Good test/practice session last night. Dean was able to get going and Rotary and Sauce managed to be in the same room at the same time without issue.
I’ve got work to do on pace tonight. Fast lap was only in the 38s. I know exactly where I am losing time. I struggle to get the right pace and line in the corners between the back straight and the jump corner. Even the bots catch me there. The rest of the lap is just being clean and consistent.
Starts are exciting here too. Both of our practice races I started at the back and made up 6 and 5 place before turn 2. The second race I even had to dive over and use the pit exit asphalt to get around a bot.
Now the bad news, Sauce is ridiculously fast here too. 33.5 race lap, and I think he ran faster than that in another session.
In reply to BradLTL :
If you're talking about T5 to the goose neck, I'm taking T5 with a slightly late turn in, keep it about mid-track and stay flat all the way to the goose neck. If you take a more traditional inside line there's less grip and the car gets loose. I think there's a dip near the inside curbing that upsets the car.
As for pace, I did run a 33 in another session but it wasn't faster. I also spent enough time lawn mowing that the door is definitely open. If Rotarian hadn't done some mowing of his own in the last race he would have beaten me easily, as it was it was less than a 0.5s gap.
I am way off from seeing the 30's. I started running 2:05's to start and got it down to the high 1:48s. I really need to make some changed to my steering wheel settings. It is not the settings for the car it is the actual controler settings. The default is at 50 and I am told that it is a 1:1 when set at 900 degrees. I am going to boost that up to 75 and see if that changes things. I ended up having my wheel in GT6 set very sensitive (I think spool drives it the same way) I was a huge help in letting me catch cars. I am in the same boat with this game. It the moment I feel like I am chasing the car. By increasing the wheel speed or in the real world I would be increasing the ratio It would alow me to stay in front of the cars handling.
In reply to dean1484 :
I typically will go into the car setup menu and change the steering ratio to around a 9.5 or so since I like a quick response also. Have to be careful with the Formula Rookie cars though as they don't react well to quick inputs.
For this track, do NOT drop an outside wheel off the pavement in the high speed bends. You will end up either doing a great imitation of a John Deere thresher, or worse, the new Formula Rookie Inverted Dreidel move. 
Go ahead, ask Dean or I how we know. 
Three weeks ago, I'd have been two laps down on Sauce by the fourth lap. This is getting fun again. Big thanks to Brad for the session last night, it took a load off my mind getting the rig validated.
So what time do you open a room?
Room is open. I’ll join as soon as I get the boys to bed. 30ish minutes.
Well, that hasn't gone well. No idea what happened but after passing Rotary after the steep uphill I got the boot. No real point in rejoining the session so I just shut it down.
Still not as bad as what happened to Dean, but putting the wrong tires on one end of the car is pretty much a right of passage. Welcome to the club
Well except for the part that I did not make a tire change. Really irritating. Spend all that time and I don’t get to turn one lap in a race. The good side is the learning curve appears to be steep and had I been in the race with the correct tires I would not have completely embarrassed my self.
I tried about 25 laps at brands hatch and the car needed some tweaking but managed a low 54. No idea how that will stand up. Basically turn one is a game of not letting the back end come around. The transition between Turn four and five caught me out a bunch of times sending me way off on the left side. Then there is the last turn that is the key to the whole front strait. It can make a 10 mph difference going in to turn one depending how well you get the last turn.
I just didn't have pace for this race and started 10th. After a bumpy start off the grid I found myself running in 4th. I was perfectly fine with that and just settled into a pace. After a while the dreaded brain fade set in and I had an off. That put me back in the middle of the bots and it was bumper cars from there. Virtually no way to get by them and I was sent off several times. Eventually finishing 6th or 7th. Not sure.
Dean. Sounds like you will be ready for the week after next. Next week is Oulton Park Island.
Pretty simple track, not as narrow as tonight, but not wide. The hairpin and chicane can be a minor challenge. Dentons is probably the potentially trickiest. The elevation change can be an issue.
My race worked out pretty well. My setup is pretty stable for me (careful throttle control is a must). Managed to pull off a banzai qualifying and get the pole. I knew Sauce would get by me soon enough. I got a bit loose out of turn 1 and ended up doing an off road hill climb and let him by.
I watched Sauce slowly pull away until he vaporized. Ended up doing pretty consistent 36's and eventually caught up with Rotarian to play a bit.
Points updated. Replay posted. Sauce gets the win despite technical issues, because obviously. If you would like to lodge a compliant about that too bad.
My race was basically a practice session. Qualified 3rd, kept 3rd on the start. Rotary got a good draft on my while I was being a bit conservative on the opening lap and came by out of the back straight, I slotted back in behind him. He got off track going through the esses, and I was back in 3rd. There I stayed until the end of the race. I had a few moments where I would mess up a corner trying to look around and see where other people were, but other than that I was clean. I wasn't fast enough to catch Air, I wasn't slow enough to be caught from behind. So, I just cruised.
I'm actually in Chicago next week for the race so I won't be able to drive. Air do you want to host? I'll still try and join and watch along.
I can give it a try.
Should I plan on booting Sauce again?
In reply to aircooled :
Yea, there’s a setting where you can pick the driver you want to boot just before halfway through the race.
