GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 7: Enduring someone else's car choice

In reply to T.J. :

Agreed, I went from not really worrying about tire wear to "am I running softs?" with just minor changes. 

The really funny part is with the gif changes I could move the brake bias back towards the front and not kill the front tires. Instead of being 45/55. I am now at 53/47. 

@Tj. I am going with the new diff settings. They are much more crash proof and overall faster. Especially when the fuel starts to get less. 

Oh and I have found that as the fuel load gets less the tire ware gets less. 

Spa results

1 Sauce

2 Dean

3 Air

4 TJ

436 BrArgo

Well, that was a bit disappointing. I’ve wrecked there before on worn tires, but not on lap 1. 

Once I was in the back of thr AI train things went from bad to worse. If there were no AIs I would’ve tried the no stopper, but I had to fight through them and couldn’t do that in tire preservation mode. I finally got in some decent laps the second stint because my pit stop put me to the back again and I had some clear track for a while.

Good race Sauce. Your time was 19 seconds faster than my best practice race time, even if I didn’t screw up, I don’t think I had a challenge for you on this track. 

Last night was a train wreck.  When I run my developed setups, they are often very conservative (read: slow).  So, Air found a fast setup, and I decided I would run it... period.  The setup really changed the behavior of the car in corners.  I spent most of practice trying to get a feel of it on full fuel as race prep.  The setup doesn't like trail braking at all.  It wants you to brake first and then be on the gas all the way throughout the corner.  There is a narrow margin between fast and spinning.  I started getting a feel for it by the end practice (with some tweaks).  On a qualifying fuel load, it was much faster.  I went from dead last in practice to 5th.  It required a good bit of concentration to keep it pointed the right direction, but qualifying results had me thinking I could have a reasonable race.

The first 15-20 minutes of the race were pretty good.  I made a small mistake that was completely on me, but was able to right myself and only lose a few positions.  Somewhere around 20 minutes that tires started to wear and lose grip.  That made the narrow margin on the tires to a nearly impossible margin to find the balance on.  For example the double left at the bottom of the hill at the start of the race I would take the turn like this:

Lift, downshift to 4th, gas hard to the floor, apex, track out, apex and go.

After the 20 minute mark it was:

Brake, downshift to 4th, slowly turn in to apex, no gas, slide wide past track out, countersteer to catch slide, add about 20% power, try and straighten the car, countersteer, and go.

So, not great then.  I battled it for another 12ish minutes and wasn't getting better.  I was spinning 1-2 times a lap.  I decided to sort out if it was the driver or not, so I bailed and let Argo run it for the rest of the race.

Good news, it wasn't the driver.  Or at least both of us had the same problems.  The car was borderline undriveable.  If I would have practiced, I could have run a test race and noticed the terrible dropoff in performance before the actual race.  I probably would have reverted back to my stable / conservative setup and likely would have beat a good number of AIs (because they pitted).

Thanks TJ. Last night went about as well as possible for me. Got a great launch, Dean didn't force the issue at the end of the first straight, and aside from a lock up under braking leading to a minor excursion my race was pretty clean. I did have some door to door contact with a couple of lapped AI cars but nothing serious. 

That said, it was not an easy race. Had Dean not spun early on exactly when he did it would have been a very different race. I lost more time then our delta and he would have been ahead of me. I'm not sure how my tire conservation would have gone if I had to fight for position/play catchup. 

Also, braking was a significant issue for me all race. Lockup was a real problem, especially as the tires wore out. For a while it felt like I had no brakes at all, but I eventually figure out that it was due to me not applying enough pressure due to fear of lockup. After that I started braking harder, but that wasn't without its own adventures and I had a couple of saves that I didn't think I could catch. 

Overall a fun race, but exhausting. 

I think my setup was ok, but to get a decent laptime I had to be pretty close to the limit on every corner. For me, that track was about 10x harder than Sonoma. I wish I would’ve done better, but that’s how it goes. 

Great Race Sauce.  I am not sure I had anything for you had I not spun.  Had I been perfect you still had me by a seond a lap average.  The only way i could ahve caused you troubble would be if I had managed to get in front of you adn made you use more tire than you may have wanted.  I was gaining on you at the end I think as my car got better and better in the 2nd half of the race.  My setup was about as perfect as it could have been. I had one spin and another two dustups with AI that probably cost me 20-25 seconds.  Had I pressed things with sauce on lap one I would have forced him to play catchup and that would have been fun.  I thought about it but decided that this is an hour race and I should not press the issue on lap one.  Hind site is I probably should have as it would have made you chase me and I think I was your equal on fresh softs and that would have made you use up more tire than you probibly wanted to. Overall my car was really good.  As the tires wore the fuel loade got less so the lap times were not really an issue.  The tires did ware more with the higher fuel loade so I probably should have tried the undercut by two laps as I had close to half of my tires left at the end of the race when pitting at lap 14.  When I pitted I was down to a quarter of my tires left and lap 13&14 was a bit slick.  But the good site of things was with the dif I was using I could take a lot of rear aero out with out the car getting loose AND it let me run much more front brake (53/47) instead of the 45/55 I had been running with my aero at 2/7 with the new dif I had the aero at 2/5.  This netted me 5-6 mph on the straits with better handling in the corners.  The other thing that I knew but did not want to risk was fuel.  I took on 10l and finished with 9 so I could have only taken 3-4 and save a bit of time there with pit time and weight in the car.

