SimRacing.org.uk

Endurance Championship Division 1 - Season 1, Round 3 at Enna

Date: Sunday 14th August

Practice 1: 8:30pm (30 mins)
Qual 2: 9:00pm (30 mins)
Warmup: 9:30pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:32pm (60 mins)

Cars allowed: Any. (Seat Toledo, Lotus Elise, BMW Z3M and Porsche GT3 Cup will not be eligable for points.)
Weather: DRY

Notes:
(1) Please try to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to qualifying, during Practice 1.
(2) Server Password has been emailed to those registered racers for each championship. Please contact a member of the admin team to get the password if you are registered and have forgotten or not received the password. It will not be given out in the GTR chatroom as that is a public place. The password wont change for the season unless there are security concerns.
(3) See  UKGTR Season 1 Info (http://www.ukgtr.org/series.php?series=103) for general Season 1 info.
(4) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (http://www.ukgtr.org/rules.php)

Looking forward to this one.

I should have done seriously well (for me) in the NGT sprint if not for a few accidents mostly caused by other people, so I think I'm well placed on this one.

Fozzmeister.

Dry?  Is this set in stone?  Or another one of Picnic's "dice"? ;)

Don't blame me, last night was my first use of the said die  :o

That die was probably used with the AMD k5 chips as well then ;)

T

Please check its not loaded.

If no-one else had competed and I'd driven better than I'm capable of- I should have won the Enna sprint ;)

Away at the beach this weekend hopefully but if I'm back in time I'll definitely pop-in because my Porsche and I have unfinished business with the crash barriers at Enna!

I did get the dice from a dodgy Essex Casino so they may produce statistical anomolies.

Yes DRY is correct. Enna is dangerous enough without adding the rain factor in. Executive decision that Enna will never be run in the rain.

LOL. That could be said about most people's races.
It's a shame when doing well at Enna involves a big chunk of being lucky not to get caught in tyre wall incidents.

Just drive the Bi-T. Everyone will get out of the way, because of it's grunt, it's uglyness, it's sheer size, it's sheer weight, the boat horn under the bonnet ;), the dogs dinner it leaves when you spin ;) and of course if they do stay in the way... It's brutal non-sophisticated awesome power out of the corners! I DEMAND a wet race at Enna! ;D Lol!

T

Why is it set to dry, Do they have wimpy oval style not racing when it rains there?

Fozzmeister

Oh, S**T! It's DRY!  :'(

[Edited for language.]

Which bit of is too hard to understand? :P

Though come to think of it "never" only applies to Season 1...

Sorry Dave, I was going to post that in the D2 bit, when I realised it was D2, so I hunted for D1 and posted without reading nofin... Doh!

Hm, saw your best laptimes in GT in Enna on GTRank. 1:30 !!!! Awesome! Best I could make was 1:33:4.  :(

Quoting is cool, that way we'd have an idea who your talking about :-)

Lol, yeah, sorry!  :-[

Michael Bennet, Symon Gymer, Zacari, Paul Wright, Eric G. They're all under 1:33 in GT class, Enna. Best is Michael Bennet in F550: 1:30:453.

Could we have a Enna practice server up on Saturday so we could get some extra time in on the track, plus it's fun with other UKGTR members out there instead of the craziness of the public severs...............

pretty please....................... ;D

Get's my vote too.

I can at times host some racing as well, still need to find out the right settings though. I tried a dedicated server a couple of times, but usually noticed no one was using it after about an hour, so figured something must be wrong :D.

T

Enna Open Practice on-line from now until I stop it ;) Won't be until late Sat eve now, enjoy

Thanks Picnic,

I'm sure members willl get some use from time to time on Saturday......... ;D ;D ;D

I've put UKGTR-Smoothy up too.
It's set up for the same format as the race server so you'll be able to do the whole shooting match including a race if you wish.
Timing sheets, results and replays are automatically posted to http://www.compage.biz/gtr

Thanks server admin's, your efforts are much appreciated.

Fozzmeister

Thanks Picnic and Smoothy for putting up the servers. Paul, Zacari, Don1 and I did some practice laps and I had a blast out there trying to keep up with them.

It would be great to see more members out there practicing :)

Sorry Paul would have been but I've been doing lone practise at SPA for the upcoming sprints, cos God do I need it lol

If there is room tonight I will join with beamer (I think it is best to take a non-pointer that, unlike the seat, will not bother anyone else). Hopefully I will have someone to race.

