UKGTL Stop Gap Race - 8th June

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Seems there is a strangeness there  The raw results shows Ruskus and Pero both did 21 laps. As far as I can see I've imported the right files but I'm sure Dave will be along soon to tell me where I messed uo  Sorry peeps, bear with us

I'm pretty sure you must've put the right files in the wrong holes - Qual in Race and vice versa or something. I just deleted the result entries and reimported and it seems fine now.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

So basically the problem has moved back 2 corners rather than on the start/finish straight itself. If that happened with 9 cars only then it probably hasn't helped. Did everyone really stop / go very slow or was it lag/warp, although I guess it doesn't actually matter which as you get the same effect.

If Pero had a warp or lag event which caused him to stop then it's certainly no worse than the 'normal' procedure and without the mystery event would probably have been better.

[picnic]

I'm pretty sure you must've put the right files in the wrong holes - Qual in Race and vice versa or something. I just deleted the result entries and reimported and it seems fine now.

Did wonder if I had managed that but the laps didn't add up. People hadn't registered enough laps in qual for what was reported in race

Thanks for sorting it

[Simon Gymer]

I don't really see what's wrong with the original pace lap procedure. If a steady pace is kept through the entire lap there is none of this slow down at the end of lap where people run into each other. We don't need the leader to slow down to bunch up the pack, it's this bunching that causes accidents. We need the leader to maintain a steady pace right to the line.

Making people drive at 15mph means they will have slowed from 75mph to 15mph at somepoint. This is the problem. This sort of speed reduction will always cause people to smack into each other.

[Jeffrey]

I don't really see what's wrong with the original pace lap procedure. If a steady pace is kept through the entire lap there is none of this slow down at the end of lap where people run into each other. We don't need the leader to slow down to bunch up the pack, it's this bunching that causes accidents. We need the leader to maintain a steady pace right to the line.

Making people drive at 15mph means they will have slowed from 75mph to 15mph at somepoint. This is the problem. This sort of speed reduction will always cause people to smack into each other.

The reason why there are always gaps is because people brake and accelarate all the time, instead of going one speed. There is also the argument that they don't want to drive close behind somebody because then they can rear end them. Well, just drive close behind him, but not directly behind him, problem solved.
Pace lap should just be normal, but letting go off the throttle in the last corner, coming to a steady slow pace. If people read the rules, they should be aware of it, and expect it coming.
Come to think of it, these rolling starts cause more problems than st....

[Pero_Grozni]

As you guys suspected I had big lag on the first lap and coming onto the home straight I got huge lag and all of a sudden Zacari was slightly in front of me. I wasnt sure what was going on so I passed and proceded driving at ~15mph maybe less. All I saw was that Zacari was more back than usual at the start - I do belive that he could have easily been more close  for starting.
As for this way of starting - it could work I think. I tried to do the same in Imola - I slowed right down at the start to get the people to drive more close together.
But there is a problem with this - once you slow down you have to maintain that speed till the start otherwise the gaps will rise as the speed grows (driver reactions  - the driver reacts on the drive in front and going down the field that reaction time is added together so the last guy acceleartes many seconds after the front guy accelerated). Doing the start at 10 mph is basicly very little different to a standing start - even more, on the standing start there are no big gaps.
What we could do is to do a rolling start start with normal speeds, than slow in the middle of the lap to around 20...30 mph so that the gaps close up and than slowly slowly get up to 40~50mph. After the slower phase each driver has to keep close to the driver in front and is not allowed to brake accelerate or swerve. The driver is only responsible to keep within 5~20 meters to the car in front. The leader has to keep a constant speed than and is responcible to keep the speeds so that every corner can be taken at that constant speed to the startline. (I done many outlaps in the lead by now so I kinda got the feeling of what the leader should do  )


Race was good, but tires didnt last long as I made some stupid mistakes (concentration droped when I got some lead on Zacari) and I than pushed more to get some lead back. The rear tires were going at around lap 10 and when Jeff came behind me and applyed pressure I was in big trouble. When I got passed I tried and follow him and almost managed to get close to him again, but than I lost the brakes as well and almost took both of us out. Luckily Jeff saw it coming and made room. Of course I than let him pass me back. After that error I was driving like on ice - fronts still ok-ish, but the rears were badly burned. Last two laps I was constantly sideways.

In qualy I took a big gamble with the Vette - I didnt drive it at all before last night and the laps in practise were my running in laps. Luckily I was able to get it do do what I wanted it to do and got a very very good qualy time.

[Zacari]

As you guys suspected I had big lag on the first lap and coming onto the home straight I got huge lag and all of a sudden Zacari was slightly in front of me. I wasnt sure what was going on so I passed and proceded driving at ~15mph maybe less. All I saw was that Zacari was more back than usual at the start - I do belive that he could have easily been more close  for starting.

The problem was you basically looked like you'd almost stopped in the middle of the track.  I slowed down expecting you to keep moving but it was your frozen 'lag' car and obviously it didn't move at this point everyone behind be was doing about 2mph and by the time your car had re-appeared you were some way down the road.

If I'd accelerated harshly to catch up the field would've been gappy also, and there was no guarantee that your car wasn't going to do the same thing again so I had to stay further back that I wanted to be.

The rules are fine as they are imo, if people leave big gaps then they need to be given a penalty for doing so.  Also the leader needs to just use common sense and take into account the track and what cars are in the race.  For last nights race with 9 cars there should've been no problem using the normal start procedure rather than doing 20mph from the chicane onwards.  For a GTR endurance race bunching up the field is far more necessary due to the larger mixed field and should be done in a common-sense way.

Of course last night doing 20mph from the chicane was pre-planned but on the night it made no sense to do that

[silver53]

Hi all I lost contact with the controls at the start and ended up driving by telegram. Then the track started jumping about I managed to pit and then things improved a bit. Braking was crap all or nothing.kindest regards gerald

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Something else we didn't do was agree ahead of time which bits of the track were allowed despite the new corner cutting rule. There were two obvious places where almost everyone was, at some stage, using more track than would now be allowed (the right hand exit from the stadium section where you can run super wide, and the final chicane).