UKGPL Season 23 (2012) GT Team Challenge - Silverstone (GP 1952-73) - Jun 24

[EvilClive]

Apologies to Juha ......................and hard luck Axel 

[Phil Thornton]

Then I came up behind Phil in his Mirage.... which sort of ruined my game plan for a few laps as I had to find a way of getting onto his tail as we hit the straight, so that I could use the extra power to make the pass. Then I tried to leave Phil room inside at Stowe and succeeded only in running onto the grass and letting him past again!!

Yes I quite enjoyed that .  It is one of the reasons I like this season's format.  The pit stops mean there is racing all the way through the race, how else would I have had the chance to fight with you in a Chap?  In a normal race you would have disappeared at the start and I'd never have seen you again.  If I was a better driver that battle could have been on the last lap when I might have had a chance to hold onto the position. 

Just checked on the championship table, Team Green ARE TOP!!!    Grats to Tim and Steve (Fester), enjoy it lads we might not be up there for long  .

[jhalli]

Apologies to Juha ......................and hard luck Axel  

no problem evil ,

good race for me anyway with poor performance car . I tried to make clean race as possible without mistakes but after half the race i see Hristo on mirrors and make one. Thats it i dropped 2 places behind Hristo and Tim. Tim was very fast with porky , and Hristo with mirage.  Evil was behind me somewhere end of the race but i was not able to keep he back as he used fast chap2d ,soon he was making close contact with walls on the main straight and i was able to pick one place up.    

Grats Hristo for win , great comeback !

Bad luck for teammate cookie ,better luck next time !

[BadBlood]

P:S:: nephews = nipoti

Thank you - at least you knew what I meant 

[clouds]

P:S:: nephews = nipoti

Thank you - at least you knew what I meant 

 

[clouds]

I've watched out your replay file for this event and if may I say something about, also this time it seemed that wait times at pitbox were a forced move. Maybe it could be better to have 2 or 3 or 4 stop&go instead of only one of 40 or more secs that is way too much hard to manage because each time there is a so long pitstop all the cards are mixed again in a way it is difficult to understand without an help like pribluda that shows who is in front or behind you and most of all what is your actual position. In other words it is difficult to have an idea of where you are and where are your direct opponents, that could be far away but with a long pitstop to perform or near you but with no pitstop to perform. I should say anyway that the race has been very fought but because of the mistakes made by almost all drivers. The reality is that evaluate a correct value for all wait times for each track it is not so simple like it can seem. Fast cars on a slow track have a weight on the calculation that is different from the one they have on a fast track. This is why I would prefer drivers on a fixed car for the entire championship and tracks mixed between fast and slow in equal parts so each car type can win. Otherwise you have to put hands on cars choices, handicaps and so on to level the field and more...for a driver to be specialized on a particular car is not a bad thing and last but not least, in the reality teams have had a particular car not all cars.

P.S.: what about reset on site in the pitbox, did you know anything from Stefan ?

[Doni Yourth]

Hearty congratulations to Hristo for a fine victory aboard the Mirage in this, the first round of the S23 GT Championship Series.  An admirable run by Tim to score an oh-so-close P2 in the little Porker.  And a typical standout job by Juha to bring the speed-challenged GT40 home on the podium.  Great job, gys.

A somewhat disappointing P7 pour moi as P5 was within my grasp late in the race til I bungled Abbey by vaulting the kerb, spun wildly and dropped about 15 seconds by the time I got the GT40 mobile again.  Bugger!  Those kerbs are so deadly.  Three spins during the race thanks to them.  SHE was not amused.

Actually, I was contemplating easing up to let team leader, Clive, scamper thru for P5 but the gaffe set me down behind Phil and I couldn't match his pace in the Mirage.  Well done, Phil.  And yes, Team Green on the point!  Take a bow. 

Looking forward to Brands!

[EvilClive]

I've watched out your replay file for this event and if may I say something about, also this time it seemed that wait times at pitbox were a forced move. Maybe it could be better to have 2 or 3 or 4 stop&go instead of only one of 40 or more secs that is way too much hard to manage because each time there is a so long pitstop all the cards are mixed again in a way it is difficult to understand without an help like pribluda that shows who is in front or behind you and most of all what is your actual position. In other words it is difficult to have an idea of where you are and where are your direct opponents, that could be far away but with a long pitstop to perform or near you but with no pitstop to perform. I should say anyway that the race has been very fought but because of the mistakes made by almost all drivers. The reality is that evaluate a correct value for all wait times for each track it is not so simple like it can seem. Fast cars on a slow track have a weight on the calculation that is different from the one they have on a fast track. This is why I would prefer drivers on a fixed car for the entire championship and tracks mixed between fast and slow in equal parts so each car type can win. Otherwise you have to put hands on cars choices, handicaps and so on to level the field and more...for a driver to be specialized on a particular car is not a bad thing and last but not least, in the reality teams have had a particular car not all cars.

P.S.: what about reset on site in the pitbox, did you know anything from Stefan ?

Thanks for your thoughts Sergio.

