UKGTL Season 23 HRDC Academy - Brands Hatch - Oct 02

[Wiltshire Tony]

I'm not sure if there is any difference between the Speedwell and the A30 options, but I guess that I will discover that in time.

Pretty sure the only difference is the name.

[phspok]

I enjoyed that overall... I think these cars are not as easy to drive as I might have thought...
Power sliding an A35 out of tight corners is not what I expect  
The car was a bit of "herding cats" as it went where it wanted, and not where I wanted
quite a lot...

I seemed to be braking later, and power sliding a bit earlier into and out of Druids, perhaps a bit of impatience there as well.
I tapped Erling when his relatively early braking fooled me, I tried to push his nose round to keep him straight
but instead his car rolled.. not the intended or expected result. Waited of course and lost places.
Apologies for that. Druids seemed to be the only place to make a pass stick, though I managed
some impolite passes in other places. Hard to pass when the cars are quite evenly matched
but that's all part of the fun.

Had contact with Clive as he said, that was exiting rather than a braking issue, waited again, and lost places
to Tony and Fulvio, managed to get past after a while, and chased Daz, who was slowing for some laps
maybe waiting for me to catch so he could have some fun? maybe just on some cooling laps. But I went grass
tracking and whatever he had in mind didn't happen.

I had some tyre wear, but was always green on all 4, and wear was maybe 1/2 by the end.
Silverstone next for these, which is more open, and hopefully easier to avoid people.

[Daz9]

Funny little car, and well suited to the shorter format of Brands I thought.

As noted by others it is a little happy to play with its own tail, but I quite like that in terms of it suiting the way I drive. What I did find was that whatever suspension setup it has on it did mean that once the thing was a little sideways, it would happily sit there just spinning any drive away, so I bumped up the power side of the diff to 60% which seemed to help actually get out of the corners even if it had slid out a bit.

Had to work to find a lap, and then got a good launch to keep Geoffers off my tail. He then had his moment, leaving Erling leading the chase, but then he disappeared leaving Clive at the head of the charge. Held back some speed as I had no idea what the tires would do, and did a bit of a Prost approach of only going as fast as I needed to, helped by the dramas others were having behind me, all good fun though.

Sorry to hear others had problems.

[Wiltshire Tony]

Just a suggestion to spice up these races a little. How about the podium drivers from the previous round have to make a pitstop & change at least 2 tyres, obviously wouldn't apply at this race.

In principle I like the idea but I do think that a pitstop would be too great a disadvantage.
What if the pods didn't do qualy?

Maybe wait & see what the time difference is between the podium guys & the rest in this race & then make a decision.

Ok, we can discuss after first event and then move forward.

Any further thoughts on this Guy's?

[SpecialKS]

Result

[Wiltshire Tony]

Result

Thanks Kurt 

[phspok]

Top 2 don't qual, like in other series would be ok.
Making people do Pits is not nice. IMHO

[Wiltshire Tony]

Top 2 don't qual, like in other series would be ok.
Making people do Pits is not nice. IMHO

Any other opinions, thoughts etc?

[SpecialKS]

Top 2 don't qual, like in other series would be ok.
Making people do Pits is not nice. IMHO

+1

[fpolicardi]

I agree with Matt, for some reason I can't quote a message 

[phspok]

That would be for a double event, which would work for these maybe?
or previous event top 2 don't qual for the next event.
Just a thought.

[Geoffers]

I'm happy to go with the consensus, I just put out the original suggestion. However I just think that a back of the grid start is far too easy a handicap for the regular podium fillers to overcome with the size of grid we have.

[EvilClive]

My view is similar to Geoff's. Regrettably we do not have large grids in UKGTL ( maybe 8 on a good evening?) so starting at the back is not really a game changer for the resident aliens. Normally I notice that they have ticked off 4 of those positions before T1  

Without wishing to sound like a scratched record.....over at UKGPL we have experimented with all sorts of handicaps and mechanisms to "level the playing field" and reversing the grid generally has little impact on the final result. At the other end of the scale we have a complicated spreadsheet hidden in the moderator's safe place that covers all circuits. It applies a mandatory individually timed pitstop for every driver/car combination based upon previous PB's and chassis performance. In theory, it means that if each driver runs a PB on every lap then all cars will reach the chequered flag at the same time. Of course in practice each driver makes errors and aliens tend to make less errors than mortals so the fast guys usually win. But that result is only achieved in the last lap.
Despite it proving to generate VERY close races it is not popular as there seems to be an aversion to pitstops in any form.

We have also tried multiple SnG's in the pitlane where a handicapped driver ( based upon their previous PB ) has to perform one or more SnG's in the pitlane. Simply stop the car and then drive off again ( there is no pitlane speed limit in GPL, things were dangerous back then   )

We have even moved the effective "starting from pitlane" point to half a lap behind the actual start grid, so that aliens are already half a lap behind at the start.

The simplest handicap is probably a time penalty applied at the end of the race. Each driver is given a handicap time based upon previous results. If the fastest driver A's PB is 3 secs a lap faster than the slowest driver driver B's PB and it is a 10 lap race then driver A will have 30 secs added to his race time after the finish. So, driver B knows that if he can keep the gap to below 30 secs on track he will take the win after the handicap is applied. Driver A also knows that he has to push for the whole race and not simply build a 10 second lead and cruise for 50% of the race.

Some of the above require a lot of input from the organiser(s) and some are straightforward. From where I sit I think that with the added use of the pitlane speed limit in GTL a simple requirement of the 3 podium finishers in Race1 having to do a Drive Through ( with no actual stop) below the pitlane speed limit is going to cost the fast guys at least 20-25 secs? Monday's race was 40 laps? so effectively costing them less than a second a lap?

IMHO any form of handicap should, in theory, bring all cars to the finish line at the same moment, regardless of the race length/cars etc. This would be a phenomenal feat if it worked, because we are dealing with humans and not robots ( although I have my suspicions about one or two members ). In practice it seems that whatever fair system is used, the aliens still win, but they have to work for it for the full race distance and not for 5 quick laps at the start and a relaxed sight seeing tour for the rest of the race? Surely more exciting for the fast guys too?

Maybe the best course is to try a couple of fun races ?? perhaps immediately after the hostilities have finished on a Monday evening and using the positions from those races to apply a handicap.

My 10 pence worth thrown in to the discussion................ stand back and watch for sparks  

[Wiltshire Tony]

Thanks for the feedback Clive, always appreciated.

However, I do have some points to make.

I'm not in favour of anything that involves more admin time. GTL can not do reverse grids, without some degree of faff. We have no spare slots for Fun/test races.

I would propose that the top three drivers in the championship, have to take one drive thru, at any time during the race.

[Geoffers]

Thanks for the feedback Clive, always appreciated.

However, I do have some points to make.

I'm not in favour of anything that involves more admin time. GTL can not do reverse grids, without some degree of faff. We have no spare slots for Fun/test races.

I would propose that the top three drivers in the championship, have to take one drive thru, at any time during the race.

Fine with me.