SimRacing.org.uk

UKGPL Season 17 - Inter-League race - Albi

This is the fifth Interleague race of our season 17, and will use the 66 mod.  Our guests will be the European mod league GPLRacer, a familiar second home to many of our 65 mod racers.  GPLRacer won the first race between our clubs at Watkins last season fairly comprehensively.  The race is at the earlier start time of 9pm UK, many thanks to our guests, who may be racing at a later local time.   Each league is to field nine cars, and there are no chassis handicaps, drivers will be racing to complete the distance and score points for their team.  Let's have a warm reception for our guests from GPLRacer!

Please be in IGOR UKGPL chatroom passworded 'Savage' by 19:55GMT, (You will need to set up a channel called #ukgpl if you haven't already done so)
Igor and Race passwords: see above (#post_event_password)

Server 6.ukgpl
IP address 80.5.200.198 

Race date = 03-05-2009
Track = Albi
Time = 20:00GMT
Variant = 66F1
Damage Model = PRO
Qually time = 35 minutes.
Race length = 40 laps (complete 36 laps to score points as a finisher)

Chassis assignments will be posted here when finalised:
BT19 John
one of the BT11 versions, driver to choose Lorenzo
one BRM, driver to choose between P261 and P83 Will
Cooper Sam
one Eagle, driver to choose between T1F and T1G Mike
one Ferrari, driver to choose between 246 and 312 Doni
Honda Clive
one Lotus, driver to choose between 43 and either of the 33 versions Jethro
McLaren Hristo

If you'd like to represent UKGPL in this race please post on the thread and advise what chassis you'd prefer.  Driver lists and points scored can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=209&theme=6)

bt19 ?

john

I'd prefer the BRM, although if I have to fight Will for it, the Lotus will suit me fine.

So 1) BRM, 2) Lotus

If drivers could select a second chassis they don't mind taking, this will aid in the event of disputed chassis, as was suggested in the "Monza" thread. Makes the captain's job a little easier in the event of more than one person picking a car. :)

bt19 , cooper .

john

I'd really like the BT11 2.7 please.
If I cant have that then I'll take the Eagle Climax.

Looks like my choice would be

 1) Honda
 2) Lotus 33

I'm happy to drive any car, if selected !!

Rock, Paper, Scissors with you, Jethro, for the BRM.   ;D

I ran the P83 at our recent Amateur race and would like to again for this event.  Won't push the point, tho.  She's your's if you insisit, JW.

Happy to drive anything.   :)

Edit: Ferrari 312 is OK; 2nd choice, McLaren or Cooper?  I'm EZ.

No worries all you BRM lovers....I'll take anything.  ;)

But if I had to choose....

First choice: P261
Second: 312

I'll gladly take the Lotus if need be.

Cheers,

Will

I'd need a bit more time to come up with a plan, because as we're not restricted to either 2 or 3 liter cars it's much more complicated on medium speed tracks. If 3 liters are more than half a second quicker here you can expect those to be my base for the assignments but I haven't done a research yet.

I can put some effort in tomorrow for the BRMs and Lotii, with a crudely adjusted setup (if you got setups for those cars, I would much appreciate those, as a good setup can make a LOT of difference around here) to see which is definitely quicker, if any. On such a short circuit, you'd think the 2l+ cars would have an advantage, but there's 2 long straights to consider, and they're quick, so it's a tossup at the moment. Certainly not as clearcut as Monza was, or Watkins Glen could be.

Yes, even if laptimes between 2L and 3L might be similar, I'm sure a 3L is gonna have big advantage on those straights yet the 2L should be much quicker in the turns as they're so long and some are so slow too. I don't have many setups at all and most are for the slowest cars. I'm aiming to go for the McLaren as usual and spare you all the trouble of driving it, plus I have enough experience in it now and some setups too. If no other way everyone is just going to take the car they prefer and wherever there's a clash I'd let those two settle it on their own, but for the moment nothing is decided.

I used a Steve Cloyd Mexico as the starting point for my Cooper setup when we raced there in Dh.

Seemed to work out ok.

