SimRacing.org.uk

NGT Sprint Cup - Season 2, Round 1 at Barcelona

Date: Tuesday 18th October

Practice 1: 8:30pm (15 mins)
Qual 2: 8:45pm (28 mins)
Warmup: 9:13pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:15pm (40 mins)

Cars allowed: Ferrari 360, Porsche 911 GT3-RS, Porsche 911 Bi-Turbo, Mosler, Vertigo or Morgan. (Lotus Elise, BMW Z3M, Porsche GT3 Cup are allowed but will not score points.)

Notes:
(1) Full time drivers should arrive during Practice 1 if possible. Reserve Drivers can take spots AFTER 8:40pm (5 mins to go in practice 1) to give Full Timers big enough chance to join.
(2) Server Password has been emailed to those registered racers for the relevant race. Please contact a member of the admin team to get the password if you are registered and have forgotten or not received the password. It will not be given out in the GTR chatroom as that is a public place. The password wont change for the season unless there are security concerns.
(3) See  UKGTR Sprint Season 2 Info (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?ind=lm2&group=10) for general Season 2 info.
(4) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?pid=7)

Please note the password is the same as last season's NGT sprint race.

Is the 45min race correct Shark?

I don't remember any changes being proposed or discussed ???

(Just to be clear, in case that sounds sarcastic or like I'm bitching, I'm not, I just wanted to clarify  :), I'd actually prefer 45min races)

Apologies if I've missed something.

Pops

It is correct Pops yes. There is a possibility of last minute change down to 40 mins, but currently 45 mins is the new race length. The other sessions have changed slightly too due to user feedback (qual is longer). There were some musing here https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=628.15 btw.  :)

It's part of a move to help compliment an anticipated increase in the Endurance Events to 90 mins for Season 2 too as 60 mins isn't felt to be enough for true endurance.

OK, cool. Thanks.

I think I avoided that thread as it seemed to degenerate into Tyf's insane rantings   :D  ;)

Very happy about the longer Q session  ;D

That sounds great. A 'true' endurance length and a sprint length that should mean things are a bit less frantic both in qualifying and during the race when driving for position. It'll be interesting to see if anyone is brave enough to regularly drive softs for races of 45 mins length.

Actually it won't be but I'll be sending out the new passwords to all registered drivers (and admins) in the next few days.

Well, I have not found any information if drivers are to select a car make and model for a whole season or can change cars from race to race. If the second option is correct, theoretically fastest cars in Monza (talking about F550) will be punished as they cannot run 45minutes without refuelling, while Listers can do without a problem. Of course Lister is slower on straights, but IMHO we will see an all lister grid...

To sum up - 40 minutes is optimal.

Race distance changed to 40 minutes to match GT.

i know i'm new to the online racing championship but shouldnt competitors be forced to choose a car type and race it all season? (as in the real world). Otherwise people just pick the best car for a certain track surely? Might not be such an issue with NGT? but the GT beasties seem to vary greatly on their abilities at certain circuits ???...or am i talking out of my derrier :-\

Personally I do try and take one car and stick to it all season but this league, as many others, does not enforce this as a rule.

Mark, the rule last year season was that you could take any car in the class so you could switch every race if you wanted to.

This did lead to a situation mid-season in the NGT where there were 2-3 GT3's, Tyf in his Bi-T and the rest in 360's but this seemed to sort itself out by season end with more GT3's back in so no real problem I think. Realistically, it is a shootout between the 360's and GT3's in NGT, no real way around it.

My view is that it's tricky enough to get used to one car!

(There was a lengthy discussion on these boards but I'll be buggered if I can find it  :-\ I don't recall any discussion of changing this rule recently so I'm assuming the rule holds.)

Pops.

Yeah. I see no evidence from the first Sprint season that there's any value in trying to enforce a "one car per season" rule. If GTR let us use weight penalties we could even the different chassis choices out and aim to get more variety (eg. more Moslers) but it doesn't so there you go.

Actually there was very little chopping and changing from people from race to race.
I pretty much stuck with the same car all season in both sprint champs.

