SimRacing.org.uk

Car: Radical SR8
Track: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

Practice: 19:00 for 75 mins (I'll probably start praccy a bit earlier and let it run for longer)
Qualifying: 20:10 (15 mins)
Race: 20:30 (29 laps, approx 40 mins)

Start: rolling
UNLIMITED 'fast tows' (resets) available for each driver (available by pressing SHIFT+R by default)

NOTE: All sessions protected by the main password, there is no seperate 'pre-event practice'

A couple of notes re. Blue Flags during qualifying and race where they differ from GTR2;

Blue Flags during qualifying - if you see a blue flag during qualifying it will be on your outlap and the driver approaching is on a hotlap. Please take this into account and act accordingly. The driver behind does not know you are on an outlap so no rash moves out of the way please  Usual SRouk rules / guidelines should be applied.

Blue Flags during the race -  if you see a blue flag during the race it means the driver approaching is about to lap you. Please take this into account and act accordingly. It differs from GTR2 in that you will not be penalised for not allowing the lapping driver to pass within a certain period. The flag is informational only. Usual SRouk rules / guidelines should be applied.

Pit Boxes - there are 35 43 slots available at Laguna Seca.

My new graphics card will be delivered today .... unless something goes HORRIBLY wrong, I WILL be around for this one.

Looking forward to the event. :)

So gutted this one is clashing with PnG Riverside. I've got the car & I like the circuit.
Ho hum.
Have a good race.

If it finished 10-15mins earlier I would race.

No chance of getting to work on time if race runs until 9.15

Brian, I added an extra few minutes to qualifying because Laguna is a slightly longer track but as it's a fun race I guess it shouldn't really make any difference. Same with the race length, doens't really matter if it's 40 or 45 mins.

Edited the original post :)

cheers. I hope there is no police along the M8 on Tuesday night.

Lap times will be faster than they were at Summit the other night.

Pops is slower in the Radical than the Skippy though :D - hence his confusion ....

Sorry to say I won't be making the race.
I may turn up for some practice if the slots aren't taken or reserved.

Ditto! That really is unfortunate.

The graphics card is waiting at home for me, I'll be installing it when I get back today, testing it tonight .... and I can FINALLY get back to some driving again.

B'ah what eedjut planned this the same night as the P&G season finale  ::) Pops you swine  :P

This would have been a great combo but i'm not missing those classic US beasts at Riverside for nowt. 8)

Great, I should be there :-)

I actually really like the radical, just got the Corvette and I'm not feelin' the love yet.

Ditch the Skip, take Radical! :( That's a proper car, at least. :-\

I'm not enjoying the skippy that much either. Do the Radical, Vette or Indycar all have as much oversteer as the skippy? Realise its realistic but its just so different to GTR physics that it feels completely alien to me.

I'll have to buy the Radical to join you for this and as, fairly enough, its not been decided which "big boy" car we will use I'll hold off for now.

Skippy too hard for you eh TT/SBG? ;)

We'll almost certainly have another run-out in the Radical at some point this season in the fun series!

I was tempted to move this away from Laguna but the road track selection for this week is pretty dismal (unless anyone fancies Summit Point again ;)).


No, or at least you can dial it out through set-up changes.

I'm really struggling to come up with a coherent structure for the 5 fun races. I'm torn between the veterans wanting to play with all the good stuff we've accumulated, letting the new guys play and trying out a series of cars to see what we might want to use next season. All up against a limited track selection each week. :helpsmilie:

I'm at the point where I might start doing the lottery so if I win I can buy everyone all the content to save me the hassle of trying to work this all out! :surrender:

Don't judge the skippy just on Summit Ian. I thought you enjoyed that session we did at Lowes?

I'll sort you out a nice understeery setup if you want.

Changed the announcemnet to confirm this will be a 29 lap race.

Looks like 1:20's are awesome, 1:21's are good, 1:22's average.

Having tried the Radical out round here, all i can say is WOW :o So this is how a proper race car is supposed to be! Having gone round this in the Solstice previosly i'm now finding the corners coming up a bit too quickly and struggling to stop( I suppose brake temps are out of question) ;D Always thought Laguna was a long track ;)

Being its actually quite narrow and i suspect I'll be way off the pace i'll see on tuesday as to whether i'll run, especially with the last race in the back of my mind.

If you think the corners are coming up quickly in the Radical, try the Dallara Indycar! WHOAAAA!!!!!

As it's a fun race and conflicting with the PnG race I suspect the turnout won't be massive so there should be plenty of room on the track for slower guys.