Overall it was allot of fun.  I practiced allot for that race and it helped.  The geared dif is a much easier thing to manage.  There are only two adjustments.  One for going in to the corner and one for coming out of the corner.  My car really seems to like it as opposed to the dif we have been using. I know TJ tried it and liked it in his car but did not want to eal with tuning it that close to the race.  For me it was such a big improvement with the default settings I put in it and I only ahd to make one small change to get it about perfect it was a no brainer for me to use it. 

I tested with my setup on the next track and it will need very little changing.  

If you want Brad I can play with the corvette some and see about a tune for it.  I really don't have much of any tuning needed for my car at the moment.  Just gearing tweaking and maybe adjust the dif one click to get a little more rotation out of the corners but I need to see how the car transitions through a race before I make that change.  

In reply to dean1484 :

I evaluated your position before braking and decided you were too far back and didn't really look again. I knew you could brake later (as could I), but with a full tow down the straight didn't think you could reasonably go for it and get woahed down in time. Now, I did forget you were on softs so I may well have been wrong about that, but I wasn't expecting you to try so if you had it might not have gone well. 

That said, had you gotten past I think a battle of tires would have been worse for you on softs as hards don't overheat after 2 hard laps. I also had plenty of tire life left when I pitted at 40 minutes, and had I not needed a splash of fuel probably could have done a no-stopper. I just chose that as my window because I had to stop anyway and you can push as hard as you want for 20 minutes on hards and not have to worry about wear at all. It worked out that's also when I started catching AI cars so getting out of traffic was nice. 

In reply to dean1484 :

You're welcome to play with it, but don't feel obligated. I have a stable setup that is predictable. 

Practice is what I need most. 

I enjoyed the 1 hour race allot. I hope we do some more of them every now and then. If you could up the fuel and tire ware another notch then pit stops would have to happen. But then again having the mix of pitting and not pitting made things fun. My chase down of Air was fun. I had to keep it on the track and get to him. I just remembered my duel pass of both Air and Brad. That was cool. I would never have tried that with the AI.

GPF is interesting. I am wondering if a high down force setup will be the ticket. It is also a bumpy track in places so suspension heights and springs will be something to look at.

Did a handful of laps at Nurburgring. First, I love the date/time/weather setting. Second, I love that the car is instantly 10x more happy here than it ever was at Spa. Will work on setup changes/practice over the weekend a bit I'm sure, but things already feel pretty good, although I haven't done more than maybe 4 laps in a stint yet.

e30Matt said:

In reply to dean1484 :

I evaluated your position before braking and decided you were too far back and didn't really look again. I knew you could brake later (as could I), but with a full tow down the straight didn't think you could reasonably go for it and get woahed down in time. Now, I did forget you were on softs so I may well have been wrong about that, but I wasn't expecting you to try so if you had it might not have gone well. 

That said, had you gotten past I think a battle of tires would have been worse for you on softs as hards don't overheat after 2 hard laps. I also had plenty of tire life left when I pitted at 40 minutes, and had I not needed a splash of fuel probably could have done a no-stopper. I just chose that as my window because I had to stop anyway and you can push as hard as you want for 20 minutes on hards and not have to worry about wear at all. It worked out that's also when I started catching AI cars so getting out of traffic was nice. 

I could have easily got next to you or even braked a bit later HOWEVER my fear was that we did not have any temps in the brakes and that kept me from trying it.  Had the brakes been warm I most definitely would have tried it as I could have got it slowed down so we could go through there and have left room. 

In general I could brake after the start of the curbing on the left if I really wanted to push it even with a tow.  I was hitting 165 with out draft. With the draft the best I think I ever saw was 168 so there really was not much difference for me in that respect.  It was lots of fun adn I just wish I did not loop it as we could ahve had a good fight.

It is killing me that I can not practice.  Should have sneaked the PS4 and my wheel into the car for vacation.  

In reply to dean1484 :

Don’t worry because I don’t think anyone has been practicing either. Brad distracted me.

Didn't think about it, but I'll be traveling for the 4th and won't make the race. 

I’m around this week, but have family visiting. Next week I’ll be in MI and miss. 

We seem to be having issues getting all of us together.  I now have a meeting at 6pm on Wednesday.  Will miss.

Seems like if we are going to be down 2 people, we may want to push a week. 

This time of year is always going to be a bit tough, but we are in no hurry.

We also might consider goofing around with some untested cars.

I am up for goofing off

In reply to dean1484 :

Me too. Since my brother-in-law and his family are at my house and my parents, brother and his family, sister and her family plus two are all in town, I may or may not be around Wed night. If I am, goofing off sounds good.

I'm in no hurry to run the race. Hell, I'm going to have to think real hard about what round we are actually on at this point. 

BradLTL said:

I'm in no hurry to run the race. Hell, I'm going to have to think real hard about what round we are actually on at this point. 

The one before 6  ;-)