Australia & New Zealand

[Michael Stead]

Sigh. Another interclub race, another game crash. Why does it only happen in these events? I clean installed the game hoping it would fix the problem but clearly that failed. Sigh.

 

[Nigel Roberts]

for those interested here is a Live View http://stats.austeamracing.com/live_view.php?da[id]=13&da[lang]=english

 

[Glenn Morris]

ah excellent. i've been listening while playing GTL... They sound like they're in a bit of trouble! lol

 

[Warren Dawes]

Well, I hate to admit it but I think I have realised that I'm too old for these enduro events, or at least in GTP cars @ Nurburgring/Nords when the overall event lasts more than 5 hours in total. I was actually extremely glad to finally finish.
Once again, our RD Team seem to be cursed with bad luck, Michael disconnecting yet again, Rhys having huge FPS problems, Andrew's car catching fire down the straight after surviving more than half race distance, etc. Great effort again from Jari though, flying the flag for us.

Unfortunately, the dreaded lag issues surfaced with a vengeance, but the move to the ATR server made a huge improvement. There were still some cars lagging, but overall it was pretty good. Thanks to ATR for setting up the backup server.
Big thanks to Tyson and Motorheadz for organising this series, some teething problems, but the overall concept was great.

The night had it's funny moments though. The highlight was after we went to the ATR server, and had a flooded track for practice. I watched Cam leave the pitbay, immediately do a huge doughnut (or two). :laugh2: I then thought, "be careful and don't do a Cam", gently squeezed the Vipers accelerator, and immediately did a neat 180 deg spin and ploughed into the pitbay of the guy nextdoor. :rotfl: Oops!!. Thank god we didn't have to race in those conditions.

My race was going fairly well after about 1.5 hours, sitting comfortably in P7 with an increasing gap of more than 1.5 minutes to the car behind, and even having thoughts of maybe P6 who I was slowly gaining on. Then, one tiny momentary lapse of concentration saw me run off track, through the sand, and gently nudge the wall. Unbelieveably, this removed my front splitter, causing the car to massively understeer in every high speed bend. Worse still, I had the whole Nords track to go before I could pit for repairs. The understeer resulted in me hitting the walls several times causing more severe damage. I pitted for repairs, the splitter was repaired, but the car was now very slow from other damage that wasn't repaired. I lost three spots in the pits, and my lap times from then on were waaaay down due to car damage.
Limped home to finally finish P10.

Thanks to all of our team who put such a big effort into supporting this series. The series had it's frustrations and disappointments, but also there were plenty of fun times too, especially on TS (eg. listening to Olly giving graphic descriptions of his ever deteriorating Audi towards the end of the race ).
I really appreciate the effort you all put into this one. :thanks:

 

[Cam Wedgwood]

I am bushed!!

That was a tough one. Highlights for me...

Lap 7 was a standout. I had front end damage which I had spent a lap and a half nursing in the hope that the one pitstop would see me through... Went into pit just behind Olly who spent 20 extra seconds trying to find his pit bay. I confirmed my tyres and fuel but left out the damage repair. On the way out I tried to call for another pitstop and hit the pit limiter, allowing me to speed in pitlane. I received a Stop'n'Go, went round the GP track and got my damage repaired, went round the gp track AGAIN and served my S and G and decided I would get the job done now. Third corner I spun, hit the wall and ripped off the front spoiler and got a puncture to the front right... only 19.5 kms to go until I see my pit crew again (I was missing them, it had been two minutes...) Lap 7 ended after 17minutes and 38 seconds.

Lap 8 I was either parked on the grass, or driving with my son on my lap who had had a nightmare. 5 minutes down on Olly at lap 9 and I had my target/motivation.

Thanks Warren for all of your work and management and thanks to all who participated. Well done to the front runners. For me, this was a real learning experience.

Thanks guys! arty2:

 

[Nigel Roberts]

Dedi Server Replay
============
Well done guys, sorry to hear it wasnt all smooth sailing, but sounded like it did impove. To be honest most tracks run pretty well on my machine, but Nords struggles a bit. I am guessing a server hosting Nords with 20+ cars might be getting pushed to its limits? not sure really how the host handles this. Watching the replay I noticed at least 1 car not sure who it was, warping all over the shop and all others were rock solid, its safe to assume in that case it was at the client end not the server. Like Warren in regards to these events except its not the age its more the skill or lack there of for me

I hope for more of these events to continue, and Austeam will be there again with bells on as I am sure RD and MotorHeadz will too. Hoping the next Add-On release and future patchs help get the SimBin netcode that little bit more stable, it still seems to cause heart break at random at the worst times and usually to the ones that least deserve it.

http://files.filefront.com/OECC+NORDS+ReplayDatarar/;13618280;/fileinfo.html

 

[Andrew Dawes]

This whole event was a great initiative and it was fun to drive in a team.

I feel like a deadset rookie though.

At Spa with decent pace and what i thought would be competitive i make one slight mistake put it into the wall and the car is immobile after just 4 laps.