I too will probably be way off the pace as I won't have much time to prepare for this one :(

Oooooh yes.....finally ditched the Solstice for a bit to try out the Radical...just can't wipe the grin off LOL, this is something else.

This will be my 1st outing with you guys in iRacing, so will also be off the pace, but am planning on joining the skippy champ on the 24th now I have my C licence  :o

Been spending most of my time in the Spec racer, but did a few laps here in this car & it seemed quite friendly by comparison... especially when I got back in the Speccy, the rear end was all over the shop! :o ;D

Yeah it's nowhere near as loose is it - not a hint of power oversteer, just understeer for me. I think the base setup is pretty safe, will be interesting to see how it reacts to some random tweaks one of my professional setups.

Lovely car though, we're all going to be knackered after tomorrow's race - it's quite intense! Pops I shudder to think what the Dallara's like - the mind boggles.

I need to find something negative about this sim soon or my social life and savings will be a distant memory.

Anyone up for some praccy tonight? I'm happy to host a sesh but it's like a ghost town at the mo lol.

EDIT: Ok server hosted, "Oily's SROU practice sesh" - no password. Should give us a few hours...

Hey guys, call me stoopid, but I don't get it, how do I join? iRacing is just a browser to me... Help :-)

==============

Figured it out, does iR just prompt you for a password when you join a passworded server?

Hopefully I should be ok for tomorrow depending if my internet connection comes back.

It failed just after I registered for the 3PM Mazda race and has been down since.

Called ADSL24 who used to have a good helpline.

Now it's an automated answer service to report problems with no option to speak to anybody.

 I was prompted to put the telephone number from the line used. Ok.

There was a few options to select the problem. Number 2 for no connection at all.

The automated service then answered that they would investigate the problem and get back to me by EMAIL.

Oh great. So I have no access to that email account due to having no internet connection and they are going to send me an email. Genius.

Yep.

It's possible I will renew my subscription tonight in time for this race and although I don't like to count chickens whilst they are still being incubated and I freely admit this is probably a stupid question, but once you join a league event can you disconnect and rejoin it again later like you can with the public sessions, or is it that you need to stay connected with the league races?

Like the public sessions - in fact, once you've joined, you're slot is permanently occupied, so people shouldn't join unless they intend to take part.

Are you not able to withdraw?

There are 35 stalls at Leguna, I'd hoped I'd be able to join for a bit of practice/fun  ::) as I won't be able to stay around for the race.
I'd hate someone to miss out that intends to race if I've taken up a slot! Help!

Not looking good for me.

My internet connection is still down.

Phoned in and got someone to speak to and they say the problem is down to BT.

They have to contact BT on my behalf and all I can do now is wait.

There's actually 43 pit stalls at Laguna (initial post updated) so jump in Don, and anyone else who justwant to praccy, no probs :)

Sorry to hear that Brian :(

That's tempting fate that 47 people now turn up. ;) ;D

You can, but it doesn't free up your slot.

Odd? Why would they not remove you?

It's doubly odd when you consider that you can withdraw completely from an official race and effectively free up the slot ???

Says "rolling start" - how will this be carried out?

It's a bit of a stand off at the moment.

ADSL24 say the problem is with BT and BT say it's not.

Phoned back in at 4.30PM and I've to allow them and BT another 4 hours.

Can't even put in any practice which is a pain.

I'd like iRacing to have the ability to practice with no internet.

It's very similar to GTR2 only there's a pace car, iRacing tells you which car to follow. After the pace lap is completed, the race goes 'green' and the leader can go. any overtaking before this will result in a black flag.

Just follow the normal GTR2 start procedure and you should be fine. i.e. go when the car ahead goes.

I have to add I haven't ever done a rolling start on a road course in iRacing so it will be a new experience for quite a few of us I suspect! lol

OK guys, server is up!

SRouk Radical @ Laguna

Evening Guys, would it be possible to get in on this event, or is it members only ( Neil Hind in Iracing )

Cheers

It's Srouk members only.... Which you are now seeing as you've registered! ;D

Hope to see you later Neil.

brilliant thank you :)

Well i'm not entirely sure how that happened but i ended up giving Oily a bit of a tap then i think he hit me back which flipped me over into the first corner ??? So ended up 2 laps down and in a good gap so had a lonely race but a steady one until after halfway way when the bump on the exit to the 'corner after the corkscrew' corner spun me around to the inside of the last but one corner. Waited till Stew went past, tried to drive over the curb to get back onto track before and the game froze then went to a black screen with it repeating revs. First time i've had an issue with iRacing, hope i didnt cause too many problems. Loved the pace car 8)

Had a great race with Pops, pretty much all the way from start to finish altho especially so in the first two thirds of the race. I made a few mistakes and he was off like a shot.

