UKGTL Season 17 1971 RAC British Saloon Car Cham - Brands Hatch - Jan 16

[Geoffers]

This race turned out to be almost a rerun of the real race back in 1971 which I attended as a 14-year old, support event for the F1 Race of Champions. Back then it was a battle between the big American V8 of Brian Muir & the nimble (then new) RS1600 Escort of John Fitzpatrick, only difference being back then the Escort won.

This time Jeep's Mustang was just good enough to pip the Escort. After a long chase I caught Jeep with a couple of laps to go & nearly got ahead at Bottom Bend but we had a slight disagreement over whose piece of tarmac it was which saw me take to the grass. Couldn't quite get back on terms & finished 0.5s behind.

Congrats to Jeep & Tony in 3rd.  Shame we lost Ziu at the start, may have been a three way battle, although I think Ziu would have been too fast.

Interesting to note that the fastest lap in the real event was 1.43.3!

[BillThomas]

Well our server is now running Early Brands. Hope you can make it Bill. Maybe download all the cars/skins to your 63WSC install?

Download cars and Brands onto a copy of 63WSC and renamed it but although it works it raises other queries!

Will try and update tomorrow.

All my current GTL installations (Season 17. new one, WSC and Season 17 CanAM) have now gone wonky, they all now show Monza GP for our Monday Event.  Using Season 16 installation shows the correct track, Golden Valley but does not have the track installed.

I'm at a total loss as to why my current installations have gone t*tsup. No GTL for me unless anyone has a bright idea.

Also I always save my Car/Track downloads and install into the relevant GTL installation so last night was a relatively simple job except that it was a completely different version of Brands to the one I practiced on offline  with my original Season 17 using the same SROU installer - most peculiar it had no corner marker boards and I was just lost. To make maters worse I tried a new installation  using my Master GTL (basis of all my GTL installations and when it also showed the wrong Monday track I deleted it and lost all my settings.

Finally the icing on the cake was I had trouble joining with drivers on line loading OK until I had a flashing "Evil Clive" name tag and could not join (Huggy had the same problem) - this was the reason I couldn't race in the Christmas Special but with a different name.

With so many issues I'm not clear where to start looking - help.

[Erling G-P]

Brands Hatch and I have never been friends.  Paddock Hill (T1) is one of my most hated curves on any track - always end up spinning here.  Tested all the cars (or so I thought)  Fastest for me was The Boss and I was sorely tempted to use it. With a 1:46.8 as my best time, it looks like I would have been competitive, but the most likely scenario would have been me throwing it all away at that confounded Paddock Hill 

Thus decided early not to 'waste' any of the 'good' cars, and simply get two of my slow-Mini drives out to the way, no tactical BS at all     Then come raceday, and suddenly there's mention of a 5-speed Mini in the forum    Thus had to try this and get a setup ready with not much time to go. Loaded the same Pelle Buchner based setup I had used for the 4-speed variants, only to find the car completely undriveable. Had to start from scratch with the default then, and eventually only changed minor details.  Discovered later that the undriveability was down to the tyre pressure being waaaay to high. Stuck with the default based one though, since the PB one with adjusted tyre pressure didn't make me quicker.  With this Mini. I was over 3 secs quicker than in the best 4-speed variant, so maybe not so much a throwaway option as I had thought.

Qual wasn't the best, as I was a bit off my pb. Start went quite ok - first time I haven't bogged down when starting in a Mini, so lost 'only' one place, to an Escort. Later on L1, Huggy squeezed past.  Bad news, as his car was warping all over the place, contributing to me hitting him at Sheene   Sorry about that.  Thankfully he didn't spin. Lost momentum myself, and a place to Clive, which he handed back at Paddock next lap, just before his disco.

Huggy would stretch the gap on the straights, while I reeled it back in through the curves, still being worried about his warping when I got close.  Had Bob looming in my mirror, so couldn't afford to back off too much.  Eventually Huggy solved my dilemma by slowly moving away.  At the same time, I slipped away from Bob.  Late in the race, I got close to Roger's Escort, but he of course had the edge on the straights, so little I could do unless he made a mistake in a corner.

Grats to the podium and commiserations to Ziu for his mishap.

Huggy: Racking my brain as to what may be the cause of your problems and the warping (visible in server replay too, if you want to check).  On the server connect page in GTL, there's a 'Data rate' setting. No idea if it might affect things, but possibly worth checking if your's is set correctly.

Cheers,
Erling

[Huggy]

Erling: "later on L1, Huggy squeezed past.  Bad news, as his car was warping all over the place, contributing to me hitting him at Sheene oops  Sorry about that.  Thankfully he didn't spin. Lost momentum myself, and a place to Clive, which he handed back at Paddock next lap, just before his disco."

