15 replies to this topic

[Bo Bruce]

great race!
good respect (from my seat)

good fun with Rudy for 1/2 the race - nice work my friend!  was sorry to see you leave early
also, the kind moving aside was very gentlemanly!   not sure how i felt about it as you were still quicker - and i had a pit stop to make
still, i understood it and thanks!
i was still lapped twice - but hey!  don't tell anyone, i'm beginning to LIKE the BRM!

Tames... Dan... George = podium...
2 hours is a TEST!

wished we had a full grid - the names are there~ alas, real life
on to CALIFORNIA !  (be sure you have the correct track installed!)

[Tomy AFX]

disconnected during the 10th lap ...

Edited by Tomy AFX, 14 September 2019 - 11:47 AM.

[Pepe Higdon]

First, we should all give hearty congratulations and big attaboys to Carlos and the TSG for picking this track for the season's sole two-hour race. It was a perfect choice in every way.

Second, I screwed up qualifying for at least the fifth time this year, was enormously pissed off at myself (again), and exited the game on two occasions and returned each time with a different helmet color. That's what accounts for the three different Pepes in the race results. I keep telling myself to take my Thorazine before the race, not after.

Third, I need to go to setup school. My default mode is to take the Ferdinand Schultze setup for the car/track. This setup here for the Honda was for qualifying only, hitting 11K RPM at the end of the straight. Try that in a race and I doubt you'll finish. I ran a much taller 5th gear but otherwise left his setup pretty much as is. It didn't do the trick at all. It was stable, sure, but grimly slow. Ferdy would probably be ranked G5 or G6 here, but Tim's Honda setup was only a second or so behind Schultze's best (and, of course, Tim was no doubt snickering when he lapped me late in the race). The odd byproduct of this was that I had some wonderful racing with ZZ, Bob Holada, and Niky for more laps than I'd care to remember. No matter how much time I would gain on them in the first four corners, they'd leave me in the dust on the long straight. It was some of the best, cleanest racing I've ever done in GPL, and I'd like to thank each of them for the fun.

Fourth, as you might imagine, we in the D2 division enjoy smacking the crap out of our fellow drivers, such that in a typical race we will have three collisions for every two contacts that our D1 friends experience. The collision-finder program that Dag discovered earlier this year shows just two (2) contacts in the entirety of the race today, beating our previous low of eight two weeks ago. And, of course, this race was twice that length. But, even better, one of the "contacts" reported in today's contest was between Bo and Rudolf. I looked at it on the replay and this is obviously a phantom report. The cars were close but they clearly did not touch at all. So good on ya, mates. Very, very well done!

Fifth, note to Tim: Please send me your Honda setup (higdonre@gmail.com).  

[Tames]

I was ready for a fight over this one. During training this week Francois was just as fast as me. Daniel surprised me when he snatched pole in the last minute, very well done. He was about half a second per lap faster in the first 10 laps, and there was not much I could about it. Then, in lap 13 I believe he went wide which allowed me to pass him.  I saw Francois disappearing (too bad Francois, bad luck), and just watched the gap between me and Daniel. I decided to extend my first stint until I ran out of fuel when I saw Daniel pitting. That worked out for about ten more laps, I was able to set the fastest time and then pitted with 4 liters left. I then saw I had more than 30 seconds of a gap, and concentrated on keeping the engine in one piece. Very clean race from my perspective. What was really upsetting was pribula insisting on more than one Pepe.

[timbo]

Hi Pepe, How much is it worth?, tell your boss, Bo, the price is half an Eagle, think he might go for that?.

    Probably not, well talk to him nice,     Regards Tim.

