SimRacing.org.uk

GT Sprint Cup - Season 1, Round 6 at Spa

Date: Wednesday 17th August

Practice 1: 8:45pm (15 mins)
Qual 2: 9:00pm (15 mins)
Warmup: 9:15pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:17pm (31 mins)
(1 minute extra race time has been added for a longer than normal formation lap)

Cars allowed: Any GT car or Corvette or Viper G2. (Seat Toledo is allowed but will not score points.)

Notes:
(1) Please try to arrive 15 minutes early 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/lm2-report.php?group=1&content=series103) for general Season 1 info.
(4) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (http://www.ukgtr.org/index.php?c=rules)

Must be in a picky mood, but shouldn't this be in the Champ's forum area?  Seems like this one's been forgotten!  ;) :) ;D

I'll be there as reserve if there's room, Spa's a great track  :)

Quite right. ;)

i will be there  :)

Got someone to come into work 3 hrs early so i can leave at 8  ;D

Dont want to miss this race hehe  :o

FlyBri  8)

Going to qualify on a race setup and take it easy. A combination of bad luck and bad driving has left me needing a finish.

Happy to qualify 13th (ish). car felt good, but I was quicker than those around me on the grid which is where my probs started... Have real issues with cars more than say 0.5 - 1sec slower than me. I think I just can just drive straight passed them... Just need to calm down and stop being so... erm... inventive with my lines :-)

Still at least I didn't hit anyone so I should not get any penalties.

Fozzmeister

Fozz, I hope that wasn't my fault, I was aware you were behind me then you got in my blind spot and then you were gone!!!!

Well then, what can I say. That was a quick one. Qualified 8th, very happy with that.

But when we went to race session, the start session button didn't become active  ??? Then I looked at the timing tab and it said that I was DQ  >:( Could it be that the countdown timer was at zero already? I looked at the start session button the whole time, but it just kept inactive  ???

This is the 3rd time I can't finish the race in the GT Sprint Cup. I'm getting really disappointed by this.

Had similar problems Fozz. Couldn't get a clean lap in in qualifying, kept meeting traffic, so ended up back in 9th with a time about 4.5 sec off my PB. Made a mistake early on while watching the cars in front instead of the track, who were in a tight group of 4 and losing pace as a result, and ended up near the back. Caught and passed 15th easily enough out of Eau Rouge, then caught 14th after a couple corners. Decided to play it safe and backed right off at Pouhon, but ended up watching him run off the track instead of where I was going, and had a sympathy crash.

I'm pretty good at hotlapping, but my racing skills aren't much good. I can follow similar paced cars around fairly well without causing accidents now, but I really struggle with either slower cars ahead or faster cars behind. Too often I simply miss my line and run off the track.

Think I'm going to drop out of the sprint races, getting nowhere atm. Might give the endurance league a try. The longer qualifying session should lead to less mixed-up grids and help give me more room on the track.

d/c on warmup lap :(

I had the lag problem in qualifying and on the warm-up lap but didn't notice again afterwards.

This is one of my favourite tracks and, at one time, I was confident on it.
Not this time though.
Lack of recent practice really cut my confidence and it showed in the lap times.

Still, I qualified 10th and wasn't too unhappy with that.
The race was very tense and my car felt awful.
Probably the result of lack of practice.

Again I managed the whole race without incident although I witnessed a few!
On second thoughts, I did run wide twice into the bus stop and got told off by the race director.
Not that it gave me any advantage.

Got passed several times but due to people falling off in front of me I managed to finish 5th.
Happy with that.

Qualified with a PB 2-11-8  ;D I had a good run and luckily nobody was around me on my laps   :)
 The race was tough, I had a good setup but Mark was just too fast, so I was pushing beyond my limits to try and keep up with him.
Started off in pole with paul and mark following, Paul span on lap 1 to let mark through and it was just a matter of time before he passed.... After that it was pretty lonely with only the odd mistake to keep me company ;)  Was happy to finish 2nd
Grats to Mark on another well deserved Victory.

Enjoyed the racing again!

