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Season 27 Friday Trophy - Rounds 29 & 30 - Monza 10K CanAm71

Welcome to the next round for the Friday Trophy, we stay in Italy. It will take place on the infamous Monza 10K circuit. It’s the traditional Monza track with a banked oval which had been used for Formula 1 until 1961. Much of the race will taken in top gear & there will be plenty of opportunity for drafting.


This seasons tracks will be easy and well known to have a smaller time gap between the lights and heavies,
if there is a too big gap on a track, a stop and go for the lights in the 30min race will be recommended!

This is really designed to be a fun series with 3 different car mods
- running 1 sprint length race of ~15 min and a ~30 min race with the same car.
- ONE SHIFT-R with NO Stop n Go

Light drivers are restricted to not use the M8F and the T260 ::)
Heavy drivers will allways have a free car choice!

Race List = IGOR
Server = UKGPL_8
IP address = tbc
Race date = 31-10-2014
Variant = CanAm71
Damage Model = intermediate
Track = Monza 10k (ftp://ukgpl3.dyndns.org/Tracks/Monza10K/)

Qualifying 1 Time = 20 minutes, starting  20:45 UK time
Race 1 Time = race 1 starts at ~21:05 UK time
Race 1 length = 15 minutes (7 laps )

Qualifying 2 Time = 10 minutes, starting  ~21:25 UK time
Race 2 Time = race 2 starts at ~21:35 UK time
Race 2 length = 30 minutes (14 laps )

Password: see above (#post_event_password)
Replay = will be here (ftp://ukgpl3.dyndns.org/Replays/Archive/Season27/Friday/)

Drivers having missed race1 can join the server for the Quali of race2 in IGOR

Please restrict chat to only real necessary messages including at the end of the race until ALL drivers still racing have crossed the line.

Races will be moderated for reported incidents only unless there is something VERY BAD happening!! so be nice to each other.  :nono:

GLA

When you think that after Imola you've finally gotten the handling problems and physics flaws under control, this mod throws you a curveball unlike any you've seen before. I've said it many times before that I was done driving (you can't really call it racing) the '71 Can-Am's, but curiousness had slowly taken over again. However after tonight's races I'm cured for a good while again. I almost feel this mod is an insult to GPL :( . Back to racing the openwheelers and GT mod.

Cookie's track choices are certainly not what everyone would choose.  But most Can-Am guys would choose the Shadow for such a track.  The handicap is dead, along with some drivers at such a death trap!  ;D

It cost me 30min to prove that a Lola T260 is more than 0.5 sec faster than the Shadow!
Easy doing 2.05 laps in training!!! A 2.04 is possible...
The M8F is even faster...

Tommie sorry to read you are frustrated :(

Yes there are some bad behaviours of these cars, but for me it's a challenge to make a setup that is save to drive.

It's a hard life, but someone had to live it. ;D  Ok, so perhaps Lola has the raw speed, but easier to overcook it.  Most Heavies seem to agree.

It's just the other way round, the Lola is slower in straights but much easier to handle in any curved situation  ;D

Huh, some of those settings are  :o

Very difficult to get the CA monsters to work on this track.  I found a certain diff combo that kept the car smooth on the power, but any small change to it made it practically undriveable.  Had to be very very careful, watching the tyre temperatures all the time.  Race 1 was good, I thought I could draft past Hiro at the end but turns out my car wasn't quick enough.  Race 2 was a mess.  These cars are very fragile and I think I damaged my steering at the start on the invisible wall.  Wasn't sure until it suddenly spun on the banking, causing a crash, sorry about that.  After the reset I just had a silly spin in Lesmo 2 that overheated the left rear.  It wouldn't cool down, so all I could do is cruise around - then after about 3 laps or so it was a little better but by then everyone had taken off.  These things are a blast to drive when you're hooked up, but it's such a narrow window.  Grats to Hiro and Axel.

Do I detect you knowledgeable members of the Lights brigade, charging around the banking to my rescue . . .  no?  ;) Well then, the T260 has a larger motor than the Shadow, and 40bhp extra, which should make it faster.  If your maximum is slower Cookie, I'd suggest you have made Lola a happier cornerer, at 10K  Perhaps the difference is not huge..

My thanks - I now return you to normal service.

Congrats Thom, Mark, Axel, and Iestyn!

I thought this one might get ugly. When the car would move up the banking more than a car width without warning, I thought I might crash somebody if they tried to pass me on the outside. Luckily that situation never presented itself and I had tamed that tendency somewhat by the time the race started.

That's a shame you don't like the Can Am cars Tom. The 712 frustrates me too when I try to keep up with the Shadow. You can't make any mistake or you'll quickly fall behind once the slipstream is broken. Plus it's more likely you'll make a mistake running in the slipstream. I'm willing to run the Ferrari against the slowest McLaren and Lola T222 but the Shadow is too much of an advantage. That's why I whined about the Shadow in the previous race post. You likely would have enjoyed it more in the Shadow.

