SimRacing.org.uk

Season 39 - CANM71 – Round 6 – Grenzlandring


The 6th race in the 1969x Grand Prix series sees us at Grenzlandring, a track around the town of Wegberg in Germany.  The first race was held on 19th September 1948 in front of about 250,000 spectators. It was organised by silk weaving mill owner and keen racing driver Emil "Teddy" Vorster (Rheydt) and his Rheydter Club für Motorsport (RCM). From 1949 onwards, the organisation was in the hands of the Motorsport-Union-Grenzlandring, a co-operation of four motorsport clubs of the Lower Rhine region. The all-time lap record was set in September 1949 by Bavarian Georg "Schorsch" Meier on a supercharged BMW 500 motorbike at 216 km/h (134 mph) (clockwise driven) and in September 1951 Toni Ulmen set the all-time record for cars, driving his Veritas 2000 RS to 212 km/h (132 mph) (anti-clockwise). No doubt genuine Grand Prix cars would have been a lot quicker. Racing came to an end after 31 August 1952, when Helmut Niedermayr from Berlin crashed his Formula Two Reif/Veritas-Meteor at the exit of the Roermonder Kurve at nearly 200 km/h (120 mph) killing at least 13 spectators.
Please check the Season 39 pages for details (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=1531&theme=6) regarding rules and the CanAm 1971 pages (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=1611&theme=6) in particular.

Handicapping
The cars will be divided into five groups, each group containing cars of similar performance.
Drivers will be graded as either "Professional", "Intermediate" or "Amateur".
Drivers will be limited to cars from specific groups based on their grade
and must choose 2 cars and drive them an equal number of times.



Rolling Start!

In RL CanAm started rolling ;)
We do a rolling start to the exit of the Gladbacher Kurve in one line following the polesetter ~100mph

From now on - CA71 series will be moderated for reported incidents.
One Shift-R is allowed (with no need to make Stop & Go).

Race list	=	iGOR
Server	=	UKGPL_8
IP address Server	=	TBA
Password	=	see above (#post_event_password)
GPL Mod	=	CA71
Damage model	=	Intermediate
60fps Patch	=	60fpsV2newmod
Track directory	=	grnzland (http://srmz.net/index.php?showtopic=9255%20%20http://andre-gpl-texture.speedgeezers.net/)
Qualifying starts	=	20:45 UK time - 45 minutes
Race starts	=	~ 21:30 UK time
Race length	=	27 laps
Replay	=	here (https://www.mediafire.com/file/09cmiqysenqiikd/UKGPL_8__60fps.2021.11.19.23.19.rpy.7z/file)

Drivers will be graded as either "Professional", "Intermediate" or "Amateur".

Please tell me your car choice before the next race ;)

pro   Alain Maurice (FT)
am   Christian Dauger (FT)                                    
int   Claudio Navonne (FT)                                    
int   Cookie (FT)                                    
int   Doni Yourth (FT)                                    
int   Eric Bilodeau (FT)                                    
pro   EvilClive (FT)                                    
int   fpolicardi (FT)                                    
pro   GrandPrixYannick (FT)                                    
pro   MagicArsouille (FT)                                    
am   PaulV (FT)                                    
int   Pete Bennett (FT)                                    
int   Philippe Girard (FT)                                    
pro   Greg Taber (R1)                                    
int   Gareth (R1)    
pro    Enrique Farina (R1)                                
pro   Leo Menegucci (R1)                                    
int   Phil Thornton (R1)

Important

From now on - CA71 series will be moderated for reported incidents.

GLA + FUN

Unfortunately I won't be able to participate in this race, real life gets in the way sometimes. I would have loved to drive (or try) these beasts on this flat oval.

Any idea how to keep your rear right tyre from overheating?

Not yet, it seems we have to live with it like at other ovals ;)

Never mind about the right rear tyre, how do you prevent cramp in your right leg!!??  27 laps without a single lift? just pedal to the metal and wait for the chequered flag?

Just did a quick offline test and with minimal setup tweaks, all of the cars that I tried ( including the insanely powerful Mclaren ) take the whole circuit absolutely flat out, and are at least  2-3 secs ( probably 4-5 secs) a lap faster than the smaller engined cars.

So, I expect the big bangers to run at the front and they can be geared to run in clear air with just a small allowance for tow. But the smaller cars have a real dilemma. If they are geared to run in clear air and pick up the tow, then they can kiss their crankshaft goodbye. If they find themselves running on their own and they have geared for a tow, they will be several seconds a lap slower as the engine won't pull the high gearing.

My trusty pit crew are fitting a large magnet into the nose of my car, along with a harpoon and tow rope!!!  ::)

Take a big stone and put it on the pedal ;)

I would make the top gear to reach 400kph without overreving...