In my experience with the 66's at Albi the fastest is the 3lt brab which can do low 12's and the 2lt brabs can get into the mid-high 12's as well, the rest are not far behind. This track evens out the cars pretty well imo.

Ok guys, here's the provisional assignments I came up with. For those that wanted cars and nobody else wanted -- you got them, no problem.

Jethro prefered either BRM or Lotus and Will opted for BRM or Ferrari and Doni opted for Ferrari or Cooper, so if any of you would like to switch cars let me know. As for the moment the remaining chassis available is the Cooper (again) and we're short of a driver.

BT19...........John Roberts
Lotus..........Jethro Walters
BT11...........Stu Bart
Honda.........Evil Clive
Eagle...........Mike Beattie
Ferrari..........Doni Yourth
BRM.............Will Tway
McLaren........Hristo Itchov

Cooper..........FREE

The choice of either 2 or 3 liter is entirely up to you but with slipstreaming and passing in mind lean towards 3L.

Could you update the first post with the current driver assignments, Dave?

Also, are people interested in a practice run tonight or on Saturday evening? We just need a host and a specified time, perhaps 19-20 GMT.

Any candidates for the Cooper then? You know you want to!  :)

 I cannot make Friday evening, as I am working all night, but should be around ( and maybe even awake) for Saturday. ::)

If it's tonight (Friday) let me know the time you decide and I'll put UKGPL6 up for you. I'll be using it for practice but not until 9.30pm or so.
If Saturday I will leave it on remote and Evil can start it...

You have more faith in my ability to start servers than I do!! ::)

Give it to me or Hristo then. :P

I set up Zappa to run Albi on Igor for the next few days.

Party on.

Will

Thanks Will! If anyone on the team is interested for a practice run today please say so. I would be able to run in the evening but will do that only if there are other teammies running as well.

I've had a couple practice runs with a few of our opponents last night and they're  looking sharp. Their 312 driver was doing mid 13s whilst I was doing mid 14s.  Should be a good race. Hang on to the tow as long as you can.................. :D

I would love to practice but won't be around until very late. We're having a party for my daughters first communion so I'll try and sneak a peak at Zappa from time to time and see if you guys are racing.

Cheers,

Will

I'll be on in the evening, probably from around 6pm, but no guarantees on that.

I should be around this evening too . Definitely need to play with the Honda setup.

Hi folks. Should the Cooper still be free, i'll be willing to drive it tomorrow. If I see the server up I may join to try and cobble a setup together.

Great, Sam, thanks!

So Sam takes the Cooper and we have a full team. Good luck for tomorrow!

One important thing - please everyone install and use Pribluda to have information on when you're fighting for position with a teammate. If possible, don't slow each other down and if you see the chance, give tow to a teammie behind you, but make sure you don't slow them down.

EDIT: Ok, since I have never used Pribluda before I didn't know, but it only works with the old v1 rasterizers. If you're running the v2 D3D rasterizer (I do) you can either switch back to v1 for this race or just not use Pribluda. If you're running OpenGL there is a patch for Pribluda that makes it work with the new OpenGL rasterizer.

Link for Pribluda: http://www.amirkamal.com/gpl/pribluda/pribluda_readme.html
Link for Pribluda new OGL patch: http://gplmz.bcsims.com/index.php?showtopic=3731

Not sure yet, but it seems to patch the mod exe file you must first patch gpl.exe then run gem to update the mod exe files.

Cheers,
-=Hristo=-

UKGPL.6 - usual IP for tonight; 80.5.200.198

If you want i'll be there as a reserve.....

Cheers

Lorenzo

Sure, Lorenzo, thanks.

Well that was rather crap. Couldn't get a decent lap in qualy, did the race setup first to get comfortable with it and braking zones on cold tyres at the start of the race, and then switched to a qualy setup, but kept making mistakes each lap I did which only ended up with a 14 and 2nd-last on the grid. Come the start, it was good - I got a veritable flyer in the Lotus 43 BRM, and had to slow down to avoid hitting people into T1 and T3, and down the main straight I overtook somebody else cleanly. Come lap 3 I felt comfortable, went through Double Droite normally, then got absolutely creamed on the exit by a GPLRacer who thought overtaking there was a good idea. It sent me skyward, and into the haybales. Car seemed undamaged, the handling was OK, so carried on. Come DD on the next lap, all was fine, until I tried exiting it, and something exited the engine at high speed. Game over. Sorry, you lose!