[zzbusch1]

This was fun while it lasted. I popped a Camshaft exiting the last turn at the end of lap 10. I tried to roll into the pits and almost made it. I got past the last pit entry sign 0. Then the game discoed me. I was this close [ ] to a shift-r.
At the start I amazed myself by actually passing a few cars! I had a great time with Niky and Pepe, swapping places. As Pepe noted, I could pull away on the straights, but would get caught in the turns. I never figured out how to go flat through T1, and the other two turns had me just holding on.
I have to give credit to Michiel Pompert for a great BRM setup. I downloaded it from the Trackdatabase when I got the track and it was sweet. I could do 2:03's with a 10 lap fuel and 2:05's with full fuel, on an empty track.

I think Pepe was hedging his bets trying to run three cars at once.  ;-)   Just in case one crashed.  lol

[Ronnie Nilsson]

A race of two halves for me. The first one was pretty good; the second one lasted about 3 corners.

The boss had seen fit to buy an Eagle, so I qualified in 6th, above some talented drivers in less competitive chassis.  Dan, Tames and Francois were at the top end of the grid, but special mention should go to Rudy, Tim, George and Bo, who in my opinion over-achieved in their cars.

I lost a couple of places at the start, but gradually clawed my way up the field, as various drivers outbraked themselves at the two tight corners. I was up as high as 3rd, but George in the Brabham did a lovely move up the inside of T2 to demote me back to 4th.

I was supposed to have enough fuel for 31 laps, but it became apparent that I was being much more economical than expected, so with 34 laps to go, I decided to pit. It totally ruined my rhythm, and I slithered into the barrier at the tight turn before the main straight.  Unable to extricate myself, I had to retire.

[DDodge]

You don't know what slow was, Pepe!   Anyway, at the miserable pace I was setting I made the whole race without a stop.  My apologies to Niky for the contact on lap 24.  

Don

[timbo]

Hi guys, so this was quite a good race for me, I was never going to make the first three rows on the grid, have done slightly better than my qualifying time, but 7th was good enough for me, having driven the Honda for about the last year I seem to have an affinity with it, famous last words now, it’s engine stands all I throw at it, so for those reasons, and a few others, I really enjoy driving the white hippo,
As for the race, apart from the opening ten or so laps it was quite uneventful, with a stop for fuel bang on half way, there was nothing else to speak of.

Bad luck to Ronnie, who was able to pull away once he settled into the race, but racing for real, as well as on line always depends to a certain extent on getting lucky, think I had four off’s altogether, but again down to getting lucky, none of these did any great damage.

Driver of the day for me has to be George, god knows  how many off’s he had, but he went off twice in front of me, how he got back to third I’ll never know, all good fun.

           GPL is just so good.                  Regards Tim.

Edited by timbo, 14 September 2019 - 03:09 PM.

[zzbusch1]

I forgot to praise Pepe on his great driving in the early laps. It was great fun to dice with him. He finally got his act together and pulled away, but it was the kind of racing I come for.

[cg7aa]

To have any chance of keeping up with Tames and Dan during the race, I knew I would have to lap well below the 2min mark; this was my main aim during offline practice but I couldn't make the Brabham go any quicker than 318km/h on the straights. I have seen a low 1min 59 recorded for the Brabham so it's clearly achievable but I couldn't. The best I managed offline (and naturally couldn't repeat in qualifying) was 2min 00s 55. Anyway, I concentrated a bit too much on this and neglected to get enough practice with a heavy fuel load. I did a couple of laps with 30+ laps worth of fuel on board but it wasn't enough to get a real feel for the car so I struggled a little with the feel of the car in the early laps as I spun several times under heavy braking for the hairpins. Perhaps I was trying too hard but I had to make time on the brakes, I couldn't take anything for granted because I didn't know what pit strategy everybody else was running to so I figured I best not to hang about cruising. There are no guarantees in this game!

