SimRacing.org.uk

Car: Radical SR8
Track: Virginia International Raceway (North)

Practice: 18:00 for 150 mins (approx)
Qualifying: 20:30 (15 mins)
Race: 20:45 44 laps (approx 60 mins)

Start: Rolling - standard iRacing double file start
No fast tows will be available

Pit Stops: You must make a minimum of one pit stop during which you must take on at least 1 litre of fuel and/or change at least two tyres. You cannot take a mandatory stop at the end of the pace lap, or with less than 1 lap to go.

Password: see above (#post_event_password)
(2) Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=264;theme=33)

First race for a while that I'll have been able to make - looking forward to this one.

So, laptimes  ;D

1:21.0 on race fuel.  I kinda hope that's near the pace!

You must be using the longer course? ;D

That cruel Mr Kerr.

I'm around that time Mike.

Gary

I've not even looked yet. No idea what a lap time is.

Can't actually think what the North circuit is either.

LOL  ;D

It's the same one we ran with the Mazdas at the start of the season.  Feels more awkward in the Radical, and it hates the kerbs.

It's the amount of time it takes for you to drive from the start/finish line, round the course and back to the start/finish line again.  It's usually measured to the nearest millisecond.

Happy to help.

Paul
;D

 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Server's up!

Better than me, I'm at 1:21.5 on race fuel, but that's driving like I don't care if I fall off. I suspect another track with very few finishers. ;D

I'm miles of the pace - but then again with the lack of driving time in the last month I'm more than a little bit rusty - and was really tired last night so the concentration wasn't there either.

I'll join the server this evening, and run practice and qually, but I'll wait to see what level of ineptitude I've reached before commiting to the race I think.

Probably ditto for me I'm afraid.

Too afraid are we Legends? :-*

I was doing 1:24s until I started absolutely chucking the car around. I will share my setup tonight to help anyone (although I'm not sure my setups are anything but a hindrance!) if they want it. I doubt I will be doing 1:21s in the race as I will want to try and keep it on the track.

Fiddly little short circuits like this are absolutely not my cup of tea, nor do I think they particuarly suit a car like the Radical, but I didn't think it mattered how fast you were, just come and race.

Afraid of screwing it up for someone else, yes, I am at the moment :(

I wouldn't worry, that tends to be my job. :o

We could all start from the pit lane. ;) ;D

Iain, how many laps are we doing tonight?

Regards
Gary

lap count updated (44 laps)

Looking forward to this tonight. See you all there.

Oh bugger, Dave, Gary and Paul.  That's my last chance of a flukey podium down the loo then.  ;)

Server's up :)

No Dave Paul, unless he packed his wheel & pedals in his suitcase!

FYI......Looks like the password is set to starstruck! :)

Oh ffs :wetfish:

Thanks Martin

Oh no.  My last excuse has gone now.

I'll have to fall back on just being slow like I usually do.

Well that was short lived.  ::)

Never really felt comfortable with this combo, but settled for 5th on the grid with a mediocre lap.  Managed to keep with Mike and Simon over the first few laps and was contemplating an early pitstop to try and shake things up a bit.

Unfortunately, I took too tight a line through the uphill right after the bridge and caught the bumps which speared me off to the right.  No matter, I thought, I can use the bit of tarmac to the right and rejoin safely.  Bizarrely, I had a split second thought that the sign at the end of the wall was not solid.  When I tried to drive through it, I found out otherwise.  :-X

So, thanks to a major brainfart, I ended up with broken steering and race over.

Grats to all finishers.

Wasn't feeling the love last night & it wasn't improved any tonight. Ended by making a simple mistake is a slow corner, slowly slid accross the grass & kissed the tyre wall. Steering bent, race over.

Very tough race, well pleased with 3rd on the grid and realistically, that's where I was expecting to finish.  Held the place at the start and fended off Shark for the first half of the race looking after my tyres.

Pitstop went smoothly and Shark changed tyres, so that was one worry removed as long as he didn't close up too fast.  I was close to Gary but couldn't close up and ran to the finish with an eye on the gap to Shark

I'll take a podium here any day!

Well done all who finished.

After spending more time in the practice session tonight I got far more comfortable with the car to the point I was happily sliding it sideways in and out of the corners and nearly always felt just about in control.

Unfortunately despite being on course for very low 1:20s a couple of times in qualifying I didn't manage it and instead of going for a final run I went for a drink and 5 minutes chill-out time. This meant Mike beat me into 3rd on the grid by a tiny margin and meant as the race got under way I was stuck behind him. With only a little bit more pace in the first stint all I could do was sit right behind him and hope for a mistake (which didn't come). We pitted at the same time, but I came in much quicker to the yellow cones and gained all of small advantage he had on me.