Had been practicing with the Viper on MidOhio (of all places ;)) and could certainly feel that Spa is a lot flatter ;). Which helped my confidence. Qualified with the race setup and managed 15th. Planned on having a nice drive and not push too hard, which worked (in a way). Only had 2 offs or so and 1 accident and managed to finish a nice 11th (I believe :)). Happy with that!

8)

T

Good one for me, really enjoyed it.

Qualy was ok-ish but not great by any means.  2.12.5 on a run baulked by several cars, nearly 2 seconds off my PB.  Grrr.  Second run was a flyer, until I got to Blanchimont, where I put 4 wheels over the line by the tiniest margin - lap will not count.  Bummer.  So 3rd on the grid, I was surprised it wasn't lower.

Race started, and I lost about a second in lap 1 Eau Rouge, getting it completely wrong.  Was soon able to cruise up to Paul, however, and sadly he spun out of Bus Stop, putting me 2nd.

Just drove easy for the next couple of laps, and was surprised to be gaining on Jon in front.  Lap 5, he must've made a mistake through Eau Rouge, because I suddenly had a massive tow, and made it stick into Les Combes.  Made a horrific mess of the Bus Stop that lap, fortunately Jon made an even bigger mess of it, and I had a 3 second lead suddenly.

Took it fairly easy, trying to lap in the 2:13 bracket, after that - don't know how successful I was until I see the replay, but Jon couldn't make any ground up, and I was content just to drive it out.  Lap 8, however, and Jon again goes off at the Bus Stop, allowing me to ease off slightly and bring it home.

Shame Shark wasn't there, as he was challenging for the championship too, but this has made things very interesting for the championship chase.  Jon 192, me 170, Shark 165.

Thanks guys :)

Well another nightmare.
Qualed 6th with an dreadful time, way, way of my normal pace, god knows why.
Onto the race, steady lap 1, all seems ok.
Lap 2 [One driver] has had an incident and is well slow on the main straight, I'm catching him at an impressive rate.  He seems to go to the left, no probs I will pass him on the right, he perhaps now sees me and goes right (off the racing line), too late to change direction for me and I'm onto the grass, cost me 2 places.
Well on we go and now behind [another driver], catch him after a while at the bus stop, damn hes to slow, catches me out and I have the choice of hitting him or spinning, I chose to spin and drop another couple of places.
Anyway finished 6th, should have been 3rd or 4th, just one of those nights.

[Post edited to remove names as it's right on the borderline of what's permitted in terms of public discussion of incidents. Chief Moderator]

Appologies to all concerned, wasnt having a go.

how the hell are you guys doing 2:12-13's??? I could only get 2:20 at best on race fuel...what the hell am I doing wrong?

I'm quite proud of my race, started near the back, watched people fall off... ended up in 10th at the end by keeping consistent. Strange thing happened with TOm Cooper who I was chasing...out of the corner before the back straight his car stopped dead, and left it's collision box there...so I went through him, but still with a bump...kept it on the island without damage luckily. I'm guessing that was him having lag?

I'm so off the pace... I am using default setups... could this be bad?

It happened again, and now I'm convinced it isn't just me. Not a bad qual lap having had no real practice, but spun on the power at the bus stop, with no warning and no chance to collect, and I wasn't even trying that hard. I'm coming to the conclusion that as the frame rate drops (as it always does on lap 1) the control inputs lose their smoothness - my motec trace on that lap shows an almost vertical line power appication, but I don't do that for obvious reasons! All these spins on lap 1 with hardly any at other times can't be a coincidence (can it?).

Anyway, was 13th I think when I rejoined and started working my way back up through the field. Helped by FlyBri and Zacari having some sort of incident at the bus stop I finally got back to 4th, right on the heels of Ginsters, but time ran out just as I caught him. Had a good scrap with Smoothy and some mild contact where he came back across as I was passing - hard to know what happened as no replay yet.

So, a fun race at least but I now need to search in earnest for some hardware upgrades which wont cost a packet - anyone got a Palomino Athlon XP 2100+ they want to sell?

