UKGPL Season 36 (2020) 1955 GP - Oakes Field - Mar 8

[Clive Loynes]

The only problem that I had with this circuit is that Evil is too fast for me.   

I had a rock solid 60fps all the way through.

[EvilClive]

Grats to all finishers and to Clive Loynes, for keeping the pressure on for the whole race, and to Doni for getting great points for Blue Moose 

Well, I had several major issues with frame rate drop. When the instances occurred they could last anything between 5 secs to half a lap and the FPS ( when I was able to glance at the data) was as low as 25fps!! I found it very difficult to control the car at speed with such a change in the quality of the graphics. During qually I even dialled back the graphics options in an attempt to mitigate the problems, but it did not appear to make any difference. As I have quite a high end graphics card, I sort of doubt that it was an issue with my rig, especially as it did not matter how many cars were "in view"??. I am not a tekkie so I can't offer any more insight into what was happening. 

As I could not remember this track, ( old age??)despite being sure that I had raced there before,  so an offline practice session was required to refresh my memory.
I did like the circuit which I found quite easy for the 55's, because the straights between the corners were long enough to allow the brakes to cool between applications. Initially I tried my usual Connaught, but my best was only 2:51 on race fuel and I felt that it just did not have the top speed on all those straights, so I gave the 250F a try just to see if it was quicker, ( not wanting to burn any tokens for a Merc or Lancia ) so that seemed the best option. Immediately I clipped around 2 secs off my lap times. Hmmm what about the Gordini?? But I struggled to get that below 2:53 and I found that I was overworking the brakes to get those sort of times.

So, I opted for the Maserati and joined the server for the race, not really knowing how quick I would need to be. I knew that there were a few drivers who would be fighting at the front, especially Clive Loynes!!  . So far in the 55's, I have been able to find just enough speed to steal pole positions from him. But, I have no doubt that if he was ahead of me at the start life would get very very difficult as we are very similar on pace.
Once again the times on the front row of the grid were extremely close and Clive L had selected the same car, so the race looked like a real battle. TBH I was not sure if the slipstream would give a following car a big advantage like it does at Spa, but I was equally sure that I did not want to give anyone that help!! So it was important to get a good first lap and hope that the graphic problems did not screw up my driving.
It was not easy to get away from Clive and he stayed very close for the first laps ( he has got wise to my banzai lap technique LOL) and I could not relax.
I just kept pushing and very, very slowly the gap stretched by maybe 10mtrs per lap?. That was the pattern for the whole race as I was able to slowly extend the gap, except for one very bad frame rate drop where I ran 2 wheels into the undergrowth and lost around 2 secs towards the end of the race.
One mistake and Clive would have been right there and possibly ahead and mistakes in these cars are all too easy.

[Clive Loynes]

Hearty congratulations to Evil on a superb drive.  As he says, I put everything into my opening laps in an attempt to keep hold of him but in the end I went a bit deep at Esso Corner.  That broke the tow and I was doomed unless he made a mistake.  But he didn't, although he did get my hopes up at one point by running off the circuit coming out of Carlton Corner.

My granddading duties kept me away from the server until gone 9:00 and then I must have had at least six attempts to spell "bananas"!  I had intended to try an all out "qually" lap but my head wasn't in the right place and so in the end I just tried for a clean race lap on low fuel and then did some frantic sums to calculate race fuel.

I took a wild guess at a 1st gear ratio, to make a decent start, but I think that I went a tad low.

Evil managed to edge away from me and there was naff all that I could do about it.  It was a chin on the tank and bum in the air approach and there were at least two places on each lap where the brakes were completely spent!

I think that I at least kept him honest and congratulations to Doni on a good 3rd place.

See you next time.

