PCA Sim Racing Competition Rules

Version 2.1
Released April 25, 2023
PDF Update Reference

Section 1 – Participant Requirements

Eligibility

Drivers who participate in PCA Sim Racing must meet the following requirements:

  1. The driver is a current Porsche Club of America member, affiliate member, or PCA Test Drive program participant.
  2. The driver is at least 18 years old. Drivers who are already in PCA Sim Racing as of March 1, 2022, are not affected.
  3. The driver has a current iRacing account in their name.
  4. The driver has registered on the official website registration page.
  5. The driver has completed the Onboarding process and accepted the invitation to join the PCA Sim Racing Entry Class League in iRacing.
  6. Important Note! Until a driver accepts the League invitation on iRacing, they are not fully registered in PCA Sim Racing.
  7. The driver has a current PCA Sim Racing Discord account in their name.
  8. Drivers should allow 24 hours for their registration to be processed.

Driver Classes

  1. All newly registered drivers will be invited to the PCA Sim Racing Entry League in iRacing.
  2. New drivers must participate fully in the Entry League program and be approved for competition by a PCA Sim Racing eDE Instructor before participating in a National event.
  3. Upon completion of the Entry League Program, drivers will be assigned to compete in one of four classes: PCA Pro, PCA Club, PCA Sport, and PCA Challenge.
  4. Driver classifications are determined and updated through a process that takes into account competitiveness and regard for safe driving in prior PCA Sim Racing events.
  5. Each driver classification group will maintain its own iRacing League.
  6. Drivers will receive an additional iRacing invitation to the PCA Sim Racing league for their assigned class.
  7. Acceptance of an invitation to iRacing is required for access to the league for the driver’s designated class servers.

Section 2 – Driver Conduct

PCA Sim Racing is dedicated to sportsmanship and comradery. It is expected that each member will comply with the PCA Code of Ethics and Conduct, and treat other members in a respectful, fair, and courteous manner.

Demeaning, embarrassing, derogatory, bullying, retaliatory, or disrespectful language or actions are not allowed in any PCA Sim Racing session, on the Discord server, or in Discord direct messages.

Race Control, eDE hosts, and event admins have the authority, without prior notice or warning, to disqualify and/or remove a driver from a session if any of the above are observed.

Additionally, the PCA Sim Racing Steering Committee has the authority to suspend or permanently remove a driver from any/all PCA Sim Racing activities including the Discord server and driver classes/leagues.

Supporting Documents

PCA Code of Ethics and Conduct

PCA Sim Racing Discord Rules & Guidelines

iRacing Official Sporting Code

Section 3 – iRacing Official Sporting Code

To ensure fair and consistent governance of racing competition and strive to create a respectful environment, PCA Sim Racing has adopted the iRacing Official Sporting Code as our main governing document.

PCA Sim Racing may publish supplementary competition rules pertaining to an individual series and/or event. These supplementary rules are intended to augment the iRacing Official Sporting Code and/or modify certain elements therein to ensure fair and consistent competition in the particular series or event to which the supplementary rules apply.

It is the obligation and responsibility of all PCA Sim Racing members to read, understand and abide by the iRacing Official Sporting Code, PCA Sim Racing Competition Rules, and supplementary competition rules for each series and/or event.

Section 4 – Race Procedures

Each PCA Sim Racing session will consist of Practice, Qualifying, and Race for Series events unless noted otherwise on the series webpage. The series webpage will publish specific timings of the sessions and sub-sessions.

Pace Lap

Weaving around, hard braking, and hard accelerating during a pace lap are forbidden and subject to a “Stop-and-Go” penalty.

Race Starts

Starts may be standing or rolling.

If a standing start, do not move once on the grid until the green.

If a rolling start, drivers should maintain pace car speed until the green.

Races start when iRacing shows the green flag / green lights.

There are no League restrictions passing once the race has started.

Passing

The overtaking driver is primarily responsible for completing a clean, safe pass.

Section 5 – Penalties

Penalties

Any violation of the iRacing Official Sporting Code or PCA Sim Racing Competition Rules during a race will result in Race Control issuing a “Stop-and-Go” penalty dependent on the severity of LPP issued:

  1. 2 LPP = 20 second stop-and-go
  2. 3 LPP = 40 second stop-and-go
  3. 4 LPP = 60 second stop-and-go

Serving a Stop-and-Go penalty should be done without performing any pit service. If any service is done to the car during the penalty stop there will be an additional hold time added to the penalty. To avoid this, unselect all pit service options before entering the pit stall to serve the penalty.

Repeated or flagrant violations of the iRacing Official Sporting Code or PCA Sim Racing Competition Rules will result in Race Control, at its sole discretion, issuing a “Disqualification” penalty for the race.

