UKGPL Season 21 (2011) Grads (67) - Westwood Park - May 22

[maddog]

All did not go according to plan, at Westwood.  I'd arrived with a well sorted Cooper, and had no trouble slotting into pole position on my first outing.  So I contented myself, cruising around on full tanks, for most of the session.  Only to discover too late, that two sneaks had sneaked ahead, late in the going!  I was pipped!

Ronnie and Ross are not known for their slouchiness, and I decided discretion should be the better part of valour, at the start.  All this changed when Ross squirreled, and went wide at the Carousel.  A heavy dose of warping followed, and a wayward Brabham, meant I was up to 2nd, with only a pole man ahead.  I'm learning the hard way, that a land line and a packed field, seems to be as precarious, as wireless!

Once we were off, it seemed everyone was off at least once, in the first laps.  All except mike, who gained the lead by default.  And while he held Ray at bay, I was able to make up ground in 3rd. 

With  Mike's misfortune mid-race, it became a straight, 'Clash of the Titans'. (modest aren't I?)  Ray had the task of picking his way through the backmarkers, while I sat on his tail, in the faster car, and waited for a mistake.  He was flawless, as were the backmarkers, damn them!  So, it was many fun filled laps before his mistake, and I was let loose on an unsuspecting tarmac.

A great race for me, with some good dicing at the front.  The only tinge being the opening spat with Ross.  The track rewarded a good setup, and was a much harder challenge for those without, with much practice at lapping for front runners.  Some of those being passed, slowed dramatically in the process, but survived.  My thanks to Ronnie, Ross, and Mike, for keeping things interesting.

[Hristo Itchov]

I think I will return for some private practice here and sort the setup because it should have been a great race on a nice track...but it certainly did not feel that way last night!!  

Unfortunately I realized too late that the race was yesterday, otherwise I'd have done some laps and post some replays and setups. If it's of any help though, here's a merged replay of my 2 fastest Qualifying and 2 fastest Race laps:

http://racingleague.co.cc/hikiwaza/downloads/west1967_GPLRA_merged.rpy

It was interesting to see the difference in lines at some of the corners and the speed gain/loss that came as a result. I think with a perfect lap a low 04 is possible, but the fps stutter problem I'm experiencing has been harassing me on almost every lap and that caused some minor losses of control and deviation from the ideal line.

Here are also my race and qual setups:

http://racingleague.co.cc/hikiwaza/downloads/67_westwood_q2.mu1
http://racingleague.co.cc/hikiwaza/downloads/67_westwood_r1.mu1

As a rule of thumb - the lower the grip, the softer your suspension needs to be. Once I realized that, the car became quite stable, as long as I didn't make sudden moves at higher speeds (when I did, it acted like a boat which would drift to the side forever!).

[BadBlood]

until the Esses at the top of the S/F straight where... .... The car seemed to bottom on the ( too hard??) suspension and snatched to the left ripping a wheel off on the fence...race over.

Is that what caused it! I went off about a dozen times there, literally.  I am also becoming increasingly worried that I cost Ray his race, even though he was most gracious, as usual. I will have to review it and then, maybe, stay away for all but the easiest tracks.

[Will Tway]

I slowed hard in T2 as Ivan disappeared and got hit by something, not sure what as all I could see if a flash of white, then a clear blue sky. No hard feelings whatsoever Ivan. My replay does show you vanishing. It's all part of the deal. I just wish there was a way to set the server to combat the never ending warp problems.  Anyhow, I forged on and on and on and on and on, then Evil was on me like flies on $#%^. I hope I didn't wobble too much down the straight..... I really tried hard to leave room. I stayed on the inside to try and keep the advantage into the hairpinish turn. I spun looking for Evil on prib when I could no longer hear the sound of the might waaza motor......

Grats to H and the rest of the podium.

I know it was very hard to tell but I did practice for this one..............

Cheers,

Will

[Billy Nobrakes]

Certainly not one of my favourite tracks. To achieve a good time you needed confidence in your braking points & on several occasions the blessing of the GPL Gods that the car would slow down enough to take the hairpin. I found various places on the circuit where one wheel on the grass would send you spiralling. I put this down to deer shit or some other devilishly slippery stuff on the verges.

Set a good qualification of 5th (reduced to 6th by Mike’s late run). Looked even better when I was in P4 within half a lap. Decided that survival would pay off at Westwood by making sure I hit my brake points & warmed up the car nicely before driving flat out. About lap 5 my back wheel stepped out & the car span. Steve Bird was behind at that point & had no reasonable chance of missing me. Amazingly the called rolled several times & settled on its wheels with no apparent harm. The GPL Gods were, however, not so easily cheated – I set off again took the hairpin quite neatly only to be  speared side on by the Blito javelin. (I do understand how that happened Jason). Took a SnG but the confidence was shot & just could not find a decent rhythm until the final couple of laps. Finally managed to reel in Skymole & did a banzai last lap, just missing out nicking 8th place by a whisker. 

Pleased to have finished & congratulations to those who conquered Westwood – particularly those avoided the deer shit at consistent race speed.

[bernie]

Way off form for practise, couldnt get into the track and changed race setup choice made things worse for the race .Then trying too hard on cold tyres I went off twice at the hairpin on L1 & L2  the start of many "offs"

Worse still the sound kept cutting out , sometimes would drive about half a lap or so and it would come back on , but often  I had to press cont/alt/del then play a tune on the mouse button to get it back again .

Without engine noise the Coop became almost impossible to drive , giving more "offs" including quite a long time stuck up the banking watching the whole field go by .

