So, if we aren't starting up another series next week, we might want to spend a night exploring the new content / tracks.
I would be very interested to see how the Testarossa matches up with the old Austin-Martin. (They do need to add an old Jag in there now though)
Patch also includes:
In reply to aircooled :
Aston Martin. Austin was a different company. 
I downloaded the update the other day, but not yet the new DLC. I'm probably out till the end of Oct at this point. Hopefully when I get home my rig (and house) are still intact.
So what, if anything, are we doing tonight?
The Audi was fun. I need to try something else for comparison. Also the temps were on the low side last night so tire temps and pressures could be more of a factor in a season with these.
Lessons learned:
The M3 can't hang. It has reasonable one lap pace but suffers over the course of the race. Being the lightest of the bunch you can brake late and carry speed through the corner, but to make up for the lack of acceleration and straight line speed you have to be using pretty much all of the available grip at all times. You also have to be on the gas as early and hard as possible. This wears tires faster than you would expect from the lightest car.
Also, since late braking and high entry speed is the only advantage, the only place you can attack a faster car is under braking. The problem is that to be successful you have to be on the bumper of the faster car when you get there. To do that you need a poor corner exit from the other car, high exit speed for you, and to be on the throttle very early. Downside: being on throttle that hard and that early kills the rear tires.
My goal when following Dean was to push him hard and hope that his tires would fall off, allowing me opportunity in the second half of the race. What actually happened is that my tires fell off first. Whereas Dean was able to pick his spots and not overwork the tires in a couple places, I was riding the ragged edge the entire time just to keep up. It wasn't sustainable and I eventually dropped a wheel and that was that.
The question with these cars is if they are close enough to be competitive. We might want to consider putting restrictors on some cars to get them more in line. The Ford seemed to be fast enough to keep up with Dean and Sauce (running all out) with the boost cranked, but I suspect it was using tires a lot faster then (like Sauce) and was definitely challenging to be consistent. I think it's fun to drive because of that, and it will kick butt on straights, but can be a bit of a nightmare on slower corners (wait for boost... WHAM... DRIFT TIME!)
So, not sure at this point. To keep variety, it looks like the Audi might need a bit of a HC, the Skyline a LOT (if we even bother) and maybe the Ford goes back to mortal level boost, since the Merc and BMW seem a bit slow.
I ran nearly and identical time to Sauces fast lap. He ran a 10.000 while I ran a 10.064. That tells me the Nissan is worth ~3 seconds a lap.
I didn’t finish the race because of the issues with rear brakes locking up and not being able to cool them with the ducts closed. But in practice and qualifying where I could control the temps it was really quick and consistent.
Keep in mind I try to mix tracks to not give any single car an advantage. So, heavy cars would struggle on a course like Sugo.
Do we want to take a bit of a break from a structured series and just run one-off races to play with different cars for awhile?
That seems like a reasonable idea since we really haven't done too much exploring. We might want to set up a mini-test/race format where we do maybe two test and tune / qualify / short race events in a night. We could either switch rooms / tracks at the mid-point, or setup the room to have both classes (which could get entertaining with AI cars running the other class).
We can also leave the room open to the public to see if we can attract any new participants. Something we used to do with GT and was pretty successful later in GT6 life (when most of the foul mouthed 12 year olds had left).
The Audi is a good car. I don’t think HC can be assigned to any car until we get some more seat time. The Audi works for me very well and I drove a smart race. I stayed out of the crashes and was carful to manage the tires to only use what I needed to when I needed to. There is also a very specific driving style you need for an awd car. Sauce and I discussed it some and did further testing after the race. It is not intuitive. However once you get it you will be really fast.
Last night my fastest lap in the race was a high 2:10. Most of my laps were in the 2:11s with some in the 2:12s. The point is I could have burned the tires off but I knew I had the heavy pig of a car so tire preservation was key. Another thing to note is I made zero mistakes. That goes a long way to a really good finish.
My best lap with the Audi was during practice with Sauce after the race. I got a 2:09.86 the battle with Sauce was lots of fun. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he was the rabbit in the bmw instead of me. I am not sure I could have made a pass stick
Well, certainly more testing, but since Sauce got his heart going all "pittery pattery" trying to and unsuccessfully keeping up with you we will likely have to either drop the BMW as non-competitive, or reduce the power on some of the other cars.
Nurburg is a pretty neutral/median course so it's unlikely the BMW would be much faster on a larger / smaller track.
In reply to BradLTL :
I ran the GTR with Dean after the race. Using the car as a 4 speed with no real tuning I ran a 2:07.7 which is a full 2 seconds faster than pole was, and after some gear tuning was on pace for a 2:06.xxx but couldn't quite put it together. I was having the same rear brake issue, though the brake bias is 57/43 so I think it might be something funky with the rear diff causing it to lock. After talking to Dean about how to drive AWD I realized I was doing it all wrong so I'm sure there's more time left on the table.