It's not as clear cut as it sounds. F550 fastest at Monza? Hmm, no. Only if you can drive the F550 fast. Most people stick with the car they like best. A lot of peopl are taking the Lister as it's quite easy to drive fast, but they aren't then leaving it for the F550 at Monza and Enna.

With you there dude, It's hard enough getting to know the limits in this game.
I find it takes a good while to get to know how far you can push, how fast you can go and most importantly how to realise early that your tires are in danger of flying you into a wall without changing car - even if you use the same car with different tires, there's a huge difference!

<begin mantra> Stick with what you know <end mantra>

hahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha Can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thought i'd best put some practice in for the start of Season 2. I'm ditching the common F360 and taking the Morgan instead to make a change for myself (keeps the interest up).

I've always liked the way the Morgan drives, but it's always come out a little slower than the Ferrari so I've not used it.

So i set about my task of setting up the Morgan properly and giving it a real go. I really like the car and to my complete shock I just beat my F360 PB (albeit by about 0.03), fantastic. More of the same please come Tuesday night.  :)

Made me realise I still love driving GTR, even though I have the lovely GTL now. Oooh the choices!

Well, I've got all my spybot, ad-aware, zonealarm, logitech and microsoft updates installed.
Purged my system of anything that might interupt my race night.
Fine tuned my MOMO wheel and pedals (had to use that new pedal fix - an absolute godsend!).
Raced a few Barcelona races and ended up the last one driving cause others got bored or something (hate those public servers!)

Bought new pairs of socks...(gotta be comfortable ;) )

...Edza...start your engine!!!!

Cannot wait to see yez all on the track tomorrow night guys.

Best of luck to all and here's to an incident free race. (I'm terrified of the first corner already!)

Oh dear, better get some praccy in then!!!!

N1 Simon. Did you file some of the wood off to make it go that fast?  ;)

Will probably give the Mosler a spin tomorrow if there is room on the server, to add a little variety to the grid.

Are Vertigo and Mosler supposed to be faster than Porsche 911 GT3-RS / F360?

No. Vertigo is the slowest NGT. Mosler is slightly slower than the F360 and 911 but not by much. Mosler has loads of torque, but less downforce than the main NGTs. Vertigo is a nice little car, but you have to learn that the Vertigo is all about braking late and carrying loads more corner speed as it doesn't have the straight line speed of the others. Although it has excellent tyre wear.

Thanks, I think I'll try a Porsche 911 GT3-RS for this season. Whole season.  ;)

It also has much lower tyre wear than any of the other NGT cars.

Yay Tom, with Mark taking a 911 too there should be a much more healthy showing of 911's on the grid this season.

I wouldn't recommend running those things in the backround when driving GTR online.

I'll be in the 911 for the season too  :)

I guess it is quite difficult to get below 1.44 with Morgan on Barcelona, thus my pick would still be F360. I just hope there will be an empty place on grid today as I am registered as reserve for nGT :(

It's quiet difficult to get below 1'44 at Barcelona full stop

But possible as proven in last Sprint Cup nGT edition qualifications. My current PB is 1.44.172 - of course I have not practised much as my status is "Reserve" :D

Below 1:44!

Bloody hell, I got pole in a fun race against a lot of the quick guys here in NGT. My PB is 1:44.721

Got a long way to go still :-(

Bloody hell I'm screwed. Below 1:44! Even Fozz's PB is better than mine, how'd you manage that?!

Perhaps I should just take the Vertigo and blame not winning on the fact that it's clearly slower.  :P

LOL sandbaggers!

Just looked at my times for Barcalona, I need a miracle as I'm 4 secs off the pace  :-[

Lol, this and Estoril see me decidedly below par for some reason. 1:46.1 is the absolute best I can do.