I have actually been working on a solution for the long pitstops because of the issues with the GPL disco after 30 secs stationary. It seems that quite a few drivers have had a problem with disco's in the pits and I have to admit that it is not satisfactory to get booted out without warning in the middle of your race.!!

So , what if all pitstops would be a maximum of 20 seconds wait in the pits, but the faster cars might need to make 3 stops at somewhere like Spa. Slower cars might need no stop, a single SnG or only a 10 second stop. I can factor in the time lost going into the pits and getting up to speed again for each track, that is not a problem. It might take some of the guesswork out of where you need to park your car in pitlane?

I realise that the pitstops make it more difficult to know exactly where you are in the race..but that is the intention. What you should know is that you have to keep racing at max pace until the final laps when all of the stops have been completed before you can truly know what position you have. So, another improvement I would like to make is to ensure that all stops are completed BEFORE 10 laps to go shows on your pitboard.

[Hristo Itchov]

I had no trouble figuring out where I am. That's what the pitboard info is for, it only takes a lap to see your position and who's in front and behind.

[clouds]

I had no trouble figuring out where I am. That's what the pitboard info is for, it only takes a lap to see your position and who's in front and behind.

RGR that Hristo but...who is in front or behind you can have a stop just before or just after your, or in the same lap...I would not like to need a pocket calculator to figure out where I am. 

To be honest it never happened to me to be kicked out on the pitbox...maybe because I've never tried a so long wait time (max 19 secs). I will make my trials to know if there could be a problem. I've used both rasterizers OGL and D3D and I've parked my car when I had the black pitboard with my name just in front of me and all went fine.

It seems some drivers did not use GPLWait.exe. Why ?

[Cookie]

I waited 54 sec with the pitboard just dissappearing.
GPLWait works perfect for me as I have tried this several times and never had a failure.
I would prefer a single loooong stop more than 3 or more short ones!!!
The possibility of a dangerous situation leaving the pits is minimized by that.

[FullMetalGasket]

It seems some drivers did not use GPLWait.exe. Why ?

I'm too lazy to install it and have a stopwatch 

I'm not sure it's too hard to keep track of where you are throughout the race - generally you know where everyone qualified and can gauge your speed relative to them. For instance as he was in a faster car I knew that at any time Hristo was behind me he'd be gaining while, say Juha, in the GT40 was in a car that was slightly slower than me (Hence his not having to stop).
As a result I was able to guess roughly my position and where I should finish.
Of course I can't be sure so I had to press extra hard - which I did 

As for the race it nearly went perfectly, I qualified slightly better than expected with my biggest concern actually being Juha who was next to me on the grid - I knew I had to not only stay in  front but build as much space as possible to ensure I held position after the pitstop. Looking at the qualifying times I was feeling confident for the race as I had a much shorter stop than the cars ahead and wasn't much slower than many of them.
As it turned out I could pretty much match them when sneaking along in their slipstreams (For instance recording second fastest lap of the race while shadowing Hristo) so as long as I could keep a decent speed up after my stop I felt I should leapfrog them.
Amazingly this is what happened, I nearly managed a win thanks to Hristo's many spins - but he managed to catch me again and once in range the Porsche simply had no defense.....
And then I managed a 360 when I clipped some curbs and lost the slipstream, despite a couple of minor mistakes Hristo was too far ahead for me to latch back on properly again and start annoying him before the end.

Good fun race, I won't be in the Porsche next time and look forward to the random results we get at Brands


IMO the time penalties seem about right looking at where the individual drivers placed - especially given that the ones who arn't quite where you'd expect had incidents/spins drop them down the field. It may not be perfect yet but certainly seems good enough to race to 

[Phil Thornton]

I'm a bit confused by all the discussions about being disco'd in the pit lane.  The results table shows all drivers who started actually finished.  So nobody got disco'd, so what's the problem? 

As far as knowing where I was in the race, yes it is quite a challenge but that is what makes it interesting.  Without pit stops everyone ahead of me would have disappeared into the distance at the start and I would have hopefully left everyone else behind me.  So it would have been very easy to know where I was but it would have made for a very boring processional race.

[EvilClive]

I agree with your assessment Phil.

I was just a little concerned that very few drivers appear to be risking the longer stops.

[clouds]

I nearly managed a win thanks to Hristo's many spins - but he managed to catch me again and once in range the Porsche simply had no defense.....

Yep but...the Porsche is better than it seems. I've seen you from your camera car and, I've noticed you constantly were forcing the corner entry point when you were near and behind Hristo and this had 2 bad effects, the first one you were often long on braking and often you were near the external border of the track. The second one that is a consequence of the first one, you had a bad exiting line and had to press on the throttle later than Hristo. This is why you didn't catch him also if for me, you could do it ! The Porsche is slower than the Mirage on straights but it turns faster, this is why Hristo didn't fly away if he was at max performance and he was not only keeping the control on you.

P.S.: GPLWait.exe doesn't needs to be installed, only unzipped and launched from where it resides or better from a link on the desktop but it needs to be left open and 2 keys have to be set for: 1) Pit IN Warning; 2) Start the stopwatch when in the pitbox. The Pit OUT Warning will be sent by itself when the Wait time has gone.