Tried to join tonite but it says bad password ??? ???   :'( :'(
Can someone mail me the pass,i jus reinstalled and i cant find a mail from ukgtr anywhere.

#$%&# !  ??? Comp let me down again. Restarted itself after a good qual lap. Had to join and came to the end of session, glad to be under 10th place. After 3 laps comp froze stiff. Same as last GT race in Donni.  >:( Thought I solved the problem after overhauling but apparently I didn't. Hope others had a good race.

Sorry Tyf, no contribution to ZIP from me tonight.  :'(

Just made it home for the race.  It was going OK, but on lap 8 or thereabouts, FPS drops suddenly to 13-15.  Did 3 very slow laps, see if it would clear up, but it didn't.  Didn't fancy a headache as reward for the night's efforts too much, so I retired.

Shame, would've been a good race.

Glad that's over with. Finished 2nd can't complain. Fooked up my pitstops by somehow only putting in enough fuel to go till 10 mins left, shame as i had caught JonM almost and then had to pit again for 10 mins of fuel. I hate the pit board stuff when you pit, it's never clear whether what you specify is the extra you're putting in or the amount that will be in the tank after the stop. Always confused me and caught me out tonight, at least I'll know for next time.

Arrrgh  :o

Well, not TOO bad I suppose.  Crashed a lot, got a puncture, spent 4 mins in the pits for repairs, came back from 11th to 6th at the end.

Not one of my better performances, looking forward to getting back to a proper race track next time :)

Right arse.

Two big crashes, two trips to the pits (guess i should be grateful for keepign going). Every time, coz I had a go on arcade when without my wheel, I unbound the cursors to drive, so every time I had 100L of fuel (argh!).

Setup wasn't so good over an hour (knew I should have done a long run this afternoon), which pretty much caused my accidents. On the plus side, no contact with anybody else so at least I won't get no penalties.

Fozzmeister

Enna. What a stupid track. Those chicanes are suicidal. 1.28.7 quali, i stuff it on the 1st lap, spin, had to work my way back up the field, finally get back into 1st with consistent 1.31's, a few 1.30's.  Stuff it after 20 minutes. Great. I hate this stupid game.

Decent race and quali for me.
PB in quali and 1st in race. At the start mourali floored it way before S/F line and I was unsure what to do, kinda waited a sec then went with him. After a couple laps with Mourali could see he was a bit erratic( but fast) and soon slid off.I Spun twice in the race, It's so hard not to cock up at enna, I was lucky enough that it didn't end my race. the car seemed to lose some top end speed after the contacts with the walls.  Could see shark was closing fast coming upto the end of the race, would've been amazing finish if he didn't have to pit but the GTR gods smiled on me this day  ;D. Grats to matjaz on his victory and 3rd overall  :o

Quite an easy race for me. The rest of the NGT drivers were struggling a bit today so I just nursed the car the whole race. But then again I nearly spun my team mate when his Saleen came very suddenly rumbling down into the first corner. Sorry Mike I was just laping somebody and saw you in the last moment. Luckily we somehow managed to avoid the accident.  ;)

Did the same. In the cold light of day it seems obvious but in the neat of the pitstop I usually feck up the 50/50 call. Result being I added enough fuel to do about 80 minutes  :-[

I've never had such a bad framerate as I did tonight- some of those corners were a slideshow at times. Really shocking. Enna seems to be the worst for these kind of complaints for some reason.

Qualified 3rd fastest NGT. Had a nice lap "in the bag" ;) at a second faster for second but a sliding GT2 collected me at the exit of the second chicane. I decided I'd wait out the rest as it would only have gained me one place and I wasn't sure I could drive hard defending that place on medium tyres for an hour. Had a moment with a 550 performing an 'eager' overtaking move for position right at the first chicane  :o We both ran over the gravel area and rejoined. Also a bit miffed to be barged out of the way whilst being lapped by a GT car. I spent the whole of the previous straight offline leaving room to pass but had to move over to the braking zone and just got shunted for it and span. Mostly the GT cars were superb though tonight- I know I entered the first run of corners after teh start/finish with a GT car behind me on a couple of occasions and they were patient enough to wait until the straight to pass, great stuff.

Don1 and I had a loooong tussle somewhere in there- me faster in teh slow stuff but him always with enough pace to hold me off. I was planning to just stick behind and then go for it witha few laps to go because I thought I'd done well with the tyres all race but had a silly spin on a corner exit and got the dreaded "the splitters gone" message. Pitted and got back out in 14th and drove hard on my lovely soft/soft tyres- ahhh- just like hotlapping heaven  ;D

Somehow, not sure how, got 3rd in NGT. Well done to Don who was solid under pressure and Matjas who was in another universe for NGT speed and consistency.

