GRM - Gran Turismo 5 Racing League - Series 4

trust me Grae, I really want to continue but yeah like you said....you groan? you should see me, yeah I get pissed!! to say the least

It's just a hit or miss with me, sometimes it'll just disconnect like crazy and other times works flawless, stay in the room with track changes and people joining and no glitches and so on. The other day I joined a Kart room and it was just that, we always had 6-10 people and it was great. There were a couple from Canada, one from Brasil, one from Germany, an Italian, a French, and a few Americans, like a world championship! haha

I had time for about 3 laps ea. with the GT and Sal. cars @ Fuji GT this morning. I also ran two potential Touring cars to see how they compared. One light weight and the other a heavy wt. with higher hp. They were within .1 of each other after about 3 laps ea. IMO that series as well as the shuffle races has the potential to be a LOT OF FUN!! How refreshing to just go for it without your butt all clenched and holding the contoller hand over hand to try to put some english on a car with no grip. If anyone wants to test a little some night this weekend please post it to remind us. It would be fun to have some short trial races just to check out some of our cars. I want to try a couple of others. Not being sure what the tracks are all like makes it a little hard to choose which way to go.

BTW, neither of the cars I tested had to be turned down much with the limiter so I don't think it's use will be a factor. 625 pp is pretty strong.

Graefin10 wrote: How refreshing to just go for it without your butt all clenched and holding the controller hand over hand to try to put some english on a car with no grip.

Well, you might not be out of the woods on that one. My observation with the TC is that although you don't get the grip issues of the Saloon and GT (though you might want to be careful on the gas coming out of corners), driving them smoothly is much harder. They are so twitchy and brake so hard you have have very good timing to get your line perfect.

Your right though, it should be fun either way. The multiple options for tuning will also allow adjustment throughout the season, so even with totally even cars, the tuning could give the cars different advantages / disadvantages (kind of like the dual Hunter and I had in Saloon)

Make sure to try the TC's at Mt A-Hole or your custom course. I have found that although banked corners seem like a great way to go faster, they are a total pain in the butt when you are trying to do some maximum grip cornering, any slide and you are done!

Oh, didn't I mention that I'd like to have TC as well as ABS. Yes, you're right, you've got to be super smooth with the gas coming out of the corners. It's going to be tough without pedals or triggers.

I just tried about 5 more cars which brought up the question where is the line for "touring cars"? When I think of touring cars I think of sedans or coupes, not GT cars like in the GT 500 and 300 series. This is what I found though, 625pp is 625pp. The GT500 cars, DTC, and even the GT500 cars like the NSXs are all within a second of each other with me driving. Your call on this Air but I suggest allowing all sedans and coupes including GT500 & DTC. Just for diversity the concepts such as the ISF and the Nissan Skyline could be allowed as well as the Camaro LM car. Anyway, if I didn't bring this up I'm sure someone else would. I've pretty much narrowed it down already. I can't quite get the NSX up to the same lap time as my two front runners anyway. Probably because of what you said about power application. It wants to snap to oversteer very easily.

Yes, the current plan is ANY car at 625pp. You can modify the car as much as you want throughout the series as long as it is the same car and it is 625pp.

I really hope we do get a very wide variety. I am pretty sure only race modified car will be competitive though, they seem to be a fair amount faster at the same PP. This may be because they allow a lot more downforce or it might be the cars are given wider tires and more braking power.

I am guessing you are only testing RM cars. If you want, try some non RM cars, I suspect they will not match up.

In reply to aircooled:

Don't you think you ought to draw the line to eliminate the F GT and LMP1 cars? If not, well we'll definitely get diversity. I THOUGHT I had selected my car but if it truly is ANY car I'll have to de-tune some LMP1 cars to see what happens. I did the seasonal trial recently for a low pp # and hundreds of entrants faster than me chose the FGT car. I chose my 10 Ferrari F1 car and placed better than in any other trial I've ever entered. It was at Cape Ring and I ran many laps until I knew I was at my limit. I got a gold by several seconds but the record was several second lower than my time. Makes you wonder where the limits of this game really are.