Paul

I never checked my Motec m8, but your story sounds just about the same as mine. Had it last time with the Bi-T on Spa as well. Hardly on the power and beng spin! Guess when I have it next time I will need to check the Motec to be sure! :)

T

Quite an eventful race for me.  First time I've been in as a reserve and did better than I thought I would.

Qualified in 11th on 'race' setup, but seen as my main PC is still out of action I've got no saved setups  :( so it was a variation on the default with med tyers.

For the race I realised I'd get nowhere with the setup so stabbed in the dark and put on softs (not totally crazy as I'd done it before in 30 min races there) which worked much better.  Had a steady start and had a good battle with Smoothy for a few laps; side by side on more than a couple of occasions!  Never any hard contact though and was probably the best battle I've had in any league race so far.

Managed to squeez past into the hairpin and after a while ended up 4th with 4 laps left.


Lol! basically I got a small tap into the hairpin  ;) ::)

Ended up back in 8th and my tyers were all over 150 degrees, spent the last few laps just trying to keep the car on the track (which was damn hard!) and ended up 7th.

Was still good fun though  :D

You were one of the slower ones (don't take offense, none is intended at all). But its my inability to be sensible around those slower ones which is the real problem. I'm used to placing further up the grid now, and I just can't do that in the sprints, partly because of slight lack of preperation, partly because of connection issues meaning I only get maybe 2 laps in, its particularly a problem in GT races, as I know the F360 like the back of my hand, but I'm not so familiar with the GT cars.

The real problem is I go into NFSU mode I think, which is dangerous. Of course I don't go ramming into people (my accident rate is slightly higher however, but I still do everything I possibly can to avoid accidents) but I seem to invent interesting lines on the fly, which is stupid. I am someone who can overtake similarly paced cars as well which makes it all the more crazy.

You did nothing wrong while I was around you Jam.


I've never done hotlapping at all. I nearly always concentrate solely on race setups. I'm also reasonably good at overtaking usually. IMHO hotlapping will do nothing for your ability to drive consistently, take an hour out and drive non stop without pitting, then alter your setup for hotlapping/qual and see how much faster you go... My thinking is you get 2-3 times more practice on race setups as you don't have outlaps, and the fact that your practicing at consistent tire temps is a great help. I've come to lots of endurance races, just took the fuel out, put softs on and qualified really well.

I'm giving very serious thought to dropping out of sprints, I don't want to ruin anyones race and the penalty points are going to kill my endurance championship if I'm not careful. I think I'm only going to race when I qualify well in Sprints, which is probably going to be not very often.


Fozzmeister

Well firstly, race to qual setup would usually be about 3secs (it is for me) but Spa is looooong so that's 4 secs at leastso your already at 2:16 ish. There's two _really_ long straights, one after Eau Rouge, one with Blanchimon on it (am I correct with that name, it's number 17 on http://www.race-rally.be/spaeurorace/infos/maps/circuit.htm ). So you need to be super quick out of number 15 (where I certainly wasn't maximising it) and out of Eau Rouge (3/4). I know once I started pushing hard out of 15 I was about 2 secs a lap quicker in the F360.

I still sucked with the F550, went to a public race and qualifed with roughly the same speed but i did a half spin at turn 17 on that map so I would have taken at least 2 secs off it I reckon.

Fozzmeister

Replay uploaded to the usual

Cheers

Eau Rouge or Red Water or (Penis)Aqua Rosa LOL! (Dutch joke never mind ;)) looks almost straight on there Fozz! :D

Which some of us may have noticed in this race was not the case  ;) ;D

T

Aqua Rosa appears to be a perfume, don't know what that has to do with penis's... I'm not sure I want you to explain it. I knew it meant red water but thought the corner was just a nice way of saying "blood" (tis dangerous), I guess it could mean "wine" but if you went down it pissed you'd be in trouble, bringing you back to blood again... I only just realised there's a stream (under?) there and the Ferrari's were very quick there?

Anyway I think (and spend to much time in forums) too much.

