SimRacing.org.uk

UKGPL Season 17 - Amateurs Trophy - Race 9 - Silverstone

The penultimate round of the Trophy takes us to the Silverstone Circuit named after the nearby village, and hopefully the competitors will not get stuck in the traffic jams that have become a great British tradition on race weekends.

Half the circuit is in Northamptonshire and half is in Buckinghamshire, and it is built on the site of a World War II bomber base that opened in 1943. The circuit was first used for motorsport in September 1947 when 12 friends held an impromptu race on the deserted airfield. One of them, Maurice Geoghegan, from Silverstone village ran into a sheep writing off his car. The sheep didn't fare too well either and the race became known as the Mutton Grand Prix.

Silverstone hosted its first British Grand Prix in 1948 and has been held it every year since 1987. Hopefully that will continue.

Drivers should be especially careful on lap 1 as usual but hopefully this fast circuit will not compress the field once safely through Becketts.

Reserve drivers should not join until there are only 30 mins of qualifying left.  However, all drivers should not go on track until there is 30 minutes of qualifying left.  This helps all drivers join the server successfully.  Please restrict chat to pit messages.

Please use the updated 65 mod for this race.

The 65 mod V2 update is being used by UKGPL and the updated layout features are very welcome, with the ability to record best lap times at addon tracks and to have 65 specific tracks. The new collision boxes are also a great improvement.  Though the new slipstream code will need extensive testing, the preliminary race seemed to show that it would be a definite improvement in racing terms, without the controversy over its extent, as with the 66 mod.

Thanks to all involved with producing the update.  If the new slipsteam code works as well as it seems it might, perhaps it could help persuade the authors of the 66 mod to rework their code as well!

Please be in IGOR UKGPL chatroom by 8:55 p.m. UK 19:55 GMT
(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 ukgpl6
IP address  TBC

Race date = 23-06-2009
Time = 21:00 (UK time) 20:00 (GMT)
Track = Silverstone
Variant = 65F1
Damage Model = PRO
Qually time = 30 minutes.
Race length = 50% Grand Prix (40 laps)

Make sure that you have enough race fuel to complete the distance!

Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=208&theme=6)

CHASSIS ALLOCATION

FERRARI Phil Thornton, Will Tway (reserve), Burtoner*, Asbjeurn*
LOTUS  StormCloud, Dave Randall, Bartosz, Bernie*, Steve Bird*, Geoff65*
BRM  NatanVix, Samb, Ginsters, Steve Bucket*, Ian*
BT11  CliveLoynes, John Roberts, Ken, Jethro, Fulvio
HONDA  EvilClive, Tim, Iestyn (reserve)
COOPER Mike Beattie, Lorenzo, if he joins, otherwise any visiting speed merchant
BT7 Hristo

*drivers also assigned a Novices chassis

65 Mod

These were the 65 drivers
BT7 Bonnier, Baghetti, Hulme (Bonnier drove for Walker)
BT11 Brabham Gurney Gardner Anderson Siffert (Siffert drove for Walker, Gardner and Anderson were privateers)
Lotus Clark Spence Rodriguez Mitter Russo Solana (and Maggs Hailwood Attwood Amon and Ireland for Parnell)
Ferrari Surtees Bandini Rodriguez Vaccarella Bondurant Scarfiotti
Honda Ginther Bucknum
Cooper McLaren Rindt
BRM Hill Stewart

The 1965 season was the last to use the controversial 1500cc formula which had begun after 1960, to the initial advantage of Ferrari.  The 1965 cars are smaller than the 1967 cars and have less torque and hence more grip.  It was claimed that they 'cornered on rails', however this allowed the Grand Prix series to retain the use of circuits which were otherwise to prove extremely dangerous.

The 1965 cars are ideal for those new to GPL as they allow the tracks to be learnt in light reliable cars, however these are also full Formula One cars, and quite fast....  There was no Canadian Grand Prix in 1965.

David Wright's 'Legends' site http://fp.gplegends.plus.com/ (http://fp.gplegends.plus.com/) has the download of the 2.0.1 version (under 'details') as well as being an exceptional guide to both 1965 and 1967, for those interested in Formula One history.  The 2.02 update is available here: http://www.jamesonline.net/ukgpl/1965mod_PATCH_v2.0.2_Setup.zip (http://www.jamesonline.net/ukgpl/1965mod_PATCH_v2.0.2_Setup.zip)

I'm not sure what happened to me there...  I'd run a practice race minutes before with Clive and Vos and everything was fine.  I had a GPL problem to desktop in qualifying, and afterwards the Brabhams had developed purple neon tyres!  I rebooted to try to correct it, then I had the same issue a couple of laps into the race.

