GP79: Le Mans

Wow guys!

Only 2 finishers, must have been one brutal race!!!

A good result, considering was I worried I would possibly be one of the non-finishers! Plus the few hairy incidents that I had along the way.

Qual I had a one lap chance and was on track to get the expected mid/low 3.27 and then managed to hit a pole coming onto the main straight! So that stopped me dead and I had to limp to the line.

I had practiced half offline and half online, but for the race day my car seemed to have more grip than practice! The opposite of typical. So luckily I had three setups to cover any grip changes and I used the lowest wing car. 3-3 for the Alfa.

I had 5th gear setup to redline for top speed when alone, and 6th for slipstreaming. Racing the AI I could slingshot out at up to 332kph peak speeds, but in the real race it was useless! Any shift into 6th, even when slipstreaming, just lost speed instead! So I had wasted 6th gear, and the bigger spreads across 3,4,5 were hurting my acceleration compared to Roberto and Milan.

To get the ultimate speed you had to be redlining that longest gear the whole way down the LONG straight. And I was worried about the engine lasting for 22 laps.

Lap 1 (or 2) was a near fatality when I was chasing Roberto into the final chicanes. Even though I braked earlier than usual to allow for him I still came barrelling in on him and there was no way I was going to slow in time then so I had to release the brakes and veer off track to the left to assure I would pass him before he turned into the chicane! Or we both would have had an untimely end to the race! So that was lucky escape number 1.

Lucky escape number 2 came later on when I had managed to break away for the lead, but I made a small but critical boo-boo heading into ??? - the 'dippy/leaned 90deg left' - just before sector 2. I hit the right side barriers and damaged front and rear right suspension, and was lucky it did not rip a wheel off. So from then on (lap 5 or so?) I lost the small lap time advantage I had over Roberto and Milan plus had a constant struggle to stay alive whilst lapping fast.

Thus Roberto and Milan got past, and I was struggling to just stay at the same time gap behind them (about 8secs). So I almost 'settled for 3rd', but with hopes the tricky track might catch one or both of them out - hopefully before it caught me out again!

And a number of laps later I saw their time gaps falling to me, so I could see Roberto had run into some trouble and possibly Milan got involved in the slow down of it all.
Then I very quickly caught a slowed down Milan and got past him, and then Roberto who seemed to be struggling with damage, so I was off in the lead once again.
It seemed Roberto pitted and then left the game.

Milan kept me under pressure at about 4seconds back or so, but I could see I had a slight edge even with my damage, so he must have had some too. And eventually I saw his timer rapidly rise as he fell back after some incident. Then he was out of the race too.
On the timer it looked like he crashed out at the same place I got my damage way earlier. (?)

I backed off to about 4 secs a lap slower to assure survival, and a bit worried about the engine. So I short shifted, plus used 6th down the straights. Also my fuel was looking like it would be a close call, though pre-race calculations said it would be ok.

3 laps to go I had a 3 lap lead over Barrett so I figured it didn't matter if I crashed so I went off at full pace again to see what best lap I could do. After all the laps I had done I had the track down pat so I felt fine even with the damage.
3.28.8 done with one lap to go and I figured I could do better than that (3.27), so I pushed even harder on the last lap. But all that did was make me error more and do worse, and have a few exciting skatey moments! (a 3.29.1 still)

And just to make it more dramtic I ran out of fuel coming into the final chicanes and the car coughed a bit onto the main straight to make it over the line and run out about 15secs later. Phew!

a long post befitting an arduous race.

went with the T3 because it was the only car that didn't do wheelies coming over that hump after the long straight.

this series is tough. coming right from FabCars, i never get enough seat time just before a race, so even though i felt like i had worked out a good compromise setup, i just didn't feel comfortable with it when i got to the server. but i added more wing and managed to re-balance the car in that configuration during the warmup session.

i wasn't dead last on the grid, but i made sure i was by T1. i needed time to re-acclamate to these cars and this track. i figured i'd be over-joyed just to finish as the last of the cars running.

and i am!

but it was 3 laps of plan, 12 laps of pain and then 3 laps of pure torture.

