American FH: Longbeach

Sadly, the brakes on my beloved Arrows have been emasculated with the update, and I wanted to see how the faster cars handle now, so I brought the FW07 to this race.

Awesome battle with Krueger and Banta! Got my lucky break on lap two when they got tangled up with a spun Lotus in T1, and I just barely squeaked past on the inside, kissing the barrier. Banta caught me in just a few laps, and I spent the rest of the race with them taking turns snarling under my rear wing. Went wheel to wheel with Banta through 3 consecutive corners at one point. Tried to keep it clean, but I did have to cover the inside in the first and last corners a few times. Good stuff!

Just wish I could drive like that in a crappy car like the McLaren. :P

Amazing. After a string of lousy events I finally have a good one!
And how the heck does the online grip run great one race and lousy for too many others!? Sheesh

From pre-practice and right into and through the race the car ran just as it should, for one of the rarer times!

A great battle with Craig for ages. He was 'holding me up', but I also had no way to get past ever anyway, so I just kept the pressure on to the max to see if he would error. But he refused to!!! Somewhat inconsiderate, LOL!!

Then I got a bit untidy and he edged away - plus it seemed maybe his setup moved into a better groove than it had been in at first. So it was likely going to stay in that race order, unless traffic etc helped/delayed one or the other of us.

And then Craig had his spin, so that was my 'free pass' and I was off and away!

The rest of the race went exactly as planned and totally fine to run very close to optimal lap times the whole way.
Though there was a LOT of pressure to not stuff it up!!!

Every car I came up upon to need to pass made excellent choices of when and how to allow that! So that was big help - to be of no detriment to all involved in any case seen!

I've never been comfortable with LB. So, relatively pleased to have 9th especially in a car with no front wing. But as Steve Smith showed, it can do well here in expert hands. The car's
speed on the front straight was a big help. This led to some very anxious moments with Ray and Bob in the early going but our trust of each other made it intensely fun.

Great job by the field and congrats to the podium. Craig in particular whose Lotus had a front wing until an accident drove a great race without it.

Thanks Tim.

Congrats to Peter, Craig and Steve (CRAZY!tm) : )

Apologies to Steve B. for the hit early in the race. You were in the middle of a small war with several others when the group you were in slowed unexpectedly. Hope the contact didn't damage you car. : (

As for my race, except for the above mentioned contact and one slight brush with the wall, I had the best open wheel race of my sim racing career!!!
I was really expecting to crash and burn early on, but it never happened. The AW07 ran like a dream (after adding more front/rear wing).
I know there was a lot of back and forth about switching to v2.1, but it has made a totally undrivable mod very enjoyable for me. My result should encourage others who may have been avoiding this mod which required super human abilities to make it to the end.
I'm sure the field will grow as more people try this great mod.
Looking forward to Monaco (Wallaco!)

Oh, and sorry for the chat during quali - in my mind, qual was over - another indication of impending dementia.

Dan

No worries Dan, just a bit of a traffic jam there. Wouldn't have mattered anyway; it was obvious to me right off the bat that I really didn't have any business racing, so I just pulled the plug and bailed after a hapless but merciful early spin. Better that than mess someone else's race up like I nearly did Sammy's.

Aside from a quick five laps or so at Zolder when it was first released, this was my first exposure to Version 2 of the 79's. I hadn't done any offline laps with this car/track at all, so I was clueless. Chose the Ligier just because I'd used it before in V1, but the thing felt utterly horrible in V2. I'll have to do some offline testing to be sure but if that was what to expect across the board in V2 it won't last long on my HD. No grip, no feel, no brakes - just miserable. Heck, my street car has more grip than that Ligier had!

Bit of a letdown since the version upgrade was supposed to be about physics mostly. Hope that was an anomaly; I'll have to try the same combo offline and see if maybe I finally got a look at the dreaded online grip loss Peter has mentioned.

Sorry to anyone I may have scared before bailing! ;-)

Grats to Peter, Craig and Steve!

I had great expectations for this race, I practiced hard and consistent. Qualy came and I did the best I could under the circumstances with a front row. With all the patches I forgot to map my clutch hense I was a sitting duck when the lights went out. Race started off with myself entering T1 in P4 AARRGGHH, I settled down and let the tires get some heat and after the first lap I turned up the wick, got into T1 a little hot and looped it in the middle of no-mans-land but I let the car come to a rest in the run off area and I was waiting my turn to re-enter when I was hit very hard, Game over, this I really do not understand as there was so much track around me in such a slow corner why animal magnetism had to occur, just disappointing.

Cheers, Cya in Monaco!

Well done on your first 79 win Peter... was wondering when you were going to get lucky at get that monkey off your back. You drove a clean, fair race and deserved the win this time. *grins*

Took it easy in the beginning of the race to prevent a repeat of the Euro race... Worked out pretty quickly where Peters weak points were and where I was strongest. It was pretty easy to keep him behind me through the most of the track and we probably could have driven like that till next week tuesday. The only areas I had to worry about were the entry and the exit of the hairpins leading onto the straight and the first sector. I had much stronger exit acceleration and pulled away with ease with prevented a pass on the straight. Only way for him to get through would have been to punt me or wait for an error. On lap 8 I decided that it was time to turn up the wick a bit as we where were going to be hitting traffic soon and I wanted a bit of a gap between us so as not to be mugged into a corner somewhere :) Opened up a slight lead but then I think on lap 16 I got a little too greedy when approaching two drivers fighting for postion and looped the car on entry to a corner knocking the front wing off. It was not a hard knock but it was enough to lose it. I was pretty pissed with myself after that and drove hard to the finish line without a front wing deluded by the possibilty of catching Peter. 2 laps from the flag I caught my team mate (well he slowed down actually) and he gratiously let me passed to take 2nd place. You are a scholar and a gentlemen Steve and I am humbled by your sacrifice.

Well done to My team mates Steve and Joe for scoring valuable points for the team and hopefully next time lady luck will be with Jeff.. sorry bud :(

Congrats to Dan for his bestest ever race heehehe
I am glad the higher wing settings helped amigo :) Now get your ass to the local video store and go rent that bloody DVD, make some popcorn, put your feet up and enjoy the movie!
Been trying for weeks to get Dan to go rent the movie called the "worlds fastest Indian

Craig,

My wife insists I should buy it, that's why the delay.

I will see that movie pal,

Dan

Your wife is right you should buy it heheheheh
Want me to send it to you for xmas?

One other thing regarding the mod....
Peter, Steve and I noticed during practice that the timer for the lap time was not consistant... Most times it would start after a lap and a half but sometimes it would count after only 1 lap. We were worried that might happen in quali which it did on one of my laps. If it started 1 1/2 laps then one would need to look after the tyres depending on what you are using but if its starts ealier then one would need to warm them up very quickly. this must be a track related bug yes? or is it mod related? Also the damage modeller was on crack when he programmed the latest physics tweak. Quite often in practice I would kiss the wall and I mean just slighty rub up against it and I would get suspension damage without it showing up on the motec. The kiss was definatly not hard enough to warrent damage and the motec confirmed that but yet my wheel would be out of alignment and one could instantly feel the difference. Anyone else experienced this? I am a firm believer in driving with 100 percent damage setting but this is a little bit extreme. Monaco is next and brushing the walls will inevitably happen and believe this might be a problem even for the very experienced drivers like Peter... :) I think this is a bug unless I am the only one to notice this?