Paging Sauce and TJ

I'm going to give Donnington GP a try tomorrow. I'm hoping to make it a race without damage for once.

Well, I managed to finish one of these races without any damage, but the bad news is I spun twice and finished 9th. Only top 8 move on to the real race. 

My plan was working great until I spun in the chicane and had to sit still while 3 cars drove past. That dropped me to P8 and from there I managed to lose a spot. 

Sauce moved on to the next race, but he made it interesting. I’ll watch the stream.  Good luck Sauce. 

In reply to T.J. :

Well, it wasn't until watching the stream that I found out that you can wait to do a drive through penalty, I assumed like everything else in the game if you don't serve it immediately it would throw a fit.  Lesson learned.  I'm rather disappointed though, I felt really good, had good race pace, and think I could have actually competed with Operator had I served the penalty later.  Not won mind you, the penalty would have been too steep for that, but at least on the podium.  

Interestingly I changed the brake force setting before the race.  I did a bit of testing, realized I went too far and backed it off a bit, and then went into the race never having tried the new settings.  I turned out they were great and I was able to get the car rotated much better under braking.  However, that extra rotation came with higher temps and wear on the outside rear tire.  My LR was 20* hotter than the RR almost the entire time and I really struggled putting power down, especially when not in clean air.  Coming out of TJ's turn I used to be able to feather at the crest, let it take a set, then hammer down.  In the race following the same timing the car would just kick sideways, and a couple of times I actually caught grass on the inside trying to just catch it with the wheel.  Now, the car was also better under braking and at entry so I wasn't losing much time, but it was not easy to drive.  Eventually that difficulty and traction imbalance caught up with me, I caught a little curb and the grip difference between the two sides caused the car to snap, sending me into the wall.  

In reply to e30Matt :

I was wondering if they were correct when they said you could choose to serve the drive through whenever you wanted. Certainly the last lap would be the best if they are right, but I'm not 100% sure they are right. Seems like something to test out and see how it works. I would've done what you did, assuming the game would DQ you if you didn't go through the pits at the end of the first lap.

EDIT: There is always Zuhai. I'm not familiar with that track, but planning on doing enough practice over the next 2 weeks to hopefully get a decent result for once. Seems like a dumb track without much interesting character.

In reply to T.J. :

I also don't know Zhuhai but it doesn't seem bad.  That said, it is trickier than it initially appears and finding reference points for braking is tough in some places.  There are also some corners that are either bumpy or just don't have much grip, which will probably get more interesting with time progression.  This is especially true through T1-2, the traditional line doesn't work due to the track surface.  Keep it tight and off the bumps and you can get on throttle much earlier and with less drama.

Agree on the braking points being hard to spot. I’ll try an inside line on T1/2 to avoid the bumps. 

Got a 1:33.7 today trying to use some of your coaching tips and I lost a lot of time at T4, so low 1:33’s are in my reach. 

Well, I made the podium but by all accounts that was a rough race for everyone except the absurdly fast dude.  I got sandwiched in T1 but made it out just losing some time, then had P4 blow his braking point into T4, hit me, and then take out P3 and I think several others.  Fortunately I didn't take any damage, just got pushed wide and the cluster behind gave a me decent gap to the rest of the pack.  I briefly tried chasing down Operator and did close the gap by a second and change, but then almost lost it dropping a wheel and decided discretion was the better part of valor and just settled in to take P2.  

In other news, my wheel broke slightly in qualifying.  I'm not sure what happened, but it was like the ring had separated slightly from the core of the wheel and my down shift paddle quit working.  I had set a decent but not great time already so I bailed and just hoped to get it fixed for the race.  I did manage to get it to snap back together and it didn't do it again during the race, but I'm going to need to look into that.

That was an irritating mess. More like wreckfest than a real race. I need to watch replay to see what happened at T1. Besides getting hit there, I got taken out three other times. None of the offenders stopped and waited. Kind of crappy. Was in 5th in sight of 4th and 3rd for a while which was surprising after starting 14th. Finished 9th. Too much damage to hit 5th gear on front straight. 

Edit: Phatman (lap 2, first hairpin), driver13 (lap 6, T1) and willphazier (lap 6, purple sign turn) each took me out. Phatman’s hit knocked me into an airstrike which put him off as well. 

In reply to T.J. :

I just watched the replay of the stream, you got it bad man, sorry.  It looked like you were doing well and moving on up before those incidents.  

In reply to e30Matt :

Watching it now. Funny that both of my lap 6 incidents were on the stream. They called out driver13 for a mistake, but seemed to praise willphazer pitt maneuvering me, but they cut too it a little too late to see it well. Oh well. It was my best result of the series. Hopefully they have it next year. 

In reply to e30Matt :

I didn’t know what happened in T4 lap 1 until the stream. When I went through I saw two cars staked up just off the track. You did well to survive that hit. 