No problem Erling, I felt something, but couldn't see you in the mirror at that time, wondered where you got to!    Thanks for the tip re rate, will look at all settings. Interesting that Bill had a similar problem to me, i.e. flashing car loading messages. Bill : I found if you kept clicking on the "race" button, you eventually got in, if it happens again, but we could do with a solution.

Edit Just checked, and I had it on ISDN, and as I'm on a fibre broadband connection, I guess that should be cable/dsl ?   Will see how that works.

[Erling G-P]

Erling: "later on L1, Huggy squeezed past.  Bad news, as his car was warping all over the place, contributing to me hitting him at Sheene oops  Sorry about that.  Thankfully he didn't spin. Lost momentum myself, and a place to Clive, which he handed back at Paddock next lap, just before his disco."

No problem Erling, I felt something, but couldn't see you in the mirror at that time, wondered where you got to!    Thanks for the tip re rate, will look at all settings. Interesting that Bill had a similar problem to me, i.e. flashing car loading messages. Bill : I found if you kept clicking on the "race" button, you eventually got in, if it happens again, but we could do with a solution.

Edit Just checked, and I had it on ISDN, and as I'm on a fibre broadband connection, I guess that should be cable/dsl ?   Will see how that works.

Mine's on cable/dsl as well.  Again, have no idea if it makes a difference, but probably can't hurt    Maybe we can try to test it online before next Monday, if there's an evening it's convenient for you.

Cheers,
Erling

[Wiltshire Tony]

With so many issues I'm not clear where to start looking - help.

Not an issue I have come across before Bill. You could spend a load of time trying to find the answer and still be unable to race. I would consider starting over with a fresh install 

[Bob M.]

Bill:
I had issues simular to yours when I first came to race with you guys from GC.  I had a lot of GC /GTC and V8's when I loaded the SROUK cars and had problems on online test's only.  I just pulled the GC Gamedata folder and installed a new clean Gamedata folder and then reloaded it with only SROUK cars.  Worked like a champ!!!   I read your post on Nogrip also, I now have three complete GTL games, one for SROUK cars, one for CAN AM only and one for the Nogrip cars.  It seems that some cars are just not compatable with each other, also some versions of the same track but by different authors are not compatable.  By the way just to let everyone know we two old farts finished a long endurance race,  29 laps at LeMans!!!!  Neither had great finishes but we made in to the end.........

Bob M.

[Erling G-P]

NOTE: Drivers, please check the Car roster and let me know if you see an error please, thank you 

No errors for me as far as I can tell, but puzzled about the 'N/A' for some of the other drivers.  I thought the limitations were only based on class (with free car choice within the class), but it seems we must actually use all cars in a given class.  Is that correct ?

Cheers,
Erling

[SpecialKS]

Results



Unfortunately the chart does not mirror all details like position changes. It shows only the order at the end of a lap. 
I wished that could be modified. 

[55steve55]

I decided early on to go for a Class One Mini, mainly because I've never felt comfortable on this track, and only chose the 68 970 because it had a slightly better power/weight ratio than the others.

My race was quite uneventful though, mainly down to my "safe/get you home" set-up, so I was never going to challenge anyone with my laptimes.

Finishing 10th out of 12 starters was nothing special either, but I was pleased with being awarded class points for coming 3rd/last in my class!

Well done to Jeep and Geoffers for your close finish.

[Wiltshire Tony]

NOTE: Drivers, please check the Car roster and let me know if you see an error please, thank you 

No errors for me as far as I can tell, but puzzled about the 'N/A' for some of the other drivers.  I thought the limitations were only based on class (with free car choice within the class), but it seems we must actually use all cars in a given class.  Is that correct ?

Cheers,
Erling

Yep

[BillThomas]

Well our server is now running Early Brands. Hope you can make it Bill. Maybe download all the cars/skins to your 63WSC install?

Download cars and Brands onto a copy of 63WSC and renamed it but although it works it raises other queries!

Will try and update tomorrow.

All my current GTL installations (Season 17. new one, WSC and Season 17 CanAM) have now gone wonky, they all now show Monza GP for our Monday Event.   Using Season 16 installation shows the correct track, Golden Valley but does not have the track installed.

I'm at a total loss as to why my current installations have gone t*tsup. No GTL for me unless anyone has a bright idea.

Also I always save my Car/Track downloads and install into the relevant GTL installation so last night was a relatively simple job except that it was a completely different version of Brands to the one I practiced on offline  with my original Season 17 using the same SROU installer - most peculiar it had no corner marker boards and I was just lost. To make maters worse I tried a new installation  using my Master GTL (basis of all my GTL installations and when it also showed the wrong Monday track I deleted it and lost all my settings.

Finally the icing on the cake was I had trouble joining with drivers on line loading OK until I had a flashing "Evil Clive" name tag and could not join (Huggy had the same problem) - this was the reason I couldn't race in the Christmas Special but with a different name.