I start the server now for some testing  ;D

Just did a few laps with Yannick to test my gearing. I'm pretty happy with it. It is going to be a strange race, flat out all the way! One mistake and it will be all over  :eek:  No tow = no chance.

On the positive side Evil, there isn't going to be much risk of missing a gear with your H-Shifter  ;D

lol Phil.
 Although, in an attempt to find a way to hit 400kph I have experimented with running 3rd gear for non tow laps and 4th gear only for use behind faster cars. So there have been a few gear changes, but only straight through the H gate from 3rd-4th and 4th-3rd, so pretty safe.  ;)

Without a tow there is no way that I can get the Lola222 anywhere close to 400kph!! I think my max speed so far is 347kph running terminally low gearing and almost hitting the rev limit in 4th for the whole lap  :-\. Not much chance of bothering the bigger engined tanks.

Yes 400 kph may be a little high, but ~375 was the max I got in tow with the Shadow

I can't recall the exact year but on Saturday, qualifying day, for one of the Mosport CanAms, the late Milt Minter was being interviewed in the tower as I sat opposite the pits with my friends in the grandstands.  Milt was entered in a Vasek Polak Porsche 917.  I so distinctly recall Milt saying that the track was very oily which was good as far as he was concerned as he said, '...now all the Chevys will blow up when they hit the oil and lose adhesion.'

Milt was a DNS.  The Porsche mill blew up.  Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.  :)

That was wishful thinking. Chevy engines prevailed all but one time between 1966 and 1971. Dan Gurney won Bridgehampton in 1966 with a Ford engine. That's ironic. I've struggled terribly to get a good lap in Gurney's Lola at Bridgehampton.

I hope you don't bring the 917 to the fight. That might be worse than bringing a knife to a gun fight. :)

Remember we will do a rolling start - we stay slow until the blue Dunlop banner

Aargh. Suddenly iGOR can't find any mods? Any ideas?  I keep getting timed out when trying to join UKGPL-08 Practice server, too :(

Restart, look into igor.ini if strange things in there

else join via IP  92.116.142.18

There are some notes about connecting via IP here (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=b6aaaa293948a494efd74de1b6f4e237&topic=23771.0)

Well for me also access problems by Igor! I don't know why. At the same time, display resolution problem, the menu was almost unreadable (fortunately not in race) :-\

To complete, accident in front of me, I receive a car on the head and get hit by others, shiftR, but shortly after, gasoline breakdown...I took the start in basic configuration.... >:( >:(

One to forget and one for making an apology.

Lap 4 - Cookie and others. So sorry. My fault entirely.  ::)  I thought for a moment that Axel was sliding wide so, stupidly, I went for an optimistic gap up the inside. I backed off the throttle as soon as I saw Cookie's tyres bite back into the tarmac but these boat-like cars don't slow down in a hurry and I was surprised by how quickly I ran into the back of Cookie's Shadow. This sent both of us flying. Greg, I think that I ruined your race as well. So sorry. Cookie managed to Shift-R relatively quickly but I had to wait until the entire field had passed me. I did not want to take the risk of Shift-R and landing on someone's head.

I clung on for a few more laps and had a real challenge getting past the cars of Fulvio and Christian. My Shadow was faster but their cars were WIDER. So tough to pass and I'd already lost my confidence after the L4 mayhem. I finally lost all concentration and threw myself into the haybales in front of Yannick. First early retirement of the series for me.

I'll put this one behind me and learn how to turn right again before the Nurburgring.  So sorry to everyone involved. By this stage of the season I really should know better. Shoot me now  :2guns:

Great result for me thanks to a front row start, courtesy of a great tow from Greg in qually. The start was a bit tense, I got a draft on Tris and squeezed past at the end of the long straight on lap 1. After that I just tried to maintain my concentration and not make a mistake. Easier said than done with Tris all over my gearbox. Eventually Tris made a tiny mistake and lost the tow and I was in the clear. I had to focus and maintain my concentration because one small mistake and it could have been all over. As it was I managed to hang on for a rare win. Grats to Eric and Leo for the other podium places.

Grats, Phil. Well deserved  :jumpjoy:

Nothing but disastrous for me today.

Even though the Porsche is the slowest I thought there were a few things that could come in handy.
For the winged cars I reckoned the most would really lower the wing configuration for the many long straights. But doing so, in my experience, makes the car pretty unstable, and something I didn't find in my Porsche at all despite having no wings at all. The car is so stable even when really opening up the diff. And I thought despite the lack of power and top speed it could still manage to keep up with the rest. Put simply, I thought an underdog race was possible.

But my engine already blew up in Lap 2 and so I was doomed to be in last.  :dots:

Well, after have loose your drag cause a big slide on T1 I found your car stuck in the inside and couldn't avoid it, end of the game cause I had already reset cause your lap 4 crash where I hit Christian spinning car  :(
This track is like russian roulette  ::)

Grats to Phil for maintaining the concentration required to take a win on this track.