that "'dippy/leaned 90deg left' just before sector 2" is the corner i have the most trouble with on this track, and i screwed it up twice by coming into it just a bit too hot.

first time was only 4 laps in. i limped into the pits and the crew did a decent job with what they had to work with. the car was drivable, but the steering wheel was cockeyed and it felt like there was 40 degrees of toe out on the right front. it wanted to pull me into a spin under braking. so i moved the bias back several notches -- like 6 or 7 -- and then the car improved to the point where it was just squirrely under braking, darting to the right if i got on the brakes too suddenly, but controlable as long as i was smooth and gentle. meanwhile the tires were sceaming with every turn at any speed.

unfortunately, about mid-race, the leader at the time came up on me between that dippy left and the following right. i saw him come around the left, and i checked my mirror as i got to my (extended) brake zone, but he was still well back and i was not expecting a pass attempt there.

then in my mirrors i saw him veer left, into the armco.

well, i felt bad for him at the time, and still do. and that's where i'd end my comments on this if it weren't for the fact that it's abundantly clear from his post in the main forum that he blames me for his wreck and doesn't think i'm worthy of sharing a track with him. he's pissed at me for today, and it's also clear he's still pissed at me for my blunder at Kyalami last season -- even though he said he wasn't at the time. i appologized for that one, several times, in private messages and in the forum. i caused that one by loosing control of my car, and it took him out of the race.

but there will be no appology from me for the incident today, because i didn't loose control of my evil-handling car, he lost control of his car.

judging from the replay, i was correct to assume there wasn't any intent to pass there. it looks to me like he was simply caught out by my necessarily slow corner entry and when he hit his brakes his car veered left into the armco as a result of a brake imbalance, much as mine had been trying to send me into the right side armco since lap 3, in fact.

enough of that...

the second time i screwed up "le dippy" was only a few laps from the end. that one left me with about 20 degrees of freeplay in the steering wheel. i was running a high caster setting, so the car tracked pretty well on the straights, although about 35mph slower, but braking and turning were quite adventurous. if there had been several cars still in the race, i'd have parked it. but my brother was back on team speak and did some spotting for me (thanks Mike!) so i knew it was just the two of us still running, and that i'd have ample warning of an approaching Peter. so i crept around for another three laps to avoid the DNF.

glad you made it across the line Peter!

no comment, i already had to say what i needed to say in your historical indipendent subforum.
Have good simracing, if that's what i experienced yesterday, i don't deserve to drive here

Wow,what a tuff race.

Almost lost it off the line but managed to recover a spin. I was not able to gain on the guys in front unless they made mistakes. Which they did. And I slowly crawled up the field. Got some front damage early on,which didn't exactly improve the already very twitchy T3 and it knocked off a couple of km/h of the top speed.

I could see Alexei was slowly gaining on me and I was unable to pull ahead. I Was in 3rd and then all of a sudden I see a message saying Milan was out from 2nd place..Wow..I was in 2nd soon..Or so I thought..The distraction of the server message resulted in a major crash and I lost my front wheel. Race was over :-(

But it was fun while it lasted :-)

Grats to the 2 finishers LOL, I was right we couldn't fill the podium.

Roberto: I hope you decide to stay and race in this series. Accidents do happen and especially in these cars. Look at the bright side: this series won't hurt your ranking :-)

Every race in this series is a pure adventure as it should be.
At end very interesting event with sad end for me.
Good battle with Roberto, Peter and Rolando at the start.
In some points very exciting (look my pics).
And what a noob mistake I did on lap 16. In place where I didn't expect anything than excelerating I lost it on 2nd gear at the straight o), and lost a wheel and front wing :(.
p.s.
Christian don't read the server messages :) that I've learned from last season :)

Congrats to Peter for deserved win and Barrett.

Well, 11 drivers lets hope we have a better turn out next race. I am on vacation now but on Sunday will start training for Kyalami. I have tried to arrange my schedule so I can attend all 7 races that remain in this series.

Let´s hope Roberto keeps driving in this series, he is one of the fastest and consistent drivers out there.

agree as Emilio said.

btw. Emilio everyone with Alfas really flying on the end of the straight, we need to lift off the pedal to avoid airborne.
T3 has not that problem.