SimRacing.org.uk

Season 36 – 1955 Grand Prix – Round 1 – Zolder

The first race in the 1955 Grand Prix series takes us to Zolder in the Belgium. Built in 1963, Zolder hosted the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix on 10 separate occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the 1980 Belgian motorcycle Grand Prix. F1 moved to Zolder in 1973 and with the exception of a race at Nivelles-Baulers in 1974, Zolder was the location of the Belgian Grand Prix until 1982. That year, Canadian driver Gilles Villeneuve was killed during qualifying at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix. Villeneuve's Ferrari 126C2 collided at speed with the March of Jochen Mass. The Ferrari was torn up in the accident and when rolling, Villeneuve was thrown from the car.

After Villeneuve's death, the Belgian Grand Prix was held at Spa-Francorchamps in 1983, before returning to Zolder one final time in 1984. Fittingly, Ferrari driver Michele Alboreto won the race carrying Villeneuve's #27 on his car. Since 1985, the Belgian Grand Prix has permanently moved to Spa.
 
Please read the championship specific rules on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=872&theme=6).

Race list	iGOR
Server	UKGPL_4
IP address	77.102.28.179
Date	26-01-2020
Track	Zolder 1967 (http://Zolder 1967)
Mod	55GP with 60fpsV2newmod
Damage	PRO long
Race time	~ 21:30 UK time
Qualifying	20:45 UK time - 45 minutes
Race length	25 laps
Replay	here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rtXwxT4OXYcG8L75nwEac2pmutiEPPdh/view?usp=sharing)

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

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=872&theme=6)

Handicapping and chassis allocation.
The 1955 Grand Prix cars will be using a token system which allows drivers to purchase any chassis of their choice for a given number of tokens as published on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=872&theme=6). Drivers classed as Juniors will be allocated an additional 10 tokens.  The tokens available to each driver will be published in the race announcement. See table below.

Available Tokens:
Note: These are the tokens available to each driver before the 10 tokens are added for making the race start.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	10	Senior
Clive Loynes	10	Senior
Doni Yourth	10	Senior
Dulima	10	Senior
EvilClive	10	Senior
fpolicardi	10	Senior
GregT	10	Senior
JonnyO	10	Senior
Ziu Bacubacu	10	Senior
tagomago	20	Junior
5117sebas	20	Junior
francesco	20	Junior
Gareth	20	Junior
PaulV	20	Junior
Phil Thornton	20	Junior
Ricardo Valim da Silva	20	Junior

Hi, Phil.  Long time, no see...

Thanks for organizing this.  Looking forward to having some fun in the GP55's.

I think that you might revise my standing to 'Senior' considering that I am, in another universe, Lance deBoyle.

https://gpl-clandestines-trophy.webnode.com/international-trophy/a3%c2%aa-international-trophy/

Hi Doni

Good to see you back. I'm looking forward to this 55 season too. It is my favourite mod at the moment. The brakes are bad but it is a thinking man's series. There is time to think and plan a manoeuvre, it isn't all about flat out racing. I drove in the 69x race on Tuesday and the speed is manic. You don't have time to think, it is all instinctive. I missed so many gears because the revs climbed so fast it was all clutch shift clutch shift  clutch shift miss grind.....

In the light of your Clandestines Trophy results, I've amended your grade from Junior to Senior. A more fitting status for a champion. 

Hi Doni caught sight of your name at Monaco last Sunday and almost crashed!! lol  Welcome back my good friend  ;) and looking forward to these 1955 cars too  ;D

Thanks to Taber a very beautiful start of the 55 Season,nor half lap.

Some people on this board better smarten up a ton real fast or you'll be down an entry.

Results are up now Doni so please use the link below the table to submit an incident report.

Who was driving as "J automatic" tonight? I can't associate the driving name with any forum name.

I've loaded the chassis the drivers used into the token calculator spreadsheet.  For the next race the available tokens will be as declared in the table below (the table will also appear in the next race announcement).  The calculated values are automated but selecting the cars is a manual process so please check your tokens to make sure I haven't made a silly error. There was no token overspend for this round so no one is disqualified.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	20	Senior
Clive Loynes	15	Senior
Doni Yourth	20	Senior
Dulima	15	Senior
EvilClive	15	Senior
fpolicardi	8	Senior
GregT	20	Senior
JonnyO	20	Senior
Ziu Bacubacu	10	Senior
5117sebas	20	Junior
enrique farina	30	Junior
francesco	18	Junior
Gareth	20	Junior
luiz covisi	25	Junior
PaulV	18	Junior
Phil Thornton	20	Junior
Ricardo Valim da Silva	20	Junior
tagomago	20	Junior

I apologize Fran. I wasn't expecting you to slow on one of the fastest sections of track. With you warping I didn't realize it until it was too late.

Congrats Clive, Clive, and Ziu!

I was doing well until my car quit braking for T1. I never could save enough brakes for T1.

 J. Automatic is me,
Ok one mystake.

That was an action loaded race !

I thougt about saving points and took the gordini, which was more difficult than i expected.

I'm still confused about the missing tacho light, so i did not see when my brakes faded....

Anyway, great start, avoiding all flying cars and found myself on 6th.

