UKAC Season 2 Blancpain Sprint - Endurance round - Spa - Aug 24

[SRW]

Just bought the DLC in the steam sale.

[Mark J]

Bit disappointing to see nobody on the practise server this eve  :'( was around 9 of us in the earlier races pre race night, fickle lot  
As punishment I went even faster with nobody to distract me

Well done SRW   does that mean I can let Glen use his Ferrari now? Anyone else not got it? I'd really like to see these in the mix at Spa 

[Linus27]

I was on the server tonight along with Mark in his bogey green Lambo 

[spanner]

I dont think everyone has actually posted, and most dont tend to.

Only because you havent installed the skin Linus!

[Stefan aka Postal]

I was on too MJ. Just had to go to soccer practice with my son, then had to fix a flat tire on the bicycle of my other boy. So i was running late. To bad i missed you guys. Hopefully there will be a good grid tonight.
The server said 1 driver was (Spanner) was on, but when i entered i was on my own. Oh well, at least i could improve my lap time a bit.

[Mark J]

paul Mclouds new Z4 skin added to first race post.  

Great z4 time on the praccy server by Kai   punching above its weight at Spa  

stracker.simracing.org.uk:50041/lapstat

[Mark J]

Your playground awaits.....

[Mark J]

Best wear your ice vests and set up fans around you this eve - it's baking at 31 degrees 

[Maikel K.]

I got my swimming shorts on, fan installed and even made sure the fix body option is off on pitconfig.

Hopefully it's gonna be a great race, the Bentley is looking pretty fast on here, as is that z4.
Gonna try to be on as quick as possible for some last minute setup tweaking. 

[picnic]

>>>>> LAP Charts <<<<<

[garyjpaterson]

Thought I'd post my thoughts of my best race of the season (disregarding the first non-points one at Mugello...  )

Started a new setup from scratch today, since the one I've been evolving the rest of the races has become quick unstable and at the last race (paul ricard) I just had no confidence with it. The new one was quick understeery, but I was able to get quite comfortable with it, so I could concentrate on being quick rather than keeping it on the road.

Anyway, I was very happy to get into the 19's in quali, and that had me starting 5th.

Had a decent start; all I wanted to do was get around the first lap making no contact, and I did it! Came out of eau rouge in 4th, and felt for the first lap or so everyone around was being very caution, I had to slow a lot not to hit anyone. Those first laps were great, I was keeping up much more than I thought I would, and when those ahead were battling, I had an AMAZING view, really aweseom to watch from behind.

I didn't want to get involved, as I knew they were much quicker drivers and I didn't want to ruin their race, but both George who was steaming ahead spun, and then Maikel spun to a few laps later. I was in second! I knew it was only a matter of time till they caught up, and they did, but I kept better pace than I was expecting.

George overtook me at the end of the first stint, but I passed him in the pits! I felt a bit bad, as I held him up a fair bit after, I wanted to let him passed without me losing much time, but I seemed to have a lot of speed in a straight line which made it difficult. He got me quite soon, and Maikel did too.

After that it was a straightforward cruise home. Thanks to my new setup I wasn't fighting the car too much, although a concentration laps at La Source in which I span allowed Mark to catch up, though not enough to pass me.

I'd actually love to see a replay if anyone has the file, I bet my spin looked so stupid   I wasn't even pushing hard, I think I just forgot where I was for a moment!

Happy with that, only made one proper mistake, and made no contact.

Also, was anyone taking Eau Rouge/Radillion flat? Near the end of the first sting where I was at my most confident I was pretty close, but couldn't do it keeping within the white lines.

[Mark J]

Well done Gary, nice job

My race just didn't go as I hoped, can only think it was the heat but I was just not on the pace tonight and didn't get near my regular 2.19's during the race.

Qually was great, duking it out with a couple of cars for 3rd to 5th and only pipped into 3rd in the last seconds by Maikel.
Race start wasn't so good, too much wheel spin and I got swamped    I was overly cautious to avoid contact on the first few laps and the nimble cars climbed all over my Bentley barge. I literally dropped down the order one place after another as I couldn't get clean air and my tyres upto temp. Soon I found myself as low as 10th  I was suffering in the heat and sweating ridiculously.
It took me until lap 8 or 9 to begin to get a good rhythm again and I gradually caught and picked off several cars using the Bentleys grunt up the Kemmel after good speed exits  through eau rouge.
I eventually closed on Simon in 5th? and he pitted one lap ahead of me. I steamed around for another lap then pitted myself. When I emerged i was on my own with a 20 sec gap to the front 4 and not much chance of catching but I steamed on with a decent gap to any following cars.
Then Gary had an incident and I had only a 9 sec gap to close but I just couldn't get below 2.20's lap times no matter what I tried.
Ended the race in a disappointing 5th at a circuit I expected to be stronger at.

Loved the early laps and chasing 4 cars ahead. Felt like a proper endurance doing an hour in that heat!

Big congrats to nsfw on the win and Georg and Maikel for the podium 

[Linus27]

Interesting race for me and not so enjoyable as I was hoping. For some reason, my Nissan went horrible. Understeer, oversteer, losing tyre heat, then coming back, fighting it and then not. So weird.

Anyway, qualified 9th and by the end of lap 1 I was up to 6th for some odd reason. Had a nice battle with Mark J in the Bentley and tried to hold him off but just couldn't. Then spent a good few laps chasing Mark and Pete in their Lambo's and I think Simon in the Merc. Not sure what happened to Mark J but he then ended up behind again and as I closed in on Mark's Lambo, Mark J closed in on me so rather than get involved, I pitted after about 8 laps to try and get some clean air and do the undercut. Came out in 11th and worked my way back up to 6th and finally dropped to 7th when Simon passed me near the end.

So a good result but the Nissan was hard work.

[Stefan aka Postal]

First of all congrats to the podium. Some pace guys.

I had a dismal race. Entered the server for qually, my wheel didn't work. After a restart i found myself on the grid with a 99% cpu warning, so the whole race was just trying to get round with the game stuttering now and then. Not good for your race pace! Had no problems on the Hongaroring and the AI race i did last week showed no problems either. I would guess that that would be more of a performance killer then an online race, but apparently not. Really annoying how performance fluctuates so much between tracks. I am hoping v1.8 will give me some performance gains..
Possibly the heat was a problem too as the fan was blowing like crazy. Oh well, gonna set my visual settings to low and see how it is next outing.

Top 3 in the standing looks very close btw!

[Mark J]

Yes top 3 in the series are taking it to the final chequered flag by looks of it whilst I am locked in my own battle for 4th place with my nemesis Shark Simon   only 1pt between us after 8 rounds  

Good close fight for points for 6th to 10th too with Pete (what happened to you mid race last night?) dropping valuable points at Spa.

Standings here:-
https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=560&theme=4

Got to say I was a bit disappointed that only 12 guys made the grid from the 21 names listed in the drivers file. a couple I know about but others just haven't bothered to show up even for a big event like Spa  :'( I doubt any new drivers will join now we are 9 races into a series so bit of a shame it's petered down a bit. Would help if some drivers joined in the forum chat a bit more and created interest otherwise I feel like it's just me banging the drum.
Thankfully most of us had several drivers to race against last night for lots of laps but the lacking numbers showed in the second half of the race when I hardly saw another car.