I played around with some of the other cars today. I could get the McLaren and Toyota in the 1:36's and the Ferrari in the 1:34's after a handful of laps.
I like the Ferrari quite a bit. With my setup, turn in at T6 is not as nice as the Merc, I think because front downforce is not adjustable.
Not the race I was hoping for.
The first few turns were interesting. I'm pretty sure I put Air on his roof may have hit Brad too. There was no place to go, so I aimed between two cars best I could. I got lucky that I made it through.
I used up more of my tires than planned trying to fight my way back from P8.
I should've been able to catch the leaders, but I got stuck behind the AI Panoz. I caught him and crashed trying to pass him, caught him again, crashed again, and repeat another time or two.
Tj. I was the one that tapped you around in t2. I was a little late braking but no big deal just go over the berm thing as I always do. But this time it kicked me out and in to you. Then all crazy ness happened. I came up on air on his lid and was going to hit him but brad got there first so it was cool to see air go flipping and land on his wheels.
I had a couple very bad AI cars assist me in crashing a couple times. I also made a couple mistakes.
But it was fun. Ended up where i realistically should have.
I was more competitive than I have been at any other event this series. I broke my streak of having the slowest fast lap time in the race. Generally a fun race with periods of focus and the periods of goofing off and trying to roadblock the AI.
So for the finale, everyone is all about that high speed, but have you checked the weather? Pit strategy and weather will make the top speed test a bit more interesting.
Also, went ahead and setup Series 6 to distract you.
Not the race I was looking for either. I FINALLY figured out the tune on the Ferrari for this track and found a huge amount of time over the previous sessions. Did a long run test and was averaging more than a second a lap faster than I could do before and the car was easier to drive.
In qualifying I had trouble getting a clean lap/open track and as time expired I was on a flyer. I was 4 tenths up going into the last complex when I caught a Group A car and had to settle for P2, but I knew I had the pace.
Aaaand then I forgot to load my race setup and started with 6 laps of fuel and no pit strategy set. Awesome. On the plus side you can adjust certain aspects of your stop on the fly. On the downside it's really hard to do that while driving on a track with no real straights. I had a couple minor offs messing with that, which didn't help the cause.
In hindsight probably should have elected not to swap tires and just add fuel, but I had been running qualifying laps and figured that a fresh set of softs would give me the best chance to make up ground. It actually might have if the pressures weren't 8 pounds lower than my target pressures... Regardless, after the stop I was 40 seconds back with 20 minutes to go and that hole was too deep.
Yeah, I am not sure what went on during the start. I got a decent start but braked too late into T5 and chose the Panoz as my "extended braking device". I didn't hit him too hard, but it did leave in a bit of a weird place at the exit of the turn I think. After that, it all went a bit dark and upside down. I was getting up to see if I could use the controller to reset me when I was mercifully knocked back over.
I did play a bit of "slow down the leaders" near the end with Brad (we were somewhat successful) and got an excellent take out of one of the Ferrari's chasing Sauce at the hairpin. It was a bit concerning though since there were 3 red Ferrari's running in a row and sometimes the driver label does not show up.
Here is a shot of the start. Sauce got a better start than I did. Sauce, myself and Dean all ran a bit wide on T1, but we all lived to tell. Sauce had a car length on me heading into T2.
Then at the apex of T2 this happened (if I had gotten a good start, I would've been where Sauce was and not been in Dean's way.):
The chaos after that was fun to watch on the replay. Air hit the AI Panoz which spun. Air ended up coming back on the track tangling with Brad. I came back on the track and contacted Dean and an AI, then plowed into Air sending him flying to land on his roof. I should've taken a pic of Air getting some of his namesake. Brad was already off in the sand and knocked him back over.
Between ending up in P8 after the first couple turns and Sauce having to pit, this ended up being a race that had a lot of potential to be really fun, but just didn't pan out. If I would've driven more smoothly and not made a few dumb mistakes, I could've caught the AI leaders, but I never would've got near Sauce without his pit stop.
Oh, and here is a pic of Brad and Air at the finish line:
Air was going faster. 50 meters and we would have been swapped.
BradLTL said:I was more competitive than I have been at any other event this series. I broke my streak of having the slowest fast lap time in the race. Generally a fun race with periods of focus and the periods of goofing off and trying to roadblock the AI.
So for the finale, everyone is all about that high speed, but have you checked the weather? Pit strategy and weather will make the top speed test a bit more interesting.
Also, went ahead and setup Series 6 to distract you.
The Porsche was not the right car for this series. It may be faster than the McLaren, but that's not saying a lot.
The rain will make LeMans interesting. Hopefully no puddle of death at Mulsanne corner.
In reply to e30Matt :
Was it one thing or several little things you changed to get the setup right?
EDIT: Looking at the laptimes, you had a very good race other than laps 7&8 when you had to pit. I can see how you got the times you did on the opening laps since you had a clear track ahead, but then after your pit you put down 4 laps in the 33's. Did you have traffic for those laps? My fastest race lap was a full second slower than your fast lap. In fact you had 8 laps faster than my fastest lap. I don't think I ever had a lap with a clear track in front of me the whole race, but you were flying. I overdrove my tires the first couple laps and never really got into the groove. Great race despite the questionable pit strategy.
