SimRacing.org.uk

UKGPL Season 18 (2009) Amateurs Trophy (65) - Round 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, and looks likely with the demise of Donington.

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 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 = 12-01-2010
Time = 21:00
Track = Silverstone
Variant = 65F1
Damage Model = PRO
Qually Time = 30 minutes.
Race Length = 50% Grand Prix

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
Asbjeurn - Ferrari
KingHiro - BRM

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)

I won't be there, because of the problems addressed in this thread (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=7304.0). :( Good luck to all! :)

Can you confirm race length please?
I make it a highly painfull 40laps having just looked at last seasons race!  :scared:

Yep, that's the puppy. 40 fun laps of my 2nd favourite circuit.

Ah well, that was going quite well. Think i was somewhere in the top 10 and the racing was close and exciting.

Made a move on King Hiro at the end of Hanger Straight because my season is a right off anyway, and i thought if i hit the outside wall and a wheel falls off, it'll save me having to do the full 40 Laps.

My overtaking move was a clean one, but just lost the back end slightly, spun and tapped the wall resulting in the left rear coming off.

I've always prided myself in finishing as many GPL races as i can regardless of position as thats not the be all and end all for me, but must admit, this season in the Amateurs with the (in my opinion) over long race distances i'm usually relieved to crash out or have a mechanical problem, as i'm afraid to say, i'm approaching these races before the flag drops thinking '40 Laps...what a slog'.
I've always been happy running at the front, the back, in traffic or on my own as i just enjoy the experience, but for me the Amateur Race Distances are too long. (Moan over  ;) )

I sympathise with you over the race distances Clutch.

I qualified quite well and then made a great start (up to P6 from P8).

Then I spun and collected Podkrecen I think, so sorry about that.

Trawling around at the back I was VERY slowly catching Steve Bird I think. But then I spun again on lap 26ish and by the time I got going again I realised that there'd be no proper racing for me and so I retired. My car was suffering from snap oversteer, and I couldn't handle it properly anyway.

On a brighter note, I pick up a Mazda MX5 this weekend, so that'll put the smile back on my face. Also the long straights of Monza suit the BRM and maybe I can get a top 6 result. ;D

I share the thoughts on the race distance, it felt very long and tiresome. It's not GP distance, but you tend to push a lot more in these cars instead of doing the careful balancing act of 67s. Even the slightest but unnecessary movement can cost you time and so you're always tense. Combine that with doing a couple of divisions (plus other leagues) per week and it all adds up.

Anyway, I was surprised to snatch pole position, I guess the others didn't get slipstream as I didn't either, except early on but it wasn't a perfect lap. My last one was near perfection (on my terms, not WR standards) and it kept me ahead of Evil who was flying.

The start was clean but Evil disappeared somewhere so I had Jethro chasing me down during the first laps. He had to fend off the Hondas behind him and that allowed me to open 1-2 secs gap, although I did a slight error in T1 going wide and the gap went down again.

I decided to push a bit more after that and extended the gap to a couple of seconds before Tim moved up to 2nd. The gap stabilized but I could still add up a few tenths each lap and by the time Evil was promoted to 2nd the gap was 8 seconds.

The really intense and difficult part of the race was keeping that gap back to Evil and trying to increase it. For some 10 laps the gap remained 8 seconds though, we were both doing our best with neither having the edge. I thought whoever adds/removes 1 second in their favor would probably get the moral boost and so that was the main objective.

I was glad I had a well proven setup from past races and so the car was very drivable and predictable, therefore I could focus on being as precise as possible and watching over the shifting to avoid stressing the engine too much.

Finally after what felt like an eternity the gap increased to 9 seconds and on the next lap to 10 seconds, and then stayed like that for the reminder of the race except the last 3 laps when Evil seemed to have backed off.

What was impressive that there wasn't a single backmarker yet there were quite a lot of runners. Great pace by everyone and very close lap times kept everyone on the lead lap, it's not something that happens often.