Not sure why my PC is suddenly doing this but suspect now its something to do with the new Kodak printer we recently installed on the home network system cos it was OK before that  

Need to get sorted for the next battle , any ideas welcome  

Grats to Martin on a fine win and to the podium , at least my offs made my being lapped easy for you guys  

 

[BadBlood]

Colin - re earlier do NOT diable your AV but make sure it won't download an update or start a scan whilst you are racing - it can be disastrous.

As to iGOR it will take all your settings from the ini files - iGOR.ini, core.ini etc. I don't think it picks up GEM settings unless they write to those files. I BELIEVE that is how it works but I can't prove it and I have been known to be wrong.

If you are getting bad packet loss you may be able to adjust some of the settings on your router to prioritise your GPL traffic. I seem to remember your router is a bit horrid

You really need to isolate the issue so start off by making sure your PC is the only one connected on the router. Reboot it to clear any connection caches and then ensure that ONLY GPL/iGOR are running.

If you still experience problems then it is almost certainly the quality of the connection outside your walls - time to call your ISP.

If not then start ramping things up to establish a pattern - boring and tedious.

One issue might be that you just have too many connections open and your router is swamped. You could check this using TCPView (its a wrapper program round netstat) Just Google that. Might help.

Cheers,

P.

[happyal]

RE the connection issues, do you use a router?

I had a similar problem and I had to setup some firewall rules on my router to allow certain ports access. I'll try to dig out what I did to see if it will help.

[Arf Arf Arf]

Al

Yes, I connect through a router. Apart from the standard iGor port settings, and some that BadBlood helped me with (effectively just the same iGor ports set up for both TCP and UDP) the only other things I have done is disable SPI in the router firewall.

Disabling SPI made the difference to me being able to host races locally on my laptop, which I'd previously been unable to do (tho' I'd been able to connect to UKGPL practice server before that)

Arf

[Samb]

Good to see you not disconnect for a change, Sam, the new connection proving stable?

The internet was flawless this time round H  . I think it's fair to say what happened in the Sports Cars race was a blip as I have never had GPL show me a server error on screen before. Normally, the quality bar gradually gets bigger with no explanation if the internet's being useless  . I must admit, using wires instead of wireless over the last few months had made an enormous difference, the only problems now are Virgin occasionally not offering me a constant connection. Now that I've said that, no doubt I'll disconnect at the next one 

[Baab]

Bob got by me at the start but I wasn't too disappointed.  I didn't need intense pressure right off the bat and figured a lot could happen in 43 laps.  Sure enough he must have had some bad moments somewhere because I some how got ahead of him and later he disappeared off my radar.  After Sam got by at T2 it was pretty much a lonely race.  I could not gain on him, and nobody behind me could mount a threat to me.  Bob's passing of me at T2 was a little clumsy but not worthy of a complaint.  I have to say I was totally shocked when I felt the bump.  I had no idea he was there.

Rick, I think you have Sam and I mixed up.  I made a better get away hence was in front of you at T2 (though I think you know this).  Not a big deal, just didn't want anyone to think I'd been crashing into people, when I had a clean if not uneventful race.

This track seems to have provoked a marmite reaction, I actually loved it, but there seems to be a fair number who hated it.  Thought it flowed well and had a few challenging corners.  I almost took the lotus but actually quite liked the way the BRM went around here.  Managed to pull my best lap out of the bag in qual, which was good timing.  Started well but then lost concentration...or perhaps T1 was too much of a challenge to make it round 43 times unscathed.  Having once been in front of H I ended up a lap down.  Still, pleased I made it to the finish.  Hopefully my mate Arf will be able to take part soon.

Bob

[Samb]

That was indeed me with that clumsy manoeuvre, although I have apologised to Rick about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the mods demote me a place or two given the emphasis on keeping it clean on the first lap.

[Ronniepeterson]

Garats to Martin on a fine win and Mike for third . A clear lap towards the end of qualifying and I sneaked pole position ahead of Ross and Martin, just. The BRM proved a ponderous handful early on and and my pole soon became a chasing second behind Mike. Keeping up with him was a challenge and passing was simply not going to happen unless we hit backmarkers or he made a mistake. Fortunately for me he headed up some banking and I regained the lead. Unfortunately the new Martin (fast and consistant) had been and was now increasingly snapping at my heels. A combination of neat lines and later and later breaking at the end of the long straight were just about keeping me ahead but Martin, I think, had pin pointed my weak spot just after the start finish line. So I started praying we would not come across any backmarkers at this point of the track, I did not pray hard enough. I got distracted by another car after the s/f line, made a mistake and Martin pounced. He left me to eat Cooper fumes and pulled a comfrtable lead. I had to accept I was never going catch him let alone pass him. After surviving a few late scares including slowing right down to check the car was fit for purpose I rolled in for second. Commiserations to Ross who from qualifying should have been fighting for the win/podium. One last point I think this is a great track and hope we race here again in the future!

[vosblod]

Results uploaded, any Incident Reports by close of play Friday please. A provisional review of the Privateers shows everyone complied with the reset rules and no-one took more then one. A reminder that you only need to stop (ie fully come to a halt) and not actually wait for any length of time. Of course you can wait for as long as you like if you want to, you won't be penalised for it

[ivandjj]

Just drove a few laps of Monsanto on ukgpl server and seemingly i'm not warping. Prior to that i connected my formerly wireless router by LAN cable to cputer. I'll save the celebrations until i test it tomorrow in qualy. I'll have to apply for 66s to do that i guess.

Thx everyone for advice, especially Hristo. And good luck to Arf in his Quest. You might try asking the same question on SMRZ or some other public gpl forum, more people will see it, more chance to get new and different ideas for solutions.