I did toy with the idea of taking the Porker, but a quick test highlighted ( or lowlighted? ) its lack of top speed. So my choice was the Lola 222.

Earlier posts of mine probably showed my concerns for this race, and when the hostilities started my worst fears were realised. The rolling start allowed me to arrange my gears so that 3rd and forth were only 1 click apart. That gave me a 3rd gear that would deliver max speed if I lost the tow and 4th was available when I had a fast tow truck ahead.

The theory was very good and I could lap flat out in clear air, but even through quali I struggled to pick up a good tow, so when the race started a few things spoilt the plan.
The effect of the tow when behind a Shadow pr Mclaren was immense and even though I thought that I had calculated the right ratio for 4th gear there were times when I had to lift off when in the tow to protect the engine. That highlighted another issue with my setup. Lifting on the true straight sections was OK, but a lift on any of the curved sections was scary, especially when in the slipstream. It must have been the rollbar settings which caused snap oversteer at close to 380kph when I backed off  :scared: :scared:
This problem was increased when I tailed Greg's monster red Ferrari. From my tiny Lola it was like following a brick wall and if and when I got too close I simply could not see where ideal line was.
The combination of the two issues ended my race when the tow sucked me in to o close to Greg and I had to lift to avoid contact that would have taken Greg out of the race. The sudden oversteer put a wheel onto the grass and things went wrong extremely quickly, just glad that I did not hit Greg.

Grats to the podium..............on to the next race.

First, let me apologize for wrecking so many drivers. I wrecked Axel, Phil, and Doni during qualifying. I had to tell myself quit behaving like a kid and start acting like a pro. Worst of all I ended Axel´s race. I should have backed off. I was hoping he would slow and then fly by me on the next straight. At least it wasn´t total devastation. He lost 3 spots. :( I need to be nicer to Axel.

Congrats Phil, Eric, and Leo! Kudos guys.

I tried to put Axel and Phil on the pole. I knew it would move me up the field too. I got Phil there for a little while but somehow Tristan found a great tow and got the position. Had I got lucky with the tow, I could have challenged Tristan for pole position. I´d be lucky to break 1:35.00 without a tow.

This was one incredible spectacle. I watched a great deal of the replay. It got me wondering if the top of the sky box is very low. When Pete and Axel collided, I thought I was going to drive through the middle of the gap and possibly under Pete´s car a little bit. On my client replay, he was over ten feet off the ground while still rising. One frame later, his car is back on the track slightly clipping the side of my car. I wonder if he hit the top of the sky box while only being 10 feet off the ground? Leo got lucky and did a very nice evasive maneuver to get through the carnage ahead of him. Excellent driving Leo!

Later I was using Axel´s tow hoping he´d carry me towards the front. I didn´t realize at the time how important it was to take great care of my tires. I ran wide twice in turn 1 losing a fair amount of distance to Axel. That ruined my tires performance and Axel started getting a tow off Eric and Leo which quickly broke any tow I had left.

I had Doni and Clive to contend with after that. It was a shame Clive got in the grass and lost control. Poor Doni had nowhere to go ending his race. There was no way I was going to get away from Clive. And if I could have broke the tow Doni was getting, it would have been incredibly difficult. I saw Doni hit 229 mph (368 kph) in his Porsche. I didn´t think the Porsche could go that fast.

Pete´s demise was interesting. He slightly clipped a haybale on the left after the start-finish line. He may not have realized he lost a wheel. He was doing 216 mph (347 kph) on 3 wheels. He didn´t make the turn 1.

I was hitting 232 mph (373 kph) in the tow. I´ve never gone so fast in the Ferrari. I think I might be able to go faster with a different gear but that would make the Ferrari much weaker in the turn 1. I wonder how fast Phil went on our qualifying lap. I hit 232 mph on that lap while Phil closed the gap somewhat quickly. It wouldn´t surprise me if he hit more than 240 mph (386 kph). I didn´t get that part of the replay saved since I left the server after our qualifying lap.

My apologies for the long post. Thanks for the racing guys and my commiserations to all the drivers that got a loaded chamber in the pistol as Fulvio mentioned.

I got up to 235mph at one point so not much quicker, but I probably held the higher speeds for longer closing in under the tow which is probably where the lap time came from.

Yannick was right about the twitchy handing with low rear wing. I had my Shadow at 5 degrees, which is as low as I could get it. The car was a lot more stable with 15 degrees of wing. I didn't want to change the setup to much in case I made it worse. My main concern was keeping the rear tyres from overheating too much. So the only change I made to the default setup was gearing, steering ratio and tyre pressures (NSF 20 psi, OSF 18psi, NSR 18psi, OSR 18psi). The car was OK but I had to keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times and only make small changes in steering input.