With so many issues I'm not clear where to start looking - help.

Sorted using info from Cap7 on NoGrip 63WSC forum "There is a bug in GTL that if you do not have the correct track installed for the server, it shows a random track that you do have instead, and then tells you, you have the wrong track when you try to join."

Started with Bob's suggestion and installed virgin Gamedata file, then tried to logon but Golden Valley not shown. After I installed the track the lobby had Golden Valley available and I logged on successfully and ran the Alpine successfully.

[Geoffers]

NOTE: Drivers, please check the Car roster and let me know if you see an error please, thank you 

No errors for me as far as I can tell, but puzzled about the 'N/A' for some of the other drivers.  I thought the limitations were only based on class (with free car choice within the class), but it seems we must actually use all cars in a given class.  Is that correct ?

Cheers,
Erling

Yep

Glad you said that Erling, I read it the same as you, that we had 4 drives in each class irrespective of which particular car we used. No problem though Tony, quite glad I swapped cars for race 2 now.

Just one thing, nothing personal against Ziu, but he did actually start both races in the RS1600 & it shows he only used it once. If you decided that because he did not complete a lap, that drive doesn't count, that's fine.

[Wiltshire Tony]

NOTE: Drivers, please check the Car roster and let me know if you see an error please, thank you  

No errors for me as far as I can tell, but puzzled about the 'N/A' for some of the other drivers.  I thought the limitations were only based on class (with free car choice within the class), but it seems we must actually use all cars in a given class.  Is that correct ?

Cheers,
Erling

Yep

Glad you said that Erling, I read it the same as you, that we had 4 drives in each class irrespective of which particular car we used. No problem though Tony, quite glad I swapped cars for race 2 now.

Just one thing, nothing personal against Ziu, but he did actually start both races in the RS1600 & it shows he only used it once. If you decided that because he did not complete a lap, that drive doesn't count, that's fine.

Guy's, sorry but I had no intention of misleading you. When you get involved in setting up a series, which can take weeks of prep, you can lose sight of what information won't be apparent to your potential audience. I assumed that folk would go to the spreadsheet as part of their prep so did not bother making a specific statement about car drive limitations. Obviously this is my bad.
I am now revising future race posts to state that there is a restriction.

Re: Ziu. My judgement is that if a car doesn't make the starting grid it doesn't count. Or if a car reaches the grid but doesn't move that also doesn't count. If a car is on the grid and it moves, that counts. I have not watched a replay but I did assume that one of the first two conditions applied. I can watch a replay tonight.

[Jeep]

Although I do think this series will be a real blast I have to admit I don't have the free time to investigate any form of strategy regarding matching cars to tracks so I'll probably find myself severely outclassed later in the season as my choices become limited. For the opening round I simply put a few laps on everything. The Boss was by far my fastest car and I figured that not many other would make the same choice. A lap in the high 1:45's was managed once, never to be repeated and pushing it into the 1:46's indicated even a short 12 lapper was going to put me in deep doodoo regarding tyres later in the race. Given my lap times in the other cars I was surprised to find my American Iron out qualified by a small British Tin Top. (Although it did have Ziu at the wheel). I never expected to grab pole but did think it would be another of the muscle cars which took it.

Start went well, I figured if I could stay with Ziu until the exit of Surtees he would be easy meat on the run down to Hawthorn's (Exactly what I would do after that was still under discussion). Unfortunately he disappeared at T1 leaving me at the front with Geoffers up my a$$. Even on the opening laps I was conserving tyres and only burying my foot in the carpet on the straights. This must have been quite frustrating for Geoffers who was catching me on every lap until Surtees and then had to watch as I simply accelerated away down Pilgrims drop. This was repeated for around 7 laps or so until the inevitable tyre wear kicked in and he began to get ever closer every time a corner reared it's ugly head I did my best to keep it as clean as I could but once the Boss decided it wants to begin sliding there is nothing you can do except lose momentum and sure enough eventually on around Lap 10 I over cooked it into Druids and he got his nose in front but such is the oomph of the Boss I was back inside him at Graham Hill Bend although I felt nothing we touched forcing Geoffers off onto the grass so I slowed to allow him to recover and the battle began again. I was probably overly cautious for the remaining few laps safe in the knowledge I that as long as I was still in front by Striling there was little he could do as long as I kept all 4 wheels on the tarmac.

So really pleased to have won this one and not wasted one of my bigboy rides. Congrats to Geoffers for a very hard fought race, I was never able to relax at all knowing you were sitting there waiting for a mistake. Congrats to Tony as well, I have no clue in the Escort FVA as I discovered during race 2.

Thanks all, it was a pleasure as always, and thanks to those who were lapped, you made it very easy on quite a demanding track.

TTFN
John.