SimRacing.org.uk

Season 16  Division 1 - Round 4 - Le Mans Sarthe

The fourth round of the championship and the first one on European soil.  1.UKGPL seems to be working OK so we are back on VROC for this round.

This is a very high speed track, it is difficult to to avoid slow and stationary cars when approaching at high speed.  So it is particularly important that drivers execute very careful rejoins, keeping well off the racing line until they are fully up to speed.  Also drivers must stay well over to the right hand side when slowing down to make their pit stops.  If you are not making a pit stop then you are well advised to keep to the left of the start/finish straight during the pit stop window.

Please be in VROC UKGPL chatroom by 8:55 p.m.

Server 1.ukgpl
IP address 194.105.176.22
Race date = 19-10-2008
Track = Le Mans Sarthe
Variant = 67F1
Damage Model = PRO
Qualifying time = 35 minutes. Don't start until 30 mins left on clock to allow everyone to join.
Race length = 50 minutes (14 laps)
Password: see above (#post_event_password)

Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=190;theme=6)

Pit Stop Times

	Single Stop Time		Double Stop Time
Cooper	No Stop		N/A
Brabham	17		N/A
BRM	17		N/A
Ferrari	31		10
Honda	33		11
Lotus	53		21
Eagle	67		29

 First Pit Window is: 12 (to go on your pit board) to 8 (to go on your pit board)
 Second Pit Window is: 10 (to go on your pit board) to 4 (to go on your pit board)

Can't bring myself to practise for this one , It has to be a candidate for the most boring track ever in GPL .

After what seems like 15 mins leaning on elbows , then "Hey whats this " anyone got a bucket and spade  ::)

Hehe Bernie I can see what you are saying.

A race is the only reason I am gonna drive it  :P

Classic track with the Le Mans races, waiting for the different mods to be finished!

Will take some good driving to make a good race with the 67's though... !

Well Le Mans is an "endurance" race after all  ::)

So I suppose I will simply have to 'erm  ............   "endure" it  :D

I can't make this race - sorry.

I see Honda has a longer stop than the Ferrari. Again the issue of using WRs or something for calculating pitstops and not taking reliability in account. There's no way in hell you can be faster in a race with the Honda than with the Ferrari and make it to the end to tell about it. I dare anyone who thinks it's possible to do it, I'd call him/her the luckiest person ever!  :D

We have tried to take reliability into account this season.  Have a look at the Pit Stop Calculator (https://www.ukgpl.com/files/pit_stop_calculator.zip) and you will see we have introduced a race pace factor for Division 1.  The Pit Stops are still based on WR times as we need some logical basis on which to calculate the stops.  The race pace factor for the Honda and Ferrari is 1.005.  This effectively shortens the Pit Stops for the faster cars to compensate for reliability etc.  Using a race Pace Factor for the Honda of 1.008 (effectively lengthens the Honda WR time by 0.8%) would bring the Pit Stop down from 33 to 25 seconds.  Maybe that would have been more appropriate in this case but it is difficult to call it correctly at the start of the season when we have to put everything in place.  If we use this track again (unlikely if the comments from Bernie and Neil reflect the majority opinion) then we could go for 1.008 for the Honda.

The race pace factors for the rest of this season's D1 races are all in the Pit Stop Calculator too.  If anybody thinks they are wildly out I can ask Clive as the Divisional Mod to consider revising them.

Really not sure I can endure 14 runs down the Mulsanne tonight so I will give this one a miss and hope it doesn't effect my championship position too much!

I realize it's difficult to have a balance over an entire season unless the pitstop lengths are calculated separately for each race taking the characteristics of each track, so it was more of a joke than blaming anyone. I'm not sure how much of a loss in time there would be by running a safe 5th gear ratio in the Honda on this track and also short shifting up the gears, but I predict some 1-2 secs over a lap, perhaps even more if you really want to be on the safe side. At the same time the Ferrari is so robust you can even get away by running qualifying gearing. But anyway, those are details and of course they're not so valid for different tracks. So it's up to those who calculate the pitstop times if they're willing to bother with analysing each track in advance and separately.
I actually like this one for a race, but not for running alone, but in a race you can have good battles as I can remember from our French series in B.R.E.A.S.T.S. some years ago. It would've worked great in the old Masters division with the top in standings taking slower cars thus giving chance of people down on points to move up with a better chance than at any other track (even more so than say Spa or Monza), but I guess that's not the case in D1.