[Clive Loynes]

This is interesting:
http://www.downloads.izikastom.info/articles/REG-35-5.pdf

[EvilClive]

The Nassau article is a great find Clive. Although it does make it sound like "a jolly good week for the rich and famous to have some awfully wild fun, with much champagne darling"   much in the style of the old Raymond Baxter commentaries, before Murray Walker. But then I suppose that Motor Racing ws a sport for the wealthy back in the early 50's??
The other interesting point was how professionalism was moving in during the 60's, which resulted in Nassau and many other good tracks losing support. Goodwood is an obvious parallel, but it has found a way back with the Revival and it's club racing along with a few other classic circuits. I can ( just) recall that Jim Clark drove at Castle Combe back in the 60's along with other big names....I doubt that we will see Lewis Hamilton and his mates there anytime soon??
Maybe we should hold the UKGPL annual get together in the Bahamas this year...anyone interested??? I suspect that Oulton Park might be more likely, unless we find some generous sponsorship lol.
Back to the race momentarily....
My gardening excursion, exiting the track at Carlton Corner, was a sharp reminder of how close to the limit I was running. I think on the previous lap I had set my FL and I was sucked into hunting for the sub 2:48 lap that prib was promising was easily available. ( Mental note: never trust Pribluda, it is a tool of the devil and will tempt you into terrible mistakes!!). If I had gone a fraction wider and got all 4 wheels off the tarmac things might have ended differently    
Once I regained the track and control of the car I gave myself a stiff talking to and eased off for the last few laps  

[tagomago]

In my case the fps problem was all over the track going down somewhere to 26 ... only two lines of the circuit gave me full 60 fps ... the luck is that I had no hooks, even rolling with cars around ... with the hooks it is impossible to drive in a race with others ... but since the few fps were constant, you could drive ... so I considered running to finish and I had a very nice race with Paul Villiers ... we shot with a similar rhythm in the tail ... thanks Paul ...

Grats Evil, Clive, Doni ...

and thank you all for racing ...

[Cookie]

FPS drops solution:

I found the troublemaker! W7

I had the transparency in the desktop designs disabled!
Enabling it and an "aero design" activated made the job.
Now I can do Nassau with 19 AI's with CA66 on solid 60fps

AND

try this Horizon file in this http://srmz.net/index.php?showtopic=11166&#entry115677

[Phil Thornton]

I've loaded the chassis the drivers used into the token calculator spreadsheet.  For the next race the available tokens will be as declared in the table below (the table will also appear in the next race announcement).  The calculated values are automated but selecting the cars is a manual process so please check your tokens to make sure I haven't made a silly error. There was no token overspend for this round so no one is disqualified.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	12	Senior
Clive Loynes	21	Senior
Doni Yourth	12	Senior
Dulima	25	Senior
EvilClive	13	Senior
fpolicardi	18	Senior
GregT	28	Senior
JonnyO	40	Senior
Ziu Bacubacu	10	Senior
5117sebas	20	Junior
Durval Becho	20	Junior
enrique farina	38	Junior
francesco	16	Junior
Gareth	20	Junior
luiz covisi	25	Junior
PaulV	8	Junior
Phil Thornton	25	Junior
Ricardo Valim da Silva	20	Junior
tagomago	25	Junior

[fpolicardi]

Enrique apologize taken, sometime shit happens 
I had 36 fps at start, but later all came back to normal fps.
Usually I watch replay after the race to learn from my errors, not enough it seems  , but this time I enjoyed watching Clive drifting at any turn 

[Enrique Farina]

no problem buddy, i'm a very soft guy, :-) its a game, and some thinks happen, ( internet is not perfect )
  cheers

[Phil Thornton]

Moderation published.

Given that I was involved in one of these incidents, the ruling was checked by the other moderators. In the interests of transparency and for the benefit of the new members, the guidelines we used to arrive at the conclusion we did are on the web site and are summarised below.

The guidelines on overtaking are here. Overlap is key to deciding who, if anyone was at fault.  The Etiquette page has a link to the GPLAC Recommended Driver Behaviour which has a good description of overlap under the section describing Corner Rights.  What counts as a percentage overlap is shown in the overhead screenshots here. Overhead camera angles are available here. The lack of effective brakes in the 55GP cars makes overtaking in the braking zone more difficult than it is with the other mods. Once committed it is almost impossible to back out, but this isn't a reason for changing the rules. We just have to be a bit more careful in these cars. On this occasion, neither driver did anything wrong. Phil was lucky, Enrique wasn't.

The guidelines for re-joining are here. In the heat of the moment most drivers will try to re-join as soon as possible. But it is always worth pausing for a second to collect your thoughts.