Fozzmeister

That was exhausting. Quali went quite well, I got within 1.5 seconds off my pb which is closer than normal, and was surprised to see I was fourth.
First lap had a little ding dong, all seemed fair, with locutus and he slipped through to take my place. Then Paul had his spin in bus stop and locutus had a bigger moment through eau rouge which saw me move up to third. Started to settle into easy pace after that, with someone about 2 seconds behind me. Even though I was driving a little below limits it took a great amount of concentration to keep gap constant and I was relieved when my chaser slipped up and left me with me comfortable gap.

With no chance of catching those in front and 6 sec gap to those behind I decided to drive carefully and bring it home which brought even more pressure on myself. I was just hoping race would end when I started to notice gap behind me was shrinking at alarming rate which could only mean that one of the faster guys, Paul, was now behind me. I had nothing else to give. Could not go any faster with half a lap to go and concentrated on not making any mistakes. It proved just good enough as I defended last corner and beat him to the line, another lap and I was done for.

So pressure throughout the whole of the race made it a very difficult and tiring third place for me. But delighted to finish at top of second tier of gt boys and pinch a podium thanks to absentees.             

Watch a hotlap from one of the fast guys as it's probably your lines and how much curb you're using. You'll learn a lot at Spa from watching a hotlap replay.


Well done Mark on the win.

Yeah I was out for dinner with the inlaws unfortunately and actually for some reason I am down as reserve for GT Sprint and not full time (dont know how that happened) so actually there might not be space for me every week anyway.

I'll be back next week to come 2nd again though.  :-\ :)

I just never feel I have enough grip....kerbs cause me problems and usually spin the car around. I'll have a look at someone's hotlap if any of you want to donate :)

I've had a look at one of your laps Woodee and have a number of comments. It would help tho if you could get me the motec too (as discussed).

thx

Paul

The motec was attached to the email to, oh.....and your comments....be gentle? :)

ah - no email has arrived yet.

odd...i sent the email last night. Would your email server has reject 1-2mb or attachments? In RAR files?

Found it - Spampal decided you were a spammer! I'll get back to you later with comments.

cheers

Paul

i'm no spammer!!!  ;)

I was puzzled you'd said this as I didn't remember any contact.
Now I've seen the replay and it confirms my view.
There was no contact and I stayed right to give you room, not being sure of your position.
You could see me.
What's the problem?

No problem - from my view at the time your car seemed to be coming across and then bounce back the other way. I've seen the replay now and it shows that this was you steering right to avoid me instead of contact. Wasn't meant to imply any blame btw  :)

Paul

OK Paul, no problem them.
It's just that I'm a bit touchy about this kind of thing, having been penalised several times.

Hi Guys I only wanted to get a race in with no incidents. I qualified with the default race set up with a couple of mods and ran at the back letting those that wanted to pass me. I was quite pleased with the end result but think the lambo was not a good choice at that circuit.Recon I will be on hols for next 2 weeks but may have a go at an endurance at weekend.I do not know what happened at start but there seemed to be a car going about 10 mph and then dissapearing.bye for now gerald :)

This race has left me well pissed  >:(

Spent all morning doing race distance runs off line running between 2.13-2.15 laps comfortably, car was set up nice, the world seemed a great place..........

Just as i was trying some hot laps before i left for work my graphics card started playing up (was getting pink and green thin lines down screen etc  :o). Could still drive but the lines were a bit of a distraction and i didn't know if it would get ant worse. Left work 3 hrs early to get back home for 8.30 (got someone to cover for me-didn't tell him why tho!! lol) it had been grating me all day about my graphics card so i got home decided to take my gforce 4 64mb card out my old pc and use that, original card was a 9800 256mb card so the graphics performance dropped massively.........