I've already tried non RM cars and for what ever reason they don't quite make it.

I haven't done any testing due to my internet issues*, but if it's any car at 625 PP I could run one of my 1000 horsepower monstrosities as a comedy option right? I think my Speed 12 is at 624 without the ballast boost, and I think my SL600 and SL65 are both nearby.

I've been leaning towards running the Challenger TC since we decided on the PP limit, but I might still test a bunch of stuff.

*Right now I have enough of a signal from the E36 M3 network that I can connect to the PSN, but I can't do anything more than use the internet on my PS. This keeps up, I might not be able to run wednesday.

Can we please do race tires on one of the classes? I kindof like the juxtaposition between once class with E36 M3ty tires and one class with not E36 M3ty tires. I know i don't have the patience or focus to do two races in one night fighting for traction every inch of the way.

Audi Grilles

Canoe

Graefin10 wrote: Don't you think you ought to draw the line to eliminate the F GT and LMP1 cars?

You may be right. Theoretically (?!) the PP limit should make it even, and it would be fun to get some crazy variation like that. I suspect the LMP1 cars might be OK, but the F GT cars might just be a bit much in the downforce department.

Keep experimenting, I will look into it also. I certainly don't want to end up with a bunch of de-tuned F GT cars.

I took some pics from last weeks Ring Race:

Saloon: Here is Hunter 10 seconds after the start, already cashing the winners check:

Here is Hunter 10 seconds later at the first corner making the turn into the winners circle:

After realizing the winners circle is not currently open Hunter has to work his way back though the pack. Here he is passing some sort of feminine hygiene product sponsored car:

This is Hunter trying to squeeze past me to get to Grea. At this point, Hunter already has rear damage and is somehow not only able to keep his car on the road, but is pushing for position. Not too long after this, he got past me, pushed a bit too much at caught a wall. Fortunately for him, Grea and I also did some wall inspection not too long after him.

This is the start of the Saloon race. As you can tell, Grea is in the lead, again, and Hunter has apparently visited "Pimp Your Car For Less" since that last race (fur hat cannot be seen from this angle). Also of note is the fact that a car know as the Purple Drift Wagon shows up at the start thinking this was tire burning event:

Here is the Purple Drift Wagon, after somehow passing a prime example of 4WD Teutonic might, showing how quickly he can reduce a pair of $300 race tires to pool of tar.

This is the M5 parade that resulted for a lap or two. As you can see Hunter is "assisting" Grea by letting him know he would like him to go a bit faster. I'm trying not to get involved in there little domestic dispute.

A bit of airborne action after Grea felt the need to see what the barriers on the outside of the turns were made of. Also the start of an M5 nose to tail parade that went on for 9 or so laps.

An idea of what happened when Hunter went into the ring, I would catch him fairly quickly.

This is on the second to last lap. Hunter gets pretty squirrely, slides wide and I poke my nose in. This is were I SHOULD have tried for the pass. I was too paranoid about taking both of us out.

In reply to aircooled:

I've already experimented and the LMP1s turn in considerably faster lap times. 4+ seconds on Origami Road. I was going to try Lemans just for the heck of it but if they're that much faster on a twisty track I would have to assume that they would be faster on a longer track. Still haven't tested that theory though. It may be all wrong because they have less than 500HP by a good bit. Some of the higher hp, higher wt. cars might be faster at Lemans, I'm just not sure. I think we are all of the mindset that we don't want the dominance of one or two cars and that's probably what would occur if we allow the LMP1 cars. I think their advantages are just too much for the higher c.g. touring cars. I've got about a dozen touring/gt cars that could be competitive and I'm sure other entrants will have some that I don't. I really did enjoy running my Peugeot and BMW LMP1 cars @ Origami. They were within .1 of each other, old school vs. new school.

I think just allowing all RM touring and/or GT cars will give much diversity

Great selection of pictures Air. There's no way I'd ever do a real M5 like I did the game car, but now Hunter's looks pretty cool. Not real sure how that color would look in reality though. It looks like a chrome version of bronze or highly polished bronze.

