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Silverstone is one of the tracks that I've never really got comfortabe with. I never seem to be able to string a decent lap together as I make a mistake at a different place every time. It's the final left hander of the lap before the straight with the pop-up Dunlop bridge which seems to get me most often. Look out for the disappearing Dunlop bridge on the left. It cheers me up every lap and takes my mind off the lousy lap I've just done.

Hocus-pocus - it sure does!
Also seems a bit gloomy round here (& flooded in places);  brightens up once the fog has been blown away...

Will and I are looking forward to this. We've been messing around with our wheels and have made some headway. I had a G27 and Will a G29. It turns out that he's been battling with a beast of a wheel - no matter what settings he used it was horrid to drive with. Really lumpy, violent and unpredictable. My fault entirely as I hadn't tested it for him. Note to self - be a better parent.

Anyway, all sorted now as I've made the move to Linux where the G29 works perfectly. Nothing wrong with the wheel at all, just terrible Windows software. So, Will is now driving the G27 on Windows and I'm loving the G29 on Linux. If we fall off the track now, we can only blame ourselves and not the hardware.

Great news Pete, you've got a decent car in the Brabham so hopefully you'll finally get to love Silverstone. The race server is up for testing so please check your connection is good. Hopefully you won't have any graphics issues.

Thanks, Phil. I tested on the server last night and all was good. Still very foggy though. Perhaps it'll clear before tonight.  :laugh:

Foggy, Pete?  As in 'literally'?  Especially the horizon?  Most likely the 'fog' settings in your 'track.ini' file.  Set it to '0' and that should lift the haze.

I kind of like it. It's only when I use the 68Season file. It reminds me which Mod I'm in.

hopefully all goes well for everyone tonight.   

Ive tried to get a bit of practice in and going well if not super fast. but the setup seems very
stable and driveable.

only stumbling block at the moment is I moved my race frame out to the barn/workshop yesterday and although im all up n running its bloody freezing out there..  Ive just popped back indoors for a warming cup of tea and an extra pair of socks..

see you all later. Good Luck All.

Are we allowed to swear? *&^%^$$%$%

Disaster in the Bennett household! I was qualifying in third place and then I had to restart my PC as I was getting a bad frame rate for some reason. I rejoined Q to find that my lap-times had vanished. I managed to get back to 5th on grid (I think) and then the game crashed when I was in the pits. It threw me back to desktop (all messed up on 600x800) and by the time I tried to rejoin, Qualifying had finished. (Place swear word here)

Will qualified in a solid last place and then used ESC/Enter to go to the pits and then the PC threw GPL into a tiny, non-responsive window on his 2nd monitor. What is going on? Must be something in the water today. I guess that we just have to put this down to a bad GPL experience. Right now we're thinking of selling our PCs and buying an XBOX to play FORZA.

See you in a fortnight when I know that we'll both have calmed down and grown up a bit.

Jumping out of one race and into another, in my haste I forgot I was suppose to drive the BRM. :-[ Please disqualify me from the results, very sorry to all. Will have to post notes for all the different leagues to remind myself of any restrictions.

Unlucky Pete. You had driven brilliantly to get P3. Keep joining the races and testing your PC, you'll iron out all the problems soon I'm sure ;)

Bad luck Tom, thank you for being so honest. I concur a few notes would help you. Even I get confused sometimes and I help write the rules!

Sorry Phil, I think I closed the door just before Becketts.
I didn’t expect you to pass me on the left.

That was a tough race. I still haven't dialled out the snap oversteer on heavy braking and it caught me out a few times. I'll sort it for the next round. Dropping to the back provided some interesting racing trying to work my way back up the field. It wasn't easy, everyone I was chasing was a fairly similar pace to me. Had good battles with David, Doni and Bastian, thanks for the clean racing gents (no problem with Becketts David, I was being too ambitious). Great to see Billy secure a good result on his return  :thumbup1:  I noticed Evil was struggling again, the H-Shifter is a hard beast to master. Keep working at it Clive  :fencing:

Phil these cars want the brake bias ~2 points more to the front. This is the tyre characteristics, I had 58 where I usually have 53-54, but my right front went orange-red...

On a save position my engine just stopped working, had pushed a little too hard to get away from Andreas ::)

Had a good drive last night.  Bettered my PB by nearly 2 seconds.

Had a slight problem, after a great and safe start I managed to keep with the pack and started to settle in nicely. Really felt comfortable and happy with the car and setup etc, although the Ferrari isn't the fastest I was confident I would do ok.

Sadly I clipped a kerb in the first couple of laps and although I didn't think I had done much damage, whenever I tried to trailbrake into the next couple of corners the car kept spinning like a top . Aaarrhh.. a quick reset and pitstop and I was up and running again.

Had a good run after that and was making very good steady progress.. at least for me.

Everyone drove really well and clean, and also gave me no scares or problems when overtaking me. Without the stop n go I think I would have at least stayed the pace and although being the tail-end Charlie could have stayed on pace with the group and finished on the same lap rather than a lap down.

A really good evening's racing and fun. True GPL at its best.

Thanks Chaps.

Sorry to hear about a few PC and disco problems.. c u all next time.

Paul.

A very good point Cookie.

I had a small bit of damage and the car became very difficult to control

I had created a nice setup for the race, but noticed during practice I had to move the brake balance further forward.

I'm not at a PC at present so can't check but if I remember correctly the default setup for the cars has a lot more than usual rearward bias.

I'm not a bad workman blaming his tools... but now having driven the cars and definitely experienced what you have mentioned its something for us all to be aware of. 

The ferrari was very loose at the rear end. And even at 58% it's noticeable.

Thanks

still try to learn this car needs to invest more time.

I gonna try to remember setting my brake bias to 60 then....