First endurance race and I too fell foul of the pit board. I decided before the start I was one stopping half way through and set the strategy accordingly. So on the first flying lap the car in front stuffed it into the tyres and blocked the track, twack, one puncture. Crawled back to the pits for new tyres, reset the fuel because I didn't need any. Of course come the real fuel stop and it didn't put any in! Then when I pitted again straight away I thought I was putting in another 5 gal but I was topping up to 5 gals so I had to make a forth stop :(

Apart from that the only fun was letting the cars passed that were lapping me. I was a lap down after the first lap and it went downhill with all the pitstops.


Replay is available too :D

Thanks for the kind words Paul. I was anticipating an attack from you at some point and was happy to see I could keep you at bay for a while at least. Once you had spun out and the pressure was off I drove like a Grandma just to get it home.
Scary stuff that, with the GT's breathing down your neck! Hope I didn't cause too many probs.
Don.

Well that was quite fun in the BMW, qualie'd 16th but I wasn't expecting higher!  The parade lap was a bit of a farce, ended up having to do over 200kmh on a couple of occasions to keep up.  Is it always like that near the back?

For the race I could easily go the distance without stopping so I kept it steady (which is about all you can do in the beamer!).  It's amazing how fast some of the GT guys fly up in the mirrors!  I don't usually go NGT so that was a bit different, all the lapping GTs were fine and gave lots of room.  I only had 1 spin, and that was into the last complex when I was distracted in my mirrors by someone uncharacteristically dithering on the inside trying to overtake.  No idea who it was but I should've been watching the road rather than my mirrors!

Shortly after that Fozz passed me and I was trying to keep up as best I could, then those chicanes bit him and I ended up a comfortable 9th.  I was suprised at how different it is running in a race when you know there's no hope of points, no pressure and I made basically no mistakes, so hopefully that run'll help for next weeks race when I'm back in the 550!  ;D

Zacari, congrats for winning beamer championship. Hoped to race you but couldn't live with your pace and then got stop/go for getting out of way of gt's.

I will now be far more understanding when lapping others. Its bloody terrifying having gt zooming up behind you.

Looked like you lifted for a GT, which lost you all your speed, I think a few people did that too, was basically just let passed for 3 real places, wierd! It's probably what your meant to do, but I'm not gonna take that hit all the way down those long straights, I was letting people through on the enterance to chicanes which was fun :o

Fozzmeister

Lol i have that every race!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers Ginsters  :)  I couldn't believe how fast the GTs closed up either, a few times coming into the chicanes I was screaming at the screen for them to slow down!  I tended to assume the cornering speeds were pretty much the same for GT and NGT, but after that run I'll be more understanding of the NGT drivers in D2.

I did intentionally let you go Fozz, there's no way a beamer can keep up with a 360 over a lap with so many straights!  And I'd already suffered from a ferrari doing random things when trying to overtake me, so I made sure I could go through the chicane normally.  TBH I was never going to block a driver from passing when I was in a non-scoring car, seen as I was racing for fun rather than for points.  I was a bit nervous of even racing in case I forced someone into the tyers!  But it was all fine in the end  :)

Yes I did floor it way before the Start finish line - realised what I did - and slowed down after Turn 2. Irrelevant anyway i stuffed it.

"Well that was quite fun in the BMW, qualie'd 16th but I wasn't expecting higher!  The parade lap was a bit of a farce, ended up having to do over 200kmh on a couple of occasions to keep up.  Is it always like that near the back?"

Thats impossible - I kept the formation lap to way Way below 80 mph, some occasions I was cruising at just 60. CHeck the reply if you want.

Well thanks, your thoughtfulness is appreciated.

Fozzmeister

Probably there was too much "concertina" going on in the middle of the pack - in the slower cars it can prove quite, ahem, challenging to keep up with the snake once it starts to flex. :o

I do not think I will join you in non-scoring car again. I took the beamer to stay out of everyones way but there was such a speed difference (partly car, mostly me) that there was a real chance I would take off one of the "real" competitors. I would be livid if my race was ruined by non-point scorer, so I will not take that risk again.

If numbers are down, although grid looked pretty healthy anyway, perhaps there is a better way forward. 

I would say the Beamer is too slow for Enna and Monza, possibly Spa to be safe for anyone to take. If I fill a spot in Div 2 Endurance race it will be in the Seat probably as the Beamer is too slow. It's fine on tracks with fewer straights, heck I can go faster than a few of the back NGTs, but a tad dangerously slow at Enna.

