UKAC Season 18 Skoda 130RS Trophy - Round 5 - Biķernieku - May 11

[Jos Ogos]

The qualy session was spectacular, with the last few minutes seeing the times improved by several drivers reaching levels unseen during the practice sessions. I was almost resigned to repeat the result in Ahvenisto (5th) but managed a great last minute lap, still not enough to beat Tim and Lorenzo but just about to secure 3rd in the grid in front of my teammate Maxime whose setup helped us both to great results overall in qualy and the race. Well done mate!
With no cock ups from Tim this time, P1 was realistically out of reach and the question was who was going to be up battling for P2.... Lorenzo, Maxime, Fabri, Barone had great times in qualy so I was preparing for a tight fight if I could keep the pace during the race.
The start was intense and I managed to secure P2 after an initial scratch with Lorenzo. Maxime's attempts on P3 helped me to open a couple of seconds gap with them that I was trying to keep for the rest of the race. I couldn't get a time on the 1:35's and I could see both Lorenzo and Maxime had managed mids 35's at some point in the first half of the race. That was concerning but this track is tricky and keeping consistency at fast pace with those kinks and Ss is not easy, so my low consistent 36's looked enough to, on average, stay in front without massive challenges... At least until I made the idiotic mistake on the right angle turn. Lost completely the momentum and Lorenzo closed on me and overtook a couple of turns later.
That unleashed a brutal fight with Lorenzo that was massive fun  (23:28 to 27:38 in the video below). I was glad our pace at the time was very similar and no one was opening a gap after getting in front... I was embracing for a massive battle for the last third of the race when, suddenly, Lorenzo went to pits! To pits!? That was a surprise. I don't think you can pit with this car and keep a high level position although Lorenzo managed successfully that strategy at Grindewald but I think that was a quirk of the downhill at that track that killed the race for many other drivers...
In any case, with Lorenzo out of contention and Maxime's 8secs behind after a spin at the left kink, I just needed to keep my tyres out of the red zone and take the 130RS safely back home. Last few laps were pretty boring but the Crank of Brothers team delivered a podium finish that felt great.
Congrats to Tim and Maxime for the podiums and everyone for the great racing.

Video of the race as usual: https://youtu.be/LbNDOCpEPnQ

Enjoy!

Jos

[Jos Ogos]

I'll upload it to Mega as soon as I get back to the racing pc, Barone.
Jos

Does anyone have the replay of the race? I forgot to extend the save time after reinstalling the game...

[Barone]

I'll upload it to Mega as soon as I get back to the racing pc, Barone.
Jos

Thanks Jos!

[Fabri Fibra]

The race started with the premises of an epic battle for the top positions.

Unfortunately I ended up in 9th position during the first laps, due to a "contact" with Kimi. He probably received a phone-call and did not realize that I also existed on the track and accompanied me off the track. I hardly kept control of the car and was hit by the innocent Geoff who was on his way. We broke the cars there a bit. I come back ninth, as I said, and I try to concentrate, because these things are also part of the races.
I did several unclean laps, but I manage to hook up with the previous pilots. I did some overtaking and finished 5th.

Funny in any case, there was no lack of overtaking. A bit of a shame because I finally had a pace to go to the podium.

[Geoffers]

Once again a rubbish race for me & for the third week running I finished last, but in contrast to the last two races where I was reasonably competitive, here I just could not make the car work. Particularly in the second half of the lap, I had a car which turned in well initially but then just washed out into understeer meaning my corner exits were ridiculously slow compared to everyone else.
 I got a good start & gained a couple of places, then went side by side with Mark into the tricky esse bend, I don't think we touched but Mark ended up spinning out, so sorry if I caused that. Kimi passed me at the start of lap 2 & then on the next lap he collided with Fabri. From my view it seemed Kimi barged Fabri off track but looking at the replay it was just a convergence of lines. Anyway Fabri regained the track just in front of me & despite standing on the brakes I could not avoid rear-ending him causing us both to go off. Although not really my fault, I waited for him to rejoin which dropped us to the back of the field with just a recovering Mark behind us. Mark was clearly faster so next lap I let him past & then just trundled around at the back to the finish.

Congrats to Tim, Jos & Sol on the podium.  