As for track dependency, I don't think the AWD cars will really be affected much. They are plenty quick in a straight line, can hop curbs with no issue, and accelerate extremely well out of the tight stuff. They'll lose to the Ford on an extended straight but walk the M3. The Merc is a bit of a wild card there, it's faster in a straight line than the M3 but I don't really know how it stacks up against the AWD cars.
I guess what I am saying is I can drive AWD cars ( those that remember the Tangerine Torpedo in GT5 or 6) I figured out the Audi fast and with a couple quick tuning tweaks it was set up to my liking. Others in the same car the other night were no where as fast as me. I even gave them my tune. I think that this is not so much the car as the driver with the Audi. It is like Sauce in the recent 911 series. It is a car that he really likes and is really good at. He even gave us his tune/tunes and all of us were still slower. Much slower with maybe the exception of TJ. I guess I should have sandbagged the Audi and let Sauce get the HC on the BMW the other night. I will have to remember this strategy for future test and tune sessions. 
How about this I will send everyone my current tune in the Audi and we run a 30 min race with it at GPF with it next week? Or how about Saturday?
EDIT: The other thing is GPF is probably my best track out of all the tracks in the game so that helped as well with me being fast.
The hopping the curb thing is interesting. I was good with the exception of the last corner. If I hit the curb on the right the car would quickly go in to oversteer. If I tried to correct it would then snap to the left. Sauce saw that happen to me once. The power on slide through the corner is a really fun but upset the car while you are doing it and things go wrong really fast.
Sauce I just remembered something that now makes much more sense to me now. We were testing Miata’s I think in GT6 . You kept telling me to unwind the steering much earlier than I was. That problem I have of not unwinding the steering comes from all my testing and driving awd cars in the game. As we discussed that is the wrong thing to do in an awd car on corner exit. With a properly setup awd car you are actually steering it all the way through the corner putting power down with a minimal amount of sliding it. With RWD cars you want much more slip angle scrubbing speed to the apex and then at best maintaining speed and at worst actually scrubbing speed on exit as you un wind the wheel.
More testing tonight. GTR. Adjusted gears and on my third lap ran a 2:06.7. That thing is a monster of a car.
Ran a bunch of laps in the Benz and my best lap was in the 2:10s but running a 30 min race I was mostly in the 12s and up. Sauce however was in the 7s and I think he had more in it. I ran a 30 min simulated race and The tire ware was a bit better than the Audi for me but the car went loose on corner exit so for me I would have to dial a bit of under steer in to the cars dif to make that work better. Sauce on the other hand ran his fast lap with that car on something like lap six or seven.
I am going to try the Ford and the BMW this weekend. See if we can tame the ford.
Oh oh I discovered that the GTR has adjustable boost and by default it is at 75. I cranked it up to 100 for my couple laps.
In reply to dean1484 :
In the Merc I was running 2:09's starting with full fuel load, qualifying setup I hit a 2:08.15. I lost a couple tenths over a previous lap so 2:07's are possible, but it would have to be basically a perfect lap.
For race pace I would expect ~2:10 for the Merc. I was running faster in my test, but I knew I wasn't going to run a full stint and just flogged it for about 8 laps to see what would happen. The car got a bit more difficult to drive but the pace wasn't really affected, and as fuel burned off I actually started running a bit quicker. Depending on how the rest of the cars shake out this would probably be my car of choice.
Oh, and one thing of note: the Merc is a 6 speed. The description is a 5 speed as I'm fairly certain that the real car was, but it definitely has 6 gears which helps a ton for a car that doesn't have a ton of torque.
How u holding up down there Sauce? All good with the storm?
dean1484 said:How u holding up down there Sauce? All good with the storm?
So far it's just a regular rainy day. A bit more wind but nothing too bad yet. The winds from the storm have slowed significantly but we're in for quite a bit more rain before it's done.
I tried to make the Cossie work but failed. It's absurdly fast in a straight line, but even with tuning can't keep tires under it. It can run as fast or faster than the Merc, but falls on its own sword in a couple of laps. It can either work or be fast, but not both.
My current rankings are: GTR, Audi, Merc, Cossie, M3.
My go to for this series is he Audi. It is just easy and fun for me to drive. The GTR is fast but almost boring the Merc is fun but I am much slower than sauce in it. I have not tried the other two. I should get to that before Wednesday.
A word of advice for anyone trying the Cossie, switch from a viscous diff to a clutch based one and lower the accel ramps to 20-25. The car is still nuts, but that at least makes it easier to keep it pointed in close to the right direction.
I'm traveling for work this week but look forward to hearing how the next round of testing goes.
Speaking of that what are we testing this week?
dean1484 said:Speaking of that what are we testing this week?
I may take a week or so off... but don't let me stop the rest of you.
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