I'm sure you're all cheating  ;)

Really looking forward to race with you again guys, hope we get plenty of fun like we had in previous season. My personal best at Barcelona is 1.43.281 with F360. This is one and only track where I'm faster with F360 comparing to Porsche GT3-RS. To get below 1.44 with a Morgan is impossible for me (my PB is 1.45.563) so Shark go and pick up the F360 so we can have some battles.  :)

Good God - 1:44  :o

Shall we just assume a Matjas / Pedro one-two and start the chamionship points from 3rd?  ;)

Blimey - my absolute best so far is 1:47.8!!

I think I`ll try and concentrate on not getting lapped!  :)

Cheers

Rob

Go on Fozz, Mat, Pedro- show us your hotlaps  :P

Phew, when i first read about getting below 1:44 in this post i thought 'jeez i'm in for a long race' :-[   Glad alot of other people thought the same ;D

I too would love to see a replay of those hot laps too, to see where i'm losing nearly two secs a lap  :o ???

OK here is my qualifying lap for Sim Challenge race at Barcelona. It was not my personal best but still a good lap so you can compare it.

http://www.savefile.com/files/1298462

Hope it works.

My setup and motec log for 1.44.176 can be found here: http://www.clex-polska.pl/barcelona.zip
Hope this helps!

I thought you were taking the Morgan too Mat? Don't stick with the boring F360 have some variety with a new car!

My PB in the Morgan is 1:44.9, here is replay and setup...
http://www.teamshark.org.uk/files/setups_and_replays/Barcelona-Shark HL-Morgan.Vcr
http://www.teamshark.org.uk/files/setups_and_replays/Morgan-barce-SharkQ.svm

If there's enough room I'll see you all in there with my f360  8)

Nice one guys, I'm looking at the replays and will clearly be all set to deal out the ass whooping you all so richly deserve!!!

Well said Paul, I'm sure you'll find those 4s per lap you'll need from somewhere  :D

I found 5. Now does anyone need any tips?  ;) ;D

Nah, I take exactly the same line as you all. I must carry less speed into/out of corners or something... :-\

 >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

Lost connection during qually and despite the lobby showing only 23 players on the server, it said it was full and wouldn't let me back in.

Great.  ::)

Fekin PC crashed after all my tweaking! grrrr....

Mike: could have sworn you were there fighting with me in the few laps I did get in....

Time to turn my graphics card down a bit methinks.

Gutted with a capital G

Driving well in 9th, battelling with Ginster and my car lurches left under braking at the end of the main straight. Scared Im gonna take my teamy out, I floor the car straight across in front of him, hit the tyre wall across the road and puncture :(

Bugger bugger bugger.l

Exactly the same happened to me! Gutted!!

Maybe another one afterwards? Or does that not happen in these races?

Seems like I was too late, server was full. SAme as Locutus and Don. Too bad, though it's nice too a full server.  :)

Well done Mat, Mo and Pedro for the top 3!

No way could I match your pace in my Morgan. A very dull race for me, didn't race a single soul all race, passed the occasional back marker, but very dull. On the plus side the Morgan works a treat for 40 mins. Tyres felt ok, easy to drive, not a single lock up or mistake the whole race.

Matjaz, get that Vertigo out, you're way too quick!  ;)

Willier, thx for self sacrifice. Gutted, twas a good battle with my morgan so slow on straights but nimble in corners. Sure we will do it again :).

Congrats to matj, shark and teamy mo.

Feel bad about that Mike, you popped out I popped in.
I was waiting in the lobby and saw only 23 connected so jumped in(I was a little late arriving in the first place). Feel free to throw some abuse in my direction :'(
Don.

I piled into the back of your stationary car Edza, followed closely by Aagramn who couldn't avoid me :'(
No worries, these things happen but it'll be worth tweaking and testing in a fun race before the next championship event perhaps.

Pit crew said I should pit for aero damage but the exterior didn't look too bad. The rear downforce was a bit low though and I spent the rest of the race out of sorts. Oh well, still enjoyable and had a few good fights for places in the teens. Most notably with Picnic- good close racing including a nice 2 by 2 formation maneuver through banc sabadell and europcar. Couldn't keep the back in check and span 2 or 3 further times- lost count of the number of times I swapped places with Jam at the end!

