UKGTR Season 14 - Le Mans (Sarthe) New Year Special - Jan 2

[blito]

it surprised me just how long the track stayed wet after the rain had stopped - after i had my puncture (about a lap after the rain had stopped) i limped to the pits, repaired the damage and put medium slicks on.... got as far as the dunlop curves before saying hello to the gravel for the first time! I then tip-toed round for another 5 or 6 laps before pitting again for fuel and soft slicks.. but by then i was getting tired and started to make mistakes - compounded by my headphones starting to get very uncomfortable.
BTW - i didnt realise autopit was an option! i had everything disabled! call me mr hardcore

[Busi]

I was called to go out for some beers even it was on a sunday night lol sorry for retiring.

I enjoyed my first official officially organized race with the G27 and using the H gearbox, although I had a couple of hot moments where I tried to 'upshift' from 4th to 3rd and things like that

1st stint on hard wets I pulled away with Jon and Prof following closely. 1st pitstop I thought the track would dry out quicker than that so put on medium slicks and struggled like hell. Not sure if Jon was on slicks too, both of us kept dancing on and off track so H@L got past with inters I reckon. Then I retired.

Well done H@L, you alien!

[Truetom]

Gutted!!!

made it to 1h10 before getting mad with my earphones and in taking them out put the car into the barrier mid way down the mulsanne straight, coming to rest in the gravel at one of the chicanes. So now i have to sit here annoyed with myself for failing in my aim to make the finish AND with earache from crap earphones to boot!

Anyhow - a few questions...
1 - about 2 minutes after the rain stopped the back of the car stepped out on me in the porsche curves and i swiped the barrier. The muffled voice in my ear told me i had a puncture - the result of the crash or the cause of it? I`m not aware that i made a mistake there and i doubt my soft wets would have degraded that quickly.

I'd say puncture, as you must have hit the barrier with your tyre.

2 - on the drying track i was having problems braking, especially at mulsanne corner - i just seemed to run out of braking effort - was that down to wear and tear on the brakes or standing water?

Did you check your brake bias in XD (you did use it, right?). Bias your brake balance to your liking but usualy it's preferable to lock the fronts just a bit sooner than your rears. In the rain it's easy to lock the brakes. I used to lower the brake strenght to 80%, nowadays I just press less - up until locking. But I bet you already knew all that.

3 - is it possible to drive a wrecked and wheel-less car out of the gravel trap?

Not the Marcos you can't.

[Busi]

Anyhow - a few questions...
1 - about 2 minutes after the rain stopped the back of the car stepped out on me in the porsche curves and i swiped the barrier. The muffled voice in my ear told me i had a puncture - the result of the crash or the cause of it? I`m not aware that i made a mistake there and i doubt my soft wets would have degraded that quickly.

2 - on the drying track i was having problems braking, especially at mulsanne corner - i just seemed to run out of braking effort - was that down to wear and tear on the brakes or standing water?

3 - is it possible to drive a wrecked and wheel-less car out of the gravel trap?

Hopefully I can help with this:

1 - Punctures only happen due to hits, so that must have been the result of the crash. When its wet you can lose it anywhere at anytime if you do the slightest error in braking or accelerating. Or turning in

2 - not sure if it has anything to do, but a useful tip: a locked wheel brakes less than a moving wheel. This means that if you floor the brake, your wheels will lock up and your braking will be longer (worse). If that's the case, I suggest you to set the audio settings related to wheelspin or whatever its called to around 150% so you will hear when you are sliding/locking brakes and therefore you need to dicrease the braking power.

3 - as far as I know GTR2 doesn't allow you to pull out of the car and push it, so the answer would be no

EDIT: TT beat me by 1 minute!

[Truetom]

 

[H@L9000]

Well done all.

That was not easy and the track took longer to dry that I thought it would. Maybe if the temperature was higher the track would have dried more quickly. Especially well done to anyone that has not raced in the wet before.

Guess who forgot to put wet tyres on at the start of the race. I had to pit at the end of the formation lap. I had some good fights coming back through the field and was in a big train behind TT for a while, that was intense. I kept the wet tyres on until the fuel ran out and pitted for Inters. The inters were going well and I decided to put another set of Inters on once I had used up my fuel again. I some how managed to get back near the front and Jon seemed to start having problems. Soon after Busi quit and I had a big lead to Prof. I could see that I may need a quick stop for a little fuel before the end and I was over 50 seconds ahead of Prof. As he was in the Lister I doubted that he would stop again and I considered short shifting to the end but, I thought that I had a good enough lead to make a stop as I only need a small amount of fuel and I new I could potentially get the track record for a race session with dry tyres if it was dry enough. Luckily it was. I came out of the pit only 5 seconds ahead of Prof. I was really expecting to be at least 20 seconds ahead. Doh!

After the last quick stop I thought that we may not get another lap but, I crossed the line with 30 seconds left on the clock so we got the 29th lap and I got my chance to try for lap record. That last lap I was 4 seconds quicker than any previous lap. Changing to drys sooner would have been faster!

Thanks for racing all, it was fun.

[Truetom]

Forgot to say: was great to see Jon back on track. Hope you can join more times from now on.

[H@L9000]

1 - about 2 minutes after the rain stopped the back of the car stepped out on me in the porsche curves and i swiped the barrier. The muffled voice in my ear told me i had a puncture - the result of the crash or the cause of it? I`m not aware that i made a mistake there and i doubt my soft wets would have degraded that quickly.

Yes as Busi said punctures only occur and wheels only fall off from an impact (I think the pit crew tell you you have a puncture when the wheel has actually come off). A few of the corners on the track (that one included) can catch you out. I almost lost it there my self at one point when Jon was in my mirrors.

2 - on the drying track i was having problems braking, especially at mulsanne corner - i just seemed to run out of braking effort - was that down to wear and tear on the brakes or standing water?

Again, I agree with Busi. Its all about using the audio as a queue to wheel locking and its harder to pick up on in the wet as the noise is different than it is in the dry, more quiet. As you get down to 2nd and 1st gears when braking you would have needed to back off the brake a little to reduce locking.

3 - is it possible to drive a wrecked and wheel-less car out of the gravel trap?

As long as you have at least 1 wheel on the back of the car its theoretically possible but, the car can get really wedged in the gravel some times. If you have that game set to use a manual clutch you would have needed to use that as well.

Well done H@L, you alien!

Maybe on this track but, I have done a crazy amount of laps here with variable weather and I still was not close to the insane qualy record of low 1.43.

[Jamera]

Well I must say I really enjoyed that, first GTR race in over 3 years and what a way to get back into it!!!
Bit gutted I buggered my suspension up with about 20 mins to go, had my sights on SRW who I knew still had do a final stop, but hey thems the breaks. Thought I was being clever by jumping onto inters early, however it took til my next stop for them start performing properly, by which time I'd fallen some way back. All in all though really enjoyed it and hope I didn't get in anyone's way

[Prof]

Good fun in a not blinking for two hours sort of a way. I decided that 4:04 was the switchover time from wet to dry tyres only to find the track took another hour to dry properly. I was not fast enough to keep up with the really fast guys but made surprisingly few mistakes given the slippery surface. I gained places when it was Busi's bedtime  and when Jon crashed out to give me a richly undeserved second place - but I'll take it.
Well done to everyone who lasted the course and especially H@L for great pace throughout. My best performance of the year and I fear I shall still be saying that in December.

[blito]

not really got anything more to add to this post... but we cant just leave it sitting here with just 99 replies can we?

so this post might be pointless but when was the last time any post on this forum had 100 replies?