Parc Ferme, literally meaning "closed park" in French, is a term used to describe a secure area at a Grand Prix circuit where the cars may be stored overnight, or in our case; between the qualifying and race sessions.

This means that you are unable to touch your car after you have started your qualifying laps. No setup changes can be done including the adding or reduction of fuel load. When qualifying for a race that has Parc Ferme rules you must qualify using your race setup and race fuel load. More importantly have your radiator, tire compound, and rear wing settings as you want them for the entire race distance before going out for your first lap in qualifying.

In our current Formula 1 series there are still a few settings that you are able to change even with the Park Ferme rules in place;
- The front wing can be adjusted during and after qualifying. This allows you have a slightly different car in qualifying then in race, but the changes will not be very dramatic.
- All "controller settings" such as steering ratio, brake bias, etc may still be adjusted.
- Boost can still be adjusted both in and out of cockpit
- You will recover any fuel you burn in the qualifying session. Start the qualifying session with the amount of fuel you wish to start the race session with.

Using the Parc Ferme to your benefit;
- We know that everyone is qualifying with their first stint of fuel on board. The added weight of the fuel will slow everyone to an extent. Anyone can choose to run a short first-stint (less fuel in qualifying) to gain some grid positions.
- The front wing adjustments can help adjust your qualifying setup to cope with the extra boost you will be running in qualifying which may cause some over-steer. Lower the front wing to balance the car in qualifying and raise it again for the start of the race.

Thanks for the writeup - I was just looking for one only yesterday. You must be monitoring the search feature!

So does a particular mod have hard-coded different parc ferme restrictions or does the admin choose the restrictions? For example, the Megane race the yersterday day was parc ferme but fuel could be changed for the race.

Each mod is different, and hard coded in the RFM file. No way for the admin to change it unless we create a new RFM to disable it.

the F1 League i race in has 2 quals. qual one is 10 minutes and is for everybody. and you can run any fuel load you want. qual 2 is for the top 10 only and they have to run enough fuel for the race

Shane, assuming you are talking about FSR:
1) Thats because that league has so many drivers that qual one needs to be used as a pre-qual to narrow the field down to the top 24.
2) That is an F1 only series that has all the time in the world over the weekends (and often uses all of it), and therefore they don't mind if races (including qual) run for 4 hours or more (which they often do). R2P can't afford that kind of time.