Grats to Tim for taking his 2nd Amateurs Championship in a row, well deserved!

Grats Waza for the 1-2-3 as well!

-=Hristo=-

Started off even more horrible than usual cause I got scared from some server glitches. Had fun for 40 laps and ended 7 th.  Some nice close racing with Bartoz, and 500-700 yards behind Policardi and Jethro most of the race not able to catch up without taking to much chances. A bit scary to know I battle with ppl who think crashing early is a relief so they don t have to do the 40 laps. I ve had my share of ending races into sideway cars .
I don t think the race is to long. I think this was perfect and I think most are too short. Personally I miss a league with full races , but  I understand we just can t have something for every single preference.
Gz H and rest of the Wazas

It was an OK race for me.  Took the early couple of laps to settle in and not risk anything, and ended up chasing Tom (KH) and Bartosz who were having a battle, slowing each other enough so I could stay with them.  James had an off and was around 8 seconds back but kept nibbling away until another spin and retirement.  That left me last on track, and just counting the laps off.  I was running at a comfortable pace for me, had 1  spin around 2/3 distance but ok otherwise.  Pushed a little in the closing laps to try and avoid being lapped and just about got there with about 500yds to spare on the last lap.  Not very exciting but got to the finish.

Will have to push myself a bit more to get up with the field more often, easier said than done though.

Impressive win by H and well done to the wazzas for a good team finish.

Cheers H, however I feel I should quickly point out that I was only 4th last season and John Roberts took the win over Fulvio by a tiny margin (Before the mods put me in a sowing machine!)
That said last season was quite unlucky for me so I consider 4th good...

As for the race, I gave it my all in Qually. Thought I'd stumped Evil only for him to go .4 faster than my effort, then Jethro and KingHiro also pipped me so I had to try again.
This time I got within .33333 of H's time, putting me just behing Evil on the grid - Had I managed to get a tow I could have easily taken pole, but then the same could be said of any of the front 6 I guess.

In the race I got under way as quickly as possible, my only goal was to finish ahead of Fulvio to secure the championship - yet thanks to Evil's slow start I found myself in 2nd within the first 10 laps.
I slowly pulled away as he battled John, but once clear Evil managed to slowly start reeling me back in around the halfway point.
He eventually caught me, and then got away when I made a slight error.
From there to the finish it was simply a case of keeping myself consistent and stopping myself from trying to chase down Evil.

An enjoyable race as I was kept on my toes throughout, although I also hope the races get shorter next season.


All your races belong to HER  ;D

Grats to Hristo for the win, and Tim for the championship. Consistency paid out in the end! ;D

The qualifying was interesting on low fuel, as I couldn't get the BT11 up to the same speed as the BT7 in H's hands or the Hondas. The fact I got 4th on the grid meant Wazas lined up in the first 4 grid slots. :)

The start was impressive and I got the jump on evilclive on the run to Copse and Tim as well, and had a look at Hristo to see if he'd buckle under the pressure. Couldn't match it, and I had Hondas on my tail with a disappearing H. The BT11 on full tanks just could not get up to speed, I tried pushing the braking distances, driving each lap like it was a qualy, but either the car would step out, run wide or just not go quick enough. The setup was stable provided I didn't push it too hard.

I made a few successive cockups, which let first evil, then John through in quick succession at Stowe/Vale. John later commented that it was wrong of evil to box me in like that so he could sneak up on me, and I heartily agreed! Mugged by 2 cars in successive corner and straight, one driven by your team-mate and the other by a former team-mate! I made another cockup when I was watching evil and John disappear in the distance and play chicken with GPL's lag coding, which let Fulvio close up. He got a very good draft on, but couldn't commit to a pass into Becketts or Stowe, and he was running well wide at Abbey and Woodcote a lot, which meant the battle we had for 20+ laps was close.

Whenever I got in his draft, the car wouldn't pick up the draft and accelerate though, for whatever reason. Before S19 starts I'm getting a G25 (pay packet pending), hopefully, so the problems should be resolved by then.



