • Enrico Gregoratto – Instructor / Coach
  • Mark Doran – Instructor / Coach

While the East instructor team slots have now been filled there are still openings for the West team. If you have the time and interest please contact me on Discord.

Each Monday night eDE session will have a syllabus developed by Chris, Randy, and eDE Admins Jim Huth and Rusty Pruden. Sessions will run for 2 hours and should better accommodate drivers’ home and work schedules. Drivers are not limited to their geographic area’s eDE session. An East Coast driver can join the West session and vice-versa. Or attend both sessions. We are moving to the East / West format for these eDE sessions to make it easier for more drivers to participate in the highly beneficial eDE sessions.

Onboarding orientation and Entry Class will remain a nationally based function. Jeff Williams will continue to lead the group. Joining Jeff will be:

  • Anker Berg-Sonne – Lead eDE Instructor / Coach
  • Mike Patterson – Instructor / Coach
  • Jochem Bakker – Instructor / Coach
  • Evan Smogor – Instructor / Coach

Jeff would like to round out his Entry Class eDE team with one more Instructor/Coach. If sharing your skills to help our novice drivers improve excites you, and you can commit to Sunday evenings from 9 PM – 11 PM Eastern, please contact me.

Chris Paiz will continue his Discord Classroom Sessions on Mondays at 7 PM Eastern / 4 PM Pacific to introduce new tracks before a series event. Thank you, Chris, for taking the time to produce these highly valuable track walks and sessions! Chris’ Classroom videos are all available here if you missed his live presentation of the track.

Evolving the Zone Groups

We recognize that many of you have made friends in your Zone Group activities. Zone Groups will continue to be an area to maintain those contacts but, going forward, the eDE function is going to be better served by making it separate from the Zone Groups. We appreciate the efforts of those of you who helped ZGs through their infancy and please do continue posting in the same areas on Discord! With regard to the zone group championships, the steering committee will be considering new formats for zone versus zone competition. If you have ideas contact us on the SC. The current Zone Group web pages will be archived.

Improving Discord

While the Discord server functions as our discussion platform, there are many Discord features we are not using yet. Among those are in the area of moderation. A new group whose primary purpose is to watch over the server activity will be created. The current Mod group will be closed on September 6th and the new Discord Moderators will receive training and guidance on extended Discord functions. They will also provide a resource for users who have a technical problem or would like to know the latest shortcuts and tips. A thank you to everyone who has been helping and taking their time since the Mod function was created a few years ago.

Developing Driving Experiences

Something that has been a very difficult task to resolve is finding the type of sim racing that a majority of PCA Members would enjoy. Indeed, the numbered Series, our most popular and longest-running events, have been received very well and not so well depending on the cars, tracks, rulebook, times, and race control. However, the primary consideration is providing the types of events preferred by drivers.

We have drivers who want to enjoy the following (in no particular order):

  • a relaxed pace and no points-scoring
  • training and learning through low-pressure races
  • team events for hours and hours
  • short, sprint events
  • running as close to PCA Club Racing rules as possible
  • intense, super competitive sim racing

This has changed since the early Series 1 days of 2019. This continual changing of driver preferences has probably contributed to driver frustrations. Each group doesn’t necessarily want to drive with what another group wants. For example, put the relaxed pace driver in with the intense, super-competitive racer and there are probably going to be fireworks. A further example includes a driver who is just learning how to drive in sim racing with some Pro Class drivers, and either or both are going to probably have an unpleasant race.

Recently, you have seen some of our efforts to further address this varied group. This was the idea behind Series 10, Group C, Arrive & Drive, the PCA Pro Cup Series (2022), and now the weekend Pop-up Racing events. We are still working through what you want. And what some of you want others do not want, and will not do. If you have not done so, please take a few minutes to complete our Series 10 expanded survey.

Our goal is to develop series and events that bring the best sim racing to each of these diverse groups, and not fracture PCA Sim Racing. We believe these changes with eDE, start times better suited for participants’ time zones, and sim racing will provide…

…opportunities for all levels of driving experience, competitive intensity, and sim racing interests, in a friendly environment for all Porsche Club of America members.

Regards,
-Doug

Doug Atkinson on behalf of the PCA Sim Racing Steering Committee.