UKPnG Season 3 Handicapped - Crystal Palace - Jul 15

[Clive Loynes]

Congrats to the VDA boys on another dominant performance, I think the rest of us need to up our game a bit 

When PnG3 comes out I'm definitely downloading it in Italian!!!!

[pribeiro]

Well guys, before you all been in 3rd place, that was where I was before I went to pits. With a confortable gap for Clive's 4th position, I must add. However, my pit crew seems to be with more attention to the race than to my car and for several times I went back and forward and back and right and left and forward and left and up and down (up and down maybe not...) waiting for a sign from them, nothing!!!! I shut down the engine 5 times for their work adding fuel...nothing! I'm beggining to feel highly annoyed with GTR pit procedures.
I didn't pit when the blue light turned on for pitting, I cancelled the pit request because I wanted to pit in the 30 mnt time. Lap before pitting I requested the stop pressing the key I have for it. Therefore, I did all right, apparently. It's really annoying and frustrating, two races with the same issue with P&G, when I ran GTR2, it always worked fine...on the positive side, I will be in the green group again next race...if I join, the odds now are very low to race again P&G.  

I hope you all had fun.

Cheers

[Clive Loynes]

Well guys, before you all been in 3rd place, that was where I was before I went to pits. With a confortable gap for Clive's 4th position, I must add. However, my pit crew seems to be with more attention to the race than to my car and for several times I went back and forward and back and right and left and forward and left and up and down (up and down maybe not...) waiting for a sign from them, nothing!!!!

Hi Paulo,

Hope to see you at Westfield, or whatever it's called.

I guess that PnG had allocated us the same pit box.  I could see you trying to get some action out of my pit man.  Perhaps if I hadn't signalled that I was coming in then they would have dealt with you first.  Anybody's guess.  I think it is a track issue rather than a PnG issue.

They were on their toes when I returned the following lap.   

Whilst I enjoyed the racing, the pit stop just took the shine off it.  I was more on the pace here than at Charade and should have done better.

I think that Crystal Palace should be binned until the pit issues are sorted.  Several of us had trouble getting out of the pits to qualify and were in great danger of being disqualified if PnG did not like what we were doing.  I noticed one Elite coming out of the pit entrance and making a U-turn onto the track whilst I was qualifying.

[Geoffers]

Talking of pitstops, how do some of you guys do your pitstop so fast? I had everything set up before the race with XD, fuel, no tyre change etc. All I had to do was turn off the ignition & cancel bodywork repairs, all went smoothly (for a change) & yet my pitstop laptime was still some 15s slower than some others!   I guess I need to practice pitting.  

PR & Clive, do you request a pitstop? I just drive in & the pitcrew are there waiting.

[Clive Loynes]

PR & Clive, do you request a pitstop? I just drive in & the pitcrew are there waiting.

I have a sneaky feeling that I don't have to but I do it just to be on the safe side.

In my early days of PnG, ie practice for my first race at Riverside, I did just drive into the pits unannounced and nearly ran over my little man who was legging it across the pit apron to get to my pit box.

[Manteos]

Guys, there are some issues during the pit stop, but til now, I always followed the same procedure:
1) I call the pit, and I'm sure that they are ready only if the pit blue light is ON (you can see it on the bottom left of your screen)
2) To save some time, I use to turn off the engine some meters before to stand in my pit place, that let you to save another 2 seconds
3) The only thing that I've to do when the pit list appear to me is to push Enter, because I've just prepared everything with the XD Motec.
4) Turn on the engine only after the refuel is completely finish, or you won't leave the pit, til the crew will finish. If you accidentally restart your engine before the pit crew has finished to refuel, you have to turn off it again til they will put the fuel amount set on the pit list.
5) Gogogogo

I don't know how Geoffers lost 15 seconds by other drivers, but even Bonni that is a pit newbie, had lost 8 seconds by me during his pit, even if he needed less fuel than me... So the difference is how faster you arrive into the pit, how fastly you turn off your engine and push Enter, and how fast you are to turn it on again and leave the pits at full throttle... exercising caution to the other cars obviously.
The other difference is on the amount of fuel you need to refill, considering that 2.5 litre added = 1 second in GTR2 & P&G

A good training should be that of make some pit stop during the practice sessions on your server, and we can try to see how much time you waste respect of us... but I'm sure that it's only a matter of training, and I'd like to fight an equal with my opponents

Cu

[Clive Loynes]

Are you comparing like with like Geoffers?

My final stop was longer than intended because I had forgotten that I had played safe and set it up to change my front tyres.  But I had also set it up to fill the tank and that wasn't necessary.  I finished with eight laps of fuel on board.

The thing is that the Elite and Arbarth brobably only needed a teaspoonful of fuel to finish the race if they ran 'til nearly empty.

I usually spend all my time messing with the setup and then the pit strategy is a last minute guess. 

Also, the timed race makes me a bit nervous of cutting things to the bone. 

All in all, this format takes a lot of preparation.