Spun avoiding one of the GPL team, who was off at the Hairpin, while in 10th, I think. Then popped the engine while trying to get away ahead of their Cooper driver :(

Own fault, got too excited !!

I see "Jack" editied the race team in Post 1 at 9.10 pm. I assume that replaced Lorenzo for Stuart.

Hmmm, much confusion, Stuart then appeared in Qually in the Eagle and said he was driving for GPLRacer, Lorrenzo at that point was also in the Eagle, and I was the nominated Eagle driver !!!!

We told Stuart to go back to the BT11 he had been nominated for UKGPL as we didn't know he had been changed.

Surely we should stick to the team as nominated before the race, so as ALL the team members know who is racing for who?  I know GPLRacer were short, but once qually had started is a tad late for changes.

Sorry Mike, my mistake- I assumed Stu was in the Eagle for us for some reason, Lorenzo should then have been allocated our BT11.

As Stu won the inaugural race for GPLRacer he seemed the best option when they were short.  Well done for sorting it out on the track, it should have been much easier with the allocations in front of me, but I didn't make sure.

The Cooper really is something of an enigma to me. In the 3 races I've used it for the Interleagues the engine's blown twice when I've treated it with care and yet at Monza, where I gave the car the thrashing of its life, it made it to the chequered flag  :-\.

After all the confusion of whom goes in which car, I kept my seat in the Cooper and qualified in the top 10 somewhere. Made a rather poor start for once and lost a couple places by the end of the first lap. That really set the tone for the race as I kept getting overtaken but I was driving consistently, even if the Cooper was understeering like the Titanic on a full tank. Eventually, when Jethro and Remy had a coming together, I was up to.......to be honest I can't remember! Soon after Lorenzo passed me when recovering from an earlier incident.

About 10 laps into the race, when the Cooper became more drivable, I proceeded to hang onto Lorenzo and was even catching him ever so slightly. Sadly after a few laps of quicker driving, the engine wasn't having any of it and decided to become a coffee table. Ah well, can't have it all. Congrats to GPLracer for the win!

Well about all I can say is sorry for not bringing the little lady home. Was running 8th and having a wonderful battle with one of the GPLRacers when I just pulled over a bit after seeing a blue flag and nipped the armco, causing a wheel to come loose. Pure stupidity. I did enjoy the race immensely.  :D

I was really lucky to even make the event. Some drunk kook crashed his car on our road last night and took out a utility pole. The power was restored at exactly 9:01pm. So I was happy to make the grid.

Grats to GPLRacers and all the finishers.

Cheers,

Will

I had an amazing race versus Paul, I'm sure the replay would be a blast too watch. The McLaren was much down on power but with the vast amount of slipstream I could keep in touch and even make attacks as Paul was driving defensively. As soon as I went on his side or even ahead though, he would rocket himself by back to regain his position. My poor car couldn't handle all that pressure and eventually the engine expired just as I had gone ahead of Paul on the exit of the last corner on lap 11.

Grats GPLRacer for the win, but a note on the assignments... I believe if a league is down on driver numbers that's clearly their own problem and unless I agree on it as a captain I don't want to see our own people switching over, especially after making a commitment to drive for us in the same race. I may have made the mistake of joining the race too soon in pursuit of a good qualifying time, so I'm sorry for that, but in any case, the car assignments are on the forum post unless I give personal instructions and make an agreement with drivers individually. Dave always has good intentions, but in this case I settled it with Sam that if he wants to race for Clubmans to just tell Lorenzo so the latter would take over his Cooper and I also asked Lorenzo and he was ok with it. Then again, I didn't wait to see how that unfolded, so partially at fault.

I know some perceive these races just as fun events and don't take them seriously, but remember some do and they spend time and effort to prepare, organize and practice. Let's keep the competition level high and not work against ourselves by helping the opposition, please. Winning is the main objective here.

