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Pm WT for series download

Practice: ~19:20 (60 mins)
Qualifying: 20:20 (20 mins) Drivers must not leave qualifying to change car make
Race: 20:40 (27 laps)

Track: Albert Park, Melbourne

Car restrictions: Check your car availability here

Time of Day Setting: 14:00
Start: STANDING
Tyre wear: Normal
Fuel consumption: x2
Pit stops: Required

Server: simracing.org.uk Monday
Password: see above

Notes:
(1) It's best if all drivers can make sure they are connected before the Qualifying session as drivers on track during qualifying will not see cars that join after they are on track until they go back to the garage.
(2) Please make sure you are fully aware of the SimRacing.org.uk Rules.
(3) The AI control should be turned off so that you have control of the car at all times, including pitting. Your player file should therefore read
Autopit="0"
Force Autopit Off="1" // Forces autopit always off
No AI Control="1" // AI never has control over car
If you still finding pitting problematic, experience tells us that its less to do with positioning and more to do with approach speed. A slow approach to pit crew chief has proved most reliable.

Special Notes: None.

A race of two halves this time.

After a rubbish start, I seem to have mislaid any talent I had at getting the car off the line, it took a couple of laps to find a way back past Erling & then only succeeded because the Mercedes is faster than the BMW on the straights. Then spent many laps chasing Daz, some laps I got closer, some laps Daz pulled away, but it was quite fun. However on lap 16 I succumbed to a 3rd cut track & an S/G so served that & then did my routine stop the next lap. This put Erling back into 2nd place & when I got another S/G a couple of laps later any chance of recovering 2nd place went.

The remainder of the race was just tedious & when I thought that we must be nearing the end I found there were still 6 long laps left & I swear those 6 laps took longer than the first 15. On the final lap I knew everyone behind had been lapped & just to make it a bit less boring I cut several corners amassing several more penalties which explains why I was over 4mins behind at the end.

Congrats to Daz & Erling. 

I have to say that with so few drivers these long races can get boring very quickly & if it continues I can see me skipping some of these events.

Struggling to find what car to use where to be honest, so given previous experience over many years at Albert Park I took the Supra, thinking it would be a middle ground on power/weight/handling.....Did a few laps offline, and was confident of running in the 2.07s for quali, 2.08s for the race, and for a while it looked like that would be at the sharp end, right up until Geoffers released the full beans of the Merc! 2.06s were not part of the plan, but I had to respond, so took the fuel out of the car and gave it a go

Got a bit caught out in the lag of the turbo off the line. Bit confused by the sounds of this car, this Supra in the UK was an straight 6, with or without turbo from memory, but the car in game sounds like a 4 pot. Did they use a different motor elsewhere in the world? My Celica GT4 ran the 3SGTE motor so was wondering if that had been installed by mistake! Anyway, it spooled and went just in time to hold Erling off, and it was a case of managing the position so that he could not get me on the brakes anywhere for the first few corners, then trying to ease away. I was very conscious of the tires, front left in particular, and even more so when Geoff then closed down quickly on me once he had got to second, forcing me to up my pace. To be fair, they held up ok, and we did many laps before his pitting began at a good pace without performance falling off really. I had seen some run wides in the mirrors so did suspect a few cuts had happened....

I just added fuel in the pitstop, left the tires on it, which was a good call given Erling would have gone past me and forced me to chase him down. Easier to be away and manage the pace I thought.

Supra was better than I expected, the setup I used was uploaded to the online folder if peeps would like it going forward. Just a case of keeping the turbo spinning to maximise the speed.

Grats to all the finishers.

Details here of the A70 Supra Daz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Supra#Third_generation_(A70;_1986)

Appears that it used both 4cyl & 6cyl engines, although the ones they raced used the 3.0l 6cyl engine in both normally aspirated & turbo forms.

PS: It seems that all the Toyota factory built race MA70 Supras were turboed, only privately prepared ones were normally aspirated.

You are right Daz, I read it wrong, read the 2.0 as a 4cyl. Yeh I think we only had the bigger engine in the UK.

BMW

It's a dilemma for sure.  I really like longer races with pit stops, as it adds the element of pit strategy and the possibility of surprises there.  On the other hand, all-lonely races are usually not much fun.  Not sure what the ideal solution would be.  Hard pressed, I'd prefer to keep long races with pit stops.  If we're not as spread out as yesterday, the pit strategy might still be relevant, and in my own case, even a shorter race would still have been mostly lonely - I just have to drive alone a little longer if we keep the present format, so for me personally it wouldn't help much to shorten them (If all races are to go like the one yesterday).

We did go through a broadly similar problem over at UKGPL, with numbers on grids falling.

One of the strategies that we employed was to reach out to other leagues ( who were experiencing similar low numbers ) and arrange to run some series as a shared project. Currently we race the 1967 series with the Brazilian GPL league and have done quite succesfully for several seasons.
As a result of the shared season is that there has been some drivers joining other series in each other's leagues, benefitting both groups.

The other very successful thing that we did was a poll of UKGPL members to uncover what were the most wanted/popular cars to race, but I think that we have all made our preferences clear on the forum here.
I am not sure if the current pool of drivers in UKGTL is big enough to do a poll as we appear to be down to a hard core of 6-8 drivers?

As for longer or shorter races, I think it matters little because if you become isolated and run 90% of the race alone, it does not matter how many laps there are, it is still lonely. Although personally I simply enjoy the competition regardless of where I am in the field,  we discovered that some people become disillusioned with no hope of a podium against the aliens ( not the fault of the aliens!!) and drop out.
So, we tried some novel formats where we limited the car choice for alien class drivers and even created a handicap system where the fastest cars ( based upon world record times ) were forced to make a longer timed pitstops that would "in theory" mean that ALL cars in the race would cross the finish line together. This assumed that all drivers drove their car at WR pace and that no mistakes were made.....that bit did not happen, but there were often some very exciting final laps with drivers that had selected slower cars which had no penalty pitstops leading and aliens burning vast amounts of rubber to catch them.

Another suggestion would be a handicap system whereby the fastest drivers maybe have to perform extra SnG's  during the race to bring the cars closer together.  It is possible to work out the time lost in an SnG and the driver's race time from previous records to determine
We did have handicap event where each car carried a time penalty and each driver was also handicapped based on previous PB at the circuit. So each driver had a combined time penalty that would be applied at the finishing line.  This meant that you were not only racing other cars but also the clock. Crossing the line first did not guarantee the win, you have to have a big enough time margin too.

Or, we are about to run a a short 3 race series where the cars are in set groups of 3 cars which all have to be used. The aliens cannot choose the groups with the fastest cars, there by giving the gentlemen drivers a fighting chance. We know in practice that alien DNA usually means that the normal order is maintained, but the gaps are much closer.

I guess that what I am saying is that variety and the possibility of tasting champagne whatever your skill, does attract the slower/noobie driver.

I know that Tony takes on the organisation of this league, but maybe if one or two others chipped in there would be the time resource to create alternative formats?