SimRacing.org.uk

Season 36 - 69x Trophy – Round 3 - Spa67  


For the next round of the season 36 we go to Spa-Francorchamps. Designed in 1920 the original triangle-shaped course used public roads between the Belgian towns of Francorchamps, Malmedy, and Stavelot. The track was intended to have hosted its inaugural race in August 1921, however the first car race was held at the circuit in 1922. Spa was the fastest road circuit in Europe at the time, and it had a nasty reputation for being dangerous and very fast- it was a circuit known to be one for the brave, and most drivers were frightened of it. The old Spa circuit was unique in that speeds were consistently high with hardly any let-up at all for 3–4 minutes. This made it an extraordinarily difficult mental challenge (& ridiculously easy to crash)..

Race List	=	IGOR
Server	=	UKGPL_8
IP Address	=	look at IGOR
Race date	=	18-02-2020
GPL mod	=	69X
60fps patch used	=	60fpsV1
Track	=	spa67
Qualification	=	20:45  UK time -> 45min
Race	=	race starts at ~21:30 UK time
Race length	=	~ 50 min => 15 laps
Damage Model	=	INT
Replay	=	https://www.sendspace.com/file/k2x0ak

Driver lists and divisional rules can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=862&theme=6)

"Junior" drivers are allowed a maximum of one reset with a compulsory Stop & Go within two laps.
"Senior" drivers are not allowed any resets.

Only reported incidents will be moderated, there is no Red Zone.

GLA + FUN

Junior drivers not yet driven, please declare your status in this thread before this race!

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
AnGex	16	Senior
bagrupp	7	Senior
Cookie	13	Senior
Enrique Farina	10	Senior
EvilClive	10	Senior
fpolicardi	7	Senior
GregT	7	Senior
MagicArsouille	10	Senior
uli	18	Senior
Billy Nobrakes	20	Junior
francesco	14	Junior
Gareth	20	Junior
PaulV	20	Junior
Phil Thornton	8	Junior
Rainier	20	Junior

Spa67 and 69X is the maximum for CPU and GPU and HDD!

Optimize it! else you will have low fps...

practice server is up - test it -
no support after 19:00 UKtime

At La Source, I only have 30 fps ... :(

Make the CPU and GPU clocks run in full speed!
Make shure you have "intel speed step disabled" in GEM settings
AMD CPU has to disable "cool and quiet" in bios.
Set the GPU to high performance and high AA Quality settings.
For online racing use the lightest version of the spa67 track.

freeze lap3

me too...

I'm struggling a bit to get to grips with these cars, particularly with the monster amount of fuel they carry for Spa.
The race was a bit of a shocker. Lost the car at Stavelot on Lap 1. Ok for about three more laps until about I span on the run down to la Source. Big apology to Paul Villiers, I had seen his car in the hedge a couple of corners before & thought he was out. I didn't realise (until I checked the replay) he wasn't that far behind. I should have taken more care with the rejoin. My bad.
The engine choked half a lap later.

"Senior" drivers are not allowed any resets.

I couldn't remember the rules. I reset and then pitted. Continuing to drive was more important than the points. :)


The GPL setup fuel estimate for this mod is the worst one. It overestimates a great deal. The 24 gallons I loaded estimated 10 laps. I was using less than 1.6 gallons per lap.

Congrats Uli, Andreas, and Clive.

It was fun racing with Tristan until I made a slight mistake at the Kink.

Thanks guys.

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
AnGex	10	Senior
bagrupp	1	Senior
Cookie	7	Senior
Enrique Farina	10	Senior
EvilClive	15	Senior
fpolicardi	4	Senior
GregT	12	Senior
MagicArsouille	10	Senior
uli	12	Senior
Billy Nobrakes	17	Junior
francesco	14	Junior
Gareth	20	Junior
PaulV	23	Junior
Phil Thornton	13	Junior
Rainier	23	Junior

Got a good start and I was careful around the first few corners. Fulvio was careful too but letting me by cost him the chance of a tow from the faster cars. I'd set my car up with no wings so it was really quick in a straight line and Fulvio struggled to get past on the straights but he eventually did me at La Source. I tried to stay with him but I clipped the Armco at Les Combes and spun off. I got in David's way, sorry about that. I got going but the car wouldn't pull top gear so I had to take my one and only reset. After my stop and go I chased after David. We were very closely matched and I had to work very hard to try to close the gap. Unfortunately David's engine expired which denied us an interesting last few laps. Grats to the podium finishers, some very fast lap times up there!

Me too. I'm quicker with a lot of wing (may sound obvious but it isn't to me) because the higher corner speeds more than compensate for the lower top speed but it does make overtaking harder IMO.

Shame I got a freeze at the same millisec as Bastian...

My favourite track...

I had very low wings 2/1, as this is a highspeed track, Masta kink went full throttle with this car!