I had a good start from 5th, passing Eduardo and Tomy at the start (thanks for the racing room, gents) then had my first spin on lap 3 and back down to 7th I went. Oh dear. I had a nice battle with Ronnie and Tim (who was hustling his Honda impressively) trying to claw my way back up. I figured the best I could do was 3rd as Dan and Tames were distant dots by now. I was back up to 3rd on lap 7 and then another spin under braking (the back end wasn't happy on the Brabham). I thought I had really screwed it now and was quite annoyed. Ronnie and Tim were past me and gone. I got my myself together again and charged hard to get back up to Ronnie and Tim again by lap 12 only to have a minor spin. This was more in avoidance, I caught Tim up much quicker than I anticipated and his braking point took me by surprise a little (the man is entitled to brake wherever he wants of course, he's the car ahead!), I ducked out to avoid rear-end his car and couldn't hang on to my car. I wasn't planning to overtake at all but had to and then couldn't stop as I was out of shape. Off we go again, at least this time they hadn't pulled several seconds on me. I finally got past Tim on lap 15 and then set off after Eduardo and Ronnie who were dicing hard ahead and were probably slowing their pace as a result. It helped me and I was on them by lap 19.

The next couple of laps was probably the most fun I had in the race. Ronnie and I had a really good slip streaming battle for a half a lap or so, I counted 4 position changes. Punch and counter-punch! It was great. I wish it could have continued all race. It would have been way more fun. I would get him exiting the corners using the Brabham's torque to my advantage (it seemed to me he was understeering on corner exit too) then he would nail me down the straight bits then we'll repeat it again. After finally working past Ronnie, that was it really. I was up to 3rd and determined not to make any mistakes, just be consistent and reel off the laps.

After lap 30, I realised I had messed up on fuel load. I've learned the hard way that fuel consumption offline and online are different (for reasons nobody has yet explained to me) so I try to do a long stint online to see my consumption. However, I only managed a ten lap stint online prior to the race, it clearly wasn't enough data point to do any accurate extrapolation. Consequently, I over-fuelled by quite some margin as I used way less fuel. I was worried Eduardo might jump me after my stop when I was far too overweight for the remaining laps but then he stopped too. I think I finished the race with over 30litres left in the tank. Lesson learned.

Edited by cg7aa, 15 September 2019 - 03:20 AM.

[Baldassarri]

Acceptable result for me in this Great Race. Possibly my gear was not tuned as needed, resulting in the  max speed on the straight of 310 Km/h close to max rpm. This was a great handicap, attempted to mitigate through the good handling of the Cooper in the corners and mostly in  braking, but not sufficient to be competitive.  Despite that,  I had a great fun even rolling most of the race alone.  The full distance race is always a challange, thougness of maintaining the concetration and even physical resistance.  All these characteristics are severely tested, at the end one is honoured to have seen the flag.  At this regard I have this question:  would it be possible to have more full distance races in a season ?  Or definitively all ?

Grats to Tames for the brilliant win and the podium

to the next
ciao
rob

Edited by Baldassarri, 15 September 2019 - 01:00 PM.

[DDodge]

At my age, for a moment there with about 15 laps to go, I was afraid I was gonna pee my pants.  I would rather not race in a diaper.  

Don

[Baldassarri]

Hi Don,

Cancel my proposal.  If I had to choice between a full length race without you and a half length race with you, then I would select the second  

Ciao
rob

[Bo Bruce]

we have had a survey on the subject of how many FULL length races ... 1 .. 1 or 2.... 3 etc
http://forums.speedg...showtopic=29303

as for diapers... Don, if you have/use the pitstop PATCH, you can pull up to the pitboard, and when it disappears, you can sit indefinitely, no disco!

[Rudolf Goertz]

That was a very good racing experience. It was the first full length race in my life. Well... unfortunately not really. As I messed it up in lap 53. I was pushing hard as I was trying to reduce the gap to Bo with whom I had a lot of fun - like so often during the last races
I had a good pace but messed up the pit stop and made 2 or 3 mistakes.
So I lost a lot of time. But this high speed course was so much fun that my driving became too risky. I am sorry for my team for the damage I have done
Congratulation to all the finishers and the podium!

The choice of  this particular track for such a long race was perfect. On the other hand I can imagine many tracks which would be too exhausting to race for more than two hours.