GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 4: Ugly Ducklings

Depending on the track it can be a combination of a few different things: tire wear, tire temps, tire pressures, and fuel.

When pushing these cars hard they over work the rear tires, and the one on the outside for the majority of the turns gets it a bit worse. Compared to the other series we've run this actually does get to a point where you can feel it. 

The tire temps and pressures are related but independent. Like at Fuji the pressures stabilized, but as the fog cleared tire temps rose. These tires tend to hold heat, so when they get hot it takes a while of cruising and picking you spots to push to get them back down. At Willow it was almost impossible to get the left tires back down and still turn a reasonable lap time. 

Fuel load does affect balance, my qualifying setups and race setups usually differ slightly because of this. 

The combination of all these factors will change how the car drives, it's a matter of finding a setup that works as they start to take effect. 

I may not be able to make it tonight, and if I do I won't be on for much of practice. 

With most of the field out at this point should we postpone e to next week?  

Or..... we could just race.... I can run you off the track, and take the WIN!!!

We still have tj

Someone should send Cligedy a friend request if that hasn't happened already, he may be on. 

I think I did 

I will be on a little bit after 9:00 eastern. Practice till about 10:00 then 15 min quail an 30 min race. 

I may not make it.  My drivehub keeps showing a zero and doesn’t work.  We had some power outages recently, so it might have taken a dive.

I got it working.... sorry Dean.

Bathurst results:

P1 Sauce

P2 Aircooled

P3 T.J.

P5 Dean

P12 Cligedy

All others were DNS.

Here is the Replay. Having trouble embedding it for some reason, but hopefully the link will work.

I was happy with my qualifying lap since I finally got a lap in the 2:21's. That was phase 1 of my plan, to qualify 2nd. Phase 2 was to try to get a good start and beat Sauce to T1, if that didn't work I just wanted to get a good enough start to maintain P2 and stay out of any messes that may happen in T1. Turns out I got a decent but not great start, came out of T1 in P2 but got a good run on Sauce. It took the whole straight to get past him for P1. Instead of just focusing in on putting in clean consistent laps, I was worried too much about Sauce and spent too much time watching my mirrors. I made it through Lap 1 with the crazy high tire pressures and instead of settling down continued to drive a bit ragged. It took until lap 5 when I had an off that only cost me a few seconds, but it totally destroyed my concentration for a bit and then I had a bigger wreck near the bottom of the hill as I brain farted and upshifted to 4th when I should've been lifting and getting ready to brake & downshift to 2nd. I thought I could get pointed back the right way before Air arrived on the scene, but that didn't play out so well. Ended up in 4th after Air got past (through?) me and the AI jag passed me on the long straight. It took a couple laps for me to clear the jag for good and at times I would gain on Air and then make a mistake and have to start trying to catch him all over again. In the end he just kept gaining time on me.

New track for me next week, so that should be fun.

I just realized that the rest of the season is on tracks I've never driven on save for Monaco. Also that next week will have rain. That will be interesting.

EDIT: Drove a few laps at Leipzig. Seems like a fun track. Worked on getting the right gearing selected and by the time I felt I had something that was not too bad, the rain started. Did 3 or 4 laps after the rain started on the slicks and that was good. Went to the pits and got wets and either the track got a lot wetter while I was in the pits or the wets just don't have the grip like the slicks. Made it to T3 and had to stop to make a work meeting.

I actually had a pretty good race... didn't hit Dean.

The car setup was pretty good there.  It was a bit loose in some of the braking (especially into the hairpin before the long straight).  This track and car really showed the suspension model in the game, you could feel all sorts of changes going on as the car went over the bumps and rises.  I watched Sauce bounce off the walls for the first lap or so, let them get a way, smash my way through TJ when he parked in the hairpin then just got better at the track and got faster and faster (I actually kept pace with Sauce, 10 seconds ahead).

I thought it was a good track for the car (at least for my setup).  It was great fun tossing the car into the corner, before the corner, and let is drift through the corner.  I think T2 was the most interesting since you could run into it too fast/late and use the drift to slow you into the corner.  You just had to be very careful with some of the braking zones!

On the first lap I could have pushed it with Air in t1 but thought better of it. I had fun blocking a jag for three laps but then realized I was actually loosing ground to air. The jag got by and it was then just a matter of clicking off laps.    I did not push it as I really wanted to finish with out an incident and I managed to do that.  Was a good race even if I did not finish up front. 