My race ended while in 6th after about 15 minutes when I broke the suspension against the first tyre chicane.

The right compromise between commitment, speed and accuracy is not easy to find is it?

Still, at least I kept my nose clean this time (apart from the tyre marks that is).

Glad to see the back of that track for a while.

Grrrr - stupid pitstop system! Made a mistake at my nemesis corner (2nd fast chicane) while chasing Jon early on and dropped a couple of  places but was back up to 2nd by the time I pitted. Simon followed me in having had an 'incident' with Muorali, and while I sat waiting for my stop to finish Simon rolled past on his way out. Strange I thought, maybe he didn't change tyres? Then while I sat there waiting longer and longer I realised it wasn't fuelling -  bugger. Vaguely remembered something about the engine needing to be off, turned off the ignition and the fuel started. Lost several more seconds trying to restart, not sure why as I was using the right key. By the time I got going I had lost over a minute and dropped to 5th. Bernie was ahead in the Bi-Turbo but didn't take long to catch. After that there was almost a 50 second gap to 3rd, who I guessed would be Mat. By this time the clock said I had about 20 minutes left, but I was catching him at 3-4 seconds a lap (when I wasn't slowed by the odd backmarker - really tricky when you catch them at the end of a straight). Time ticked down and I got the gap down to a handful of seconds behind and I thought I might do it. Then for some reason the race ended early - how does that work?

Can anyone tell me how the pitstop fuelling works? I have never stopped the engine before and pitstops worked fine - why did it not work this time? My german manual doesn't tell me and I haven't changed the speech out of german either so I couldn't hear the instructions. Must get round to that.

Paul

Yep, I thought about the seat. In truth it is the non-point scoring thing that puts me off. In the seat I would be on the pace of some ngt boys but I would not be comfortable either trying to pass, holding them up or unforgivably taking them out. I do not think it is fair for me to get in the way when I realize how much it would irk me. Obviously Shark, with your experience, you can compete more securely and confidently then I. So present system works fine for you but I will not risk taking someone out through my own stupidity.

I only mention it because if numbers go down, nothing worse than empty grid, I would like to make up numbers but would not take part. Sorry I can not offer any easy answers just another problem      ::).

What you have to remember is that taking points as well would be even more irksome. There is no easy answer, but we have to just accept non-scoring cars as all part of the game. Just make sure you are clean :-)

Paul

GT racing works on time limit and/or distance limit, depending on which comes first. Enna is a very fast circuit so you always cover the distance before the time. The game is really crap at telling you what the distance is mind you so it makes it hard to know what to do. Enna only reaches about 55 mins in a GT car.

Pits wise you have to turn off the ignition to start refueling then start the ignition AND then subsequently press the starter button to start the engine again when they've finished.

Thx Simon
    So why in previous races have I never needed to turn the engine off?

Paul

Gawd knows.

I've had this happen to me before - every now and again GTR just "forgets" some settings, including the lack of ignition/starter key bindings.

It's current "trick" is to keep forgetting my video resolution and switching from 1280x768 (nice wide view with decent peripheral vision) to 800x600 (in which I can see bugger all). >:( No idea why it's suddenly started doing this. ??? ::)

Or see exactly the same as most of us...

Actually I'll have to look into that :-)

A friend of mine usually had this issue with Doom3, it was something to with an error condition triggering it (going to a known res), sorry can't remember more :-S

Yes mine has started to do that also. I run the config now everytime to make sure the settings are correct before I run the game, how annoying.
Don.

Very much a race of two halves for me......Started out quite steadily and was running in about 6th for quite a while, and was even starting to almost enjoy it.....

Unfortunately after my pitstop it all went a bit pear shapped....Managed to spin in the last corner, and found myself off in the sand.....Took me almost an entire minute to get the car out again - the bloody thing would not move. 
After eventually getting out (Having been passed by half the field) I was just entering the first corner when I was informed by my pit crew that my splitter had gone......which explains why I completely missed that corner then.  Had to limp back to the pits (losing even more time).
Despite being in there for a while for repairs the car never quite felt the same, particularly as I seemed to lose a lot of top end speed (was barely able to make it to 6th gear on the straights).

Managed to make up a couple of spots in the last few laps, primarily thanks to Fozz, who seemed to have a bit of a 'mare towards the end of the race.

Looking forward to Brno now......