In regard to the above, it would be nice if people who have signed up to race in Interleague but have missed the recent events make themselves clear on whether or not we can rely on them. It is difficult to always wonder if someone is going to suddenly show up for one of the events. Also people racing in D1 (or any other) are more than welcome to join the team so we don't have to rely on Clubmans missing their own races all the time. Remember, I'm not going to chase and beg you, so if you're interested just make yourself clear.

Cheers,
-=Hristo=-

I think Hristo has a point regarding our team. If we have assembled a team and that has been posted as such any last minute changes should be the at the discretion of the captain ( which does of course mean that he has to stay "in chat" until the whole team has joined the circuit) Any reserves can then be poached by an opposing team if they require topping up.
I do not attach any blame or criticism to Dave or those who were were involved in the seat swapping last night as we had not formulated any clear guidelines on this subject so they were only doing what they could to provide a full grid of two teams.

But, as Hristo says, other leagues do take these events far more seriously and with greater preparation than we do. I am positive that UKGPL has the ability to take on any of the leagues we have so far challenged and raced with a good chance of victory, but we do need to field our strongest available members and be as prepared as we can be. Confusion over who is driving what car and for which team during qually is distracting for ALL drivers, after all we do need to be sure whether we are racing the guy in front or is he a teammate??

Maybe we need to draft some internal guidelines for the UKGPL team along the lines.... that the published team will not be altered unless the captain deems it necessary during pre race chat and once a full team has entered qually there will be NO alterations. Only then can "reserves" be drafted into the opposing team if they so wish.

So to the race itself.

After our Saturday evening "team practice" where a few of us ran laps at Albi I was not entirely happy with the Honda setup that was understeering badly. Given my woeful lack of points in this series I was absolutely determined to finish this race even if it meant staying in 18th place!!

I was busy through most of Sunday but snatched a sneaky hour on track to tweak the setup and finally managed to dial out the understeer and gain drastic oversteer instead... a half way compromise in settings eventually gave a predictable response.

Tried Igor to find GPLracer had a server running with someone called Paulo circulating at  1:12's!!!!!!. without a tow. bugger!!

I did a few laps on full tanks but was only getting low 1:14's so retired to a private test session and further tweaking of setup  but mostly braking points and lines.


Slowly the times crept down into the 1:13's so I was a little more confident.
Qually went well and a run with race fuel provided me with a mid grid slot. I tried to get a tow from someone but just was never in the right place at the right time :O(.

So I dumped a load of fuel and went out to try and gain a place or two ..mid grid sounded a trifle vulnerable knowing Albi T1 and DD have a habit of taking no prisoners on lap 1.
I was even slower than with race fuel, but I had been slightly compromised by other cars on each lap so I thought  "ah well, just one more banzai lap, then back to a few mins on ful fuel" and Bingo 4th spot behind some very quick guys.

Just had to get a safe start and stay out of trouble in T1 which I did, although it allowed a couple of cars to sneak through on my inside.
That was ok there were 40 laps to go and I could easily stay with them with the slipstream.
 Cold tyres caught me out at T1 on about the 3rd lap and although I went wide I was far enough ahead of the next car to rejoin without any damage.
By now John Roberts and Stu were involved in a dice ahead of me and I slowly reeled them in, until I was close enough to give Stu something to worry about and perhaps prevent him harassing John quite so much.

