SimRacing.org.uk

UKGPL Season 18 (2009) Amateurs Trophy (65) - Watkins Glen (GP) - Sep 8

Welcome to the Grand Opener for UKGPL Season 18, the 10th anniversary year of UKGPL.

The opening race of the season will be held at Watkins Glen, USA which hosted a United States Grand Prix for twenty consecutive years. The race received the Grand Prix Drivers' Association award for the best organized and best staged GP of the season in 1965, 1970 and 1972 and unfortunately, like many other circuits, had to be altered to cope with faster cars in later years.

Please be careful on Lap 1 as you make your way through the Esses where things can get congested, and don't forget that lap 1 incidents attract an extra place penalty and can usually be avoided.

The Hay Bales at The Loop are only to eager to help out those who push their cold brakes a little too hard too early on and many a Pro race has ended there for the unwary.

I am sure that all of the seasoned Amateurs will welcome all of those brave souls daft enough to promote themselves from the Novices this time around. If you see a Novice out on track and he seems lost, please give assistance where possible. Thank you.

Reserve drivers should not join the race server until there are only 30 mins of qualifying left.
No drivers should go out on track until there is 30 minutes of qualifying left as this helps all drivers join the server successfully.
Restrict chat to pit messages, and at the end of the race avoid chat until ALL drivers still racing have crossed the line.

Please be in the IGOR UKGPL chatroom by 8:55 p.m.
(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 = 5UKGPL
IP Address = TBC (ping myjamesonline.net)
Race Date = 08-09-2009
Time = 21:00
Track = Watkins Glen
Variant = 65F1
Damage Model = PRO
Qually Time = 30 minutes.
Race Length = 50% Grand Prix (55 laps)

Password: see above (#post_event_password)

Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=222;theme=6)

Chassis allocations are below, and the same chassis will be used for all races this season unless there is an adjustment agreed by the moderator.  Good luck!

FULL TIME DRIVERS
Hristo Itchov - BT7
Evil Clive - Honda
Ken Murray - BT11
John Roberts - BT11
Samb - BRM
FullMetalGasket - Honda
MikeBeattie - Cooper
FPolicardi - BT11
TurkeyMachine - BT11
JamesRye - BRM
Natan - BRM
Miner2049er - Lotus
Clutch - BT11
Podkreceny - Lotus
Ruud Savelkoul - Lotus

RESERVE DRIVERS
Phil Thornton - Ferrari
Steve B_1_rd - Ferrari
Asbejurn - Ferrari

Please use the updated 65 mod for this race.
If you have re-installed UKGPL over the summer break or are joining us for the first time, please don't forget to use the updated 65 mod which is available here: Jamesonline.net/UKGPL (http://www.jamesonline.net/ukgpl/1965mod_PATCH_v2.0.2_Setup.zip)

Well, I'm just glad there are only 15 full time drivers. Otherwise we would risk seeing a full grid in some (or all) races without a Ferrari. ;)

BRM for me please

Natan

You really need to make it clear that people can't choose their own chassis in this division.  ::)

Oh, and yeah... what's with the lack of Ferraris?

well natan was offered the choice between the brm and honda ... looks like he doesnt want to be a wazza !

however he will have to stick with the brm now he's made his choice .

john

Yes, as John says, Natan had expressed his two preferences and I had PM'd him to find out his final choice but he had not replied before I posted the race announcement, so he hasn't chosen his chassis as such.

you could note me down as a reserve driver (for 65's only). i'm not sure i can commit to 100% attendance on tuesdays, might not be home on time from the gym.


Ruud (cure on irc)

Heh! Had a go this evening, and managed a nice 1:10.539. Saved it and checked on my GPLrank to see if it was a new PB.

It was not.

My PB is 1:10.538 ...

I get a feeling tonights going to hurt - Was half dead after the 67's here on Sun, I'm almost dreading 55 laps!  :o

At least the baby Wazza is easier to drive  :angel:

I want to say that I don't quite understand why the 67s Graduates division has shorter race distance than the 65 Amateurs... any reasoning behind this? IMO 67s should cover more distance as they lap faster than 65s.

Good question H.
Basically the 50% length for Amateurs was set in Season 17. When we came to the Graduates it was felt 50 odd minutes was a compromise to tempt in newer drivers bearing in mind we were running Pro.

Not really any other reason then that and, to be honest, when setting it up I didn't cross reference against the Amateurs distance.
Something open for debate next season...