Onwards and upwards, thanks everyone  :)

Had a mare for my first race of the new season, had a small spin on lap 5 rejoined, got half way round the lap to find a burgundy Porsche sitting in the middle of the track not moving (damaged/lag/warp?), had no-where to go but straight into the gravel, lost about half a minute, got so angry  >:( and lost concentration completely and promptly went off under braking at the end of the following straight...40 secs in the kitty litter  >:( :'( :-[  
Race was over really from that point on  :'(

Disaster, apologies to my teamies.....slunks off to the back of the pit for a cry :'(

Pretty pleased with the race overall   :) Quallied 2nd which was suprising and stuck meds on same setup for the race. Just drove around in second for about 25mins having a nice little battle with Mo who was a bit quicker than us so had a good time trying to keep him behind  ;D  but then I made a mistake going into Repsol and slid wide letting Mo through. 3-4 laps later going into the same bend changed down from 4th to 1st and spun out  :( Finished the race in 5th  ;D And starting to get a feel for the F360  8) Grats Matjaz, forget about the Vertigo and get the elise out instead  :D

Replay uploaded and in the 3 mins I was on the phone someone else imported the results  ;D Team work, don't you love it ;)

Enjoyed that. Was pleased to qual 9th in the Mosler. Unfortunately a couple laps in a car in front of me had 1fps or PC crash and was stationary in a braking zone. I flew off the track to avoid him, lost me a lot of time as I had to drive through a lot of gravel to find a safe place to rejoin. Pushed me back to 17th. Suffered some aero damage which seemed to slow the Mosler down quite a bit. Had a solid race after that and worked my way back up to 10th.

Congrats to Matjas for another win. Was good to have more of a mix of cars on the grid instead of the usual procession of 360s. Thought the extra 10 minutes made things more interesting as the tyres were noticeably worn at the end.

Results up (it was me Picnic  ;) )

Thought it might have been, another new ftp upload record, 9.19 MegaBytes / sec

Where can you see the results?

Click on the big UKGTR logo above, look for results in left hand boxes on from page

Cods....

https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?ind=lm2&group=12

Click on the Spanish flag to see the details.

Someone else said you were warping a lot, I followed you for best part of a lap towards the end of P1. You very warping quite badly with a ping time in the 600ms. I was thinking it was the server not coping too well with 24 cars until we came past the pits where all the others were reading in the order of 200-250ms. Are you on dial-up? Or perhaps using a wireless link? Certainly needs to be more stable for close racing.

Qualed in 8th and managed to sneak a couple of places on lap 1.  Had a good battle with Pops until he spun at about the halfway stage.  Was never going to catch the 5th place guy so it was just a case of holding onto 6th.

Good race overall, really enjoyable. 

Cheers guys!

Just watched the replay to see whos car was sitting in the track, it was Edzas porsche but on the replay it all goes weird with his car seeming to sink into the tarmac then just stop dead on film 543secs approx. Does that mean he lost connection or something? Was just trying to determine if it was a warped car appearing in front of me in game but its there on the replay ???

 Cost me a trip into the wall & gravel  :'(

Cost 3 of us matey! Likely to be a 1fps bug type thing but could equally be a connection issue too. Happened a fair few times last season and probably won't be the last this season unfortunately. One of those things  :-\

Sounds like exactly the same thing that happened to my car at the Spa D2 Endurance race when my connection get droping and coming back, except that then there were 6 of me! Apparently you can drive right through these "ghost" cars but obviously it's a heck of a risk to take the first time you come across one! :o

I hope this race gave me opportunity to introduce myself and my driving to all of you guys. Third place is great!

I have joined at 8:40 and drove just 3 laps before qualifications. I was quite surprised by the number of cars on the track, and my poor performance. It is quite different to get a good lap with that many cars on track. Another noticeable thing was low framerate, around 35fps. Strange. Anyway, qualified fourth and that was not that bad at all.