Then John spun and came to rest exactly where my Honda was planning to go!  and we had a nose to nose meeting. Stu slipped through as we sorted ourselves out and gave chase. I kept a respectable distance from John as we slowly closed the gap to Stu allowing him to set the pace even though in clear air I knew I was about a second of a lap faster.
It would have been very easy to use the draft to pass John into DD on many occasions but I hoped that by just showing my nose in his mirrors he would get the message and push on.
I noticed Hristo disco and later we passed Stu on the side of the circuit which made us 3rd and 4th. I was hoping that we had a good many team members still running behind to collect points, as we were out of touch with 1st and 2nd spots held by Paulo and Paul. Alas it seems that there had been far more casualties than I had noticed.
With about 5 laps to go I decided that if I could make a clean pass without taking John and myself out I could move up to 3rd spot. a couple of times I backed out of the move when I felt it was only 70% until a small mistake by John exiting T1 gave me a near pefect tow and pass before the braking zone for DD. Because I hugged the inside line to avoid any contact with John, I had compromised my exit and he was able to pick up the tow.
I played safe for the braking into the next left hander, knowing that he would struggle to get past before the tight right hander onto the start finish straight. But John was obviously somewhat miffed to have been passed by a Honda and gently prodded me into a half spin whilst he regained his place ::).
4 laps to go and he was now some 6 secs in front ( the despicable "cad"). Well, I adjusted my Fundoshi and tightened my white headband and deployed full red mist mode. I was closing on him but witout a mistake on his part I would not catch him. Still managed a 1:12 last lap in a do or die effort to get back to him.
Very pleased to have finally finished a race and score some points, disappointed that so many cars dropped out and that once again we did not fulfil our potential in terms of points.
I find that here really is a different mind set for these races and (other than the last few laps last night) I was playing the team game, intent only on bringing the car home and not attempting any risky moves that might take me or team mates off circuit. I was trying to help John early on by harassing Stu and keeping him off his tail and was hoping that Doni would close up from behind and pick up my slipstream.
During qually, having secured a good slot, I tried to give Will a tow but I think we need to practice that skill ( at least I do) because it seems that it is as easy to hinder your team mate through the corners as it is to tow him down the straights. :-\

Grats to GPLracer for winning and to all those who made it to the finish.

How did you fix that understeer, evil?  ;D

BTW, I used Pribluda for the first time in this race. Switched to the old rasterizer and it worked just fine. Handy tool, but it was often confusing me a lot by showing false information on who's in front or behind, and at what distance those people were.

At one point in qualifying it was saying Will is closing up and I wasn't on a fast lap so I decided to give him a tow. Just as the car behind appeared in my mirrors Pribluda suddenly replaced Will's name with someone from the opposition! And he got the tow...  >:(

At the end of qualifying I was cruising around with race fuel, hunting for UKGPL drivers to give a tow to, but there were none! All Pribluda was showing me were GPLRacer drivers approaching, lol.  ::)

Useful tool, but that distance info bar is more of a hindrance than anything else.

That distance bar can be a pain, but is dependant on bandwidth settings as for best use. ;)

what can I say except sorry and "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".


what gives you the most red mist the tightened headband or the fundoshi (hope it's made of nomex ?).

john

"How did you fix that understeer, evil? "

I could say that I used my natural skill and talent to extract the maximum performance from a severely non competitive car.  But you would not believe that, so ..... ::)

Tried a few things, but from what I remember the final difference was...

I lowered the rear tyre pressures by about 15psi and fronts by about 10psi , and lowered front spring rate by 10lbs and moved brake balance to 49%. The overall result made the car far more predictable, and I was able to push that little bit harder with confidence, which makes all the difference in lap times.

Hristo, I run the "Distance" indicator in Pribula, in time mode. So you have your gap in seconds to the cars infront and behind, which I find easier to comprehend, play with the F buttons to toggle the various info settings.

Dropping the Tyre Pressures 10 - 15 PSI !!!!!! What pressures were you running to begin with, Clive ?

lol !     ;D sorry for the confusion.
Well I usually drive with a hacked about default setup, which in this case came with 120 rear SPRINGS and 85 psi front SPRINGS , I think ::) so they stayed at that whilst I tried to tame the beast initially. Often I try random adjustments, just to see if I can feel any difference/improvement, or if i feel the

Occasionally I get into diffs and clutches but I would rather learn to drive around the setup I have than go searching for the "magicbullet" that might be in there somewhere.

Did you try the "option " tyres  ;D

Hi guys!

Was fun racing with you. Too bad so many had to leave the race.
Thx for organizing. We are looking forward to more racing with you.

Could someone please post the results and the server replay? In case you don`t have free space for the replay I recommend http://www.sendspace.com/

All the best from Germany
Stefan

shit!! I never knew tyres were optional!!     :o          I must try that next time :laugh:

I've posted the replay here http://www.jamesonline.net/ukgpl/2009.05.03_Albi_Interleague/ (http://www.jamesonline.net/ukgpl/2009.05.03_Albi_Interleague/)