UKGPL Season 16 (2008) Novice '65 - East London - Oct 21

[b_1_rd]

Sorry, didn't explain myself very well.  My point was to have only practice and not races in the time leading up to the actual event.  Just a thought.

The password issue was just coincidence.  The practice password was probably the only one we didn't try 

[Ian Stanley]

Failed to turn up for this due to a distinct lack of Broadband - or phone line in general   :'(

Hopefully will be fixed later today.

[EvilClive]

It is a long time since I have experienced a race with a full capacity grid and it certainly adds an extra dimension to proceedings, both in practice( getting a clean lap) and in racing with so much traffic.
The downside is that I suffered on several occasions from stuttering frame rates or latency/warp of some sort, which was a little offputting, but that in no way detracted from the fun.
I particularly enjoyed the debutant Red Arrows/BRM low level display at T1 lap 1, for which I had a grandstand seat...in fact the display took place almost upon the bonnet of my Cooper as they swept across the track. Very thoughtful of you guys to add this extra entertainment.
The race was a case of thrashing my poor Cooper as hard as I dared around the twisty bits and watching in frustration as anything I gained was eaten away on the straight!!! I found myself up to 5th through good fortune and more auditions for the Red Arrows and was looking to score some quite useful points given the chassis handicap.
In the last few laps Alain began to close very quickly and I could see that the last lap was going to be "tres interressant".
Unfortunately neither of us found out how close it would be. As we were about to enter the S/F straight to start the last lap, I was playing it very safe and concentrating on slow in and fast out with no wobbles to try and stay ahead of Alain if I could through T1 and T2, but it seems Alain was "on a mission" and was the later on the brakes than me and my very tired Cooper.
Although he tried to avoid hitting me the resultant contact sent me into an acrobatic display with barrell rolls and cartwheels which has secured a long term contract with the ariel display division. It also finished Alain's race and we both missed out on some very nice points.
But, what the heck, the race was thoroughly enjoyable and the standard of driving and speed from the "novices" is defintely improving.

Grats to the podium and all those who finished. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

[Samb]

That would be me making that display Clive  . After a poor start the red mist descended and I braked far too late for the first corner and clouted an innocent Cooper. I am deeply sorry to whoever it was as it was completely my fault. I dropped back to 15th after the first corner mishap but I fought my way up to 5th by half race distance. Sadly I outbraked myself for the inner loop and hit a hedge which spun me round. I rejoined in 7th and I stayed there until I saw two cars collide in front of me on the penultimate lap. So I inherited a lucky 5th although I expect to get knocked down a few places after my, frankly awful, first corner attempt.

[miner2049er]

Nice write up Clive.

Can I just check the rules on crashes, if you sustain damage can you do a SHIFT-R?

Does this repair damage?

In the part of practise that I was in I crashed and damaged my car. I returned to the pits, changed my fuel level and went back out but the car still seemed to handle as though it was damaged. Does damage like that not get repaired until the race?

I know. I'm being thick again.

[Phil Thornton]

Does this repair damage?

Yes it does AND it gives you a nice full fuel tank and a lovely set of new COLD tyres.  Hence the handing will be affected.

If you do a Shift-R then you need to do a Stop and GO (S&G) see the rules here

[EvilClive]

LOL ............so used to "Pro" rules that it never occurred to me to do a "Shift-R" 

[NickyIckx]

 
Woooooow , unbelievable...my first GPL-league-race win ever. What a feeling… !!!
I am so happy on my lucky win , cant tell…..

Such a thrilling race , started with nice battle on pole. I lost , even so I always found myself back in a lucky situation of clean laps most of the time .
Congratulation on pole position  Lorenzo !!!!!!!

Luck kept at my side even at the start. This time my 1th gear wasn’t too long  and I could managed to pass Lorenzo . kicked my car into turn one first .
As I ( as usual ) forget to save replay , I am not sure which lap it was , Lorenzo overtook me.
Unfortunately he missed the entry to the infield section by tenth of  inches, after that .
From that point on , I could stay ahead.
Both ,Natan and Lorenzo , pushed extreme hard to come close . and it wasn’t easy to stay sort of cool , to be honest . I was really hard working to watch my engine and tyres temps ; told me not to start pushing to hard…
Well , pretty sure I got the backmarkers  all the way up on very comfortable situations to me. That’s why I called it a lucky win at least.


Big hand to Natan and Lorenzo and of course to all taken part !!!!
Special thanks goes to the Novices , all did make an extreme profesional job  I think !!!
And thanks for hosting ! as I already did say : to me this time the servers quality was very good.

Another special thank goes to my friend Norbert , pushing me all the time at free practise, we did quite a lot . very constructive setup work; thx !

Hope some of you could bring a replay to download soon..

See ya al at Spa


Lucky NickyIckx


 

[Clive Loynes]

Grats Nicky, you can download the replay here:
http://www.planet-venom.co.uk/gpl/
and I'm pleased to hear that Gladys was doing her stuff.