Great driving Pops.

Congrats on the win Dave,  great pace lap after lap

Thanks for the very friendly hospitality guys, i'll definately be back for more.

Had a nice battle with Brendan for the 1st half, then threw it off backwards at the bleedin kink, kept bogging down and couldnt get going with traffic coming. Then punctured a few laps later, then blew the engine 2 laps after that :). At the end my new set of tyres was down to 22 LF 67 RF, so not really driving very well :)

Thoroughly enjoyed it all the same. Nice racing with you.

That was a bit of a return for me.

Renewed and downloaded all the updates just before joining. Not driven the game in any car for 4 months and straight into the twitchy Radical!

Qualified 3rd, started ok, but I soon came a cropper when I completely misjudged where I was supposed to brake for T1 on about lap 8. Brendan was in front of me and I know I'd missed the braking point by miles I tried to dive across his nose to miss him and head off into the gravel. Unfortunately I didn't manage it and whacked him hard instead. :-\ Great job me! Sorry Brendan. It must have looked like a divebomb from nowhere, but I really wasn't attempting a pass.

Anyway, that gave me my first slow tow experience as I lost 2 laps sitting in the pits waiting for the magical tow countdown to expire and then to be serviced? by the pit crew.

Got back into it and thought the best I could manage was a fastest lap, so just kept pushing hard and I see I just pipped Gizmo to the fastest lap so  :-*.

Then later on I was actually catching Stewart for position and as we diced very close I managed to balls that up too by tapping his rear and sending him into a neat spin. Sorry about that Stewart.

I think maybe it was silly of me to join after so long out and not having the game setup ready for action etc.

There are various new options in game that seem utter nonsense to me, especially in graphics settings, e.g. the FOV calculator which gave me a ridiculous number, so I put it back to what it used to be and then there is the brake force curve calculator. Not sure what I should set that too, the difference between values wasn't apparent and I didn't get a good feel for the brakes the whole event trying different values. I would prefer to have to stamp on the brakes really hard to get them to lock up than have it so sensitive like it is by default (or used to be anyway).

Voice chat seemed very iffy. I could hear others (mostly apart from some breakup), but no matter what I tried only rarely could others hear me. Maybe I stick with TeamSpeak in future.

Finally, is it just me or is the iRacing members site 10x slower than it was 4 months ago? It took ages to download the updates too (running very slowly at 100k/sec max) and everything takes ages to access on the website.

P.S. Are we doing Radicals again? I thought we would have some of the new cars. Radicals are not my favorite car, they are like driving a skateboard.

Thanks - it wasn't a total surprise, given the vast number of laps I did round Laguna in the SR8 earlier this year, where Team Shark worked very hard on setups, but I was still a bit taken aback to be on pole by a full half second. :o ;D

Was't sure how the pace car was going to work but it was okay in the end, even if they did tell me to catch up at one point :-[ and the silly sausage put a wheel off in the right hander at the bottom of the hill showering me with dust. ::) Went a bit defensive for the first few corners but pretty soon everyone had thrown themsevles off behind me; I popped in one 21 and then backed off a little bit just to avoid any accidental trips into the dirt, and to protect the tyres a little bit.

On the last few laps, with a good margin behind, I tried to pop another 21 in case Shark had got fastest lap, as I could see that though he was a lap down, he was sometimes catching me. Couldn't manage it though and the cheeky haddock snatched fastest lap. :P

I've just got such good feel for that car after driving it so much, I just jumped in with no practice save for the C6-R round Laguna in official practice and qualifying earlier and was immediately at home. If you stop fighting the understeer and just accept it as a signal that you're trying to go too quickly you can soon learn to drive around it, and even make use of it - on my braver laps I was throwing the car into T1 Alonso-style and letting the understeer gather it back up.


Heh heh, yeah, I got nobbled by that and lost two places in the Skippy at the weekend.

That was brilliant 8)

I think Bernie technically jumped me at the start (no overtaking before the s/f line)  but I was quite a long way back so I don't really blame him, it was my fault. The pace car was quicker than I expected and I was finding going double file a bit scary so I was hanging back a bit and ended up quite a way behind Shark.