I hope it wasn't my setup that caused you so much grief. It was a setup I made for Spa that would run laps at 3:00 flat. I thought it might work well here since it was the least amount of wing I can run at Spa. I changed it a little bit to get to 2:08.7 while thinking I can get no more than one second better than that. Then I copied the setup to the Shadow and was almost immediately into the 2:07's. That was all I needed to see to decide not to use the Ferrari. I was tempted again when I saw you using it.

Sorry about ramming you like that Mark. Especially after you had just reset. I was trying to end your race? I saw you against the guard rail so I immediately decided to exit the banking on the low side. There was no way for me to know that your reset would place you right in front of me. I wish I had taken my normal line. I wouldn't have lost any time at all, had I done that.

I had a good time and I'm looking forward to working on my Can Am setups for this track some more. There's still so many things to try.

Take care guys. Thanks.

Not at all Greg, thanks for the setup! It's just that these cars don't feel right to me, they don't have a sweet spot. You can only either cruise around or crash out all the time. There are some physics flaws with the cars that to me take away a lot of the realism and therefore fun as well, and those things combined makes me say that the mod is an insult to GPL. Thankfully for the upcoming 1966 Can-Am mod we've removed these flaws so that one will be up to the usual standards again :) . Unfortunately for CA71 it's too late. Maybe we'll make a CA71-Extra mod, or Interserie '71  ;D .

These things are like axe murderers with wheels, but I have managed on occasion to find a sweet spot in the setup.  But it takes a lot of work and experimentation to get there, and even then you have to drive very very smoothly - always with one eye on the prib tyre temperatures.  I'm looking forward to see what the 66's can do, but I hope the 71's don't go the way of the thunder cars.

In my opinion, the big flaw with the '71's is the unrealistic behaviour of the Ai.  This has prevented many would be enthusiasts from putting in sufficient practice time offline, to become good enough to join us.  With no official solution being made to get the huge number of offline racers happy, I have found a way to fix them.  I'm running an ad. at SRMZ, to give folks the good news. :angel:

I highly recommend giving the Crystal Palace Ai a go, before the Ukgpl event, as it may help avoid a crashfest.  Only the tracks I have installed are currently being tuned, but requests can be made on the SRMZ thread. 

These Ca-Am's were considered ultimate racing machines when new.  They're the newest cars we race in GPL, and almost as quick as '71 F1's, with a greater top speed.  They have downforce and a heavy motor in the rear.  Racers who fail to understand their nature may struggle.  As someone who raced Karts competitively in the 80's, I can say this Mod is the closest to kart racing I have experienced, in any Sim. 

It's a little disappointing to me that Tom finds the 71 Can Am's so horrible. I can't really argue against any of his points but I'm one who enjoys them a lot. I think it's my second favorite mod. I drive them in a similar fashion to the 67 F1 cars (my favorite cars). It's the only mod I feel I've gotten worse since racing online over the last year. But that's because I drove them so much offline and now I don't get as much practice. They do require a readjustment to your usual driving patterns.

I've always thought some of the unusual behavior in the 71's was just because the cars were so powerful with not a great deal of experience in using downforce up to that point. Prior to the mod being released I knew little about Can Am. I knew McLaren was good. Chaparral had a movable wing and Porsche's turbo cars were some of the fastest race cars ever built.

Mark, I'll continue to race these cars for many years. So they'll never go the way of the TCs with me. The only reason I've only driven a few laps in a TC is because I wasn't driving GPL when they were released and they're not actually based on a real car.

I'll miss you Tom. With the limited number of people driving GPL now, anything that keeps a driver away is disappointing for me. As I get more experience, I'll try to participate in more races. A lot of the times I drive the 65's and 66's F1 cars is just to try pack the grid more, get a few kicks, and gain some experience. If GPL still had a large number of drivers, I'd probably limit my driving to the 67 F1s, 71 CAs, 69x F1's, and 67 GT's. I have grown rather fond of the BT23 over the last year though. Prior to racing online about all I thought of the F2 mod was, it looks very good and it seems to be job well done. You could say my immaturity contributed to my initial lack of enthusiasm for the F2s. I doubt many little kids grow up saying, "I want to be a F2 driver" but plenty say, "I want to be a F1 driver!"

Take care guys.

I do like to bring up the grid a bit by just jumping in, but unfortunately CA71 doesn't allow me to do that. It takes too much practice and time spent on setup refinement so it becomes too much of a proper preparation for me. The F2's are perfect, most of the time I can just hop in and drive. I'm very lucky that I can learn tracks extremely fast, so the only thing holding me back from participation is the driveability of the car. The 1966 F1 mod is perhaps the second hardest, although the 2 litres and the McLaren handle very nice. But with all these mods you can play with the car a bit, it moves around and you can drive around setup shortcomings up to an extent, even in the 1969 mod. I had a lot of fun last year trying to overdrive the Eagle Climax at Lime Rock and finish ahead of some of those winged monsters. But with CA71 you can't push the car, if you go over the edge there's just no recovering. And if I have to choose between just motering around braindead in a '71 Can-Am, or editing a '66 Can-Am to make sure that handles right, I'm going to have to pick the latter :) .

Looking forward to my trip to the Moon in a couple of days though :) .