I also tried the Lotus 49 with no wing ( it only has a front wing option) and it was very quick in a straight line, in fact it looked like it might seriously challenge faster cars. I used the BRM as a benchmark with wings and initially the Lotus 49, although it felt very fast, was around 2-3 secs a lap slower?? I reasoned that the time was being lost in the long fast corners like Stavelot where the Lotus was struggling to carry the speed.
So, I added 1 degree of front wing and initially the car just oversteered like crazy so that it was undriveable. By backing off the diff, and the roll bars, and the toe in, plus tweaks to the dampers etc I managed to balance the front grip and the speed to make the Lotus match the BRM laptimes. It was quite fun throwing the Lotus 49 through Masta and controlling the slide, although slightly scary  :o

All was going well in qualifying...quite relaxed about not challenging the McLarens and pleased to be very close to Greg's Lotus49 time. As qually was ending I was on a faster lap when I suffered a screen freeze  :-\ Just managed to get back onto the server before the start and as a precaution I decided to up all the gear ratios one click, just to be safe  ;) It was not until the first run down Masta that I realised I had missed upping 5th gear  :-\, so 4th and 5th were very close ratios. As a result I could not challenge Bastian's McLaren as the slipstream was taking the revs into dangerous territory and....I needed to finish the race to get some points. So I eased back and stayed just in the tow until Bastian disco'd.
Without a tow truck I could not close the gap to Greg and Tris, who I could see up ahead as they slowly eased away on each lap.
Quite a lonely race after that until I passed a recovering Greg at Masta, promoting me to 4th place. Then with just a few laps left the gap to Tris and his BRM started to reduce and I could smell the scent of a podium.
Tris was obviously in trouble with his car and eventually I was able to pass him and finish in 3rd place.
Grats to Uli and Andreas and to all other finishers.

The Lotus 49 is strong in the slipstream. It looked like my advantage on the straights was greater than Tristan's advantage in the turns. I was regularly doing 204 mph (328 kph) and saw 205 mph at least once. I wasn't even using a good  5th gear for the tow. There's no telling how fast I'd have gone with one more click on 5th gear.

I could have passed Tristan several times but I didn't like leading him into the Kink or Holowell. He was much better through La Carriere than I was. I tried to figure out how to stay close for the back straight but I was too slow through the turn onto the back straight. If I wanted to lead Tristan at the end of a lap I needed to pass him before Blanchimont. I had serious doubts I keep him behind me from Stavelot to the finish line.

It was difficult driving in the slipstream. I had to be very cautious. Once I quit being so careful, I bumped the rail at the Kink which led to losing my right rear suspension. :(

It was good to see Clive make good use of the 49. He was running as fast as I was by the time the race ended.


:) That's my experience. I used no wing at all. I copied my 67 Lotus setup. It needed some work but it was a good place to start. It takes a lot of work to make the 69 Lotus 49 work well with just 1 degree of wing.


Tristan seemed to have the greatest advantage through the turn onto the back straight. He also got out of Stavelot a lot better than I did. There was a good difference at Burnenville too. I was surprise how well I was doing at Eau Rouge and the Kink in comparison to Tristan.

I'd have liked to have had a chance to see what I could do in Andreas's or Uli's tow.

I apologize for making the moderators job more difficult since they need to disqualify me.

Thanks for the fun guys.

Yes I hate to do it...

Clockwork orange day ;)
Congratulations to you Andreas and Clive, a victory in Spa, “where one fault could kill you“, is always something special to me.
But I‘m VERY SRY for Axel‘s disco. I was looking forward to a close fight over the whole distance after that practice AND because I know that you are a Spa Specialist :) Andreas tried to pressure me but my M7A was just quicker in the corners, so I was able to increase the gap lap for lap.
This was my first race with my new PC! But I still have a lot to do, make my WIN10 clean and all things running well. After all, the 69x Mod was great yesterday.
As a privateer, driving the M7A of Vic Elford yesterday ;) I will miss all oversea races – low budget, because of the new PC – this year. So we met again in Brno. Have fun in Laguna …

German "Doppelsieg" again!  :thumbup2:

Good point re the fuel on the 69x cars Billy.

Im really certain that during the few (too few ) practice sessions I had that the fuel amount was showing ok, but when i joined the server the other night then my setup showed fuel for 999 miles, no matter how many gallons i had.

I just bunged about 30 gallons in the car and hoped it would be OK..

Im also struggling a bit whith the 69x and 55 cars etc, they are new mods to me. downloaded them but never tried to race them in anger at all.. have now. and they arent easy to get to grips with. 55s have grip and brake fade issues etc,but im actually getting to like them. but so far the 69x cars seem to have loads of grip, but due to being fairly used to the original 67s and early 66 and F2 mods Im really struggling to get the gonads to push them hard enough!!,

I too am finding it a little strange, but enjoyable getting back to online racing with UKGPL, by far the best place to get up to speed again after my lay off.  just trying to stay safe and have a blast.. seems to be going well.

Hey Billy, no need to have apologised mate, I didnt expect you to have even remotely assumed I would recover from the mess i was in when you passed me.. I bet it was a bit of a shock when I tore the front of your car off.

It was a bit of a shock too to find you around the corner.  I hope that the engine issue you had wasnt because of our coming together.. I lasted till about 7-800 metres after the start finish line and ended up in the grass again..

If any one does a Lawn Mower Mod for GPL, I reckon I would be World Champion.. No Problem !

Paul V.

see you all at the next one.

Im off now to draft an email for next seasons sponsor.. Hoping to get some backing from FLYMO !!

Moderation posted