What happened next I'm still fuming about. I pulled up to my lollipop man and Mike pulled up to his invisible one right in the box in front of me. However what I didn't realise was that I was apparently too far forward, the pit crew couldn't be arsed to move half a yard forward and they weren't doing anything for me. I couldn't read the text on the screen telling me I was too far forward cause Mike's car was right in front of me and by the time I'd realised that nothing was happening Mike was about to go already! I rolled it back got fuel and tyres and off I set, now 17 seconds down. :cursing: :censored: :cursing: >:(

Fuming, the red-mist decended and I threw everything at every single lap. This rapidly closed the gap and showed my true pace, but alas with still a few seconds to gain the chequered flag came out and the chase was over.

So annoyed with myself for that shambolic pitstop cause it robbed both Mike and I a chance for a race long podium battle.

Well done to Paul on the win, class of one tonight at the top.

Yay! I finished! ;D

I nearly didn't race, I had a stinking headache beforehand which is why I sat out most of praccy/qual but some painkillers did the trick.

Anyway, glad I did, I enjoyed it despite being fairly outclassed, i had a decent tussle with Pete for a while until he proved a bit too quick so I settled for the finish. 9th has never felt so good tbh!

Were it not for bad luck I'd have no luck at all lately.

In qually I went off on my outlap so reset and started again.  Coming up the straight Rob came out of the pits and wombled to the middle before spotting me at the last second forcing me to lift.  Another lap gone.  After that I kept screwing up a corner a lap until I got the two laps fuel warning.  that lap I hooked up and was heading for a mid 1:20 or better until the final complex when I missed the downshift to third.  I kept my foot in and lugged it to the line for a 20.8 and 6th.

I got a decent start and held off Ross into T1.  The car felt strange, I wonder if I'm getting frame rate problems in traffic, I was too busy to look.  After a couple of laps with Ross under my rear wing he made a mistake, dropped back a little and I started to find my pace and pull away.

Brendan was a little way in front by now but I was still in touch.  When he had his off I settled in to drive smoothly and aim for my planned pitstop around lap 26.

Approaching the pitstop window Gary was getting close behind me after his stop and Pete was ahead but a lap down.  Rather than lose time lapping Pete or defending from Gary I went in a lap early.  By now I had a pitstop in hand on Ross in 6th so took it easy.

Not easy enough.  I saw the speed jump to 46 for a fraction of a second on the run through the pits.

I wasn't taking tyres so it was a short stop though was still surprised to come out right behind Simon.  That was short lived though when i saw the speeding penalty.  What it didn't do is tell me what I had to do.  I came in on the next lap and stopped in my box whereupon I was given 21 laps of fuel and some new tyres before my penalty even started!  What a stupid piece of software design.

So now I came out about 6 seconds behind Ross pulling a caravan.  I caught up with Ross when he made a mistake and tried to harry him but he was driving well and his weight advantage gave him so much better acceleration out of the final complex I couldn't get near.

Not long ago I'd have looked at 6th as a good result rather than a missed opportunity.  In reality Simon was quicker than me and I'd not have done better than 5th but it would have been nice to at least been in his mirrors for a few laps after the stop.

Ho hum.

Paul
:)

Small mistakes led to me being dropped by Pops and Picnic, who I was hoping to have a race with .... and ultimatley a light kiss of a tyre wall ruined the handling - so that was that.

Probably my best all-round performance on any sim to date given how hard this combo was - really hard work.

On the outlap, I saw Brendan's car take a big hit to the rear despite no-one else being near him - looked like someone had just shot his car with a shot gun!  Obviously lag induced and possibly only I saw it but was very weird!

Got a decent start and spent the first couple of laps trying to find a way past Paul T figuring he must have some kind of issue for me to be able to hassle him.  Tried to outbrake him into T1 but he squeezed/closed me off with a really tough but excellent move to hold the place.

Through trying a bit hard to catch Paul, I ended up having a couple of minor slides leaving me losing him and falling back to Rob and Martin.  Rob dropped away leaving Martin on my tail.  I seemed to be a bit quicker when I could hold it together, but a number of errors preceded a small run wide at T1 letting Martin past.

I managed to close back up to Martin quite quickly but couldn't get past so figured it was going to come down to passing him in the pits.

Pitted on L22 with a very clean and quick stop taking on fuel and tyres.  A few more quick laps and eventually I saw he'd pitted and for whatever reason I had about 10 seconds on him as I past the pits.  Stupidly though, I ran wide on T1 through lack of concentration dropping that difference to about 4 or 5 seconds but I was pretty sure that staying ahead of him would just need some consistent error free driving from me.

