SimRacing.org.uk

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Car:	LMP2 HPD ARX-01C or GT2 Ford GT
Track:	Watkins Glen Classic Boot
When:	Sunday 7th August
Practice:	17:40 (80 mins)
Qualifying:	19:00 (30 mins)
Race:	19:30 - 21:00 (90 mins)
Start:	Standard iRacing double file rolling start
Resets:	One

Password:

>>>> see above <<<< (#post_event_password)

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As there won't have been an awful lot of time for us all to get familiar with the cars before this race, there will be a hosted practice session on the Saturday evening before the race.

The session will run from 1800-2200hrs (UK timings as ever)  and will give us all a chance to get together and familiarise ourselves with our new chariots and our new competition.

I hope you can all join us on track.

The next Endurance Sundays season is upon us - and with a number of new teams on board this could be something special.

Legends Racing and Team Shark split the titles between them in season six, but there looks to be a lot more competition turning up in the LMP2 and GT2.

FT-Ninecraft Racing have a strong lineup and should certainly make things interesting, Prodigy Racing have been adding strength and depth to their lineup, and Torque Freak Racing are a recent addition for this upcoming season.



Round one sees a return to Watkins Glen and the Classic Boot configuration.  This proved to be an excellent race in season 5, providing some awesome racing whilst everyone got to know the cars, the competitors, and how they would all mix on track.  All being well, this will be another race to remember.  With a less drastic performance gap between the classes some of the old problems should be a thing of the past, whilst giving us all something new to work with.

I'm really looking forward to it - and I hope you are too.

To give people a better start to the season, we are now running a pre-season fun race at Suzuka:

(http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/5168/i7precopy.jpg) (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=9695.0)

The setup of the race will be the same - but it's not for points.  It will run on the 31st July - timings as usual.

comment was in wrong thread  :-\ :cursing:

needless to say shall try my best to run  ;)

Just to reiterate - round one is the 7th August.  I just figured that it wouldn't hurt to publicize the fun race in here too.

 :'(  :'(  :'(  :'(  :'( Sooooo ppppp'd off.. can't make this....  :'(  :'(  :'(  :'(

finish work at seven and dont fancy sticking my iracing content on the comps there :) so wont be able to make the quali might spectate the race though?

Doubt I'll have time for any practice - my flight gets to Heathrow at 9:25 tomorrow morning, so I won't be home until near midday, then I have a Late Model race and then I'll undoubtedly fall asleep. :laugh: So I'll only have Sunday to do any practice or even pick a car.

I've not done many laps but so far the Ford GT feels great here. Should be a fun race :)

For the HPD, the WG fixed setup, just changed to high aero, works really well. Lowering the rear rollbar helps traction out of a few bumpy slow corners, where the car has a tendense to snap fast, if to hard/early on the throttle.
I managed a 1.30.299 at the end of a 60kg fuel run, and was very surprised to see that the tires were still at 96% at that point.

What times are we lloking at in the GT?

I guess I won't let the cat out of the bag by saying a few of the Legends were doing mid 46's....  I'm still trying to get under a 1:48 :(

Is that race pace or qualifying?

Wouldn't you like to know  :-*

It was race trim... 

I have a feeling it's not going to be good enough.  ::) 

I have a practice server running now if people are interested, until 15:00 GMT.

Right ... back from hols ... I'd best get practicing!!

I probably be away as well, doesnt look like a good turnout this week..

Practice server is up now chaps 7.0pm UK time

Don't put a downer on it, It's race one, everyone will turn up :-D

I think you might be surprised...

I'm really looking forward to tonight, bit apprehensive due to my limited time in the car, but hey - it's meant to be a challenge!!

yep i'd say we're on for a great turnout ya negative Nancy!

Had my first experience of the lmp last night in the practice and thanks to some help from Purds seemed to more or less hit the ground running with it - really enjoyable to drive...i was worried it would be on a knife edge but I was pleasantly surprised I have to say!

Really not sure what to expect from the NTM, I drove as usual and it did seem to suddenly lose the ability to turn after 7/8 laps so I suspect I may have spanked it a little hard but hopefully some more practice will help me get my head around it!

Was really nice to see Prodigy boys Raimo and Dimm online as well as some other familiar faces...hope to keep the momentum up this season myself and attend as many as possible. It's got the potential to be epic!

Catch ya tonight...

UTTERLY STUPID divebomb which I see coming and manage to get out of the way of only to get rear ended by someone else at the same time. So glad I bothered. ::) These races are 90 mins, not 30 mins, dive bombing is for sprint racing not endurance racing. :-*

I'll come back when not hitting each other is more important than beating each other.

