Originally Posted by Clodhopper

Yup, got that much... but I'd still like to know which online tourney Pfeil was talking about :P

This wasn’t related to the SimHQ Summer Series. Turn 10 holds online tournaments on a regular basis within the multiplayer tab. They have a qualification period and the top drivers move onto gold, silver and bronze brackets of 64 drivers. For example, the D class tournament I qualified for had its time trial on Tsukuba Circuit with a qualification bar of 01:02.445. Over 1,500 players tried to make the cut, but only the top 192 became official entrants. I popped a time of 01:02.384 and grabbed the 185th seed, which placed me in the bronze bracket (bottom third of entrants).

The brackets are broken down into groups of 8 drivers who go on to compete in 4 rounds to determine an overall winner. The top 4 drivers in each race move onto to the next round and face off on different tracks in each phase of the tournament. For example, Tsukuba Circuit was selected for the first round and Maple Valley Short was used in the second.

Unfortunately, these tournaments are not monitored by Turn 10, so the latest one was run during Xbox Live’s recent downtime and nobody was able to make their race times. I also read a few posts on the Forza forums that suggest it is not uncommon for players to miss their races, as they are run at odd times automatically generated by the tournament system, and the prizes are the same as regular races, which doesn’t seem to be much motivation to compete in the event.

These tournaments may not be run well, but it’s been a lot of fun trying to qualify for them. Once I can consistently make their cuts, I might try some of the ones run by various online racing communities.