I qualified 7th with an ok lap (2.14 0r 2.15ish) Apology #1- Sorry to Don1 for a very noobish mistake while joining track from pits, i stopped to let a few cars past, it looked clear as i pulled off on to track i saw a car come and tried to get over the other side of track so car could take natural line exiting en rogue but i was to slow and Don ploughed into me-SORRY

The race started well, got up to 4th and was behind Ginster by 2secs just pacing myself keeping an eye on me tyre temps. Was comfortable, intended to start pushing in the last 10 mins, from what i can remember (haven't watched replay yet)  Ginster was slowish out of en rogue and i got close at end of straight and missed my braking point and spun, losing a couple of places. Apology #2- Then was following Zacari into final hairpin before s/f line, he was guarding inside the legitimately moved left for his line, i tried to do the opposite, and as i was doing so, he was on the brakes and i ended up ramming him, my fault sorry Zacari. Gets going again really pissed at myself, took smoothy on the outside of 1st corner at the end of straight after en rogue and while trying to give him room for second part of those esses i touched the gas and the back end went and slammed into wall puncturing me rear tyre. Apology #3- decided (probably wrongly) to try and get back to the pits, checking constantly if anyone was behind me, saw a car coming (was at the quick double left hander just after first sector) moved onto grass to get out the way and cause tyre was burst it put me into a spin and took out a white viper who i think was (Zip) Tyf, after the havoc i caused i escaped game and banged me head off wall a few times lol. If there is anyone else i caused incident to i apolgise  ::)

Worst race to date, drove like a complete noob second part of race it could/should have been at least 4th place................Dont think graphics card was entirely to blame (i made a couple of por decesions in race) but it certainly had an affect on my driving and lap times, like whoever it was mentioned about their fps causing them spins i can see where they are coming from.

Excuse this long post have to get last night off me chest lol

FlyBri

Actually for future reference, I'd like some pointers on that pitlane.

If your hot you come right passed the pitlane exit making it very dangerous with just that, but even worse is the "lump" in the pitlane which means that you aint gonna be able to see down Eau Rouge... So you can't see, your coming onto the racing line... Erm...

What I usually do is turn heavily from the left to the right of the pitlane just before reaching the track, but by that point you've had to really slow down so you can do that without going onto the track anyway.

As the pit lane is super long anyway can we be allowed to cut out that hump and drive straight across (obviously not the grass bit). Hopefully this will enable us to see down Eau Rouge right until the last moment.

Fozzmeister

Don't think it's good to change the 'route'. This is how it is in real life as well I suppose. I use the tab key to have the names showing, then either look to the side or look back plus you can hear a lot when using a headset and usually will know when someone is coming or not. (Looking back with tab on will show players from a far :))

T

Yeh [TAB] is a good idea, it'd work for qual. When we get to endurance and we're pitting under race conditions, well those corners are quite curvy, your gonna want to get close to that line (comp cars seem to cut it a lot), and close to the tires... It's going to be hard to look back...

Yup, but will make for some awesome replay action though ;)!

T

Think you could be right. I remember I found the game easier to play after I upgraded, and I stopped spinning so much.

Paul if ya havent read my post, i mentioned i swapped my ati 9800 256mb(playing up-started getting pink and green lines down screen) for my old nvidia geforce 4 64mb card, i reckon i was 2 secs a lap slower around spa with nvidia card(would point out i was using ati card offline and nvidia online, i seem to get better times off line, that maybe a factor in losing some of the time) but it certainly makes a big differece to car control using a less powerful graphics card- UPGRADE m8

I am currently looking to buy a new graphics card in the region of £200, if any1 has any ideas or suggestions of what to get im all ears :)

thx m8 - I know I need to upgrade but funds are very limited atm (SWMBO). If I can find a cheap processor upgrade then I might do that, as my XP 1600 is hardly state of the art and a 2100 might give me 20% more for about 20 quid.

Paul

Does any1 have a link to race reports for all previous races including spa?

Thx FlyBri  :o

Just look back through the replies to the race announcements in this Championship Races forum...

Sorry i should have said incident reports (want to see if any1 grassed me up lol j/k  ;D) i thought i read a incident from one of the earlier races somewhere....

Just look through the results on the main website - if you click your name anywhere (events, champ standings, driver or team list) you'll see at the bottom if there are any penalty points against your name.

ok thanks Dave  8) I thought i saw a page somewhere a few races ago(bnro?) with a description with all the race incidents on, with a description of errors made etc..... No worries m8 i will check and see if i have any black marks against me  :o

regards FlyBri