No incident discussions on the forums. Submit a report.
You know the rules and you know why we have them. >:( >:( >:(

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I was actually a lot more competitive than I thought I would be given that I'd only driven four laps in the car before practice started, and only two of those at Watkins. Qualifying felt good and to my surprise I ended up as the best placed Shark. It was all downhill from there.

My race started badly and ended worse. Took me four goes to get in the car with a working pit limiter (iRacing's code must be utterly awful for them to be unable to fix such a rudimentary and long standing bug :no:), by which time the pace lap had started.

Didn't take me too long to pass the GTs - unfortunately picking up a 4x trying to pass Fozz out of the heel when he was busy looking at the car ahead and pulled out to look at a pass himself. :-[ I hope Watkins doesn't represent the normal balance of performance between the two classes because I had almost no straight line speed advantage and could only pass GTs by either diving through on the brakes before they turn in, or sitting right on their tails through the corners and passing inside on the exit, the latter being risky and the former very risky. :o

My first off came passing a GT up out of the Toe - he let me by up the hill but I entered the corner just a car width or two wider than normal, caught the bump wrong and smacked it into the armco. The car was badly bent so I dragged the wreckage back to the pits for my reset. The steering was straight but it didn't feel quite right - almost as if the front tyre pressures had changed. ??? It was still quite drivable though so the second and race-ending off was more of a surprise - again, where the boot section rejoins the old track.

It was probably the same bump as before but this time I wasn't offline and I certainly wasn't expecting the rear to step out there; one overcorrection later and I was in the armco again. Having already used my reset, when I pulled in the crew told me I was too bent to continue so that was that - never even made it to the first of my two stops. :-\

Hopefully I can do some more practice before the next race, though I suspect the next week and a half are going to be crazy at work. ::)

Well whatever the cause was that was some knock-on effect! Mike clattered into you as you recovered, I hit him, Dimm hit me and on and on. Gutting to go out so early after feeling like I had some reasonable pace and even moreso to make contact with my team mate even if I was just a passenger.

Got some repairs and enjoyed running around at the tail end of the field but the tiniest slide resulted in me meeting the barrier in any case so I guess i shouldn't be too upset.

Fantastic grid anyway - brilliant to see so many of those evil looking LMP's dicing and I just hope the rest of you have a good one! I think if you make it to the end you'll be on for a reasonable points haul at this rate!

Cheers for organising Adam - fingers crossed for a better result at Sebring although the prospect of those bumps scares me muchly lol.

Erm.....not the most impressive way endear oneself to a new league....

By the way - Hi!

I've not had many laps in the Honda, but once I had a decent setup I felt relatively on top of it. A bit radically in some ways. During practise things were still looking OK - decent pace, and getting through traffic was OK, almost fun at times.

Started to get a bit sloppy during qualifying, but managed a decent enough lap to get on the front row (always good for the ol' framerate). I didn't have a plan as such, but I knew I would be having to take it easy to manage 90 minutes with few enough mistakes to get to the end. I steadily dropped back over the first few laps, before - predictably - getting it wrong at turn 9 (I think - the bit where the boot rejoins the circuit). This corner had repeatedly caught me out in practise, and pushing to keep a reasonable pace cost me. A lap later, same thing, this time with damage. After all that, I was a lap down, and was just starting to get back in a rhythm when we came across a spinning Darren, and a bit of a bottleneck. I knocked into Barry (sorry - hope no damage), and then got tapped by Andy whilst rejoining (again, sorry - hope not too much damage). After that, the car was too damaged to continue, and race over.

Not exactly as I'd planned, and I hope my actions did not compromise anyone's races. From what I saw on track though, it all looks promising - generally the driving looked good from what I saw. I guess we're all learning as we go with the new cars, so things can only get better. No? Hopefully for me anyway.

I'm stumped!

I spent all of practise and most of quallifying driving around with a full tank of fuel.  No dramas!

But once the race started my car felt different.  ???  The back end became very twitchy under braking.  I tried pushing the brake balance forward, but that didn't help.  In the end I eventually spun under braking, and then again 2 laps later...

After another half spin I decided it was best to park the car for everyones safety.

Sorry to those I caused problems for.  :-[

Back to the drawing board....

Spin spin disco spin spin retire.

Just not had enough time in the car yet .... :(

Started well, but lost the back end under braking and damaged the car, the disco didn't help ... and neither did not being able to change my fuel when I rejoined ::) so I then had to pit ...