Congrats to everyone who made it to the end without hitting someone.  Sadly I'm not in that category.  Having bogged it down on the start, an attempt some laps later to pass John ended in disaster as we touched just at the point of the second kink on the main straight.  Thankfully John was only knocked off course.  I, on the other hand completed the rest of the straight on my head.

Then I threw myself on the grass due to cold tyres.  Add this to the SnG, during which I boldly engaged reverse before attempting to set off and you will understand why the leaders were able to lap me.

Very impressive performance by Lorenzo in the BT7, which I happen to know could not pull the skin off a rice pudding.

Spa is going to be hard work.

[b_1_rd]

I was happy with my race, although I always get a feeling after that I could have done more.  Anyway, qualifying was nothing special and was 14 on the grid.  I was trying to play things a bit safe and use a 'softer' setup that I had been using with reasonable consistency.  However, a last moment of madness hit me and with less than a minute of practice left I decided to switch to a 'harder' setup that I had developed while practicing with Nicky and Norbert in previous days.

I'm pleased I did make that change, I'd got used to it better than I thought and immediately felt at home with it.  After the air display, as Clive so well describes it, at T1 (Potters Pass), I found myself behind my practice buddy, Norbert.  I had a good run out of T1 and was closing to his Ferrari and made a dive up the inside into the sharp right hander at T3 (Cocabana).  It worked, for a change, and I didn't overshoot!

I out-breaked myself into the esses on Lap 5 and overcooked it on Lap 14 again in the esses, ending up losing the rear putting m in the grass on the outside of the 2nd part of the bends.

After that it was a case of settling in and counting the laps off, passing the occasional backmarker, who all did an outstanding job of giving way, thanks guys (stick with it, I was there not long back and still am in 67's).

Geoff and Dave were looming in the background and getting a bit closer each lap but I didn't want to risk anything by pushing.  My place was mine to lose and after negotiating a couple more backmarkers in the dying laps brought her home in 8th, strangely just behind Norbert who I was about to lap.  I know he can go much better here so it was a shame he had a bad run.

Grats to Nicky on his first outright race win, excellent drive.  Applause to the remaining podium.  Also congratulations to Sam who had an outstanding run, and if I'm not mistaken, to head the Novice field home,with an overall 5th in the race (pre-mod, but I still think he was far enough ahead to take the novice win).

Well done all, good racing.

[Burtoner]

If 65s are going to be this much of a turn out now, will there be 2 servers?

[Clive Loynes]

If 65s are going to be this much of a turn out now, will there be 2 servers?

There have been two servers for the last two rounds Burt and I think there would have been last night but for the fact that UKGPL-3 had a hissy fit.

As it turned out, I think there were a couple of places spare.

[Phil Thornton]

If 65s are going to be this much of a turn out now, will there be 2 servers?

We are trying our best to ensure that Burt.  However, it is worth remembering that in UKGPL we rely on good will for servers as we do for everything else.  As you know everything we do in UKGPL is on a volunteer basis.  I believe the UKGTR guys organize things a little differently in that they rent their server which is funded from voluntary contributions (have a look at the dial at the top right of the SRou homepage, it will take you to this thread).  Although I'm pretty sure some of this money also goes into maintaining the SRou forums and domain names (i.e. www.ukgpl.com registration). 

We are lucky in that Bully is letting us use his server for free but there is no doubt that it is costing him money.  I assume Bully has personal reasons for running a server and has been generous enough to let UKGPL use the extra capacity.  In previous seasons, Ian Stanley had a server which he paid for and similarly was generous enough to let us use it.  In all honesty I don't know how 1.UKGPL was funded, it was in place long before I got involved in UKGPL.  All I have is an email contact of the guy who looks after it for us and connects it to his network.  It is getting pretty old now (it is a windows NT machine, Pentium III 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 3dFX Voodoo 3, 10GB partitioned hard disk - yes ten gig) so I don't know how long it will last.

Rest assured we will continue to beg borrow and scrape from anywhere we can.  If I ever win the lottery I promise to set up a server farm so UKGPL and SRou will never need worry about funding servers ever again (unfortunately that's about as likely as me winning the Division 1 Championship!!)

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Although I'm pretty sure some of this money also goes into maintaining the SRou forums and domain names (i.e. www.ukgpl.com registration). 

Actually that all comes directly out of my pocket - SRou/UKGPL are hosted as part of the package I use for DaveGymer.org - but it's less than a tenth of the cost of game server hosting, and I'd have some sort of web hosting account in any case, so only the domain names cost me extra.

[Phil Thornton]

Actually that all comes directly out of my pocket - SRou/UKGPL are hosted as part of the package I use for DaveGymer.org - but it's less than a tenth of the cost of game server hosting, and I'd have some sort of web hosting account in any case, so only the domain names cost me extra.

Dave, your hero member status is richly deserved yet another one of many things you do to keep this whole show in the road.  Thanks again