Quite pleased to qualify 5th, the Radical isn't my best car but I love Laguna so it's worth a few extra tenths there.

Got a decent start despite dropping a place and setting in behind Bernie while the top 4 disappeared all too quickly. I know Bernie doesn't get on too well with Laguna and although he was making a few minor mistakes you could barely separate us, running nose-to-tail for the first 15 laps. I have to admit I was getting a bit frustrated but eventually Bernie put a wheel off after the left-hander running up to corkscrew and I squeaked past and pulled out a few seconds to the end of the race.

It's not often I get a podium, even in fun races so I enjoyed that immensely :)

Well done to Dave and Brendan, very fast and very consistent  :thumbup1:

Also wanted to add, great drive by Truetom who kept it to within a few seconds of Bernie and I for a long time, you're picking this up WAY too fast TT!

Nice to see some old foes/friends and some new faces too tonight :)

Looking forward to Silverstone in 2 weeks. Yes, Radicals again Simon, some of the new guys signed up on the Radical/Silverstone free trial (and are running PnG tonight) hence why we're doing that. As well as the scheduled SKippy races there will be fun races with the Dallara, Star Mazda and Spec Racer too, all in the name of helping us decide what to race next season.

Carp! I forgot to save the replay :(

Hi all I would of joined if I could get a connection to the server!

Going to have to just wait till I changed ISP in the next week.

Grats Dave nice win.

I was looking forward to racing as it was good fun racing it week 13 eating up those lazy DPs.

My internet connection is still dead. I've been chasing ADSL24 up all day and getting nowhere.

They have been blaiming BT and said nothing was wrong at their end.

I got fed up and called BT. The guy said I need to go through my ISP but was good enough to run tests.

He said the problem clearly exists at ADSL24s end which after a further call to ADSL24 they dispute that still.

I'm stuck in no mans land and ADSL24 seem hugely reluctant to get an engineer to have a look at it from BT.

I've got a feeling they know it's them at fault and don't want the bill.

They asked me to leave it until tomorrow before taking any more action. It's already been down since Monday afternoon.

My lap times were anything but consistent - my lines in T1 and the Corkscrew are made up afresh every lap. :laugh:

Fixed! lol

I just had a look at the HTML being sent for the results page and also for a series standings page... around 500k each. :o Both highly compressible but the internal details are almost worth posting to The Daily WTF (http://thedailywtf.com/).

Race was great, I held TT of for maybe 7 laps and hung onto him for about 4 more. Later he slid off but overtook me that time with ease. At one point I managed to close for a few laps but by that time I was >6secs behind. I never got de-motivated when alone this time, which is something that's been happening recently.

I think this is the first time I've not been lapped at Laguna in a long race :-)

Will race again :)

Well done, Fozz, very close the whole time - more than watching Bernie, Pops up front I was motivated by your car in the mirror. And at least I didn't punt you off the track this time. :P Ok, maybe I'll do it at Magny again, if we ever race there. :D

Pops, what was that talk about 1:22 being average? ::) I was sure with Q in high 1:23s I'm gonna be left behind by everybody. I guess you and Bernie were just pulling my, erm, leg then? :angel:  Was closing over a span of time, even down to 4 seconds, then Bernie got a bit bored waiting for me and just drove away. ;D

Lots better to drive this car than the Skip. Must say I rarely succeeded to place the car into corner the way I planned, was constantly under impression I could go at least 1 sec faster. :-\ Was braking too soon, had to press the loud pedal before entering, lost time. Next time started braking just a tiny bit later and overshooted, lost more time. :( Somehow like the darn car was making fun of me. ::)

My PB is 1:21.207 so I was pretty close to that in qualifying.

Last night's race reminded me why I hardly ever touched the Radical during my previous subscription. 

Aside from the fact that Laguna Seca is one of those technical circuits where a good line is everything, I've never really got a handle on the Radical's handling traits.  Those of you who love the Radical must have struck a deal with the devil 'cos I've never found a sweet spot in terms of setup or driving style.

Anyway, I enjoyed the rolling start and tried to hang on to the front 3.  After Neil had handed over 3rd spot and Simon had binned it at corkscrew I was up to 2nd and could only watch as Dave (and his tentacles  ;) ) disappeared off into the distance.

I tried to treat the rest of the race as a test session but just couldn't find a decent rhythm and after a few excursions into the sand (total 9 incs :o ) I dragged the Radical over the line for an ill-deserved podium.

Congrats to Dave on the awesome pace.  Looking forward to the Skip next week.