Forgot to update the results and standing, now in traditional format:

GTP is starting to run away with GT and is charging quickly in Saloon while Bael and Mini are in a death match for 3rd:

And if it makes it any cooler.... the Legnum is AWD. It's just incredibly easy to dift.

I should have just used this car from the beginning. Yeah, it's about 200hp down from the field, but it's pretty fun.

I did some experimenting with the Prototype and Formula cars. I was unable to get a FGT car down to 625.

The big issue I see here is the amount of downforce available. The prototypes can do 150 ish total, while a TC is around 105. What that allows of course is someone to crank the downforce way up for small courses and way down for fast ones. Not a bad thing, but it also means there is no reason not to use a Prototype car. I am thinking we should limit the cars to production "type" or "based" cars (which includes silhouette style TCs). Or maybe restrict total down force to 110 max.

One weird observation: NASCAR cars seem to have WAY more downforce available then they should. They are something like 150 total! That's pretty crazy considering the small splitter on the front and the little duck bill on the back. They give them as much as the large wing cars! Even still, I am tempted to allow them though since my brief experiment showed that even with a LOT of downforce, traction was pretty hard to find (not sure if it because they are heavy, or smaller tires?)

Anyway, thoughts? Brad, what has been your experience with this (since you say you have run a lot of these)?

My interwebs are functioning again, so I'm good for testing and such.

aircooled wrote: Anyway, thoughts? Brad, what has been your experience with this (since you say you have run a lot of these)?

My intention with this class was to be production based cars (not LMP, FGT, F1). In the rooms I've setup I've listed the title as "RM, Stealth, SGT, TC, 625PP". I had 1 guy show up and run a Nascar, he was uncompetitive but I don't think he was used to running without TC.

IMO, it should be production car based race cars. So that would allow for cars like:

• BMW M3 GTR Race Car
• Viper GTS-R Team Oreca Race Car
• Ford GT LM Race Car

But exclude cars like:

• Bentley Speed 8
• Audi R10 TDI Stealth
• Ferrari 330 P4 Race Car '67

This is my vision for the class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-QmOYbECF4

So there's no point in testing the Nascar I was thinking about running?

I agree with Brad. Let's save the prototypes for a series down the road. There are so many RM production based cars to choose from we don't need to complicate things by trying to develope an equalizing formula for the prototypes. It would suprise me if any two of us show up with the same car unless we tip our hand while practicing together. Right now I'm torn between a car that's a little faster and one that's easier to drive.

I'm gonna guess that if the 330 is out then the XJ and MK4 are gone too. Which is good, because that knocks two big maybes off my list and helps narrow the field a bit.

I don't think the Prototypes will matter much. With all the downforce on, they'll be down on ponies.

But then again, like was said, there's plenty of production based cars out there, even if it is just silhouette cars, so that's fine.

(I don't really like the Prototypes anyways.)

I might be running a street car.

NASCARS = Useless, couldn't complete a lap on Mt Ashole.

Challenger TC = Near as useless, couldn't run a good lap on Mt Ashole.

Street car #1 = Fast, set a 1:13 on Mt Ashole with a slide into the wall at the corner before the hill.

Street car #2 = FAST, set a 1:07 on Mt Ashole, with no real issues once I got the hang of it.

R33 TC = Highest of my PP cars in the favorites, so I ran it. On pace to run a slightly faster lap than SC#2, but the damn thing spun horrifically at the corner SC1 did, and was having traction issues all through the course.

I still have some stuff to test, but if I'm not much faster than the two street vehicles, I'm gonna run them because they're much more tame.

Hokay you sneaky little bastards, you have to start testing in your lounge or online instead of hiding your choices away like I'm gonna steal them.

I need one of you to run one of your choices against my street cars. I have to see if they'll be competitive before I make the official selection.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: And if it makes it any cooler.... the Legnum is AWD. It's just incredibly easy to dift. I should have just used this car from the beginning. Yeah, it's about 200hp down from the field, but it's pretty fun.

Why am I not surprised you were in the purple people eater? I've seen that Toyota before too.... you would bring random crap. Which reminds me... I still have that 155 if you wanna give it a run.