[Mark J]

Snap - If you've come from a 10xx series like me the difference is phenomenal. Light sourcing etc is immeasurably better 

Yes, upgrade from my 5-6yr old 1080 card  tell me more about the light sourcing  must say the Finnish forest looked pretty stunning last night 

Well, due to my lack of pc upto tuesday day when i had it rebuilt with the new parts, i had no practise. Actually got my new pc sorted out with 15mins of practise left for my league GT4 hour race 

So qually was tough but kept improving my times throughout, alas so did everyone else. Think it put me 7th? on grid.

Got a clean start but picked the wrong car to follow through turn 3 who slowed down to miss-daisy speed giving cars on my right a clear run! Just as we picked up speed i got clouted from the right and it sent me into a 360 deg spin, also getting hit by innocent Syd.  I wasnt best pleased when i righted myself to see i was now 16 secs behind the leader by the end of the lap. Had that instant sinking feeling that it was probably race over before it had really began, but kept on in hope of someone else having an off to fight with. Within 3laps my prayers were answered and i came barrelling through sector 3 to find two cars going crazy slow and had to check up fast behind them. 
Had a brief fight with Geoff and once past him, he seemed to lose heart and dropped right back considerably  So now set off after Fabri and we enjoyed a great chase for many laps closing on 3 cars ahead. Alas i got a wheel on the gravel at T3 and lost 3 seconds to him which proved painful once we closed on the others as i wasnt close enough to follow him through. I had a great tough fight with Laari on his homesoil, swapping places a few times until i got past and then after a shorter fight, also got past Syd whilst Fabri attacked kimi ahead. Proper duels going on! 
Fabri cleared KImi but as i closed on him, i spotted a fast blue car battling behind me and assumed it was Tim coming to lap us  but it was Lorenzo after his pitstop (why?) i duked with him a while but his fresher boots gave him the edge and we both chased Kimi with 2-3 laps remaining.
Sadly for Kimi he ran wide at T3 and skidded across my path, just missing him by millimetres  so now i finished behind Lorenzo in 7th or 8th.
Felt poor reward as had the race pace for a top 5 but a good result considering my big deficit on lap 1. 

Great combo of track and car 

[Lorenzo Galluzzi]

Horrible race for me yesterday, i was quite happy about qualy time, but after some laps in the race my rear left started to degrade, at some point the car was undriveble, still hanvent figured out how tire pressure works on those cars....

Had some good battles though, expecially with jos, tough but correct.

see you next one!

[IbnSolmyr]

Sorry Lorenzo for my tap at 1/4 of the race, I didn't even really want to try a pass at first, but to me this series needs you to be extremely close to get a chance of overtaking, so that sometimes one can try something just because he wanted not to loose some time...  Thankfully you managed to keep control and I was the only one getting real misfortune, seeing most of the Italian squad passing my slowed car. 

I wasn't concentrated enough appearently yesterday, doing plenty of mistakes here and there... 

[FullMetalGasket]

I had a great tough fight with Laari on his homesoil,

*ahem* Last week *cough*
Biker is in Estonia, so unless Jari has moved he's still in Finland with Kimi


Lorenzo; do you run Pro-tires?
Using that I was on the following for the race - I seem to take about 3-4 laps to get upto temperature and pressure in these cars, but once upto temp I'm fairly consistent running within tenths of a psi of the optimum from then on(I still think this is why I have to fight hard for the early part of the race and can then just walk away a few laps in):

[PRESSURE_LF] 22

[PRESSURE_LR] 26

[PRESSURE_RF] 23

[PRESSURE_RR] 27

I was into the red for tire wear several laps before the end but as I was trying not to put masses of energy through my tires once clear of Jos and the pack I managed to avoid putting too much heat through the Rear Left.

At Grindelwald there were some seriously fast loaded corners - hence the monster tire wear there and my only just reaching the end.
This track was fast but didn't have such prolonged sections of load the most you ever had was 2 corners the same direction after one another so the tires always had a bit of a break providing you weren't sliding

[FullMetalGasket]

Snap - If you've come from a 10xx series like me the difference is phenomenal. Light sourcing etc is immeasurably better 

Yes, upgrade from my 5-6yr old 1080 card  tell me more about the light sourcing  must say the Finnish forest looked pretty stunning last night 

Due to it's age AC doesn't benefit much other than from the added grunt - although as in my case that means I can now turn everything up to 11 in VR as well as when I'm watching replays in pancake-vision.
I may be imagining it but the reflections are looking much more believable now though.