Wondering if we should turn on track limit penalties for Leipzig? I haven't tried it yet with them on, but there are several places were seconds can be gained with nothing to stop you more than cones.

You should try them....

.... if it's anything like we have experiences you will likely have a response similar to:

I'll try it with them on. I imagine they are ridiculous, but so are the gains on this track of running over the cones. 

T.J. said:

I'll try it with them on. I imagine they are ridiculous, but so are the gains on this track of running over the cones. 

We run with a gentleman's agreement to not exploit track areas that aren't supposed to be used. If it happens on accident then so be it, but don't gain a lasting benefit from it.

Where the track limit nazi really gets you is when you make a mistake. Run wide, put 2 in the grass, slow down to get back on track, and then add another 5 seconds to that. Do it multiple times and it compounds. We had races where someone had served all their time throughout the race, but ran wide in the last sector and was hit with a 40 second penalty as they crossed the finish line. 

Updated points and posted the replay (I can't get it to embed either).

e30Matt said:

T.J. said:

I'll try it with them on. I imagine they are ridiculous, but so are the gains on this track of running over the cones. 

We run with a gentleman's agreement to not exploit track areas that aren't supposed to be used. If it happens on accident then so be it, but don't gain a lasting benefit from it.

Where the track limit nazi really gets you is when you make a mistake. Run wide, put 2 in the grass, slow down to get back on track, and then add another 5 seconds to that. Do it multiple times and it compounds. We had races where someone had served all their time throughout the race, but ran wide in the last sector and was hit with a 40 second penalty as they crossed the finish line. 

Yea, I guess the computer isn't able to determine whether you are cheating and gaining an advantage or are just a complete idiot.  So, it punishes you for both.  It starts reasonable, +1 Sec, +2 Sec, and then you have a spin and come to a complete stop, rejoin the track and are given a +59 Sec penalty.  

That said, I'll watch the replay and can apply penalties after the fact if they are warranted.  No one has let me abuse my power yet, so that is disappointing.  

Did a practice race. First half went well. When the rain came I was slower than the AIs. A camaro got by me putting me into P2, then eventually I discovered a puddle, spun and ended up 11th. Maybe I can find a better setup for the wet. 

We haven’t run these in the rain yet right?  Theoretically they should have a huge advantage over the other “backwards” designed cars.  I suspect a tune update might be helpful but I am curious how a loose tune will work in the rain!

aircooled said:

We haven’t run these in the rain yet right?  Theoretically they should have a huge advantage over the other “backwards” designed cars.  I suspect a tune update might be helpful but I am curious how a loose tune will work in the rain!

The wet tires don’t seem to handle the water as well as the modern tires. 

TJ Sauce and I tested tonight and we all basically came to the conclusion that this track in the rain with these cars is not fun. We really need to rethink this race in terms of weather for a bunch of reasons. If for nothing else my personal opinion is I do this to have fun and relax. In the rain these cars are not fun and the frustration level with them in the rain just gets you mad. Also the Ai is not really affected by the rain at all while we were seeing a 23-27 second difference between wet and dry lap times. Also in the sessions we ran we had an hour practice. Ten minutes was dry and the rest was rain.

About the only thing I learned was that AT tires are better than the rains in the rain and when you go off they actually grip on the sand dirt and grass.

If we are going to run this weather model I am out for this race. I will instead watch the grm live thing.

Some thoughts.  First, the track is really fun in the dry.  Second, driving these cars in the wet is work and extremely frustrating.  It's an exercise in pedal control and patience, but not in a good way.  It's CONSTANT corrections, and I mean that literally.  Even on the straights you're fighting to get the car to go in the direction you want.  Most of the time you can get into a rhythm even in bad conditions, and I don't know if it's the car or the track but that just doesn't happen here.   Also, it's pretty much impossible to pass the AI in the wet.  They still park it in corners, but somehow don't have any issues getting the power down and just walk you down the straights, creating a gap that's too large to overcome at corner entry where they're slow.  Overall I expect this to be a frustrating race: you'll be fighting the car the majority of the race, and if something happens (and it probably will) and you end up behind the AI you're stuck, even if you're faster overall.