Faster cars and some spins brought me down to a final great fight with fulvio.

When Clive came to lap i was not sure how to manage it good, and i let him pass on the backstraight,
but i saw on pribluda that he had plenty gap to second position.

I put some pressure and unluckly clive spun, sorry, not my intention.
On the last lap fulvio overtook at the line and i was hoping i saved enough brake to reattack,
but as always on the 55 cars you lose the brakes just about 1 second to early.
Same happend to DuLima with me in the beginning of the race i guess?

So, i saw Fulvio in the fence/hill. My car was still drivable but after i knew he was in front me at the line
i retired the car so he stayed in front of me, not the way to gain a position.

So, i hope for a great season and me in a faster car !

On this track the brake fade is not a problem ,wait Roy Esket and you see your brakes faded.

now i'm even more confused...

ok its an upcoming track, sure its no big deal here but you have to breaking points where you can use it if you have breaks.

That was a close one.  Evil nicked pole by 0.021 seconds but by then I was doing a long run on race fuel and was seeing problems with the tyres and didn't bother to respond.

In the race, I was beaten off the line by Ziu's Ferrari and could not get past for some time, whilst Evil made his escape.

In 55mod you can usually expect mistakes, from anyone, but sadly it was me who made the first error, whilst trying not to ram Ziu.  That let Phil past, so now I had two cars between me and Evil!

Eventually, both Phil and Ziu had grassy moments and I was able to resume my pursuit of Evil.

It was soon apparent that we were doing similar lap times and I didn't feel that I had enough brakes to do anything more.  Having followed Ziu at the start it took me several laps to get my brakes back under control.

So that was it really.  I closed a little at the end when Evil encountered Fulvio and Bastian but otherwise it was stalemate to the flag.

Congratulations to Evil, perhaps I shall have to try harder to get a head on the grid in future.

Grats to all finishers and podium places. Great to see such a large grid  ;)

I had not run 55's since the last championship and most of practice was spent trying to remember how to drive them and cope with the brake fade. So I was qualifying on race fuel and concentrating on finding braking points and getting consistent lap times and it was not until the last 5 mins of quali that I actually tried a banzai lap.
 I did smile when it showed my pole as 0.021 faster than Clive  ;D, but I fully expected either Clive or Ziu to go quicker.
My start was good and I wanted to hold the lead into T1 if I could...always easier driving these cars with a clear view ahead  ;) I pushed quite hard when I saw that Clive was being delayed by Ziu, and my laptimes for laps 3 & 4 were in the 1:45's which was pretty good on race fuel and I was still controlling the brakes so things were looking good (ish)
Once I had a comfortable gap I was able to relax and re-discover the driving technique for the Connaught and the braking/downshift points. The gap slowly stretched as cars behind had traffic or grass cutting issues. Clive was, more or less, matching my pace but seemed unable to close the gap so I did not need to push any harder and drove comfortably and carefully. Prib was promising a mid 1:44 lap as possible but I was reluctant to go looking for that and throw my race away.
It was not until the final laps that I had any problems, when I caught some of the backmarkers. When I had to change my lines and braking points to find a way past other cars it showed just how close to the limit my brakes and tyres were. During the majority of the race my brakes were recovering in time for the next big stop and my tyres were always OK. But just the slight extra demand in tighter lines/heavier acceleration and fractionally later braking pushed them over the edge.
The first car that I lapped was not too bad, but when I caught Fulvio and Bastian things almost went very wrong :o. It was clear that I was lapping more quickly because I closed on them so easily, I waited for a gap and Fulvio kindly allowed me through even though he was battling with Bastian. Then I tried to move past the Gordini of Bastian and thought that I could simply power through on the inside of one of the corners. The extra demand on the tyres sent the temps into the red and I got a horrible tank slapper that sent me onto the grass, allowing Bastian and Fulvio to retake their places ahead of me. :-\
With just 4 laps to go I looked at the gap back to Mr Loynes and decided to play safe. I cruised along behind the 2 cars battling ahead and simply watched the gap back to Clive. There was a moment of doubt as we started the last lap and the gap closed suddenly, but as the final lap unfolded it was clear that provided I made no mistakes I had the win.

On to Spa and a whole different set of problems to deal with ;)

Francesco it seem's that you had some connection problems at start. After some meters you came back on me like a bazooka  ;D totalling my steer so when I restarted dead last after have collected some cars behind, sorry guys, I found my wheel steer 80 degree to the left and the car was very unpredictable. After some laps I get used to the new driving style and could even do some passes till I join Bastian that had had an off. We had a nice battle till Clive catched us and I let him by on front straight, then Clive had some problems and decided to follow our battle. Bastian had a momentum before the hairpin at last but one lap so I could pass him safely and settled for a last burning lap, but Bastian asked too much to his brakes at T1 and the race ended as he has already told. Thx Bastian for the gentleman behavior letting me ahead on final standing :)
Ciao

Link to the server replay cap in post #1 seems to be borked.  No can do.

Oops Sorry, I've forgotten to upload the server replay. I'll do that tonight. Off to work now.

Server replay now available via the link in the race announcement.

No problem JonnyO, I've amended the race result.

you're welcome, dont want points that way...sorry for the punch.

Moderation published.