GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 4: Ugly Ducklings

I went wide in T1 because I was not sure how things were going to work with TJ and Sauce in T1.  I probably should have gone to the inside but the last thing I wanted to dow as slide through and take both of them out so the outside was the plan.  If they tangled I had lots of options.  If I screwed up I only take me out.  I did ding the wall on the exit of one but it did not slow me.  Air you were way back going in to T1. I glanced at my mirrors as we came to the brake point for T2 and you were not in any of them so I just assumed you were still back there.  From the replay you contacted my left rear and turned me left in to the wall.  I was clearly ahead but we had very different approach angles so we could no see each other.  I think if we were running parrelell with each other we would have seen each other and or the warning things would have gone off.   Once I was nose in the wall I had to sit and wait till the field went by as trying to get turned around and going would have meant that I would have taken many others out.  Not a good thing!!!  

Watching the replay helped me understand why a bot DNF’d on lap 6. 

Also, I enjoyed watching Dean head off to run an errand on Seaside late in the race. 

My race ended where it began, in 7th. I guess my gearing was lower than others, I launched off the start and passed 3 cars in a straight drag race. Air was inside at T1 so I didn’t fight to keep 4th. Then Air+Dean = back up to 4th. Then TJ started tank slapping and I was briefly in 3rd. Then, I spent the rest of the race giving positions back. Towards the end of the race either track/tire temps changed or I was just getting sloppy and I started locking brakes. There were a couple times where I nearly nosed into the wall and had to reverse. Typically reverse is not ideal for lap times. On one of those adventures Headshot got by. That gave me a little late race excitement as I had to chase him down and try and get my position back. I got by and had a bit of a gap. I saw Sauce approaching and as time expired I decided that I would rather get lapped than run another lap, so I pulled to the side and then followed him to the finish. 

Was that the one I pushed in to the wall?  

dean1484 said:

Was that the one I pushed in to the wall?  

It looked like there was contact, you hit the wall, ended up facing the wrong direction, drove to the runoff and spun around and started going again. 

Ohh that ya. I was a bit to aggressive and then realized if I pushed it any more it was going to end really bad so I took the escape road.  I think the one I pushed in to the wall was in qualifying. 

The one I pushed In to the wall the race director did not say a thing. 

LOL. Just figured out that I ran slicks on 3 corners and a wet tire on my front left at Long Beach for the whole race. I can see the treads on the replay if I go to photo mode. Ran that way for qualli as well. 

Who’s hosting this week? I’m out. Dean? Air? Any questions on setup?

In reply to T.J. :

That's quite an impressive drive under those conditions, I would have expected that front to burn off pretty early. 

Here is a picture of us all at the start.

If you zoom in on my left front tire it looks like this:j

Then if you tell the IT guy to "enhance" like they do in the movies, you get this:

Yep, that's a wet tire with tread. My replay doesn't let me see my HUD for some reason, so I can't go back and look at tire wear during the race to see if that tire got more degradation than the others. I think the wets for these cars must not be the same as the wets for GT3 cars, otherwise I would've noticed after a handful of laps that something was wrong. I'm not sure when I changed it to wet so maybe it was like that for my practice laps as well.

Actually TJ, weren't you just using Dean's setup? 

Won't be able to host next week either as I will miss because Road Trip!

I will be flying to Houston to pick up my new (to me) Carrera 4S and driving it back home to Reno.  It's 1,900 miles.  Let's see, I figure at an average speed of 180 mph it's only about a day's drive, right?

I can host if people want me to. What time do you have qualifying start? 9:30 pm??

Probably better you since we all know we play well with your connection and the start time can get a bit close to my getting home time.

dean1484 said:

I can host if people want me to. What time do you have qualifying start? 9:30 pm??

I set the session so that there is 30 minutes of practice starting at 8:30 CT. Qualifying should start roughly at 9 CT. 

Also, qualifying only has 1 Weather condition, it is whatever the first condition from the race session. Practice has the same conditions as the race. Each session should start at the same as the race, but I usually set practice to “real time”, while the race is set to 2x time progression. 

So, what is a decent laptime at Bathurst? 

EDIT: Leaderboard has a 2:20.7 as the top time. I haven't gotten all that close to that yet. I think my fastest lap was in the high 23's and I seem to be fairly comfortable running 25's. Been tinkering with setup changes still trying to find something that works on the whole track. I'm hoping to be able to be able to run fairly consistent laps in the 24's. I downloaded the suspension calculator and will mess around with that to see what it says and how it works.

In reply to Argo1 :

I'm sure I changed it to wet while trying to change the tire pressure.

Looks like a fun road trip and a nice car!

In reply to T.J. :

I've put in some 21's with a best of 21.3, though 20's are definitely possible.

In reply to e30Matt :

I got into the lower half of the 23's after some more practice. Still haven't played with the suspension calculator. Not sure what that will tell me if anything, but the gearing calculator helped me come up with different settings to try out.

So, messed around with the suspension calculator. Followed the guidance from the creator and ended up with a car that was very tail happy under acceleration. I tried to work on that with differential settings and rear toe. Those helped a bit, but still not so good. I then messed with the springs a click and softened the rear bar a click. Car still seems like it wants to kill me. This may be more of an issue with my right foot than the setup. I'll play around with it a bit more and if I can't figure it out, I will just go back to what I had.

In reply to T.J. :

I only gave the suspension calculator a cursory attempt this time around. I couldn't get it to show anything remotely close to inside the lines on the graph, and since I'm not unhappy with how the car sits now I didn't spend time messing with it.

Here is what I came up with. The springs ended up a lot stiffer than I had been using for the past couple of races. It seems that getting the gearing correct is more important than suspension setup. I seem to run about identical lap times with the below setup as I do with my modified Fuji setup.

Drive the one that does not fall off as much. I have some very fast setups but after five or seven laps they want to kill me. My Fuji setup is very consistent. I just have to move the bias a little. As the race goes on. 

In reply to dean1484 :

I wonder if the 50 pounds of fuel burning off is what you are seeing. The fuel tank is in the frunk right? So, it seems like over the course of a half hour race we are losing about 50 pounds off the front of the car. To keep the brake balance feeling the same perhaps it needs to be shifted a bit rearward as the weight changes.

The jags will make this one interesting. If you start a straight with one too close behind you have to watch out where they overtake you because they tend to kill me sometimes if they overtake at the wrong place. It is possible to stay ahead and build a gap on them, but with the AIs at 85/30 I need to push pretty hard and stay clean to not let them start to hassle me on the straights.

I still haven't managed to get into the 2:21's, but I've gotten 2:22.0 a couple of times.

I made one minor change from the suspension setup posted above and it seems to work well for me.

I don't think it's the fuel.  I normally run the full fuel in practice and many times run less then half that for qualifying and I don't see the difference.  There is clearly a difference in handling as the race goes on though.  I notice the car getting looser, but that does not bother me much, it's more the general loss of traction (I notice I tend to run corners wider).  It really seems more like what Sauce is talking about with the higher pressures, less forgiveness (tires seem to hold a higher slip angle early in the race).  My pressures have not got up to the 27 he talks about though, so it's not that.

I can see how adjusting the brake balance could help though.  It's not worth me trying to scroll through the menus, but I should probably setup some buttons for it.

I've been running tire pressure right at 27.1# at this track. They start off higher at the beginning of the race, but pressures come down after the first couple laps. When I start out with cold tires for practice, they are way down in the 24# range. I seem to be able to get about the same lap times anywhere in that range, but the super high pressures seem to the trickiest for me.

I set up the little scroll wheel to change brake bias and moving it a bit to the rear as the race progresses seems to work ok.