I've checked my GPL offline, and the Brabhams are fine...? It seems the issue must have been specific to this race?

Had been looking forward to this one... I suppose at least it was kind enough to stop me after two laps, rather than thirty!

Started 4th, finished 4th. Got fastest lap too! ;D

Race was good until lap 3, when John got a run into Woodcote and made an attempted overtake. I hadn't seen him, collide we go. I spin into bales, car's still good. I do the same thing again (spin) at Copse, and I'm plum last. Time for the fightback. Reeled in Geoff, and he was gracious in letting me through after Copse. Set about closing the 15 second gap between me and the battling Fulvio and Tim ahead. Within several laps I'd just about caught them, when Fulvio had a moment of madness at Woodcote to let me up to 5th. Not long after that, I had my moment at Abbey and fell 10 seconds back. Then Hristo dropped out, and I was 4th! It stayed that way, despite my best efforts to catch Tim back up.

BRING ON THE MONZA! ;D ;D ;D

Think yourself lucky you only had the purple tyres to contend with, I had a bonnet mip instead of a steering wheel!! I wish I'd taken a screenshot.

I spent the hour before the race installing the 65 patch (I have eventually recovered my old PC GPL folder but it was not patched), making a virtual mirror and adjusting the Pribluda display for my new projector setup. All of which looked fine offline but when I joined the server I had a red bonnet on my Brabham steering wheel. I immediately thought I'd corrupted the 3do when I made the virtual mirror but when I tried to revert to the backed up version GPL just kept ctd'ing. Eventually after replacing the whole of my 65 car folder I managed to get back on the server, but I still had the bloody bonnet on my steering wheel, so it hadn't been my error after all. You may have seen me in and out of the server like a yo-yo while trying to sort all of this out. Anyway there I was, bonnet for a wheel and no rear view but I thought I'd have a bit of a play in qually and managed 2nd on the grid. I wasn't going to risk racing without mirrors so I came out and left you all to it.

I have since re-installed the whole of my 65 car folder again and tried it on the one server running on iGOR and all looks OK, but I need to check it sometime on a populated server, and more importantly one with other BT11's on because I think it's a problem with the online car 3do's.

Sorry for your problems Ken, but why didn't  you disable the steering wheel view? You spoke about a virtual mirror. I was used to have one with Voodoo cards but haven't tried it on D3D, how do you get that?
Ciao

I suppose I could have done that but it was mainly the lack of a mirror that prevented me from racing. And I only junked my modified 3do containing the mirror because I thought that was causing the wheel problem. By the time I realised it was not connected to that it was to late to go back and recover it.

The virtual mirror is created by some minor modifications to the car 3do file. There are a few sets available for download but I tend to make my own from scratch because there are so many different car 3do's available for each car for things like 2D or 3D helmets etc etc

Piss poor turn-up made this race a pretty boring affair, the 5 cars ahead of me at the finish were all at least a second a lap faster so they were miles up the road....I've never run a 40 lap practice session before.
A few silly spins due to boredom and lack of concentration after Dave and Natan retired. Happy to collect the points for 6th and depart for Italy.
Great drive Clive, you were the class act on the day, but a good points haul for Clark-Hill with JR running another good 2nd and Jethro in 4th. No sooner do I see improvement in the order of 2-5%, the rest of you go 10% faster....pushin' shit uphill with my nose at that rate.... :(

Championship gone then, after a rare piston failure on the BT7. It was all going well after the early troubles to all others and I was pulling away on Evil a few tenths each lap, not bothered by anyone at the top. Can't say I was abusing the engine more than usual, plus Brabham has excellent reliability. Ah well.  ::)

Grats, Clive, great pace today, well deserved victory.  :)

Where might I find the server replay? I'm interested to know my number so I can test the same car for the steering wheel mip problem.

All replays can be accessed via the replays link in the top left column (entitled Navigation) on the UKGPL home page (https://www.ukgpl.com/).  You will have to navigate to the Amateurs replays by clicking on the double dots.

Thanks Phil, I'd been looking there but I didn't know about the double dots!! :)

Well I was number 21. I just changed my player number to 21 using that number changing util and it plays fine. No bonnet mip on my wheel. I don't know what was going on last night?!!!

Last call for incident reports gentlemen, and Clive. ;)