UKGTL Season 21 VW Scirocco Cup - Zolder - Feb 22

[Erling G-P]

Very hard and intense race from start to finish.

Going online and seeing the posted laptimes, I briefly held lofty delusions about possibly being contender for pole.  Bah#1; as usual Ziu was sandbagging, and did a laptime in qual I could not hope to match, despite a new pb. Well at least I was 2nd on the grid.  Bah#2; in the dying moments, both Geoffers & Daz felt the need for delivering a reality check, posting quicker times.

Relatively bad start went to worse at T1, where I got trapped by a wayward Geoffers. Couldn't avoid hitting both him & the barrier, fearing for my headlights, but luckily they survived.  Down to 7th though. Arrived at the back chicane ahead of Matt, but had to take avoidance for an early braking Clive. Went over the grass, earning a warning, despite losing a position to Matt.  He got past Clive, but then went off in spectacular fashion next lap. Daz & Ziu going off gained me two places.  Battled Clive for what felt like an eternity without finding a way past, but in reality it was only a couple of laps, before he most graciously let me past.

Spent the next many laps hunting down Dan, in a sort of deja-vu from last week, albeit in a very different setting. Dicing with Dan after catching up seemed to lose me time, as the gap behind was shrinking.  Dan too waved me past eventually - very kind of you guys and definitely not callled for.  Despite now having a free run, the gap behind continued dropping.  It was my now regular nemesis Daz, chasing me down.  In one lap, I knocked 0.6 secs off my fastest lap, but still lost 0.1 sec.  How could I hope to keep up that performance..  When he got closer, Roger losing it in front of me momentarily broke my rhythm and basically sealed it.  Was determined not to be a pushover, but next lap Daz just drove past as if I wasn't even there.. 

Tried to keep some pressure on him, but had no answer to his pace, especially not on badly worn tyres, and thus had to settle for 3rd.

Grats to Dimitar & Daz, commiserations to everyone meeting misfortune.

[roguk]

A strange race for me, had lots of stutter, my fps is normally high but last night in some places it was very low making control poor and led to offs which should not have happened  also when Erling came to lap me i slowed down and moved to the left grass verge only to find the car shot across to the right verge Sorry Erling. Prob should have discoed earlier in race.

Grats to Dimitar on win

Grats to Podium, Daz and Erling

[Erling G-P]

A strange race for me, had lots of stutter, my fps is normally high but last night in some places it was very low making control poor and led to offs which should not have happened  also when Erling came to lap me i slowed down and moved to the left grass verge only to find the car shot across to the right verge Sorry Erling. Prob should have discoed earlier in race.

Grats to Dimitar on win

Grats to Podium, Daz and Erling

No worries Roger, Mr Daz would have gotten me anyway I'm sure 

With regards to graphics, I had to change my settings for this one, as the headlights gave a massive drop to the frame rate.  Normally I run with Supersampling as AA method, as that's what looks best.  It removes all line shimmer, but with cost of a massive drop in frame rate.  However, in daylight it normally is above 100 fps anyway, so fast enough - no need for the 300-400 fps it can reach without it.  On nighttime Zolder however, it dropped to 25 fps in places, so had to deselect it to get a smooth experience.   AA method is selected in the control panel for the graphics drivers.

[EvilClive]

Grats to those who were on the podium and to all of you who have a handle on how to drive these cars.

Sorry to see Andy get disco'd from the grid. I was a couple of rows back and saw him arrive and depart the grid. I find it interesting that several people have experienced graphic/connection glitches recently. Reassuring to know that I am not alone, but I wonder if has any relation to a recent Win10 update which was around the time my problems started?? There appears to have been a small Nvidia driver change within that update???

This Scirroco season has been a nightmare for me, with a string of DNF's from races where I was so far behind it would be tomorrow if I reached the flag.

I can make the excuse that I am getting to grips with my H shifter, and that has undoubtedly had an impact on my pace and mistake quotient across all my simracing. Slowly, I am reducing the number of missed/incorrect gearchanges and now mistakes usually happen when I am in close combat and at the limits of my ability. This is not ideal and has resulted in a few embarrassing incidents and apologies to other drivers.

