UKGTL Season 4 GT Classics Cup - Road Atlanta - Dec 13

[Mike Hammer]

Hmm. I'd say the GT350 is among the easiest to drive. Very stable, slow in it's movements, not much oversteering, at least not sudden or difficult to control oversteer. Nice car, if a little weak for it's class. Make sure you put enough steering lock, so that it is flickable (sort of such a heavy beast) and so you can catch any slides you induce. Depends on your steering wheel of course, but I use between 28 and 32 for all RWD TC65 and GTC65 cars with my trusty old Ms Sidewinder.

Mostly 23-24 for TC76. Though I do have one excellent setup by Pero Grozni for the Capri, with steering lock to 32. It's awesome for tracks like Cadwell, where you can just keep it sideways through all the righthanders before the chicane, mucho fun. I'm clueless about setups, but gearing and steering lock are obvious enough for a <censored> like me, and pretty important too.

This should be a good race, it's going to be very very hard getting ahead of the GT350, given it has the edge on the straights, and it's very narrow from T2 to the back straight, very little room to make a pass. Without ever doing a race here, I'm guessing it would have to be done on the inside to T2, possibly T3. After that there's not enough room, and any positions gained just before the back straigth will just be lost on the straight. I'm speaking from the perspective of the Alfa driver, if that was unclear. Of course, the situation is reversed for the GT350 driver, makin a pass on the Alfa anywhere but on the back straight would be very, very challenging, and you have to be close at the start of the back straight.

Interesting to see how the racing turns out.

[Wiltshire Tony]

Too varied a field in GTL equals boring racing.

How so  Elaborate please

[Tibernius]

Too varied a field in GTL equals boring racing.

How so  Elaborate please

I think he means it prevents close racing. 

[Simon Gymer]

Too varied a field in GTL equals boring racing.

How so  Elaborate please

If you just ran "open" classes then there would be many different cars selected and as a result people would have far less "racing" because with the very large differences in car performance it's nigh on impossible to make up the gaps in performance from driver ability alone.

[Alex vV]

Hmm. I'd say the GT350 is among the easiest to drive. Very stable, slow in it's movements, not much oversteering, at least not sudden or difficult to control oversteer.

You think so? Personally I - as a rookie - find the Alfa much easier to drive (I would recommend that to The Tib..), but maybe I should give the GT350 a chance again (offline  )

[Wiltshire Tony]

Too varied a field in GTL equals boring racing.

How so  Elaborate please

If you just ran "open" classes then there would be many different cars selected and as a result people would have far less "racing" because with the very large differences in car performance it's nigh on impossible to make up the gaps in performance from driver ability alone.

Yes, I agree. But your analysis seems to be based on varying vehicle speeds/power/handling but with a constant skill base. I you throw into the mix a random factor called "ability" then surely it all changes. A skilled driver in a slower car will race the novice driver in the faster car? And further to this the race would break down into groups of like for like cars/drivers having theiw own little "battles".
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoy being restricted (tested) by car choice so I am not voicing an opinion to change. Just interested in what your comment actualy meant.

[Simon Gymer]

Yes, I agree. But your analysis seems to be based on varying vehicle speeds/power/handling but with a constant skill base. I you throw into the mix a random factor called "ability" then surely it all changes. A skilled driver in a slower car will race the novice driver in the faster car? And further to this the race would break down into groups of like for like cars/drivers having theiw own little "battles".
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoy being restricted (tested) by car choice so I am not voicing an opinion to change. Just interested in what your comment actualy meant.

Only to a certain extent. As I said, in GTL, a lot of car performance differences are far too much to overcome even accounting for differences in driver ability. In addition faster drivers don't actually pick the slower cars.

[Mr.BMW]

Yes, I agree. But your analysis seems to be based on varying vehicle speeds/power/handling but with a constant skill base. I you throw into the mix a random factor called "ability" then surely it all changes. A skilled driver in a slower car will race the novice driver in the faster car? And further to this the race would break down into groups of like for like cars/drivers having theiw own little "battles".
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoy being restricted (tested) by car choice so I am not voicing an opinion to change. Just interested in what your comment actualy meant.

Only to a certain extent. As I said, in GTL, a lot of car performance differences are far too much to overcome even accounting for differences in driver ability. In addition faster drivers don't actually pick the slower cars.

In addition we can't add driver ballasts in GTL, like in GTR So Simon has to do a good job week after week picking our car selection.

[Wiltshire Tony]

Yes, I agree. But your analysis seems to be based on varying vehicle speeds/power/handling but with a constant skill base. I you throw into the mix a random factor called "ability" then surely it all changes. A skilled driver in a slower car will race the novice driver in the faster car? And further to this the race would break down into groups of like for like cars/drivers having theiw own little "battles".
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoy being restricted (tested) by car choice so I am not voicing an opinion to change. Just interested in what your comment actualy meant.

Only to a certain extent. As I said, in GTL, a lot of car performance differences are far too much to overcome even accounting for differences in driver ability. In addition faster drivers don't actually pick the slower cars.

In addition we can't add driver ballasts in GTL, like in GTR So Simon has to do a good job week after week picking our car selection.

I'll second that

[MortenS]

Yes, I'm impressed by the way you seem to always get the cars to match each other quite evenly.

[Steve Holmes]

If you haven't driven all of the cars in each class you wouldn't be aware of just how much difference in laptimes there is.  For a GP track you're looking at 4 seconds difference at least between slowest/fastest cars in TC65 and GTC76, more like 15 seconds in GTC65.  That dwarfs the difference in driver speed. 

Also, in open races, everyone will be in an Alfa, GT40, Pantera/906 unless choices are restricted.  With restrictions, we get far closer races and much more varied cars in the races - it also takes some of our resident aliens, that are expert in a particular car, out of their comfort zone - of course, they're still far too quick for the rest of us!   

[Mike Hammer]

Quite right, except that it's Panty/Capri for speed. Only place I've seen the 906 be really fast is Spa, everywhere else it falls a bit behind, to 911 level and below on power tracks.

The GT40 is a bit of an oddball as well, far too fast for GTC65, but too slow for TC76. 427 Cobra is overpowered for it's class as well, even if it can't hang with the GT40.

[Simon Gymer]

Yes, I'm impressed by the way you seem to always get the cars to match each other quite evenly.

It takes research, practice and a bit of hocus pocus , but I've had enough experience with GTL to roughly know what cars go well at what types of circuits and what the performance differences between all the cars in all the classes are.

I probably spent a couple of weeks trying out various combos of cars and tracks, researching speeds on GTL Rank or previous races we've had to come up with the Season 4 schedule. Especially with 3rd party addon tracks it can be tricky to assemble meaningful data and in those cases I also resort to setting comparitive times for myself.

If the competitive nature of the car choices and interesting track choices helps to make for more fun for our GTL drivers then that can only be good.

[Blunder]

Simon,

Good dicussion but for the record, I think you do a brilliant job!
Makes for good close racing!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks

Martin

[Wiltshire Tony]

Because I love asking the really stupid questions...........

This is the longer variant of this circuit isn't it?