Being a couple of laps down and still making mistakes ... time to get back to practicing and getting a proper feel for the car.

Not the best start for the season, but hopefully it will get better.

Two races, two retirements :(

The car felt better than at Suzuka, but I must be getting something wrong here to be that far off the pace.  It looked like drivers were trying all three downforce setups, which didn't always end well.

Qualifying was pretty hopeless, but the race started even worse, with a huge clump of cars going round together.  Then came Simons incident.  I was already defending from another car and went to brake late, locked the left front and found a very slow Simon right in front of me :(

Dug the car out of the gravel, but it had lost loads of speed, so it was a pitstop for repairs.  The fuel run went OK and pace seemed pretty good, then after my second stop I had a brainfade, bounced a kerb and wrecked the car on the barriers.  Reset and it seems to want to let me continue, but I had run out of motivation :(

I like the car a lot more, but you can't relax for a moment with it, unless it's something in my setup.

I was having a great race with Richard and Karsten, until I made a bad decision. Of course, what I should've done was do an emergency stop causing the two cars 0.3 or so seconds behind me to pile into me, causing an even bigger accident than the one that actually took place....naturally.

So, HPD chaps, lesson learnt: If a GT umms and ahhs when it's too late, employ "Cashier number three please!" mode regardless of what's behind you.

Excellent turnout. Was it 33 or 34, in any case, great to see so many cars on the grid again.

Had all day been telling my self, to take it easy, to not being sucked into hopes for a win and thereby take risks. But that didnt last much further than 2-3 laps, cause I was easily keeping up with the top 3, so I suddenly had hopes. We were bunched together for a long time. Richard, Jamie and me, and with Amos further ahead getting way - didnt want to play with us I guess :). This spawned some hairy situations when lapping, cause no matter how hard I tried to not take risks, there is constantly this, dont loose too much time in the back of the head. I didnt have the top speed to try anything down the straights, so I had to stay close and wait for a chance. It basicly stayed like this all race. Only a small breather in the 2nd stint where I constantly got cought in traffic, so Richard had opened a 6 sec gap, and I was slowly settling for 3rd.
But then after the last pistop, I was suddenly right back at sniffing Richards exaust, and now the heat was back on. Trying hard to keep the pressure on Richards, in hope of him making a small mistake. I was the one making one though, and sadly I took Adam Kell with me. I misread the situation and went for a opening I thought was being made. It was a nano second decision, and a very bad one. Once again, Im terribly sorry Adam Kell.

It was a fantastic race though, incredibly intense. Grats Richard, great drive.
Im sorry if I caused some scary moments for the GT's. Besides the Adam incident, I think I scraped you Raimo, in the begging of the race. Sorry for that one, I held it a little to tight there.

See you all on Sebring - is that night or day btw?

MW: I used a dummed down WG Fixed setup, using high downforce, softer rollbars (60 and 5, metric I think it was), softer front springs (2 clicks), brakebias on 60% and an altered gearing to suit the high downforce better. The only times I was in danger of loosing it, was when running over curbs or braking to deep into a corner. Out of the 2nd gear corners, I just feed the throttle slowly, no on/off. Was very comfortable - but then, I like it when the car is a little bit lazy :). I'll most likely ruse that for Sebring, will have to see. Might need to run it softer still, cause of all the bumps.

Not exacty the race I was hoping for.

I was on my own for most of it.  Qualified 3rd.  Got second when Darren span out and closed the gap a bit to Jasper before the stops. around 9 seconds.

Lost 5/6 seconds in the pitsop to Jasper, I had a terrible in lap.  Was 15 behind when I came out of the pits, which came back down to 9 seconds with arounf 5/6 laps to go.  

Punted into the barrier in turns 1 and 2.  >:(

Tow.  4th place.

Hope the next one is better!

Couple of apologies for now.

Sorry to John Stamper for taking him out in the Esses in qualifying, first time I'd come across a GT in there and wasn't sure how to take it, thought I was going to be hit in the side so took to the grass which made it all worse.
Sorry to Adam Kell as well for a rather stupid divebomb which I got wrong, but thanks for seeing it coming and avoiding the accident. Don't remember too much about the incident, just it was incredibly stupid.