I've learned to love driving with H-Shifter and right-foot braking. For all mods and cars I have the bias as much as 60% to the front, 62 for the Sports Cars. My old left-foot braking and paddle-shift setups are almost undrivable. I tend to use a 45/60 diff as default but this is tweaked at each track.

It's SO satisfying heel-toe-ing down from 5th to third as you slide into Stowe corner. :)

Evil - keep going. It's worth putting in the hours of practice. You feel like a real driver, and not a gamer.

Hi ;) Qualif was not so bad as the MatraMS10 early68 have no wing and my setup was not on top ! ... At start Leo was not so fast as his pole time ! ... so I'm able to overtake him but whith a little contact ( I've not seen yet the reaplay ) sorry mate !... but Tom is now too far away to catch him and anyways we are in the same laps times .... so I finish second...but Tom race the wrong car !! and unfortunatly disqualifie  ... so I should be the winner !?...or what ?!
Thx all for racing this good serie ;)
Thx Org.

My head was just somewhere else yesterday.

I still dont't have the focus for the whole race. Guess I'll just have to find a safe pace to finish a race without big mistakes.

No problem about our contact Tristan. I also didn't see the replay, as I didn't see you by my side  :oops:

At the end I had a great last five laps race with Andreas. Worth watchin!

I am coming to the conclusion that I might be doing the switch to H shift the wrong way. Currently I am still left foot braking as my pedals just don't feel right if I try Heel and Toe, but I am probably doing it wrong lol.
This reveals to all that I am not using the clutch properly. I was hoping to get the shifting through the H gate fixed in my brain first and then move on to adding the clutch into the equation.
After recent months, I think I might have been better going 100% cold turkey and adopting the clutch and right foot braking from the outset. One way or another I will migrate to become a paid up member of the big "H" club.

My early exit from Silverstone was not entirely shifter related. I was actually slowly improving my pace in the V8 Honda and picking up places through other people's misfortune. I can agree with  the brake bias comments which I discovered during qualifying, I think mine was at 54% instead of the usual 50-51%. But i also discovered that the coast side diff setting also had a big effect on the turn in, so balancing the brake bias and diff appears to be the secret.

Sounds like you're warming to Silverstone ????

Left foot braking won't work IMO. You need to brake continually and steadily as you shift down the gears, dipping the clutch as you go. Not mastered Heel-toe, that is seriously advanced. No wonder you are fast Pete if you have reached that skill level.

I hear what you are saying Phil, but is Heel and Toe the ultimate realism that we are seeking??  If it is, then maybe I should practice that and not teach my muscles and 0.5 gb of poor quality ram to RF brake and dip the clutch....and then have to start all over again with the Heel and Toe action??

BTW what pedals do you have Pete?

Hi all

Well done Tom, Magic and Raoni.

Difficult race, I am fully with the BRM.
After Doni overtook me, I managed to stay in contact with the aspiration but got out when, knowing that I was being chased by the leader of the race, I missed my braking and lost 2 wheels, end of the ball !!!

Well done everyone and thank you for the organization.

Just tested my setup with 58% front and problem solved :-).  I should be a bit more competitive for Round 9 at Imola ;D

It's a personal choice Clive, I like the realism of a clutch and H-Shifter but I'm not skilful enough with it to be a quick as someone who uses paddles and no clutch. So for me using a H-Shifter is a disadvantage with regards to race pace but winning isn't everything to me so sacrificing a little competitiveness for the sake of realism is worth it for me.

Heel toe might be a way to claw back some of the disadvantage but it is a hard technique to master. Every time I try it I feel like I'm turning into an octopus. I like the Driver 61 videos on YouTube and he has a pretty good explanation of the technique (https://driver61.com/qa/how-to-heel-and-toe/). But to be honest I'm not sure the physics engine in GPL is good enough to accurately reflect the effect of RPM matching. So maybe heel toe won't make a noticeable improvement? I do know practicing it makes me much slower! I'd have to practice for ages to master the technique before I could say if it makes a difference to my lap times or not. So for now at least, I'm just sticking with simple right foot braking.

I did mention recently that in combination with moving to a H shift most of my setups had evolved to be horrible. So, I have started again and tried to develop setups that work better with the gearstick.

What I have discovered is that when you are using paddles, or even a sequential shift and a change takes 0.15 secs (or whatever Fairshift allows
) it is quite easy to change gear anywhere even mid corner. But, when your hand is off of the steering wheel for something closer to 1.0 sec to make a positive move through the H gate, things get a little more tricky. Especially if it is entering/during/exiting a corner with the FF working against a single hand and someone like me is wrestling with the tail end plus tyres that refuse to offer the grip that I want.

So now, I am changing gear ratios at each track so that I reach the red line ( in whichever gear I am using), just as I reach the ( now earlier) braking zone for the next corner, rather than as I did before at my turn in point where I dropped a gear. This allows me to be a little more realistic by braking and dropping a gear ( or two) in a straight line, negotiating the corner in the most appropriate gear to accelerate through and beyond the exit threshold and make the next upshift in a straight line.
This approach has uncovered some interesting setup parameters especially in the 67's. Firstly, I find that I am taking many corners a gear higher than I might have before, using the torque of the engine to power through the apex without too much wheelspin. In turn that has forced me to work on the coast side diff values, so that the car rotates into the corner smoothly and I do not need to provoke the rear end into breaking away to get the nose into the apex. The power side is a little easier as that value is also dependent on how heavy my right foot is on any given day.
This could change my whole profile in GPL lol!

Yeah, that was really fun. At times you could cover both our cars with a big towel.  :) It was great to race against such a fast and, above all, fair driver.  :fencing:
Congratulations to all comers and better luck next time for those who didn't see the finish line.