Well, IMO it just follows no logic and since this season is so fresh, surely there's no harm if we tweak the distances from the 2nd races onwards. Next season sounds like saying "next life" to me, lol.  :D

Honestly, what am I like! Grab Pole and spin off at the loop, which ruined Tim & Ken's race! Deeply sorry chaps, you'd think I'd learn after all these races  ::).

Not your fault Sam, I was far enough back to avoid you - Just fudged my steering while watching your car dance and span into the wall.  :censored:


REALLY don't know why I bother with watkins, I've only ever finished there once. If I don't crash out myself then my pc does it for me  :cursing:

Mega upset now as my setup was a dream to drive (wish I'd managed to make the RA300 handle like that on Sun  ::) )


*edit* Don't think Ken got caught up? He was still going when I left

Set a PB in qualifying so very happy about that.

The race was thrills and spills all the way.. for 3 corners on Lap 1, till i was taken out in the Lap 1 pile up.

Lost a wheel hitting a fence whilst trying to navigate my way through the crowd and back onto the track.

Possibly the biggest anti climax of a race i've had since owning the game.

Welcome to the Amateurs i guess.  ;)

Ah well, onwards and upwards. It can only get better.

No prob Sam, but just try to keep it steady on cold tyres.

I had that stupid steering wheel graphics glitch again tonight but found if I deleted gplc65.exe and let GEM make another it was OK for the first run but as soon as I left the track and then rejoined I had the stupid bonnet mip back. So after securing 2nd spot on the grid I timed my departure back off the server to rebuild my exe so that I'd be back just in time for the start. It was all a complete waste, not just because of Sam's spin but the trick didn't work anyway!!!

Off the start someone came by in a Honda but I popped in to his slipstream and headed down to the Loop. The Honda promptly went off and then I could see Sam spinning. I thought all my Christmases had come at once, but Sam's dodgy internet connection meant I could not predict where he was headed. I tried to just let it run wide but I couldn't avoid a collision and lost a wheel. Bugger. Mind I'm not sure how I would have handled 55 laps droning round there, maybe Sam actually saved me after all.

Well this was rather silly. I did a pb by nearly half a second in Qualifying without any tow and it was still only good enough for 10th or so on the grid! Talk about handicapping...  ::)

Then at the start people were so hot headed it was unbelievable, I was up to 5th at the end of lap 1! Then up to 4th and then 3rd after more people threw themselves off.

Then we went into a battle with Jethro and two other guys (sorry, don't know your names yet). It was fun for a while, but then one of them dropped back and it was just 3 of us left.

After awhile the other guy had an off and dropped back too, so I was left battling with Jethro. I'm not sure why, but he was super defensive in his driving, taking inside lines and changing lines even when I was in no position to challenge him. All that slowed both of us down, which was really unnecessary IMO. There was obviously no way I would've pulled away if I made a pass, so instead of pulling each other forward, we were going slower...

With 19 or so to go Jethro had a slow last turn (everyone seems to be getting last turn wrong), so I had a run on him on the outside, but just behind him. Well, he changed line slightly and clipped my front right, spinning me around.

After that the other guy caught up and we began fighting, but he was making too many mistakes in the corners while pulling away on the straights, so it was impossible to make much impression on Jethro's 8 seconds lead.

Eventually I got attacked in the Loop with just over 10 laps to go and while trying to carry more speed on the outside, my front left touched the dirt very slightly, but it was enough to send me right into the haybale and I got stuck on top of it.

I had a look at the tracks list for this season and it looks quite grim with this kind of handicapping. Majority are tracks favoring a fast engine where cornering skill matters little in the 65s. Solitude, Kyalami, Silverstone, Monza and Spa - no chance whatsoever. Unless I rely on people continuing to retire in mass numbers early on like today, lol...

Cheers,

-=Hristo=-

i had a blast, third evening ever driving 65's and i managed to finish the race, going only off once \o/.

qualified 5th with a 1:09.6, then wasted it all trying to get away from the starting line :D.

didn't know how to properly get off the line in 65's, that was pretty funny. if it would be possible to stall the car, i would have! managed to get around the mess at the loop, then i had a great view of the top three battling it out for the first 10 laps. think it was was Bartosz who went off at the 20th lap or so, came back slowly to overtake me, i went off on lap 30 or so trying to follow him. it cost me more than 10 seconds. that's when Fulvio overtook me, from that point on i cruised to the finish 30s behind the leader.

oh, fuel load in the setup menu, is that calculated according to 67's still? think i had about 15 or 20 liters left or so at the finish. i started with 79 liters (good for 59 laps according to gpl).

was alot of fun, looking forward to the next race!