Incident Definition

An incident is defined as at least two cars making contact with one of them being forced off track, turned, spun, or damaged. (rev 4/25/2023)

Any driver who, in the sole opinion of Race Control, is responsible for an incident will be issued a “Stop-and-Go” penalty.

Incident Points

After exceeding the incident points limit specified for the series or race, the offending driver will receive a “Drive-Through” penalty.

An additional “Drive-Through” penalty will be applied for each additional 5 incident points thereafter.

Once a driver exceeds the maximum incident point limit specified for the series or race, they will be Disqualified.

Netcode

If Race Control considers that contact would have been inevitable, ie, a driver is carrying enough speed and would have collided with the driver directly in front even if no contact is made due to netcode, Race Control has the right to issue an incident penalty.

iRacing Applied Penalties

All iRacing AI applied penalties must be served.

Race Control under no circumstances will reverse iRacing penalties.

Appeals

All in-race decisions of Race Control are final and not subject to appeal.

Official Results

Once the event has concluded, the server replay is downloaded then uploaded to the archive, and made available for drivers to review. Official results are posted on the series webpage as soon as possible after the event.

Section 6 – Penalty License

Each driver is provided with a penalty license with zero points at the beginning of a Series. The license can hold up to 10 license penalty points for Pro, Club, and Sport classes and up to 12 for Challenge Class.

License Penalty Points (LPP)

If an in-race penalty is awarded, then the following table is used to determine the license penalty points, all points are cumulative.

Racing Incident LPP
Driving causing an incident 2 LPP
Driving causing an incident from joining the grid to the start line for lap 3 3 LPP
Careless driving  (rev 4/25/2023) 4 LPP
Disqualification 5 LPP
Any other violation of the iRacing Official Sporting code, PCA Sim Racing Competition Rules, or PCA Sim Racing Supplementary Regulations 3 LPP

Careless Driving

Race Control will award a “Careless Driving” penalty in cases a move has been attempted with little chance of success or without consideration for the driver affected in case of an “extreme dive bomb”, “unsafe” rejoin, or driving into an incident without throttling down/braking, etc. (rev 4/25/2023)

Race Ban

Drivers who accrue 10 points (Pro, Club, Sport) or 12 points (Challenge) on their penalty license will receive a 1-race ban after which their penalty license points will be set to 5.

For example, if you get 10 points on your license by Event 5, you will miss Event 6 and then resume at Event 7 with 5 points on your penalty license.

Race bans will not count as dropped races if the series allows dropped races.

LPP Status

All awarded LPPs will be announced and published with the official race results.

Appeals

All LPPs assigned by Race Control are final and not subject to appeal.

Section 7 – General

Championships & Points

  1. Championships, points, and awards are detailed on the Series’ web pages.
  2. The driver’s classification will be used for the entirety of each Series, regardless of subsequent changes to the driver’s iRating or safety rating after the start of the Series.
  3. Results are unofficial until they are posted on the official event/series page of the PCA Sim Racing website.

Race Communications

As a condition of participating in PCA Sim Racing, all drivers agree to the following items regarding communications:

  1. While joining the PCA Sim Racing Discord server is mandatory for participating in PCA Sim Racing, it is not used by Race Control during the race.
  2. Race Control will communicate with drivers only through the iRacing voice chat function during the event and never on Discord.
  3. It is strongly recommended drivers set up multiple keys for race comms.
  4. Drivers must use Push-to-talk (PTT).
  5. Use only the in-game voice function on iRacing during the race.
  6. If you and your race spotter would like a private Discord channel on the PCA Sim Racing Discord server, please send a request.
  7. No competing driver or the driver’s spotter may enter a competitor’s private Discord If they do, they may receive an on-track “Stop-and-Go” penalty during the event.

Post-race Interviews

  1. The podium of each race will be interviewed by Podium eSports on the PCA Sim Racing Discord channel during the broadcast.
  2. Winners should navigate to the Podium eSports category and join the Interview Waiting Room channel immediately after the race.
  3. Podium eSports will do a microphone check with you then you will be moved to the Broadcast channel for your interview.

Post-race Discussions

Should a driver request a post-race meeting with Race Control for any reason, please send a Discord direct message (DM) to Doug Atkinson.

Technical Issues

  1. Any driver who has a bad connection will be alerted by Race Control and may be asked to park their car in the pits until the problem is resolved.
  2. If there is an additional problem or their connection remains unstable, they will, unfortunately, need to leave the server so it does not affect the race quality for other competitors.
  3. Any driver leaving the server because of connection issues is welcome to rejoin the race once they have resolved their internet problem by rebooting their computer, or their router, or reducing the load on their home connection.
  4. Drivers with a poor internet connection may be removed from the race.
  5. Do not connect to a PCA Sim Racing event via a wireless connection. Use only Ethernet-cabled connections.
  6. iRacing is suffering from an increased amount of netcode problems. It is strongly suggested you watch this video to understand netcode and its impact on sim racing.