My qualifying session ended up being pretty odd. I got a message from a friend just as the session was starting that needed attending to and it got me a bit out of rhythm. I got out on track late and ended up in the middle of the AI pack. I had trouble getting space or a clean lap so I bailed back to the pits to try to get some clean track, only to end up right back in a different pack of AI cars 
. I finally got a decent lap going then caught an AI car through the esses. I was playing for some draft but he ran wide at the last corner so I cut to the inside and we ended up next to each other. As we approach the pits he just comes over into me, we get locked up, and I end up in the pits with him spun out at pit entry. At that point there were about 2 minutes left and I had only completed 4 laps: 2 out laps, an ok but in traffic lap, and a pit stop lap. The next lap was already blown but I now had clean track, leaving me one chance to put down a flier. That flier was great all the way until T3 where dropped a wheel to the outside and Air locked up a solid pole position.
As for the race, I knew I needed to just settle down, run some laps, and get back in rhythm. I ran behind Air for a couple laps til he dropped a tire, then just focused on hitting my marks and was feeling pretty good til I got the boot. It was weird watching the replay because where the replay ends is 4 corners past where I saw myself when I was disconnected, and I didn't see any sign of Rotary in the vicinity. For me he was parked dead center of the track just after the steep uphill, and basically as I passed him I got kicked.
In the next day or two I'll post my full setup. I gave most of it to Dean the other day and he's already made some changes, but it might help someone figure something out about the car.
Amusingly and unrelated, my driver rating took a 50 point hit last night. I think I was sharing a pit box with someone and it was registering the contact, which is why I got the race director warning while parked. Combined with Brad not seeing me when coming out of the pits and AI being AI I had a fair bit of contact last night. I really need to tune another car or two and join some more races.
You lose 50 points for rage quits. Don’t blame me, my rating went up a whopping 6 points.
I’ve basically given up on caring about the numbers. I just want to get to a D, that lets you get into their esports scene. Not that I’ll actually do anything, just want the option.
Ok, my full setup from last race:
Tire pressure: LF 16.97 RF 17.4 LR 17.4 RR 17.84
Brake pressure 60%, Brake Balance 58/42 Weight bias 48/42, though I do move the weight more rearward for some tracks
Front Suspension: Caster 4.5 Camber -1.4 Ride Height 85mm Spring Rate 44N/mm Steering Ratio 10.5 Toe 0 Anti-Roll Bar 24N/mm
Rear Suspension: Camber -0.9 Ride Height 95* Spring rate 38N/mm Toe 0 Anti-Roll Bar 7*
Front Dampers: Bump stop 0 Slow Bump 2400 Slow Rebound 4000 Fast Bump 1150 Fast Rebound 1900 Bump Transition 250 Rebound Transition -210
Rear Dampers: Bump stop 0 Slow bump 2300 Slow Rebound 3100 Fast Bump 1675 Fast Rebound 2250 Bump Transition 220 Rebound Transition -300
Radiator opening 60% Engine Braking 2
Final Drive 3.444 1st gear 2.846 2nd gear 2.000 3rd gear 1.471 4th gear 1.190
Diff: Clutch LSD on, 60 degree ramp
* Dean lowered the rear and softened the bar to improve trail braking and on-throttle stability.
For me this setup is stable at both entry and exit on mid to high speed corners, and on low speed corners there is definitely some twitch but it gets the car pointed in the right direction early and, if you trust it to, will stabilize under throttle with mild steering correction. That last point is key as the natural reaction would be to lift slightly to regain traction, but these cars have no power and the traction will come back on its own if you add a small dab of countersteer early. Get it right and you don't even need the countersteer, the car will maintain its arc and mild slide but not actually step out. I should add bunch of asterisks for driving style and whatnot, but this is what works for me. Now, I've never run a lap at Oulton so I have no idea if this tune translates, but it's very similar to my Snetterton tune and I invite people to try it at Caldwell since it's fresh in the mind.
Ok, I ran a few laps of Oulton and 1. I have run this track before but not in this configuration and 2. That tune is NOT plug and play. If you try it as a baseline at minimum drop the rear spring rate and sway bar by one click each, and probably up the front sway bar a click while you're at it. If I find a decent tune I'll post it, but right now I'm having issues with the car getting loose in a couple spots that are hard to save.
Go turn your system on. Version 4.00 update is 11 Gigs. A couple hours of download at the best.
Don't really know what they updated. Doesn't look any different. Haven't seen on the forums what the update 4.00 contains. I did download the Fun Pack.
Ran some laps at OP. I've driven this track before in a FR race. Maybe it was back in PC1. I like the track and was able to come up with a good raceable setup very quickly - unlike the other tracks. After about a dozen laps, I'm in the 34's. If I remember correctly, the bots are slow in the hairpin and through the chicane but they will run you off the road going up the hill to Druids.
The update is likely similar to the PC update that I put a link to in the other thread:
http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?55001-Project-CARS-2-PC-Updates-Changelog&p=1472667&viewfull=1#post1472667
LOTS of mostly small stuff (including likely messing up you 911 GT3 tune). I didn't see anything about a fix for changing tires to studded when you make a last minute setup change right before the race, but who knows.
Looks like a lot of AI changes, which should be nice... hopefully.
Who knows but suddenly I was much more comfortable in the Formula Rookie. A YouTube video on the update had nothing but praise for the changes.
Edit: In the long list of updates there were multiple changes to tires, suspension, and FFB for formula cars including the FR. If my brief session tonight was any indication, the changes are excellent.
I won't be able ro test it until Tuesday, but I do hope they got rid of that weird un-recoverable "auto spin" dynamic at low speeds. It's pretty irritating sometimes. Especially since, no mater the car, the spin seems to almost always result in pointing the exact opposite direction.
Looks like I should fire up the game tonight and see.