Just as a side note, I am working on getting a company ADSL2+ line (with Annex M if it's enabled by then) installed at my folk's place as a 2nd line, so that I can push a server and use it for my own benefit. If things go according to plan, I can get it set up as a server for UKGPL usage, but would need some testing pre-season. Again, this is pending everything going through, so no guarantees yet.

They can, however, put a server in tele-house in London on a dedicated 100Mbit line for my benefit at a certain price to myself. Would that be beneficial?

@Kinghiro - A bit scary to know I battle with ppl who think crashing early is a relief so they don t have to do the 40 laps. I ve had my share of ending races into sideway cars .

Don't worry mate, i'm one of the more cautious drivers and never take a risk on overtaking if i think it'll affect another Drivers Race or lead to a collision. My comment was slightly tongue in cheek, so not to worry  ;)

Oops, sorry, I guess memories of past seasons just blend together in my mind.

I never said it was wrong ... I rather enjoyed it . what I did say was that you were stitched up like a kipper by Clive , he must have been thinking for once !

john

I m happy now m8 :)

more about race distance:
I see even more people agree to the race distance being to long and I disagree so much. As I said before this has to do with personal preference and theres no right or wrong here. However,  if I add up all my practice time, the time spent in races would be completely dwarfed no matter if the races were 30 mins or 1 hr 30 mins. Ofc it s hard to keep concentration level up for a long time , but isn t that a major part of what formula 1 racing is about? some times one will have to do loads of racelaps alone too, but I think that also is part of the charm. Only the Americans need action all the time...I will end this by saying out moderatly load  "Hope the races will be longer next season " :)

If this was the only division (and league) that I was racing I won't mind even GP distances. I used to do MoG in the past, GP distance races, and it was OK as all my effort and focus was on that Championship. But it's a different matter when you race in a couple of divisions per league and then a couple of leagues at the same time. It all adds up you know.

If UKGPL drops all other divisions and focuses solely on a 65 Championship, personally I won't mind whatever distance, but that's not the case here.

And yet there's another factor - handicapping. If we were all put on equal terms I won't mind longer races as much as now, because I wouldn't need to exert myself additionally to compensate for a (slow) car's lack of power (or abundance of weight in other cases).

Overall it would be nice to have some sort of consistency in the divisions, not some which are much shorter than other, and some that have much less handicapping than other. That's in my opinion of course.

Cheers,

-=Hristo=-

That would be a great help Jethro but the problem isn't download speed it is latency.  I'm not sure but I think contention ratio will have an effect which might be why our domestic connections suffer more from lag.  As far as I know domestic connections generally have a contention ration of 50:1 whereas commercial lines usually have a contention ratio of 20:1.  I'm not sure about commercial games servers but I suspect they are towards the 20:1 mark.  The speed of the PC isn't crucial compared to the line latency so a cheap or second hand PC should be OK as a server.  My server is a AMD Sempron 2800 and UKGPL_1 (when it was running) was a pentium III.  The problem with my server is the line not the PC itself.

We've been checking out a possibility of using a virtual server (cheaper than a dedicated physical machine) but it didn't have the performance we need.

If your line was a commercial rather than domestic (sounds like the one in Telehouse should be) I'm sure it would be a much better prospect!

The company I work for specialises in VoIP and provides lines dedicated to low latencies and as few hops as possible. I'm also very close to the exchange, so upload speeds won't be an issue in that respect.

I'm leaning more and more to getting a dedicated server for my usage in Telehouse. Nothing virtual, but I'd like GPL to run on Windows 2003. :)

Mike had a go at getting GPL running on 2003 server but he had one or two problems; so he didn't spend too much time on it because he already has a server running on XP Pro.  What he did find out is that it is not as straight forward as it is with XP.  However it is possible to do it because the T7 server Fulvio has been providing for us is a windows 2003 server.  Here is a quote from Fulvio describing how he remotely logs in to his server