Assignment of penalties in races

This feature is part of the SmartRace Champions Club. This is a big package with cool extensions, which you can conveniently add in the form of a monthly or annual subscription in the app and of course cancel at any time. Learn more.

This feature requires the Carrera Digital Pitlane with a built-in Pit Stop Adapter Unit. Learn more about how the pit lane works.

Ever wished there was a way to bring more discipline to your racetrack? Well, you could use penalties, just like in real life. With penalties in SmartRace you can impose lap deductions or time penalties on drivers. Penalties are only available in races. Tap the “Penalties” button in the quick link widget to open the penalties dialog. The dialog consists of two parts:

• A list of controllers with assigned drivers – tap on a driver to select him for the penalty selection.
• A list of possible penalties – tap on a penalty to impose it on the selected driver.

First tap on a driver and then on a penalty of your choice. You can impose several penalties at once by tapping a driver, then the penalty, then the next driver and the next penalty and so on. When you have selected a penalty for a driver, a small red or green flag will be displayed next to the controller ID in the penalty dialog. Until you confirm your selection by tapping on “Confirm” at the bottom of the screen, the selection will not be applied.

You can choose between these penalties:

• Time penalty – This imposes a time penalty on the driver. He must drive into the pit lane and wait for the time you have set. The time penalties add up, i.e. you can impose several time penalties on the same driver and the seconds add up. The driver must wait for the specified period of time and refueling and changing tires will not begin until the penalty has been served in full.
• Lap deduction – this immediately deducts one lap from the selected driver’s lap count (if confirmed).
• Time credit – If you have inadvertently imposed a time penalty on a rider, you can reverse this by giving them a time bonus. Example: You have imposed a time penalty of 10 seconds on a rider, but actually only wanted to give him 5 seconds. In this case, simply open the penalty dialog again and select a time credit of 5 seconds. Confirm it and the driver will then only have a 5-second time penalty.

Automatic penalty for speeding in the pit lane

In addition to the penalties that can be imposed manually, drivers can also be penalized automatically if they drive too fast in the pit lane. For this purpose, a minimum pit stop delta can be set for each track in the track database (in milliseconds). This delta is the sum of the lap time before a pit stop and the lap time after a pit stop. At the start of a race, you can then specify in the corresponding selection box whether and, if so, what penalty a driver should receive for falling short of this delta time.

Example: Let’s assume a fast lap time on your track is 10 seconds. You could therefore set a delta of 20 seconds in the settings for your track. Then you start a race and specify that drivers should receive a 5-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane. During the race, driver 1 now drives into the pits. The lap time when entering the pit lane (i.e. from the finish line to the tank sensor) is 9 seconds because he drove into the pits very quickly. The lap time on the exit (i.e. from the fuel sensor to the finish line) is 10 seconds. The sum of the two laps is 19 seconds and therefore one second below the minimum delta – the driver receives a time penalty.