UKGTR Season 10 Lower Endurance - Monza (GP) - Aug 9

[Legzy]

Edit: might take the Panoz, nobody seems to like it.

Panoz is not bad actually TT. I tried it along with a lot of the cars at Imola and the lap times were pretty decent indeed. It's also pretty soft and forgiving, so not one of those skittish type cars.

The Panoz is good, i drove it last season and won a few races in it.

I actually found the Panoz to be the quickest car in the GT2 class, but IIRC, it mullered its tyres & drank fuel like it was going out of fashion.
F430 was nearly as quick, more forgiving when I get it all wrong & is fairly kind to its tyres & fuel tank.
But I'm thinking something needs to happen to the F430 to make it less attractive. Seven F430's last night & they locked out the top four slots. Will there be a mid-season update to fix the balance Dave? Also Team Oldie have some lovely new skins for submission 

[Simon Gymer]

If anything needs to be done to the addon cars like the Ferrari, it's the tyres, because it's waaaaay too easy on it's tyres, the rest of the car is ok compared to other cars.

[Legzy]

Unlucky SBG & all the others that got booted this week, I know how pants that feels 

Qually went surprisingly badly . Managed to screw up every single lap I tried in one sector or another, but still managed 3rd on the grid which I was pleased with.
Quite possibly my best ever drive to date tonight, which is a shame as a few things spoilt the race experience for me:

1) The first 30 mins of the race, it felt like I was in reverse. I did not enjoy the initial darkness one bit, it added only disappointment & frustration to the experience for me. I installed the headlight patch & it did help compared to being with out it, but I found no way to race in those conditions, despite me driving well. For example, MJ mentioned I had a coming together with Gazza at chicane one which also led to MJ taking evasive action down the slip road. Did we? I am totally oblivious to this & if I was at fault, please report me Gazza/Mark. All I could see was blackness, fuzzy kerbs half the time & the inside of my car reflecting in the mirror. I didn't have a clue where other drivers were or what was going on & felt it impossible to fight safely with other drivers so generally just conceded positions. Once minimal light started to appear, I was sorted & able to drive/race normally... I still think I might have got myself up to 3rd/4th, but...


2) Five mins before I pitted, my Mrs declared that her PC wouldn't work & that I had to fix it. I managed to negotiate that it could wait till I pitted, but my pitstop ended up being 3 mins longer then most other peoples stops . So that was the end of my competitive race really. Managed to work my way up from last (21st) to 11th (would have been tenth... more to follow ), but boy is it tough getting back past GT2 cars that have lapped you & your pitman on the radio keeps warning you "it's your 1st blue flag pull over.... It's your 2nd blue flag pull over...", had a couple of nervous moments there trying to get away from them quick enough

3) I ran out of fuel  . Well actually i ended up parking at the end of the pitwall & waited for JonM to come round & win the race, before I trickled over the line. Lost me four more positions  , when will I learn!

I do like 'low level' light driving, I don't want to sound down on it, but GTR2 needs some light from somewhere or it removes the racing side of it (for me anyway).

Well done to all finishers, especially both podiums.

See you all in Germany (if you're not at Road Atlanta on Tuesday)

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Will there be a mid-season update to fix the balance Dave?

Yes. There are some balancing changes and some additional structural changes planned.

[Gazza49er]

For example, MJ mentioned I had a coming together with Gazza at chicane one which also led to MJ taking evasive action down the slip road. Did we? I am totally oblivious to this & if I was at fault, please report me Gazza/Mark.

No coming together, i think he means when you got that chicane a bit wrong which made me slow up and probably made MJ have to go wide.

Have to agree with Legzy on the darkness though. I did offer something different but i found it very difficult to "race" other cars at the start because i just couldnt see what was around me properly.

[H@L9000]

Have to agree with Legzy on the darkness though. I did offer something different but i found it very difficult to "race" other cars at the start because i just couldnt see what was around me properly.

That is part of the extra challenge of night racing. I did find it harder to get used to racing in the wet than in the dark though, I have to say. Its really difficult in cockpit view, but so atmospheric with the light effects in the car when passing under the flood lighting.

There was a moment early in the race when I was side by side with Legzy as we approached the second chicane and when I got there I realised that I could not tell Legzys position, so I slowed allot and went wide to leave room. I should have been more cautious on the approach and claimed the racing line behind Legzy as Simon went straight passed us both. Doh. Sorry Legzy.

The darkness means you have to be more tactical (as I discovered in the above example) which is great for endurance racing IMO.

I think we just all need more night race practise. The practise server could have done with a dark practise 1 or 2 I thought.

Corner cut warning are spot on. The public servers are a joke on this track with people using stupid amounts of curb. Its only when taking avoiding action across the curb that causes the problems. Not much can be done about that I suppose.

[H@L9000]

The Legzy, me and Simon thing looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRTK3Aph0l8

[Mark J]

For example, MJ mentioned I had a coming together with Gazza at chicane one which also led to MJ taking evasive action down the slip road. Did we? I am totally oblivious to this & if I was at fault, please report me Gazza/Mark.

No coming together, i think he means when you got that chicane a bit wrong which made me slow up and probably made MJ have to go wide.

