Euro FB: Goldenport

Ha!

Not so great for me today, I was on the receiving end of a couple of others mishaps.

On lap 2 Mark Cowin hit the bad curbing and spun out directly in front of me, I hit him and got hit by David McRoberts. I immediately pitted - over 3 1/2 minutes! Came out 3 laps down!. The other guys also pitted, and left the pit in half the time I was able to. That just added insult to injury.

Then on Lap 8 Brian Duray is right in front of me and he spins at the apex of a corner, and of course I had nowhere to go except into the side of his car. I stayed out to continue but the car just wasn't right. On lap 11 it started getting real bad, and on lap 12 it came out badly, spun me around the little hairpin and I hit the wall, not hard enough to loose a wing or anything obvious. I pit again, this time for 1 1/4 minutes.

Then on lap 12 I'm coming out of the hairpin and into the next right-hander, caught just a bit too much of that stupid backwards curbing and went sailing into the air, flipped around, broke off the splitter and the wing and one front wheel which rolled across the track. The replay doesn't show which lap that was, I believe 13, but I think the race was won by then and regardless, I think it was my last lap. Bummer, a dnf on I think my last lap.

How did such a poorly made track end up in R2P with all the track testing that gets done? This tracks bad curbing was the end of several drivers races. It should be removed and never used again.

Well I love this track LOL, not sure where third came from, but settled in early on and picked em off again, thought fourth was as far as it would get but Peter went wide and let me past and that was that.

Had a locked up shoot down the inside of Sam which I apologise for but I missed my braking point rather than divebombed, but managed to make my way away from the battle behind.

Do agree there must be several if not lots of other tracks out there of better quality than this we need introducing else it could become "oh no not there again". Bit like me and Nurburgring every time.

Whoopee!!!

Lousy result but I got my 3+ rank in open wheel! : )

3.132 to be exact (rolling rank)!!!

Full report of my adventures when I get off work.

I found a great way to lose an assured 3rd position! lol
And almost even 4th or 5th or more.

3rd last lap, with a 3.2sec lead to 4th and growing a bit each lap, I have some brain wave idea (not) to go and have a look at the LCD tire readout when I head onto the short back straight. No real reason or need to, I just suddenly had some urge to see what the tires were up to.

I clicked through the LCD but overshot the tire panel and had to go around another 6 clicks to get back to it. I knew by then that I was going to be out of time to look at it on such a short straight anyway and as I looked up I saw my brake marker going past! Yikes!

If it had been any other mod and/or track it would have been relatively fine! But not in a FBMW at Goldenport!
If I tried to wash off speed and still corner, which would run me out wide of the exit and over the curbings, you would launch the car and even very likely flip/roll it off that outer rumble strip. So I chose to run straight off before the curbing began to avoid that and run around through the grass - or whatever was there, seeing I had never been out there before!

But as soon as the car hit the grass, and then sand a bit after that, it would not slow or turn at all !! So I speared onwards and into the wall. Bounced off with both right suspensions damaged, and resumed racing about 0.9sec behind Nick. So it was about 4 secs lost. But worse was the damage slowing me right down and allowing 5th and 6th to be gaining quite fast with the 2 laps to go.
Though I JUST survived to hold 4th.

DOH.

Goldenport is a fun little track. Sort of suited to the lower Formula cars. BUT it has those dodgy curbings - which are actually half due to the FBMW physics problem of how they can launch abnormally and too easily.
So there are about 6 curbing areas that if you hit them you will launch and almost certainly roll the car. Ruining races and highly unrealistic.
I doubt a real Formula BMW (or 2000, or V, or Ford) has ever rolled off any curb at any track in the world!

Anotehr nuisance is how the track is always light for practicing, but then quite dark for Qualifying - like day turned to twilight! And somewhat dark for the race too.
Every R2P race I have done there has gone through that same process. Which I guess is in the GDB setup (not sure).
It should be set up for something consistent - preferably a whole event of day light.

Fun track this, I enjoyed hotlapping in these cars. Had a couple of stupid moments, one where I spun into T1 even though I went in there exactley the same as I did on the 20 other laps. As I was "elongating the spin" going backwards to turn the car around way off the racing line, somehow I got hit by someone I'd lapped! Sorry to them but I really wasn't expecting anyone to be on that part of the track.
Later in the race coming out of the fast sweepers into the 2nd hairpin, a lapee pulled off to the left and slowed down to let me passed. Obviously that wasn't their racing line, but it definatley was mine! I had nowhere to go at full speed and ran into the back of them and speared them off the track. Sorry about that, but you can't brake on the racing line infront of someone in a flat out corner and not get run into!!!

The track is great, its a fun layout and I think the curbs are actually quite realistic, much better than anywhere like Jiading where you can just run straight over them as if the were tarmac. The problem is the funny physics of this mod, but we wont have to worry about that next season because we should be on RACE 07 instead, which are much more complete physics. Don't bash the track, its one of the best short tracks we use!

Hi Chip Wiegand I had to turn sharp right to avoid Mafioso coming back ontrack after having hit the barrier. I hit the invisible wall (put there to avoid track cutters) flew 50 feet into the air and wrecked my car. Shame I had a good setup for the race.
Qualified with race fuel ...oops
104's in warm up.
Them it all went wrong lol
I deliberately kept out of everyone way after my 2 minute pit stop and nursed my boat home to avoid another DNF.

LOL I am starting to doubt whether Scoot can actualy finish a race without making contact with someone on track LOL

Whoever tested this track should be given a spanking :)
Not up to R2P standards im afraid.

Congrats Scott, Milan and Nick! : )

Qual was a disaster as I was unable to keep the car on the track. Ran 3 test races against the AI earlier in the morning with no problems.

This should have warned me as to how the race would go - it was worse! LoL

My first incident was a shocker when somehow Mark Cowan's car decided to compete with Ed Jones for the in-race altitude record. You can see what that looked like elsewhere. I was competing for most spins/off's and did pretty good at that one.

My biggest incident was late in the race. With a high flying Scott about to lap me, I ran wide and backed off to let Scott by. Well, he ran wide too (please look at the replay, your normal racing line was much more on track center and not "Obviously that wasn't their racing line, but it definatley was mine!".

As far as I'm concerned this was just a racing incident, no big deal, but I am one who will always fess up and take my medicine when I screw somebody up. I was off your normal racing line and seeing how you had a clear view of traffic, a little lift would have prevented that little bad bad. I'll except a nice cold Nesquik and be done with it, but don't think you can steal one of Sam's bottles! hehe

Not having much fun racing at this time (noonish my local time). I'm having to jump out of bed early to make the races and I'm still sleepy and groggy so my driving really suffers. Wish R2P had some real early morning races (around 2-4am pst) I'm wide awake then, the Aussie league I race with has their races at 3am my local time - just right!

See you boys around, I've got my open wheel rolling rank up to 3+ so I'll prolly skip the rest of this series now that I made my goal.

Oh, and thanks for the setup Craig, but nothing was going to help me today. It would have been fun to race with you and Sir Finn.

Cool-Dan