Well that was a turn up for the books! I really enjoyed the battle with Hristo and Bartosz, a shame that ended through no(t much) fault of their own after about 20 or 30 laps.

I had half a problem with cooking the front tyres due to sliding in the corners and braking for Big Bend and The 90, and at times I had to really ease off so as not to run myself off the road. It wasn't totally defensive driving between me and Hristo, but it was fair. He was very good on the brakes for the last 2 corners and tried his best to keep up on the 2 long straights. I think I forced him onto the grass when the wheel twitched left, I'd managed to correct it but the damage was done to H, and he fell back. Hasn't happened in a while, and I'd assumed the pots in the wheel had sorted themselves out, but evidently not. Apologies to you sir, it was a very fair battle we had, even if I was rather defensive at times.

I was much more relaxed than I was in previous races, and thanks to the front 3 taking themselves out at the Loop after Sam spun it, I'd inherited a lead I was determined to keep. I was helped enormously by aceing the start and going from 6th to 4th in 2 corners, but I wasn't going to attempt anything risky under braking and managed to escape the carnage ahead of me. I was happy with Bartosz behind me and Hristo behind him, and happy for him to take the lead whilst I kept Hristo at bay so he could attempt to extend the lead, but in the end all 3 of us got embroiled in a great fight for the lead. Apologies to Bartosz, I had to stand on the brakes at The 90 to stop the car going around, and it put you in a 50-50 move. Props for not creaming into the back of me though. :)

Well that went pretty much as expected, as my record at The Glen is reasonably shabby.

Got a bit of a tow from John at one point during Qually, which earned me a place in the penultimate row. I just about saw the Green pixel move in the distance, but waited until I saw some cars move before dropping the clutch. I got two cars ahed of me in the run to the first corner, but as we know that was to no avail by the time we got to The Loop, where there was pandamonium. Brabhams to the left, Hondas to the right so there was nowhere to go to miss the Brabham pointing the wrong way in the middle of the track.

I got it pointing the right way again, but there then appeared to be a secondary incident on the exit of the corner, which I just about missed. So by this stage I was back to being about fourth from last, then Evil cruised past ( like every other car does) and I tagged in behind him for the rest of my short race. I could stay about 1 -2 secs behind him, but was slowly losing ground. Eventually I spun into the Right at the end of the back straight, clobbered the back left wheel against the fence and deranged the suspension. I drove another lap or so thinking about struggling on for the next 40 or so laps, but it just kept spinning at each righthander, no matter how slow I was going.

I'll wait for Solitude, it's a track I go well at, to see where I am in relation to the rest of the field.

Well, my first Ams race and I picked up far more points than I expected.

The plan was to finish my first ever Pro race and anything else was a bonus, I just didn't want to destroy the car or engine.

Qually was nowt special and even a PB would have only got me a couple of places and I'm not that quick here in 65s anyway so I put on race fuel and got a feeling for the car.

When the flag dropped the car in front of me didnt get away so I got held up and lost a couple of places but the plan was just to get through lap 1 and settle down into a nice pace.

The field began to self destruct at the Loop and I did touch a car in the middle of the track when I had nowhere to go but eventually I got going again and in about 11th place with Phil right behind me for company.

I soon skillfully passed the only car I overtook in the race which was made easier by the fact that it was just about facing the right way after some grass cutting and it turned out to be MikeBeattie.

Looking ahead of me on Prib I saw a few target cars that I thought I could catch and Phil's Ferrari was buzzing away behind me so I tried to settle down a bit but I had a few messy laps due to the pressure from Phil but eventually I started to drop him and even more so when he spun off.

Pretty soon there were only 8 of us left and of the 6 in front of me I didn't think I could catch any of them so I started to settle for 7th and peg the gap to Phil who eventually retired, so with about 40 laps to go I started nursing the car home by short shifting and braking nice and early which meant my lap times were mainly in the 12s.

I imagined a couple of times that I saw a puff of black smoke when I was changing down at the 90, but whether it was actually there or imagined I don't know so I started to take extra care there as well.

Being the shortest track of the season and my first Ams race I expected to be lapped and I was by the top 3 but the objectives were to finish without any spins and I did exactly that. I just did it very slowly.

I'm not used to letting back markers through but I thought I did it quite well. Don't want to make a habit of it though.