Lol my config cheerfully tells me my Athlon64 3500, 6800GT and gig of RAM are "below requirements" every time I fire it up  :D
Guess it's the onboard sound ::)

Nice set up Paul.(jealous here)
Don

Yeah I think it was mainly caused by a 'frozen' ferrari in the complex before the first chicane, then as everyone brakes for the chicanes it all gets strung out.  I'm sure the guys up the front were keeping it tight as far as they could.

*cough*

Surely a bunch of nice people here, because I was definitely expecting someone to mention a 'bastard of a 575 driver', lol! Whom, you guessed it ;), would have been me!  ::)
Just got home a couple of hours before the race, noticed Enna was on tonight and thought, nice, I like that track, let's give it a go in something else than the Bi-T! I was wrong! :D
Used the default fast setup for a 1:38:xx then changed loads and managed a 1:36:xx, which I was happy with because I wasn't going for a win, just a nice 60 minute drive in the midfield in a different car... Or so I thought. Changed setup to a 1 stop and tyres to med/hard. Practiced a couple of laps at the end of qualifying and warm-up and it felt good. Again I was wrong :(.
Spun coming out the corners after the 1st fast chicane, rammed into the wall and with that had lost my orientation a bit. Felt I was in the way and started moving to get the hell out of there... Mistake #3, I was actually driving it straight onto the driving line and well, we all know that point of no return... lol :( Where you can hear the other cars engine sounds and know you're not going to make it, hehe! Didn't see who I hit or who I was getting into trouble, but I'm sorry guys (must have been more than one!? ;)). Pitstop took 3 minutes or so which gave me time to do some laundry and dishes ;) :D. Back on the track the car just wasn't the same. 26 Minutes or so into the race I spun again out of the same corner :(. The 575 I guess just doesn't have the traction of the Bi-T  :-\. I think I hit someone again this time and was really feeling quite bad about it by now, limped back to the pit, another 2-3 minutes for doing laundry ;) and told myself that as a punishment I had to finish the race! :D
Which I did in 15th spot. So even without the inevitable penalties I didn't score any points! Phew :D Just about the only good thing for me in this race!

Oops, nope not true... JonM won AGAIN! Woohoo! Way to go m8!  8) :D :-*

T

Saw you having a nightmare in the 550 Tyf- I bet there were some 'interesting' Flemish swear words in your house last night ;)

Not a problem m8, hope you sort out your pc soon. Maybe post on the ZiP forum about it, so I can spend some time on it as well :).

T

If you leave the default buttons assigned to ignition and starter the game turns off the engine automatically. But if you change this default buttons the game gives control to the driver. That was my experience in Barcelona for the Sim Challenge league when I was leading the race and couldn't stop my engine when pitting and had to retire.  >:(

You are joking? And to think that I only changed mine recently because I'd heard something about needing to turn the engine on in a pitstop! Whoever decided such a thing needs their head examining ::)

thx for letting me know anyway

Paul

Simbin is the new abbreviation (thank someone for the spell check button ;)) for mental institution in Sweden I heard!  :P :-\ >:(

T

Same thing happened to me. I was testing this option of turning the engine off manually just to see if it is any quicker and then decided that I would rather leave it to the game but I allready changed the default buttons so when I pitted I was adviced to turn off my engine. Of course I couldn't remember what buttons did I assigne for this... stupid thing I know. From then on I always turn off my engine manually and it works great for me.

[Moderators note: this is a response to a post which has been removed.]

Uuh ROFL was my first response!  ;D (And then some ;))

T

I'd just like to say, please can we have no more comments on this thread. It will almost certainly be locked first thing tomorrow and doing this in public wil just inflame things. Muorali, if you have a problem then make a polite appeal to the mods.

Paul

Muorali's post removed in it's entirety and topic unlocked again.

He did not submit an incident and therefore has no right of appeal - I've pointed this out until I'm blue in the face, and Muorali has been around long enough to know.

In addition, the use of abusive language is explicitly forbidden by the forum rules.

I'm hereby publicly placing Muorali on notice that his on and off track behaviour has attracted the attention of the moderators, and any further transgressions will result in serious consequences. I'm not going to let one bad apple spoil it for the rest of the bunch, and I've already warned Muorali in private about his driving.

Ok, on with the show then. I was crap in the 575! And should have reported myself for causing some mayhem on the track! Nope, this time it wasn't my awesome jokes in the pitlane ;) :D but some seriously deluded driving out of some corners. Sorry I didn't have the time to complain about myself, the idiot, but I'm sure I'll 'score' some penalty points down the line! :D

 8)

T