Now at Nurburgring, i was on pace only for 1 lap on cold tyres but when the pace heated i was clearly off pace. I was happy with my progress and was staying out of danger (slight hits here an there but nothing serious) and with the 1 stop strategy on track having stopped at the end of lap 7 for fuel and tyres i was running between 10-12. But I knew the mechanics were damaged as my pace along the straight had dropped from 290 to 262. Then at the end of the fast section on lap 9 where it sweeps right and turns into the tight left the engine let go in an instant....no warning. In hindsight i probably had the rev limit too high for an enduro (which on a lister is only 6600rpm). Rookie mistake.

I really found this race a struggle, for most of the time i had forgotten where i was on the track as my mind went to jello and my vision blurred. Lap after lap i was simply reacting to what i was seeing - like rally driving. This was costing me in lap time but having passed two stricken vehicles in those laps it was clear that losing 10-20 secs a lap was better than pushing too hard and hitting a wall.

I may not have finished but i learnt a lot and had a good run.

Thanks to the organisers and hopefully we can do another one soon.

 

[Chris Rodgers]

Glad that Richard was able to replace me last night, I didn't have the energy for it having just flown back into town a few hours earlier. Hope we can do something similar again soon, although maybe in a slightly less taxing category for Warren and me

 

[Glenn Morris]

Sounded like a heap of fun - or at least, the part i was listening to on TS.
*looks at Olly*
lol

If you ever need an emergency emergency, I'll try and stick my hand up (if this series runs again)

Cheers

Glenn

 

[Jari Vinnari]

Qualified 5th or 6th. Was in third place when I managed to flip my car to the roof in karusell. Lost time, two places and was rewarded with bad handling car. Just before the half point I realised that I have about 35 liters of too much fuel in pit pre-set. Tried to adjust my fuel load but I hit wrong keys and dropped to Windows desktop. It took some time to get back on the game and of course I crashed my car to wall.
Luckily I was in that long straight and I hit the wall in "right" angle not to damage my car totally. After visiting the destop my game stuttered for 10-15 seconds resulting to another accident with the wall and cutting warning.
Not very good driving on my part but it was great fun to race with you guys.
Thanks.

peace
Jari

 

[Warren Dawes]

Thanks Glen, you can drive next time for sure. Maybe we need to use GTL or something a little less demanding on drivers and PC's / servers.

Sounded like a heap of fun - or at least, the part i was listening to on TS.
*looks at Olly*

Apparantly Olly wasn't driving an Audi last night, it was pinkish, fairly fat, had a curly tail, and kept saying "oink, oink". :rotfl:

 

[Warren Dawes]

Glad that Richard was able to replace me last night, I didn't have the energy for it having just flown back into town a few hours earlier.

Chris, you are probably lucky that you didn't have to race. After all the issues with servers and such, the race didn't finish until about 11.30PM Oz time, so it would have been extremely late for you in NZ. :sleepin:
Richard looked to be going well and making up lots of ground after fluffing his Qualy lap and starting at the back. Unfortunately, I (and a few others) had spent a few laps trapped behind the hugely lagging car of Matt Le Poidevin, who was weaving all over the track, and I let Richard pass to see how he would get on. Sadly, as Richard was passing him, Matt hit a wall, weaved across track, and lagged at the same time, resulting in grief for Richard.

 

[Richard Hamstead]

Yep, pretty much sums it up for me Warren, that basically ruined my race for me . Oh well, what can you expect when you start from the back

 

[Cam Wedgwood]

Oh well, what can you expect when you start from the back

12th!! :rotfl:

 

[Cam Wedgwood]

Apparantly Olly wasn't driving an Audi last night, it was pinkish, fairly fat, had a curly tail, and kept saying "oink, oink". :rotfl:

I thought that Olly was sliiping in and out of reality and was driving his truck instead of the Audi. Constant trucker references to the police etc...

 

[Glenn Morris]

Thanks Glen, you can drive next time for sure. Maybe we need to use GTL or something a little less demanding on drivers and PC's / servers.

Sounds good. Guess I'll need to put some practice in, cos I'm worse at GTR-E than I am GTL at the moment, which is fairly hard to accomplish!

As long as its not Nurburgring, she's all good :laugh2:

 

[Rhys Gardiner]

Well, I suppose I'd better say something.

Our luck was rotten throughout the series (minus Jari's excellent performances of course), but we had tons of fun. If this InterClub series is run again in the future, the Norschleife should NOT be included :rotfl:, and the driving standards of some people from the other clubs could have been just a bit more cautious - those were the only niggles I had with the series. Thank you Warren for your leadership and organising, thank you Jarrod for your great skins, thank you to Tyson for making this possible, and thank you to the whole team for making this experience worthwhile for me.

Rhys

 

[Nigel Roberts]

EDITED: Thanks for that Rhys

 

[Rhys Gardiner]

Edited. Sorry about that. :sad:

 

[Olaf.j Linortner]

ok ,
now its my turn to file a report .well im not going to make one ,but i would like to convey my thanks to a few people .Tyson ,great job in organizing this event ,difficult as it was nonetheless well done .:thanks:to the Motorheads and Austeam group :thanks:for the server time ,Warren for your efforts in organizing the RD group ,Jarrod for our "colours",to my team mates for putting up with the dribble that came out of my mouth on TS,and to anyone whom i may have forgotten ,thanks for a great event
regards
olly