UKGTL Season 17 1971 RAC British Saloon Car Cham - Snetterton - Mar 20

[misnoimis]

I drove round Snetterton in the early sixties, probably 1963/64. Strangely I have very vague memories of the track apart from the track seeming very wide in places and a bridge. The GTL version was fun and I quite enjoyed my second race after my reintroduction back into GTL online.
 
The Boss Stang obviously proved to be the fastest car for this track. Although my race was kept interesting I hadn’t done quite enough practice or got the talent to finish better than 6th. I kept my driving tidy realising I could have practiced more and but for one slight error when I lost some time on the sharp right hander may have finished ahead of Steve who was faster but I think made a couple of mistakes. I passed him after one of them but he caught me with about four laps left and passed with about two remaining. He caught me going into twisty bit of track, not wanting to risk a collision I let him though and looked for the cut back but he positioned his car perfectly and after that he began to pull away so I just concentrated on finishing with no mistakes. I thought Jeep was not far behind in the slower Capri but noticed he had fallen well back so something obviously happened to him. Apart from a boring last lap I enjoyed the race. A bit of a contrast to my first race back when I got knocked off early on in the Chaparral in an unlucky sequence of events and developed the wrong mind-set driving a very scruffy race and not enjoying it. I will try to join another Can Am Race and do the Chap more justice next time.

I don’t think I can make next week’s race but hope to be OK for Thruxton.

Grats to winner and podiums. 

[55steve55]

Mixed feelings about this race for me.

Practice laps during the week had been in the low 32's, so a little disappointed not to drop into the 31's under race pressure. However, despite being in the tail end of the Boss group, am quite pleased with my P5 finish and the points that go with it, to add to my class win in the Boss last time around.

I did have an issue with my control buttons ( worker, tools etc!) and twice at the hairpin it failed to turn right. Had these not happened I may well have been close enough to challenge Geoffers for 4th place.

My setup, for a change, made the Boss very predictable in its handling and it was a great feeling to take those right and left-handers before the final straight at virtually full throttle.

Having used the Boss twice now, I need to be very careful where I roll out the Z28 as its straightline speed is obviously way below the Stang.

Misnoimis - I envy you for having driven the track in real life and I envy you for doing it in the 60's, too.

Congrats to Ziu once again, and to Erling for a close second and Bob for filling the podium.

[SpecialKS]

Results

[Wiltshire Tony]

Results

Cheers Kurt 

[Jeep]

I had a very strange race, for some reason was nearly 2 seconds adrift of my PB during qualifying and race so lined up in a very disappointing 7th for the start..

Something has gone wrong with my UKGTL at the moment and I think a complete re install of my UKGTL package might be in order. I had a re occurrence of the screen freezes I encountered at Golden Valley. Not at any particular point on the track and sometimes not for several laps but I always knew one was coming. It doesn't happen with any other GTL (Or GTR2) install such as the Altbierbude one even at places like Targa. Number of cars also has no effect. it's as likely to happen during a private practice session as it is during a race against a full grid, on-line or off-line. My Nvidea settings are common across all GTL installs as are my in game graphics options so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what is causing it. But either way if these were translating into warps I apologise.

Anyway, on to the race.. Start went well. Didn't lose or gain any places off the line and we all settled in line astern around the 1st lap, Tony had a long look down the back straight and I over cooked it into the hairpin allowing him through but he was easy meat at the left hander under the bridge so I had the place back by the end of the lap.
Slowly pulled a small gap but was also losing ground on the Stangs ahead (Oh and Geoffers who appeared to have somwhow shoehorned a Stang lump into his Dagenaham Dustbin and was mixing it with the front runners). I could make up ground from the bridge onwards but was losing ground in the early part of the lap.

Then on Lap 10 Misnoimis had a moment at the hairpin and I was back within a second and then came across a recovering Steve at the bridge and was momenterily up to 6th as we started lap 11 but he cruised past me on the run down to the hairpin. Managed to stay within a few seconds of them both for a good few laps and Steve had a few moments which allowed me briefy past but it was all too easy for him to simply wait for the back straight and take the place back again.

I was on course to finish the race on the lead lap until another screen freeze entering T1 caught me out and I went so far off track I had an arguement with the guy on the entry gate and had to pay an admission fee to get back to the track. So on Lap 19 Ziu and Erling came hurtling down on the back straight so stayed wide to let them through to finish in the end a very distant 7th..

It was about where I expected to finish in the end. I was faster in the Stang but figured most would opt for that choice and I think I can put it to better use as my free choice elsewhere. So to still be competitive it was a choice between the Camaro and the Capri. I reckoned the sweeter handling of the Capri would keep me ahead of the Camaro's over race distance and that was exactly how it went. I had considered Clive's approach as well but figured one of the faster drivers may well have that option covered (And they did).

Thanks guys, a bit lonely at times but exciting for others when Misnoimis and Steve were trying to throw their Stangs at the scenery allowing me to make a nuisance of myself.

Congrats to Ziu, Erling and Bob, Ziu and Erling were glued to each other when they went past me on the final lap, it must have been an epic race for you two.

If anyone has any thoughts on my Micro Freezes I'm all ears.

I don't think it's lack of PC. (Intel i7-4790K @ 4GHZ, 8GB Ram, Nvidea GTX760).

But I have to admit I'm pretty clueless when it comes to knowing what the ideal settings are for my card. Is it worth downloading Nvidea inspector? What settings should I put into it?

Thanks in advance

TTFN
John.

[55steve55]

If anyone has any thoughts on my Micro Freezes I'm all ears.

I had an issue with screen freezing a number of years ago, John. A little different to yours in that it started happening on all programs, not just the one. The screen would freeze for about 2 seconds, then continue as normal, but very annoying. After a few days I noticed they were very regular, in fact, every 60 seconds. The only program I'd recently introduced to the PC was when I had started backing up files with a Western Digital External HDD.

To cut a long story short, on each backup, WD was installing its own WD Smartware onto my PC. I found that if I uninstalled it after each backup, the freezing would stop.

Although I never did find out why they were linked, WD have since come clean with other issues associated with their products and have issued firmware fixes for a variety of problems, including other freezing issues, forced driver disconnect/reconnections and automatic spin-down functionality after 10 minutes of PC use, even if the PC is still being used.

Steve.

[Wiltshire Tony]

Sorry John but having read your description of the fault nothing springs to mind. I have sporadic black screen/ lockups but too few to be considered a fault, just one of those PC things.

[Jeep]

Thanks both. Steve`s comments about the back up drive has jumped out at me. Not Western Digital but I have just installed a Seagate backup drive and that came with Seagate software. I don't actually use it for scheduled backups so no reason to have the "dashboard" software installed.

I think I'll start by getting rid of that. Perhaps I`'ve just been lucky not to have seen anything yet on other GTL installs

TTFN
John

[BillThomas]

that's exactly what happened after some fun laps dicing with Bill, going off onto the grass and over the bank at the first turn about lap 12, getting flustered when some of the quick guys lapped me, and doing it again two laps later, getting stuck on said bank, and deciding enough was enough..... A more tactical choice of car for future races methinks.

Better late than  never! Yes that was good fun dicing with you. I though the best bit was after a few laps it was clear you were going to try and pass at the hairpin so took a middle of the road approach and then when you were committed to going around the long way moved over to inside line to give us both more space. We both out braked ourselves you doing a wall of death impression and me doing a 150/160 deg slide parking neatly up to the apex kerb.  I managed to get away a bit quicker and then saw Kurt doing his flying trick at T1. 

After that I had a lonely drive to the finish, enlivened by trying to keep out of the way of lappers.