Really I need to get around to firing ACC up to see what changes as that is new enough to properly support ray tracing (I'd like to think).

To really see it at it's best get Red Dead Redemption II next time it's on sale - not only is the game fantastic (as per the original) but it's simply stunning with the 3080.
Occlusion, shadows, accurate light levels at any time of day - and my new favourite - accurately modelled real time rainbows in fog, spray and rain are either not present on the old 1070, or were simply poor shadows of what I get now

[Mark J]

Oops my bad, thought Bikerneiki was in Finland - sounds it 

Yes I need to fire up ACC again to see the full eye candy 
What I found in iRacing was it meant not only could I ramp up all gfx to max but I also got increased fidelity probably by the cpu getting freed up to do more trick physics things. Suddenly lots more small steering inputs, extra feedback and oddly, even more distinct audio 

[Barone]

Got a clean start but picked the wrong car to follow through turn 3 who slowed down to miss-daisy speed giving cars on my right a clear run! Just as we picked up speed i got clouted from the right and it sent me into a 360 deg spin, also getting hit by innocent Syd. 

That car was me. I'm sorry you got stuck in traffic but honestly I had nowhere to go.
I still have to see the replay but as far as I remember me and Fabri started the straight side by side and Fabri had a little bit more speed so he was a bit in front at the turn.
I decided to back off then. Two cars side by side in that corner on lap one was going to be a massacre. Especially because half of the grid was behind us. We would have killed almost everyone.

[Lorenzo Galluzzi]

Sorry Lorenzo for my tap at 1/4 of the race, I didn't even really want to try a pass at first, but to me this series needs you to be extremely close to get a chance of overtaking, so that sometimes one can try something just because he wanted not to loose some time...  Thankfully you managed to keep control and I was the only one getting real misfortune, seeing most of the Italian squad passing my slowed car. 

I wasn't concentrated enough appearently yesterday, doing plenty of mistakes here and there... 

No problem!

[Lorenzo Galluzzi]

I had a great tough fight with Laari on his homesoil,

*ahem* Last week *cough*
Biker is in Estonia, so unless Jari has moved he's still in Finland with Kimi


Lorenzo; do you run Pro-tires?
Using that I was on the following for the race - I seem to take about 3-4 laps to get upto temperature and pressure in these cars, but once upto temp I'm fairly consistent running within tenths of a psi of the optimum from then on(I still think this is why I have to fight hard for the early part of the race and can then just walk away a few laps in):

[PRESSURE_LF] 22

[PRESSURE_LR] 26

[PRESSURE_RF] 23

[PRESSURE_RR] 27

I was into the red for tire wear several laps before the end but as I was trying not to put masses of energy through my tires once clear of Jos and the pack I managed to avoid putting too much heat through the Rear Left.

At Grindelwald there were some seriously fast loaded corners - hence the monster tire wear there and my only just reaching the end.
This track was fast but didn't have such prolonged sections of load the most you ever had was 2 corners the same direction after one another so the tires always had a bit of a break providing you weren't sliding

Hi Tim, my pressures were

lf 22

lr 27

rf 23

rr 27

Probably the +1 in the lr generated the problem during the race

[FullMetalGasket]

That depends on how you drive these - I obviously slide less than normal as sideways is slow in these, but I still trail brake and slide a fair bit while slowing and turning in so generate extra heat and pressure as a result.
More pressure normally leads to lower temps - and lower temps to lower wear, but of course if you are running too much pressure you also end up with lower grip

If you're driving fairly straight or with a setup that's more under-steery then you may have actually had the same 'hot' pressures as me.
I find in these that as the race progresses you have to drive 'slower' - by which I mean just be a litte more gentle on the controls and especially the throttle - as the tire wears.
You'll still do very similar lap times to when they were good if you do this (Apart from mistakes I ran nearly the entire race in the 1M35's once up to pressure, I only dropped into the 36's from lap 22 onwards looking at s-tracker).

There's plenty of grip until the final stages of tire life, but they become much less pliable and more likely to spit you out if you change direction quickly.