I realised a few weeks ago that I was still expecting to be as quick ( or slow??) as I was pre H shift. This was clearly totally unrealistic and I should have used my head and not my right foot. A change of focus was needed, so I have adopted a "get to the flag" strategy. That was why I waved Erling and others past when they were clearly quicker than I was. Battling them was likely to end my race prematurely.

 Finally completing a race in these cars was a triumph for me and the bonus was that I was actually getting slightly quicker as the race progressed, despite worn tyres. So maybe I was getting a handle on the car and the shifter. As usual with any new car series, I finally get some perspective just as we run out of races  .
 

[Wiltshire Tony]

Result



What happened to Dan (DQ) ?

Thanks for the results Kurt 

I think Dan said that he was DQ'd as he failed to do a stop/go for cuts.

[Geoffers]

I find it interesting that several people have experienced graphic/connection glitches recently. Reassuring to know that I am not alone, but I wonder if has any relation to a recent Win10 update which was around the time my problems started?? There appears to have been a small Nvidia driver change within that update???
 

My problems at Goodwood with the game freezing & my PC restarting was the same day as I had a Win10 update, so I am pretty sure it was related, however since then it has not recurred so fingers crossed it was just a glitch as the update was configuring itself. I do though often get momentary freezes of the game & this has been happening for some time, not really too much of an issue as it usually happens shortly after I have started the game, both online & offline. I am sure it is GTL related as it happens on all my installs of GTL but does not happen at all in RaceRoom or Assetto Corsa, but I have no idea what is causing it.

[Wiltshire Tony]

One thing I notice occasionally offline (and it was the case here at Zolder 75)... when I go to the grid I am not immediately in the car. The screen does a slow walk back from the start line to my car before I can get in. I don't know if it does that online (it didn't seem to do so here) and if so then I need to join the grid early to walk to the car before the countdown starts.

The grid walkthrough should happen when offline (at some tracks) but not when racing online.

[Daz9]

Totally forgot it was going to be a night race and had done no practise in those conditions.....

But quali should have been fine, daylight etc....nope, was getting very annoyed with myself at my inability to nail the lap, had gone quite well offline so knew there was some pace there as Ziu had shown. Eventually as a total last gasp effort (a favourite tactic normally anyway for me but this time was just because I was being crap) I managed to pull a better lap together to move towards the front. I had blown laps that were a good deal quicker though, much like Dimitar to be fair after watching his video, so knew there was good race pace if I could avoid being a plonker.

Decent start, then Geoffers had a small moment into turn 1 with some contact for us, but remarkably my car didn't go sideways or fly off the road. Held 2nd place, and chased after Ziu, catching and passing him early on lap 2, but he then surprised me into the hairpin later in the lap with some late braking, small contact but all good. We go into turn 1 of lap 3 quite close, I felt I had braked in the normal spot, but these cars didn't seem to light up the brake lights very well for me and I am not sure I saw any from Ziu at all. So his car reversed towards me at a high rate, his brakes are better than mine for sure. I tried to miss him down the inside, but just ended up hitting him at an angle instead of straight in the back. So we both fly off the road, gifting Dimitar the lead, and I thought at the time it would be his race to lose now. I have hit Ziu, so have to hold my hand up for that, apologies Ziu as it has taken you out of the race which I think you would have been very strong in.

Allowed him past when we rejoined, but he had a little moment a couple of laps later that let me through. I then chased through the pack, keeping my eye on the gap to Dimitar. It had started at around 23 seconds, but was coming down a little. Each place to take on track cost a little bit of laptime, even Erling despite his statement to the contrary  . The gap had started to close more rapidly as the race went on, but whilst I had more pace, I didn't have enough laps left, and Dimitar took a well deserved victory. I was happy to have made him work for it a little though .

[roguk]

Thanks for reply and info Erling.