In reply to T.J. :

It was just luck, if he had hit me anywhere other than square in the door I would have been done.  I did see him coming and knew he wasn't going to be able to stop, but with the number of cars in the area avoiding him just meant getting hit by someone else so I took the corner and hoped for the best.  

It did occur to me today that I leave for SCCA TT Nats tomorrow and won't be back until next week, so I'm not going to get as much practice as usual for the final.  I'm going to have to make the most of the time I have and see how the extra 10 minutes of time changes the race.

In reply to e30Matt :

At least you know Road America already. With Operator in the PC race, you have a great shot at winning.  I’ll be away for work from Wed this week until middle of Oct, so I won’t even be able to practice with you. I will watch the stream though. 

In reply to T.J. :

I know Road America, but it isn't one of my better tracks and one that punishes mistakes rather severely.  These cars are tricky when the track gets colder, and with the extra time in the regional final that is going to be even worse given the track location.  I still feel decent about my chances but it will be a challenge.

Sunday 10/6 at 2pm EST tune into to watch Sauce in the regional finals. Up for grabs is $1000, a bunch of Logitech gear and a trip to the UK for the world finals.

If you want to watch live, they stream the races on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/teambeyondnet/.

Race details here.

In reply to T.J. :

It's actually at 5pm EST, they changed it to match the other races but didn't update the site.

It'll definitely be challenging, the time trial times are very close to what I'm running and the draft is huge. Also, the track gets really slick at the 18 minute mark, comes back, and then falls off in the last couple laps. Road America punishes mistakes and they are easy to make, especially in those windows. 

I was wondering about the time. 5pm makes more sense for consistency. 

I just missed the race but saw a bit of highlights that mentioned Sauce when he was in the top 3.  Looks like 15th?  Something clearly happened.  How do you find the replay?

Well, that went about as expected.  I knew it would be a challenge staying clean all race and I failed that challenge.  Qualifying went pretty much to plan, though the first flying lap usually isn't the fastest because the tires aren't all the way up to temp/pressure yet.  I wanted to put down a 2:06 and the time was there, just made some small mistakes and couldn't quite pull it together.  That said, I really hate the grid at Road America, it's so tight that it's practically impossible to start from pole and keep it through T1 unless there is a botched start by P2.  I had planned for that, but really struggled with the track conditions in the race as the grip was completely different from qualifying.  Made some small mistakes on the first couple laps but settled down into a rhythm and cleaned it up, the problem was it was way off my expected pace. 

From my practice races I was running 2:07-2:08 at the beginning of the race and dropping down to 2:09's or low 2:10's after it got dark.  That was a conservative pace, I could still run 2:08's even at the end if I was really on it.  However, in this race I was in the 2:09's at the beginning, couldn't find the time, and the leader was steadily growing the gap.  I got into my own head that I just wasn't pushing hard enough and needed to close the gap, and that was the end.  Dropped one tire, snapped, and then dropped a 2nd and there was nothing I could do.  Took some severe front end damage which cost me 3 seconds a lap.  Still managed P5 even with the damage and another spin from pushing too hard, but it was my race to lose and that's exactly what I did.

I hope they do this again next year, it was a really good experience and I learned a lot.  My driving has improved quite a bit throughout the competition and has exposed how much more I have to do.  That said, I'm ready to get back to business as usual with you guys and have a less serious series.  Between this and real life Time Trial stuff I've been too focused for way too long and need a break.

And Operator posted a vid of his top TT time of 2:05.4xx, which is 1.7 seconds clear of the official PS4 time and 1.2 seconds faster than any lap I ran.  Most previous races I was able to be withing 0.4s or so, but not this time.  My lines are pretty much the same but what he does with the pedals is incredible.  How late he brakes, how early the car gets pointed, and how early he gets on throttle is just another level.  One thing I have never figured out is how the curbs never seem to upset his car like they do mine.  I'm sure it's how he is balancing the car, but he can get the car to do things I just cannot.  For instance, T7, the right hander after the Corvette turn.  He takes it flat, I deemed it impossible to do with any consistency as the only way I could do it required hitting the inside curb AND using grass at exit.  He does it without doing either, and somehow being halfway on the grass at entry without upsetting the car or losing grip at turn in.  

The bulk of the time difference between ok and great is mostly in the braking. I remember watching him at Indy Road Course and my brain still can't comprehend how he could get slowed down for T1 when his brake point was so late.  When I ride with you it is similar in that you almost always have a deeper braking point than me, but his are crazy.

Anyone able to find out when and where to watch the European regional finals and the world finals? The official Logitech G Challenge website seems to be fairly useless. 

In reply to T.J. :

From the Discord it seems like the finals are actually in Vegas on November 16th, not sure where to watch though.