A lap or two later I was very surprised/happy to pass Paul in the pits (found out later he'd had a black flag) although I figured he'd be past me in no time.

In the end though, despite a couple of small slips, I was able to hold him off (through having a lighter fuel load I realise now) with only letting the leaders through without dropping too much time to worry about.

5th place was as good as I could possibly have hoped for as practice on Monday had been very inconsistent.

As ever, if I could remove all the small errors from my races, I'd probably have the pace to do much better, but I guess that's true of many of us!

Would be nice to have more mid-field entrants for these races though - it's often easy to find yourself just hot lapping for the best part of an hour (although this race was the exception for me for once).

Just a random thought, but perhaps for next season, the races should be run every two weeks with a hot lapping competition using the same combo to precede the main event the week before.  I suspect that if more people did the practice events and there were fewer races, we'd maybe have more entrants and more finishers.

I'd forgotten about that.

I herad a massive crunch to my right going up the hill if memory serves then saw brendan pull ahead with the bodywork all along both sides looking like someone had set to it with hammers.  The wheels were actually sticking out to the sides.

I wondered whether we'd touched somewhere but I thought I'd given him plenty of room and he seemed to be driving fine.

Very odd indeed.

Paul
:)

I was following Brendan when that happened. All I saw was a shower of sparks and heard the classic crashing sounds when he turned in to the right hander to go up the hill in to the infield section. No one was near him at the time and it reminded be of those lag bugs when cars bounce up and down, go on 2 wheels etc.

Tough race that one, so many kerbs that really upset the car and with the corners coming quick and fast it needed a lot of concentration for the 44 laps!

Bit more prepared this time than two weeks ago. Was able to spend an hour setting the car up. I am normally quite strong at VIR and know the track well so could concentrate purely on setup and pace. Managed a 1.19.6 in practice with a somewhat scrappy couple of corners so a sub 1.19.5 was possible with a solid lap. I hadn't driven for a few days and saw Gary was in the high 19s as well so it was going to be tough. Managed to pip him in practice just. Luckily qualifying went much better I managed a 1.19.8 quite early which helped. Gary would be challenging that though so I pushed on and did a couple of 19.7s. Eventually towards the end I finally put together an error free lap and managed a 1.19.4x and that got me pole.

Race set was the qual with some fuel. I had done a 10 lap run and it felt fine but was a bit worried about the rear tyres overheating. I didnt know whether to change tyres or not so decided to take it easy in the braking zones to avoid locking the fronts and see how it went. After a few laps myself and Gary pulled away a bit with Gary dropping back slightly. He then started to catch me so I pushed a bit harder and was able to start extending again. I had a bad lap which allowed him to close again but he was hovering at about 4 seconds back. At this point I decided to not change tyres as at that gap he was prime to jump me if he didnt and I did. The car felt good on low fuel when he pitted so decided to push on at that point to try and strech the gap out. I had started with quite a lot of fuel so went quite long and was hoping for a quick stop. I figured I would come out with a healthier lead and could then cruise to the finish looking after ther tyres. Luckily it worked out like that and I was 12 secs up on Gary after the stops. I took it very easy to start with and then pushed on a bit when I guessed the tyres were ok. I was expecting Gary to close but he hadn't changed either and was also taking it easy.

In the end it looked easier than it was. Gary was error free so I couldn't afford any mistakes at all especially in the first stint. Great drive mate and as always a big challenge to beat. Congrats also to Mike for his third and to Shark who without his pitstop troubles would have been up there as well. Well done to all that finished not easy on this tricky circuit.  

Well Paul has pretty much outlined my race, I knew with our relevent speeds that my only chance was a mistake from Paul or him taking tyres. I didn't expect the former and I wasn't banking on the latter but just in case I concentrated on keeping him just in range in case he did feel a need for four shiny new Dunlops.

One of the reasons I dropped time during the pitstop window was due to a poor entry, I braked far too early. Bottom line is though I wasn't fast enough on the night :(

Then just raced to the flag Mike was always few seconds back but I could extend the gap out as it ebbed and flowed with back markers so I concentrated on just bringing it home for a nice second place behind Mr Richards. Well done Paul and Mike and Simon had a good race in there too.

I like VIR but I think we've had two tracks suitable for hotlapping now, not racing. I've never ever turned a wheel at Mid Ohio in any sim so having heard a number of people say its really good I'm looking forward to that.

Regards
Gary

Mid Ohio is indeed brilliant :)

I took a tip from Paul T and ran a softer setup that would let me ride the kerbs a bit.  Its only downside was that it wasn't as good mid-turn, but I probably needed a bit more development time than I had.

Aha, the perfect excuse for my pathetic showing last night! :)

I should keep my big mouth shut. ;)