T.J. said:The rain will make LeMans interesting. Hopefully no puddle of death at Mulsanne corner.
I think the issue with the magic puddles that last time was that the time was accelerated 60 times, but the puddles were existing in real time.
In reply to T.J. :
It was a combination of things, but I think the biggest was taking the rear sway bar to half of what I'd run at other tracks. That, combined with a lower rear ride height hugely reduced the wheel spin out of tight corners and the car wasn't as upset by the sausage curb at T1 so I could take that a ton faster. I had already tried those changes in moderation, I just took another huge swing at it and it was a night and day difference.
As for traffic I had it pretty good for the most part. It was usually just a car here or there and didn't cause much time loss, the one small pack I caught was at the exit of T2 so I had the entire straight to get past. It also helps lap times when you're in a position where tire wear isn't a concern and just have to send it.
In reply to e30Matt :
I had my rear bar right in the middle of its range. The Merc can go from 0 to 100 and I had it at 50. Maybe a little less would've been better. I think my rear ride height was fairly high as well. I had to be careful with getting on the throttle coming out of the slower corners as Brad noticed. Instead of adjusting it, I just tried to roll on the throttle a little more gradually. I'll file this info away for the future.
Hummmm we are having weather at the last race??? Really? That kind of takes the "fun" out of it as the AI weather in this game, especially rain, seems to make things MUCH worse. I am not going to spend an hour running around dealing with a wet track or puddles to be taken out by them. Just is a huge buzz kill. I thought we were not going to do rain again.
On a side note I ran some testing last night after everyone left and motor temps seem to hurt torque numbers not the HP. It is an interesting balance of keeping the motor cool enough to generate HP versus the the aero advantage you get by closing things up. When the motor is cool I can get to 210-211 mph with it hot I am only getting to 207-208. Oh and in the draft I saw 217.
Something else that some may want to try is changing the steering ratio. IT helps alot with the last couple turns and the little kink in the long strait. Gets allot of the twitchyness out of the car.
In reply to dean1484 :
I may have to change cars for the final race. I can only get 198 mph in the Merc. (202 mph with a draft).
I tried the McLaren and confirmed that the 240 mph top speed involves being shot from a cannon, but not something involving driving.
For a track with maybe 7 turns it is tricky. Haven't tried it in the wet yet.
The Ferrari I'm sure will be good in the dry, but I'm worried about the lack of ABS in the wet. I may end up taking my mulligan here too...
Wet will make you crash in a strait line at these speeds. It will not end well.
In reply to dean1484 :
I did a practice race last night. The Toyota was great in the wet. Those tires have so much grip, I used just about the same braking points as in the dry on slicks. The ABS and TC work really well in that car. Once the rain came, my lap times increased by maybe 12-15 seconds, but the AI GT1 cars seemed to increase by 20-25 seconds a lap. Ended up lapping 3 or 4 GT1 cars and P2 was nearly a lap down at the end. For some reason many of the AI cars pitted twice. Not sure why.
There were no giant puddles of death although the braking zone for Mulsanne and Indianapolis both had some water that made the ABS work hard under braking. My biggest issue was that I crashed with 26 minutes remaining and broke my headlights. When I pitted for wets and fuel around 20 minutes to go, my lights were fixed. Windshield stayed shattered though. All was good until another run in with a wall caused me to lose lighting again for the last 15 minutes or so and even though the sky had started to lighten up, with the rain and clouds it was harder to see than earlier when there is starlight.
There is a little left-right just before the final chicane that I guess may have been the inspiration for the Porsche curves. That is really fun when you get it right, but really easy to get it wrong.
It should be a fun race.
EDIT: Did another practice race this morning. Managed to lap all the AI cars this time. It is better with headlights. Rain came a lap earlier, but was not an issue. I have enough data to get my fueling at the pit stop good to go. I finished with 25L or so and ran 19 laps. The start is the tricky part because the TC setting I can't get off the line quickly and get pummeled by AIs, but get past them by the first few turns. I'll see if I can figure out how to launch the car with the TC as it is (turned way up) or if I can turn the TC down a bit and still drive in the rain.
dean1484 said:Wet will make you crash in a strait line at these speeds. It will not end well.
I found that in the rain my top speed was several mph slower than in the dry. No issues on the straights in the wet. Try it out. Nothing like the old 911 was in the wet.
Well, I am back at work today, so my month of getting paid to do whatever I wanted has come to an end. So no more spending hours per day playing PC2. All the extra time I put into the game paid off. I also got a bunch of small house projects done and watched lots of YouTube videos.
Hopefully, I'll be able to make at least half of the next series' races, but the amount of time I will be on the road is still unknown at this point.
I have to travel for business the rest of this week. I'm out for Wednesday.
In reply to Argo1 :
We pushed the final race a week because too many of us were going to miss this week. Lemans historic 1 hour race is on 2/13.
T.J. said:In reply to Argo1 :
We pushed the final race a week because too many of us were going to miss this week. Lemans historic 1 hour race is on 2/13.
Excellent.
Anyone going to be on tonight? I haven't done any LeMans testing but I kinda want to try out the Mono's.
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