Another shoutout for what was clearly a fantastic day. Alas I missed most of it doing family stuff (even in lock-down the Easter show must go on!) But as requested by
@Vingtetun I'll gladly share what went on at Cortes Base for the Elite: Dangerous racing segment at the end of the evening. So basically there are currently two standing time trial challenges at Cortes Base in the Ross 1047 system -
an SRV challenge hosted by the Buckyball Racing Club and
a ship circuit challenge hosted by the Elite Racers. Anyway, the simple plan was for myself to cordinate live racing of the former while
@Sanderling coordinated live racing of the latter.
I got myself back to Cortes Base in the afternoon (I'd spent the last week or so mining in Borann, a soul destroying activity that I do not recommend) and there were already a bunch of people there practicing in glorious daylight (which thankfully lasted right through until the end of the evening session) so we ran a few test races and verified that a) the plan was gonna work and b) it was gonna be AWESOME!
Around 9:15pm I logged back in and the place was rammed. We had 10 or so people out on the ridge for the SRV race and about the same inside for the ship race. The latter were experiencing some instancing issues so switched to a PG while we stayed in Open.
@Ozric has already shared some video of the ship circuit racing (which is brilliant, I heartily recommend giving it a go). The SRV race was simple. You started parked on one of the jetty like ramps that protrude from the outside edge of the city ..
.. then race along the ridge until the city is 10km away, stop, turn around, and then race back again. The winner is the one who's SRV hits any part of the city first. I had planned to do some tag-team racing as well (pairing fast drivers with slow drivers where the 2nd driver can't head off until the 1st has completed his run) but in the end most people enjoyed the simple race format so much that we just did that all night (I think we wrapped up around midnight). Here's a couple of videos, the first from my camera ship (voices have been chipmunked to protect the innocent) ..
.. and the second an in-cockpit pov of one of my numerous failed attempts to catch Shaye Blackwood (also includes a nice overtake of Sgurr in the craters out at the 8km line and then Sgurr sneaking back past me on the home straight).
We did also do a few "no holds barred" races (where ramming, shooting, gouging, pretty much anything was allowed). These were hilarious resulting in SRVs being pursued along the ridge by enraged Goliaths, many explosions, most people WANTED and much general carnage but alas I have no video evidence of this happening.
All in all a brilliant evening and really glad to have been involved with what was clearly such a fantastic day for everyone involved. Massive thanks to the organisers for taking what could have been (and I'm sure still was) a bitter disappointment for many people and turning it into something really heartwarming in these difficult times. Bravo!