That was one loooong race, or so it seemed and I did not even finish!!!!

Like a few others I was very careful at the start, and watched a few cars zip past up through the Esses ( a trifle gung-ho I thought given the number of cars and distance still to go ::))
I was proved correct when I arrived at The Loop in the middle of an acrobat's convention  ;D and despite my best efforts at avoiding the carnage still got biffed off the road. Fortunately there was no apparent damage and I was able to crawl away and slip past a recovering Mike Beattie.

It took a lap or so for Prib to catch up it seemed and I could work out where I was, which was about 6 secs behind Fulvio and about 8th place.
I was slowly dropping Mike until his "off" and slowly reeling Fulvio in, deliberately taking care not to stress the engine.
After some 10 laps or so, I was getting the tow from Fulvio and pulled up behind him. I think he felt under pressure as he appeared to run wide on a few corners. I followed closely for a lap or so and was thinking about making a move, but realised that our battle was pulling us up to the top 4 cars so I was contemplating just sitting behind Fulvio and getting a free ride.
It was then that Fulvio got a bit sideways exiting the last corner and despite pulling a tighter line there was contact and I was spun onto the infield whilst Fulvio completed a 360 on the grass and continued.
By the time I had extracated myself from the armco Fulvio was some 7 secs down the road, so I thought " here we go again!" another 10 laps to reel him in.
But the impact must have damaged something, because whereas before I was comfortably in the low 1:10's now I was 2 secs a lap slower even when using more revs and Fulvio eased the gap out.
Ok,I thought 20 secs back to the next car,so I'll settle for 6th and hope for some late retirements.

Good plan..except the car had other ideas and despite being gentle( or so I thought!1) with the engine it decided to throw half the pistons away and I was down to kerb crawling speed( not that I have experience of that velocity you understand! ::))  With only a single car left running behind me, who was certain to catch and pass me, the best I could have hoped for would be a mass disco of the front runners so I coasted into the pits and had an early bath.

Grats to those who made the full distance and maybe a little more caution on the first few laps would have seen some more runners after half distance? it did get a bit lonely out there guys!!

Hmm, now then. Were there any incidents to speak of or was it the Red Arrows paying us a visit??

Sam fell off of his own accord, as did I  :ninja:
Can't speak for the display team behind us though  ;D

Had a fairly good qually, close to my PB. Start wasn't my best, but I'd decided to be careful. Didn't want to ruin the start for anybody. Sneaked through the mayhem in The Loop on L1, and came out on nineth, I believe. I think I was slowly closing in on the car in front, when Evil in his Honda appeared in my mirrors. He was reeling me in, and I did the stupid thing of braking a bit later than I usually do in the Loop, just to avoid him getting into my slipstream on the back straight. It went how it always does, I ended up in the hay bales with a lost front wheel and my race was over.

It was really silly of me, since I was closing in on the car in front, and together we could close the gap even faster by slipstreaming each other.

Qually went well for me P4.


I've started race quite steady. Going into The Loop for the firs time I was 2w with John when I saw carnage at the front. Luckily John and I managed to pass that safety. I was 3 now, with John 2 and Jethro 1.
I knew that passing John is practically impossible, so I decided to stay close to the leaders and wait for their misteke.
On lap 4 when John was leading, Jethro decided to attack him in Big Bend. Unfortunately they touched and John was off the race.

Than Hristo caught us and from now, we were changing position until lap 19. Jethro made mistake on last corner and slow down. To avoid contact I had to spun.
When I rejoined I was on 4 position behind Ruud. It took me about 10 laps to catch and pass him. Three or four laps later I saw Hristo recowering from spin.
We were swapping position until lap 44 when Hristo made mistake and park his BT7 on haybale.
I was quite tired at that moment and I was hoping for some relaxing laps, but Fulvio had differed plan.His 3 place wasn't enough for him, so he was pushing very hard to catch me. My tires were in bad condition, and car become understeer. Luckily I managed to hold him behind and finish in P2 :clap:

I will be doing the moderation tomorrow if anybody wants to submit any more reports before then.

Polite nudge if moderation's been forgotten. Either that, or like Albi last year it's just taking a while. :)

Not quite Albi proportions, more the fact that I have been busy but the debate was how ambitious the overtake was.

That's a bugger. Still 1-2 for Clark-Hill though. :)

1-2 + 5 LOL.

Almost forgot you finished that! Yes, 1-2-5 for CH! ;D