The race begun very calm, with no usual T1 horror :) Things started to mess up just in second 387 - probably the scariest moment of the whole race for me. I had to perform full speed four wheel drift (greets all GPL fans out here :D) to avoid hitting a Porsche stuck (lag?) in the middle of the corner. Same thing happend on second 1295, where Gerald's car was standing on the start-finish straight.

Apart from that there was some nice and steady racing. I wished for a little more bumper to bumper action (sorry JM for second 1086 "punch") but my tries to catch up with car in front of me (MO) only got me into sand on second 1036. Completely out of pace (another 3 laps were full of locked wheels and other minor mistakes) I struggled to the end of the race, doing my best not to let Shark catch me. I guess my racing technique needs tweaking as my rear tires (MED) got quite worn in 40 minutes :(

Thank you all guys for a clean race. Special thanks to all lapped cars (Don1 second 1409) who showed experience and matureness while being lapped.

Congratulations to Matjaz for winning the race. I hope to make it more difficult to you next time, if only I can improve my consistency. :D

There's a small buglette in the standings at the moment which prevents the team standings being calculated. They'll appear correctly once I either fix the bug or the second race results are added.

I was seriously thinking of taking the Morgan but I expected some fast guys so F360 was a safer decision although it has been while since I drove it. I'm a Porsche driver in all other leagues so it was a nice change. I decided to take a bit of a gamble with decreased coast differential and it paid of in those mid fast corners. The only handicap was under braking where my rear end wanted to go a bit sideways so I had to be a bit more carefull.

Race start was calm, no threat from behind. I guess that's an advantage of starting first. For almost half an hour I was being followed by JonM. He came quite close when I had to deal with backmarkers who were all very fair and professional. I had two scary moments with two cars freezing in the middle of the track the rest was just trying not to spin under braking. In the end I managed to pull some gap and going into the last lap I had a "running out of fuel" warning so I finished with 2 liters of fuel.  ;)

Nice to see full server and some serious competition. Sorry to hear my team mate had a problem and wasn't able to rejoin. He did some nice times in practice and would surely fight for the podium finish.

That's fixed now. 8)

I must admit I've never seen so many 1 fps hit cars or just disco's or whatever they were (cars stationary in the middle of the track). Edza had really bad ping for me right through qualifying he was up at 500 or 600ms, but loads of others unfortunately also suffering some wierdiness.

On the 1 fps thing, again since I changed my connection setting to ISDN (in the lobby screen) I've not had any problems on line. I'm pretty certain I've never had the 1 fps with ISDN set, only when I've gone up to Cable/DSL have I had a problem. Probably worth people that had problems trying that out.

Funny you should mention that Shark. I made that change and for pretty much the first time ever didn't get the 1FPS bug at Barca. Top tip.

Very enjoyable race. My best ever qualification effort with a PB to be 7th on the grid. I checked, that was 1.2s better than my qualifying session in Season 1!

Superb qualifying by the NGT Legends team in such esteemed company, we were 6th, 7th & 10th.

Nice, cheeky ( ;)) move by Greg to get past PaulW & I at the start. Squeezed past PaulW to get 7th back and had a hugely enjoyable 20mins following Greg. Nice driving by Greg, didn't put a wheel wrong so I came nowhere near a passing opportunity despite my best efforts to put some pressure on.

Lord knows how I didn't hit Edza, I must have come within a pixel of disaster, PaulW was right behind me, I probably obscured his vision and he wasn't so lucky :(

A stupid unforced mistake span me off from behing Greg  >:( tried to chase him down again but as I was coming to some backmarkers I misjudged my run at the final corner and left the track to let Rich A through. To be fair, Rich was catching me pretty quickly anway!

Still, a hugely enjoyable race  ;D Brilliant we had such a full grid. Hope that lasts all season  :)

Well done to the podium guys (plus JonM & Shark), you guys are in a different class  :o

Pops

ADC "speedgeezers" have just come to the same conclusion and now advise all their members to select ISDN and it seems to "cure" the problem

I have used ISDN setting ever since and never experienced 1FPS bug. My friends from www.gtr.pl league all use the same setting but some of them experience the problem - thus it may not be a solution for everyone. The only 100% solution is to slow down (preferably stop by the track) and ALT+TAB into desktop and back again.