First must remember to set alarm as only just made it in time with 12 mins of Q left and only one clean banker type lap for P16 :(

Going fine avoiding incidents then lap 9 I think Andrew B tapped me when slowing for a GT spinner in the boot, no damage Andy but couldn't turn round and had to wait ages for a clear track. Your car disintegrated  :(

Started with light 70lbs of fuel so could gain on Andy P then lap 41 I think I cocked up big time just as I thought I could read the situations lapping the GTs I went for a gap in the Esses whilst lapping Pete A, really sorry Pete  ::) it was a complete bonehead move. I ruined your race for which I am truly sorry :-[  Hope I didn't cause any more trouble for any GT's.

2 more incidents  a limp back to the pits and a tow, not a very good night for me, sorry again Pete.

Great race for me, really intense with battles for most of the laps.

Qualified on pole and got away well but I somehow took the Toe in 3rd, didn't realise it and wondered why I had no acceleration off the corner until it was too late and Oliver took the lead after a could of side-by-side corners. When we got into traffic Oliver was able to make a better job of it and pulled out a few seconds whilst I found myself dropping back with the chasing pack. Jamie was clearly running lower df than most of the rest of us and he breezed past on the straight. After that I was stuck between Jamie and Karsten and, realising that I wasn't going to get past Jamie with his higher top speed, I decided to short pit on lap 15 some 8 laps early. Not sure it was a sensible strategy or not really, but I guess it sort of worked. By the time the others had pitted some laps later I was in 2nd but only because Jamie had crashed, whilst Oliver was well ahead and Karsten was right back on my tail :). I was on lower fuel than them now though and I was able to eat into Oliver's lead and gap Karsten by a few seconds but I knew this was illusory since my second stop would need to be longer than theirs. Indeed, after the second round of stops Oliver was now 20 seconds ahead and guess who was filling my mirrors again....

It looked like the battle with Karsten was going to continue to the end but all of a sudden he had gone and I was clear in 2nd. Finally a chance to relax and boy did I need it, my body isn't used to racing for more than an hour. Then a lap later and I saw Oliver was in the pits. Hadn't a clue what had happened and thought maybe he had sped during his stop or something and was serving a black flag. It took me another lap until I realised he must have wrecked and I could just cruise to the end. Bad luck there Oliver, you had the race in the bag for sure up to then.

Traffic was interesting. A few hairy moments but those mostly seemed to arise when a GT driver was trying to be helpful but just created confusion. Helpful is good but not so much when we have to guess how they are going to be helpful ;). I managed to bring the car home without damaging the paintwork so I hope I didn't cause too many problems for the GTs.

With Baz bringing his car home in 6th it was a great start for TWFR. Let's see if we can maintain the momentum at Sebring!

Results up.

Sorry I couldn't make it ... was working. Hope to be there Sunday. Any chance of Sebring ? :-):-)

server problems or not?, never seen that many drivers yet half the field disconnected?

I'm pretty sure they were all manual disconnections after wrecking. Adam had a disco whilst driving & he reconnected but I don't recall seeing any other "receive throughput" errors during the race. Might have missed one or two but there certainly weren't any mass disconnections.

obviously accidents  :P

As Baz I joined late in Q and couldn't set a clean lap so started from the very back of the grid counting on back up positions cause others misfortunes  ;D
First laps at the back were very cautious taking measures to the track and other cars apart for a LMP that scared the back field coming from nowhere  :o
Another scary moment was the leader coming for lapping after only 6 laps I think  :o
Anyway all went well with infinite LMPs lapping and I had some battle with other GTs at the back.
At midrace pit I missed my pitbox, it was at the beginning of the pitlane, so I had to do another try and lost a position, but the worst had still to come. Entering the boot I found Mike's LMP parked on his roof sideway on the track while I had a LMP ready to lap me. I tried to go left without cut the track to the lapper, but got the parked car with my RF wheel and my car dived for the rail. Limped to the pit and had to wait for a 9 minutes repair  :'(
Ehm MIke, Esc didn't work?  ::)
After repairs car was still driveable and went to the finish without many problems.
Ciao

I was frantically trying to reset, but it wasn't working!  Finally went for ESC which did work.  I'm very sorry that it caused problems :(

My FordGT got booted up the ARX on Lap1 and had to reset because it was un-drivable :-(
A few laps ffter Reset I was pushing too hard, I had little to loose being so far behind, crashed and called it a day :-( :-(

Might do Sebring, I really do not like the track, don't understand why anyone else does, in any case, am looking forward to racing more this season, coz I love the FordGT :-)

sorry guys meant to attend but mind was on other things :-\  namely laser eye surgery  the day after :-X all done now so hoping to make the rest of the events ;D