Pre-season: Interlagos

Wow, that was hard! Mental fatigue set in shortly after the halfway point, and it was getting hard to concentrate, and all the little muscles in my shoulder blades were all crampy. Can't imagine doing that in real life. Trying to hold your head up against the G-forces for 40 laps, and with steering so heavy you get blisters all over your hands. And in those days, some of the drivers were older than me! Unreal. I'm trying to recover with a dose of caffeine right now.

Had fun racing with Roberto, even if we were both very sloppy. :)

Not again :-(

This time I did not prepare much for the race,but I was very excited to do my best to finish a race for once. Wanted to get out of the current trend of DNFs. But it was not to be :-/

My PC froze again a couple of times,but this time I regained control after a couple of seconds. I noticed my harddrive making funny noises. I lost concentration for a split second and ended up in the barrier :-( Lost the left front wheel and the front wing. Managed to slowly crawl back to the pits,but those lazy buggers didn't put on a wheel. *grrrrr* . That was the end of my race.

Found out that my whole F1 1979 installation and rfactor directory was heavily fragmented (some files had several thousand fragments). I've completely defragmented the drive now and I hope this was the cause of my problems at least it makes sense. Starting up rfactor is now 100x faster.
I guess I have to get used to this kind of maintenance,coming from a Linux/UNIX background that's not something I'm used to :-)

But what a race. Ralph and Oliver was battling it out for quite some time. As was Allen, Aubrey and Roberto.

I hope I can participate longer next time :-)

I woke to do some pre-practice, but was feeling very sickly, due to having been up 36 hours straight all weekend and doing the Bullrun1000. So the 4 hours sleep till then had not been nearly enough! lol
So I got up, walked around, decided it would be impossible to race, and just had to go back to bed!

I was looking forward to this run, as I thought it was a good fun track. It reminded me of a "double-length Dijon", and my prior Dijon car setup took to it perfectly too!
McLaren M29
But at least I had the practice time there to have fun at it.

It didn't look like the 40 laps were going to bother the Soft tires on my car. And whilst rear temps were tricky to keep under control, most of that was down to power control and was acceptable if you took enough care.
But it would have been good to do the race to find out where they really would have been in later laps.

So many DNF's!! What happened?
It is reasonably hard to wreck a car here.
I think I damaged a car just once ever in all practicing, which included having never seen the track before - and I was only "half careful" whilst lapping to find out what was there, but still never any mad run-offs to wreck the car anyway. So much open space for error leeway around there.

Hopefully I will make the NEXT pre-season race finally!

Congrats to Ralph, Allen and Aubrey - great result guys! : )

LoL, Aubrey!

Wait till you're 60 years old and the old body starts going south with every lap!

My problems started at the start (like a dope, I wasn't sure if there would be a formation lap!)
Anyway, I got nailed from the rear causing rear suspension damage which made for a lot of extra work to keep the car on the track.
My problems weren't over yet! at about half distance, my right foot went numb causing me to take several spins. It got so bad (numb and burning where my foot pressed on the pedal) I was forced to curl my toes, pressing the gas pedal with the tip of my toe!!! How's that for making it as miserable as it can get! LoL
Not being a quitter, I did the best I could till I finally hit the armco hard enough to really screw my car up. The final laps were a nightmare with the rear trying to kick out under power.
With one lap to go I finally lost it for the last time, hitting the armco at T3 hard enough to knock off both front wheels! Dang, only one lap to go, very disappointing after all that blood, sweat and tears! : (

I must say, considering all the extra work I had to do for an hour and forty minutes, except for the foot problem, I felt pretty good and can hardly wait for the next one.

This is going to be a great series Christian, good job! : )

Dan

Thanks ,Dan :-)

Sorry all about the mess at the beginning. Apparently the formation lap had crept back in,but Tim has made sure that's not going to happen again :-)

Reminded me of that scene from the movie Cars when Allen was trying to push Dan LOL

You get an 'A' for the effort Allen :-)

Lol,

Gee, I almost forgot!

Thanks Allen for trying to push me, but that would have been some miracle to get me back with no front wheels! LoL

I'd also like to mention that if any of you are experiencing soreness and fatigue on these long runs, it might be due to a less than optimal driving position.

Check out my thread on "Your Sim Cockpit" > "Cockpit Setup".

It might help you get your cockpit/office chair or? set up to make those long races a little easier on the old bod! LoL

I had a choice between this and the Formula 1 series at Monza. Guess which I chose? :D

Disappointed with myself for not handling the first lap that ended in DNF. The pace lap message kind of freaked me out.

Had a great time watching the race. Great show.

found some cool You Tube video i thought i would share.

Interlagos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of8AMC9nnik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXIiJg3mFVU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7JrQ4YGVFE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPyBeYr3qFc

Long Beach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wechxihWjDk&feature=related

Kevin

I really enjoyed that track, and spent all week with Dan trying to get a decent set up. I had decided to start as if the season was real and go with a 60 credit car or less. The Tyrell was good but the McLaren pipped it for me and except for the rear wanting to come round in the hairpins, the car was a pleasure to drive.Qualified with a pb and had a race pb for the this car type too so was more than happy, and to finish 2nd was a bonus. On the last lap I spotted Dan sat on the grass, the amount of effort put into this race just didnt seem right to leave him there so I thought I'd give him a push if he was still there next time round. Sorry I couldnt help out m8. Well next race leaves me with the McLaren M28, the Arraows A1 or the Fittipaldi, should be interesting!

hey :)

1st congrats to the podium :)

aiaiai, sry ralph that i wrecked my car in lap 24 :( it was good fun until i hit the wall :) i will make it better next time :)

@Admin: can we make next time the qualy and warm up session 5min longer? it was a bit to short for me...no time for pee, lol :) just a question :)

k, cu on track

P.S. and sorry guys for my bad english, we both from germany ralph and me, we drove together in another league :) I have made a small video of this

http://rapidshare.com/files/58430342/79er_liga_kyalami.rar.html