Hi all,

Thought I'd apologise for my car being stuck in the middle of the track and giving people some hairy moments.....

I've got an ISDN connection and have the connection settings set to that. Had a problem at the grid where there was another car overlaid on my own (paniced when I thought my graphics card had decided by itself to draw another steering wheel on top of mine :o).

I was driving around the outlap and my ATI fault monitor interupted GTR for about 5 seconds so when I got back into the game, everyone had sped off and I was about 3 corners behind everyone.

Fought back and got past Mike after he had a spin but got a bit close to the pit wall on the last corner and he got by again.
Don't know where exactly my PC froze (was in a bit of a disgruntled rage :-[) but apologies yet again to everyone.

I have two weeks to get this in check and I will, trust me!

All in all, it was a hugely enjoyable evening and moreso because I got a PB lap in qualifying.

Congrats to the podium winners and just to let you all know - if my shit ain't sorted for France, I won't join in.

Thanks all.

Very enjoyable  :)

That was my best race to date - loads more consistent than last season. Still 3 or 4 spins under no pressure, but still a helluva lot better, and therefore much more enjoyable.

Im sure there must have been some shananigans (sp?) in the race somewhere that means Im gonna be moved up in to the points!!  ;D

40 mins race was much better.

Cheers

Rob

Excellent point Rob, I enjoyed the new race distance too. Just like baby bears porridge it was 'just right'.  :)

Have you tried running with the 56k Modem option in game in GTR? That may help.

I`d changed my connection back to cable, forgetting why I`d selected ISDN (I know why now), fortunately with no bad effects.

My 1fps problems seemed to dissappear once I switched off all the replay settings prior to joining the server, as suggested by Shark.

Cheers

Rob

Lets face it- we're clutching at straws with Simbins wall of silence on the matter. My vote goes to Pentium based systems being a prime cause, through no fault of their own of course! Any of the above can't hurt though.

Hi I was hoping to have a staedy run and was up to 12th having lost some places and made them up again . On lap 16 I was booted from the race and connection lost came up.Hope my car was not stuck on track. Will set to ISDN and hope all will be well. Really enjoyed the race up till then , a few scary moments with the stationary car and bit bit of brain fade but was dissapointed not to finish. Shame that one cannot get back in a race one is in from the lobby. bye for now gerald

First race that I've managed to stay on the tarmac for the whole distance so I'm well happy - new pb and my best NGT result too.

The first half of the race I was under pressure from Pedro who seemed to be a bit quicker than me but less consistant.
Eventually Pedro had an off which took the pressure of me and I was able to catch right up to JonM, with whom I had a great dice for second place.
It was very close and clean apart from one ham fisted overtaking effort by me into La Caixa where we exchanged some paintwork - sorry Jon, it was a kinda will i, wont i ?  thing and in the end i backed out but locked a brake and slid across onto your line.

I was lucky to not hit any of the stationary cars , although having the player names visible definitely helps see these in advance.
Congrats to Matjaz on a faultless drive and mind blowing pace.

No probs Mo  :) Enjoyed the scrap, just a shame I couldn't keep it the track a bit longer, the pressure you put on me was too much for me in the end and I tried to brake a bit too late. Nice race  ;D

Haven't tried that yet but will this weekend.

cheers

By the way....any word on the next fun race?

Do you guys intend on having one before the next French race?

Yes it was a tiny bit cheeky of me ;), wouldn't normally attempt to overtake before T1 but I seemed to get a better start than you guys and before I knew it I had passed you both.  Pitty you fell off when you did, looked like we would have carried that battle on too the finish, great fun.

Matjas has a tendancy to slow down a little before the start line to get everyone bunched up a little (generally a good thing) but PaulW and I missed the 'traps opening' so to speak! Dammit, that won't happen again I can tell you!


Yeah, after my stupid error, I was gutted we couldn't continue that battle, it was shaping up extremely well!

Pops.