Sorry couldnt post all day because of stupid net restrictions at work . Yeah it may well be that you didnt actually hit each other, all i saw out corner of my eye in a nano second under hard braking was you two almost stationary and a load of tyre smoke  so i immediately went straight on to avoid any contact. Weird that it hit me with an instant S&G as if you use that lane in any other session it doesnt give you a cut warning as long as you drive very slowly through it and dont gain any time.
My beef with the S&Gs here is they just seem a bit too draconian and spoil the natural line through the two latter chicanes. I agree some kind of cut warning should in in place but not as near to the track line as that. Your supposed to be able to have two wheels across the green strips not get a penalty for it. The problem is amplified in the 911's as it often forces such an unnatural jerk of the wheel to avoid that it un-balances the car. The other problem is you can pick up a penalty just avoiding someone else getting a wobble mid corner, as happened to me last night with someones recovering GT3 Beemer and i had to dive left of him, getting a a warning for my troubles or when you enter the chicane un-sighted behind a car or two.

Its strange some of you suffered graphically with the night lighting, it was perfect on my pc. I wasnt even using the headlight mod, just my tasty euro spec amber headlights  I had no probs with visibility just cut marshals 

[spanner]

Well i think the night racing definately made things more interesting, eyes were on stalks trying to pick up my braking points and trying to stay concentrated for so long. It took a while to gradually get up to speed which kinda helped allround i think as people were taking it cautiously.

Was slowly gaining on the battle up ahead early on which was getting interesting with people littering the track! But picked up two cut track warnings in a lap and ultimately had a a stop and go. Thought my race was going to be lonely but this brought me out a sec or so behind MJ so was hoping for some good racing later on but sadly you quit out before i could find out.

With about 15mis to go Blunder appeared a couple of secs infront after his stop and felt i could reel him in but ended up sideways into Lesmo 2,  hit the inside curb and then i lost all drive. came to a standstill but the engine was still idling, temps were ok. I thought it was better to jump out rather than stay there and get collected by someone, but it seems the connector came loose on the steering wheel



Oh well, so close to actually finishing a race around here

[Simon Gymer]

Its strange some of you suffered graphically with the night lighting, it was perfect on my pc. I wasnt even using the headlight mod, just my tasty euro spec amber headlights   I had no probs with visibility just cut marshals  

I wasn't running the headlight mod either. I gave it a go and it made no difference at all as far as I could tell.

With the mirror on, when the game changes from high-res LODs to low-res LODs, this can be slightly different distances depending on what your "level of detail bias" is set to (75% makes it closer and 125% makes it further away), lights shining on other cars start to flicker the textures of the cars getting the headlights projected on them. I don't know whether it happens with the "real" mirrors, but with the virtual mirror on it's horrible. Turning the mirror off stops the problem there and then, but then you can't see anyone coming up behind you.

One of the things they did in rFactor in one the later patches is allow your headlights to project on other cars and the track whilst leaving the other cars to only project on the track surface (for increased FPS).

I was accidentally running HIGH headlights setting, intead of LOW. I think if I had had it where I meant to it wouldn't have been a big problem. I believe MEDIUM and HIGH cause problems because medium projects light on other cars and high projects lights on track-side objects, whereas low merely projects onto the track surface. Medium and High are also FPS killers.

[Simon Gymer]

P.S. One tip for night racing is to turn off lights in your house, so it's dark to go along with your screen. It really helps pick things out more easily.

[ginsters sponsored]

Tried it, but it's undrivable for me. Just couldn't keep the back still. Any sustained braking turned the car, any bump also turned the car. Chicanes made it nasty every time and there are 3 - multiply by 41 laps...    

To be fair, it was good on the straight bits 

I quite like the present match up between 430 and Lambo. For me, the Lambo is marginally faster but trickier which makes it an intriguing battle, just hope my pc stays alive long enough for me to enjoy one. I couldn't get the same performance from the porka mind :'(

[Simon Gymer]

I'm like TT on the Lambo, just can't to grips with it. It's very slow in my hands, but it clearly has a big straight line speed advantage.

Well done to you SBG, cause you're getting the best out of a car that to me feels awful.

This is what it's all about. Some drivers work with some cars and others with others. Different characteristics mean there is overtaking.

[Legzy]

The Legzy, me and Simon thing looked like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRTK3Aph0l8

The thing with that moment in the clip, is that I had zero idea that Simon was there. He's soo lucky that I didn't just take him out 100% accidentally. It's a situation that would never have happened with even minimum ambient lighting (i.e one hour later). For starters, I'd have known exactly where my braking point was, exactly where Hal was & how fast he was traveling & that Simon was cued up... & there is no way would Hal have got along-side/past, let alone Simon jump the two of us.

I lost six positions for the same reasons, to drivers I out qualified & then was faster then when the lighting levels came back up.

Legzy

p.s. I had the lights off in the room & headlights on full with the extra mod.
p.p.s. With regards MJ's stop/go's... Am I right in thinking that once you've had a stop/go, you can't receive any further warnings. It's just another instant stop/go?

[Simon Gymer]

Am I right in thinking that once you've had a stop/go, you can't receive any further warnings. It's just another instant stop/go?

Correct.