[Geoffers]

I guess all the little bits add up to quite a lot. A bit slow coming into the pits (2-3s), I had to negotiate a car in the pit before mine on the way in (2-3s), cancel bodywork repairs (1-2s), didn't cut engine until after the pitboard (1-2s), had to slow on exit & take to the grass as the leader was coming past (3-4s) plus other fractions here & there & there is 15s lost.  

Just need more practice I think.

[Clive Loynes]

LOL

At least you could get to your pit box.


Thank goodness that Mike has organised the Reverse Grid series as well!


I HATE PIT STOPS!!!!!!

[Mike Miller]

In addition to what Manteos said regarding pits I map 2 buttons for the start procedure; 1 for the ignition and a 2nd for the starter. Upon entering the pits, I kill the ignition and then fully stop. Once the crew starts to fill the car, I turn the ignition on and then wait for the fuel to finish before hitting the starter button. I haven't tested to see if this makes any difference in time. I set it up this way because in my real race car, the ignition and starter are different switches so it takes extra time toggle both. I got comfortable with it this way over time too.

The other thing I noticed is if you deny that auto pit request too many times strange things can happen. Since I started pre-setting 8 pit stops with the same fuel load in the advanced setup window, I no longer experience the strange behavior Paulo experienced.

Like Manteos said, all it takes is a bit of practice to get comfortable with pit stops. Practice 10 per event and you'll have it down in no time.

[spanner]

Sorry about that accident Matt. I'd forgotten why i disliked the alfa and that was the braking either being too far forward or back with no room inbetween so i was frequently sideways into both the second corner and the one at the end of the back straight. I'd managed to work it out in the middle of the stint and be very gentle with them but would frequently mess it up when trying to race people. Shame, i think i was on for a good result. Probably should have kept softs on te rears as the difference in wear/ grip front and back wasnt helping.

I've never known the race to be so crowded, the first few laps were manic just trying to avoid people and work out where the brake or how sideways they get!

Shame about the track not working well with 26-28 people. Bit of clarification would be useful about pit lane right of way, never had any issue during the race as there werent many in pitlane , and i guess i'm not used to it, but presumeably i have to wait for people to go past before pulling away? 

[Manteos]

Yes Mike is right, I forgot to say you have to map before your ignition key, but I mapped only the ignition, for me the starter is not needed, cause the ignition makes both these functions, and I don't want to fight with the buttons to turn on my car. Make this try Mike

Coming back to Clive, as ever I suggest not to change your tires in every case, especially if you're going to change only front or rear tyres. In your case, changing the front tyres means that you will experience a bit more power oversteer cause of your worned rear tyres, at the opposite changing only the rear tyres you would have experienced a lot of understeer, without considering that you had lost other 12 seconds to change 2 tyres.
Going on even with worned tyres is always better in a 1 hour race, because it's impossible to gain 12 or 24 seconds (depending on how much tyres you change) on your pace after the pit. Ade is a brillant example of how a good pit can let you gain a lot of positions, he was even faster than me in his pit stop, and I'm sure that he didn't changed his tyres. Considering that before the pit stop he was in 10 th or 11th position, that shows the advantage of making only a fast refuel than go! Remember that in P&G you can drive even with worned tyres without losing so much time. My race pace was 2-3 tenth for lap slower than with new tyres, that means I' ve lost only 7-8 seconds respect my first laps, and the XD Motec at the end of the race showed me a tyre consumption of 20. Sometimes is happened to me to arrive with an even higher compsuntion, but the tyres were good til the end, and even with a value > 30 the car was still drivable with a bit more caution.
However guys, remember to train in pit procedures, and you'll see that you won't lose so much time anymore.
Bye bye!

[Clive Loynes]

Coming back to Clive, as ever I suggest not to change your tires in every case, especially if you're going to change only front or rear tyres. In your case, changing the front tyres means that you will experience a bit more power oversteer cause of your worned rear tyres, at the opposite changing only the rear tyres you would have experienced a lot of understeer, without considering that you had lost other 12 seconds to change 2 tyres.

I didn't change any tyres at Charade and suffered at the end of the race with understeer. 

I was quite pleased with the extra grip on the front in the second stint, it enabled me to be more agressive.  After having to do two pit stops I needed to be.

As you say though, the extra grip on the front was probably not worth 12 seconds.  Had I been able to pit on my first attempt then not changing any tyres would have been the best option.

Not putting the extra eight laps of fuel in would have helped too. 

[phspok]

No WOrries Spanner, I expect you would have prefered not to bounce off the wall big styley
I got shoved into the wall by another Alfa earlier that seemed a little careless at the time and bothered me more
I don't bother with incident reports anymore, the last one was 3 months in the oven before I got word 
only time one has been dealt with the same week was when a director was part of the incident.
People here mostly drive fairly, we are racing after all, and no one wants to give up a corner  so things
happen now and then.

[Geoffers]

I got shoved into the wall by another Alfa earlier that seemed a little careless at the time and bothered me more

I think that might have been me Matt, sorry. I got a run on about 3 cars onto the back straight & when I braked for the corner at the end I locked the fronts a bit & understeered & bumped the TR4 on the outside which I think might have been you. Didn't realise I had pushed you into the wall. Very sorry.