Well that's the idea.  I've written the spreadsheet to be capable of doing that, but it still means someone has to plug in the right numbers.  That's not an easy thing to do, someone has to know the characteristics of each car and each track or trawl through reams of historical data.  Other than that all we can do is make a judgement after each race this season and suggest revisions to the current race pace factors.

Well another disastrous race for me :(.  Out on Lap 1 again.  Not really at fault just bad luck, slowed down for an incident and got rear ended.  Reminds me a bit of John Roberts Masters races in S13, always in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Anyway hoping for better luck at Kyalami.

Found out today I cant count , missed the pit in window , then got lost counting down from 53 secs  :-[   (then got disco'd for being sationary too long )

My only excuse , Its a long time since I was at skewl  ::)

Managed to navigate the T1 madness then later was shaping up for a scrap with Ken after his pit stop  but got meself bunkered and by the time I'd dug the car out everyone was on ther way home.

I then  kept the crowds entertained for a while, making sand pies , they do make a change from meat and spud but do grind a bit , suppose you could say "there Grate " )  ;D

Will be away on hols for the Sefafrican GP so hope you all enjoy the w/e  ;)

Good and bad for me....
First D1 pole? I think...

Yet Burt called for someone to beat off the line and sadly that ended up being me, after my engine started smoking as the flag dropped  >:(!

Managed to get out of the way so Ken could pass  :o, did 2 slow laps and the engine gave out.

I agree on the pitstops... I'd say the Honda is probably the only one that should get the extra calculations ~ The other 6 cars can all be driven with full revs in the race, just with varying degrees of tolerance to mis-shifts and over-revs. Whereas you could run an error-free race in the Honda capped at 10,750rpm and still blow the damn thing !  :-[

It'd just be up to either guesswork or looking at data. I'd suggest guesswork - after a while we'd be pretty spot on I think. And I can't see everyone plumping for the Honda in the meantime, seeking an advantage - Even if that did happen, I think we'd see a lot of engine blows........  :laugh:

Hakkinen @ Spain 2001 anybody?  ::)

Well that wasnt much good.

Off the line i got fairly decent start, then all of sudden Phil put anchors out and I had to as well, Phil went upside down (sorry Phil) but luckily i could continue.
3-4 laps in race i struck the wall, and then lost 2 wheels, and it was over :/

I seem to remember in "real life" the H16 BRM had the worst reliability record , unless farther time has blurred my memory more than I can remember iyswim  ;D

I think I need to apologise to you guys.
I crashed home from a weeks work in hell running on adrenilin and Red Bull and maybe I should not have contemplated starting this race but I needed something to distract my mind from work.

Thanks to Phil for posting this race and starting the server in my absence.

Joined the server with about 15 mins left in qually and chose a setup from somewhere and lengthened the gears a couple of times until 5th was working down the Mulsanne and left it at that.
The T1 lap 1 incident was probably down to me tagging the rear of Ken's Ferrari, when he got a bit out of shape, and taking a trip across the track just when everyone was coming under the Dunlop Bridge. :-\...sorry guys >:(
Got going again without apparent damage and was so mesmerised by Lorenzo's nitro powered Cooper that I forgot to brake at Mulsanne Corner and sailed straight on ( either that or it was a dream and I actually fell asleep!!).

Rejoined last behind Burts "extra wide" BRM ::) which I just managed to squeeze past, expecting to be in the scenery myself within the next lap and race over. But despite a couple of spins which somehow resulted in a 360's entirely on the tarmac I actually managed to complete the race. OK, so I was about 6 miles behind everyone else but I did finish...just.
Then, I slept.................................................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It was good to see more people joining the race as initially we were just 4. Shame for Iestyn on the start, I was looking forward to a great battle, though eventually I had a brief one with Lorenzo. It was near guilt that I felt when passing his weak Cooper on the straights but he still managed to hold on for a bit and even repass when I had a half spin at the 2nd hairpin. Otherwise it was a quiet run but I enjoyed it anyway as the car felt wonderful to drive and in the end I pushed for my regular fast last lap which worked as well.  :P

Looks like I'm gonna have to up the ante if I want to claim some SRou lap records eh Hristo?  :laugh:

I think the BRM did have a poor engine reliability in '67 - But surely the Weslake was the worst... only 2 finishes for Dan, and none for Bruce. Also, what about Repco in '68... Pushing the engine to keep up with the DFV, only 2 finishes all season despite some poles!  ::)