Euro F3: Barcelona

At first I felt comfy in these(weird) cars, even though Formula 1 is WAY EASIER to drive than these pieces of junk. In F1 you have some feel of the car but in the F3, it's like I was melting ice with my wheels, only that there's alot of grip. ABSOLUTELY NO FEEL WHATSOEVER! The track is much different than in GTR2, it was a bit confusing...

Started the race bad, even qualified like crap. I knew this IS NOT going to be good. In the race I(hopefully) didn't punt anybody, well at least something... Once somebody tried to overtake me, but he braked too late and he spun, dunno who that was though.

Now the next stupidest part I did(with entering this race)... was when I went to pits. There was NO LINE whatsoever, telling when the pit limiter should be applied, or at least I didnt see it. So I pressed the limiter TWICE, was confused if it is on or not. Press once again, and than again, as game told me when it's actually on... Couldn't remember what was the pit speed here as well.

So than I see that I GOT OVER MY DAMNED PIT SPACE!!! Went reverse, got a DNF for driving counter way, automatically by the game. C'mon it's just pits ...

Conclusion: NEVER ENTER THESE SERIES AGAIN!!!1oneone. I had bad luck in all F3 races... For unusual reasons like tire blow up...

I hope at least you guys had fun... Grats. To all that have finished!

Hats off to the podium> Dmitry L., Ali T., and the always fast John Bayes.

This was a fun race and one of the cleanest im memory. Great race everybody.

excuse my post race whining--just had no idea i'd be that much slower w/ the barca tm setup. i knew i was in trouble when only 'close' to race speed in the 2nd sector..uh oh. didn't help that i had to park the car for 2+ laps for baby emergency (bottle). saw some clean/patient driving by the leaders, cheers to the podium.

Greg, when I came in to the pits, I noticed that you'd stopped in my pitbox so I had to give your car a little nudge out of the way - hope I didn't break anything on it!

A big stuff up here!
5am brain fade and I forget to bypass my Router to prevent the "More than 15 cars causing grip loss" effect.
So I went online to warm up for Qual and with only 8 cars there everything was fine. Doing expected 37.5 to 38.0 range laps. But as more and more cars joined I could not get under 38 anymore. But I didn't think of WHY by then.

Qual I could not get anywhere near 38.0 even, but in practice could do two or three 37 range laps assured for the 4 lap runs. And then I looked up at the Router realising what was going on!
Too late...you can't change things by then. No time.
So I knew I was going to be in trouble for the race because when your car is setup for optimum behaviour you can't afford ANY drop in grip etc or it is then 'over the edge'.

From 5th on the grid I got a good traction start once again and shot to 3rd. But Matt was hot on my tail and I knew I was going to have trouble fending off cars that were running anywhere to about 6th positions pace.
Worse was that I didn't allow enough for the grip loss at the most critical corner of the whole track - the fast tight left at the bottom of the hill!! So within a lap or two I had spun off and the car just HAD to almost stop - but not - before it bumped the wall and broke the front wing and suspension. And you have to pit to fix it as it will lose a TON of time over a full race.

So the spin/crash and getting going again wasted almost a full lap time by the time I came out of the pits again.
I couldnt fuel up for no more stops as tire wear would make it very dangerous long before the end, so I didn't want to risk that.
All I could do was drive the slightly damaged car as best as I could and see what it made it to. 12th I think. Sigh.

Dmitry was lightning fast! A super Qual time. But my practice race lap times should have had me able to give him a good chase, if not for the stupid Router.
Maybe next time!

really botched the start (and i'd thought i had that well sorted this time) when i misread the lights. they were all red, and then they went off for just a fraction of a second. i dropped the clutch (button) and then had to stomp on the brake as they all came back to red. probably just a glitch in my connection, but when they went off for real, i was creeping away in a very tall 1st gear losing 4 spots by T1.

the rest of the race was another good F3 learning experience.

the most important thing i take away from this one is that i have to reduce the sound level of other cars. i was having a difficult time moderating my brakes in traffic and only seemed to be able to run a consistent line when i was alone.

Joco, that was me. i was trying not to make the mistake i made when i tried to get by you at T1 and misjudged where your car was. probably a bit too focused on the sound of your engine, i got on the brakes late and they locked up when the car got light over that hill in the braking zone. didn't have a chance at that point. glad you didn't get caught up in it.

as i watch the replay i can also see where there's room for big improvements in my over-taking technique -- track position, especially.

also, the last couple races at Barcelona have shown that i have to re-think the way i take T4 (Repsol) when there's anyone within 3 car lengths behind me. i seem to invite what i consider "dive-bombs" (although i fully understand the different perspective from the other car).

other than that...

the car handled really well, except for once in T12 when i got two wheels into the grass and was bit by that weird inertia thing the F3s seem to have when they begin to drift. it's like they no longer have wheels, and there's nothing you can do to prevent them from slowly going into a spin.

what's up with that?

'Grats, as always, to Dmitry, Ali and John.

Lol, yes.
These cars have a bit of a psycho rear end.
SOME of it would be realistic, because when you drift you lose downforce effectiveness and thus it is an escalating loss of grip. Some from rear end (engine) weight inertia, some from tire grip loss from your driving taking it over the limit some amount, then that thrown in drop off in downforce coming in too.
So they will break free and 'snap'.
But these do go around WAY to far and pretty well total lack of control. Which would largely be the tire file being amiss.

That means you must setup the car to prevent it...and drive to ensure you stay away from it happening! Because if it does happen it is going to COST you notably!

5am brain fade and I forget to bypass my Router to prevent the "More than 15 cars causing grip loss" effect

What the hells that Peter????

I discovered all the grip curve of these tyres car :) because i make the dumb decision of changing only front tyres :(
Nice race btw, but i wonder if all of u use clutch to start because i always lost an awful number of places before t1!
And another clean 1st lap, well done!

If I run a Router, for local networking/sharing of PC's, the extra switching delay causes some effect in rFactor that messes up the physics for some reason. If there are approx 15 cars or more on the server there is a drop off in something (game physics cycle timing?) which shows up effectively as a slipperier car and it is quite notable and detrimental. eg generally going to lose about 0.5sec lap time and trickier to drive because of it. The more cars the worse it gets.

You can't offset it with car setup as you don't know the exact thing to correct, as all cars are not there for practice in tme anyway. Plus even of you could it would need changes which would make a slower car overall anyway (eg more downforce to offset it).

Run the PC straight to the Cable Modem and it is all fine.
I have tried 3 different Router brands but all do the same sort of thing, so I assume it is that switching delay of another device in line. So when I race online I shift the cable to run my main PC direct to the cable modem to prevent that effect.
It actually doesn't show up much in some cases (even with lots of cars), but you never know that so it is better to bypass it every time.

Not many people seem to get it, or know they get it. But if you do you will know by your offline practice ability, versus an online case with lots of cars. But that usually only shows up by a Qualify session when everyone is there, and in the Race. Plus seems related to how many cars are actually on the track - which would be due to ISI's Bandwidth Throttling system which reduces data flow needs when less cars are near you. So get a lot of cars near you (Race start, Qual chain) and it is worse.

I have pretty good pings really, even from Australia to the US, and it does not seem overly linked to that exact aspect. Ping time with or without the Router is hardly changed, thus does seem related. I think it is something to do with a Router servicing 4 PC's and thus cycling the controlling of each port in sequence or something = delays. (whether the PC's are on or not makes no difference) I am not totally sure what it exactly is. But bypass the Router and it is all cured.