Fiat Abarth 131 Sprint/Feature @ Nurburgring - Tue 23rd March 2010

Carlos Diaz

Happily driving a "girly" car
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Servername: RACEDEPT.COM TC65
Class: Fiat Abarth 131
Track: Nurburgring Mullenbach (sprint) / Nurburgring Sprint (feature)
Start Time: 20.00 GMT
Practice: 20 min
Qualification: 10 min (1 timed lap only)
Race: 2 x 15 laps
Note1: Click here to read the password and golden rules!
Note2: If you already have this car, then make sure you select to overwrite the files when installing, as there are extra skins included in this package along with an update to version 1.1 of the mod.
 
Good fun again, although I'm not really a fan of Nurburgring GP, this track always causes me graphical and lag problems. Really strange because it happens in GTL and Race On too. These little Fiats were nice though, great models and sound, the only thing they need is a longer gearing setup, hitting the rev limit about 40% along the straight (in longest gears) didn't seem correct to me.

Race 1: The Mullenbach track is a tight little thing and usually makes for interesting racing. I had a side by side battle for much of lap 1 with Carlos (for the lead) but was bumped off track somewhere by someone behind. Then had a top race with Tom.

Race 2: Heading into turn 1 the first time with cars all around me, and suddenly the game turned into a laggy slideshow, so I bailed out and hit the wall. I hope I didn't cause problems for others. That left me hopelessly last but due to some crashes and off's ahead, I ended up having a good race with Stuart, which was joined for a while by Carlos and Amir (twice lol). Somehow I seemed to chew my tyres to shreds, and ended up stuggling badly for the last few laps.

Thanks to all who raced, always good to race with the GTL gentlemen. :wink:
 
A night to forget for me, just too slow! I liked the car though, i was just missing 2-3 seconds per lap that would've hauled me up into podium contention. First GTL event using a wheel, so perhaps i'm being too cautious under brakes.
2x 8th places for me. Race 1: i was keeping pace with the battles in midfield until i got caught up in the double rollover accident and dropped back too far to catch up again.
Race 2: avoided the carnage at T1 so got up to 4th. The following few laps i was bullied out the way by the quicker guys coming through from the back and i was left by myself to rattle down the laps until the finish. Pretty uneventful really.
Might be back for more GTL action next Tuesday depending on my football injuries, so hopefully i'll have found a bit more speed by then! Thanks for the race.
 
Alright Tom! Grats buddy! And "jackpot" is right.

Race1) I wanna let u guys know that the main reason I did well tonight was thanks to the hours I spent testing the car out at different tracks. Because of that, I had an unfair advantage cuz I had way more seat time than the rest of you. You guys know that normally I end up somewhere in the middle. I was happy to win but I don't like being lonely either, I find that I have way more fun when battling someone.

Race2) Qualied 1st but had a little incident in T1. Don't worry Hans, I had a lot of fun trying to make up some places. Major apologies to Amir, I got a bit too ambitious going into that right hander and took us both out. I did something similar to Lenno a few races ago. I get nervous when a I am in a battle for position, get anxious, and end up making stupid decisions. I have to stop doing that ASAP.

Some personal history: The 'Ring was the first track I ever raced on with you guys. It was with the debut of the Skylines. It was my first online race with GTL. The beginning of an RDiction.


Thank you all for showing up, I'm glad you guys liked this car. I should tell you now that there is a turbo version of this little beast. You will be driving it soon. And you will be happy to know that it has longer gears too:thumbup:.
 
Tom, watch the replay of Turn 1, Lap 1, Race 2.

And grats on the engagement :thumbup:

I've watched the replay, am i in the wrong there? The way I see it I was almost up the inside of you, but you squeezed me to the kerb and I cut the corner slightly to avoid an accident.

If following T1 I had made it past you i would have ceded the position. Since you spun as aresult of contact from Jack I didn't see that I had to wait. If that was the wrong thing to do then i'm sorry, I just made a decision based on what I thought had happened at the time. Which was that I had been hit and I was just lucky to not have been pitched round.
 
I'm in front of you, a car on my outside, I'm already pointing towards the corner on my inside. I'm only going to be moving one way, and for you to get through without hitting me, you're going to go straight over the grass, or to try and keep legal, you're going to hit me.

It was impulsive rather than malicious, but it still knackered me up within 20 sec of a 30 min race and there was no real need for it. I know you drive with a pad, and you can correct suff really quickly based on visual input, but on a wheel with ffb, the jerk and kick off an impact that I'm not expecting means I'm never going to save it, hardly any of us would.

All I'm saying is, you tuck in behind me, we both get through the corner completely unscathed, and we've still got about 14.9 laps to go.
 
I get your point - and I'm sorry that I didn't just tuck in behind as would have been sensible. However I maintain that without the contact I took from behind in the middle of T1 I would have been able to cut the corner safely and I could have just let you take the position back without anyone having a spin.

I didn't have a lot of room and I thought I might have had more space going into the turn, but once i'd seen the problem occuring it was too late to get out of it.
 
The way I see it I was almost up the inside of you, but you squeezed me to the kerb and I cut the corner slightly to avoid an accident.

Ok - this was edited to your post after my response below the original post, so I'll just respond to this bit.

Going into the corner and when I started braking, I could see you in the mirror, I had a car on my outside moving across to the corner, so I'm also moving towards the apex into what I think is the space there, so he & I can get through without contact, no squeezing going on.

If it was, ironically, a faster corner, I'd probably have been able to leave the room on the inside for dives up there, but as it's such a tight turn, everyone is turning faster, meaning the gaps aren't there, and meaning that, especially in traffic, late dives will always cause contact either before the apex or after it.
 
Tom, I made a similar mistake with Amir in race 2 and with Lenno a few races ago at Dijon...

Basically, what I did wrong, and maybe also what you did wrong, is that I wanted to pass on the inside but I did not have the right of way cuz my car was still behind Amir's as I was entering the corner. In this case, what I should have done was retreat. I needed to let off the brakes a bit, let Amir hit the apex while I tuck in behind him and try to pass him again later. I did the same thing (if not worse) with Lenno. With Lenno I tried to out brake and out turn him on the tight, uphill, right hander at Dijon. I ended up locking up the front tires as I was trying to turn right and slammed into him.

I understand that your situation is different, since you would have probably never touched Stu had Jack not bumped into you. But in the best case scenario you would have gotten a warning for cutting the track when trying to avoid contact with Stu. And it would have been for nothing cuz you would have just given him his place back anyway since you did not intend to pass him while being off track. I also understand that at the beginning of a race we are almost always a little more nervous/anxious. But this is especially the reason why we all have to be a little more careful during the first few turns (myself included). The first few turns are always volatile cuz we, as a group, haven't yet sorted ourselves on the track and found a rhythm, so we are more likely to have an incident.

I would like to say that I am not drilling you in any way Tom, I know that you are a good, clean driver. We all make mistakes (I have a catalog of them myself lol).
I posted this here in this thread mostly so that everyone else knows that it's risky to try and take the inside of a turn if you aren't actually in front of the car you are trying to pass before you both near the apex. It's just safer/better to have more time to plan a passing move that will have more chances of being successful.

I would also like to request that in the future, any questions or concerns that any of us have regarding driving incidents, be PMed to that person or to staff. If anyone comes into this thread, I don't think this is what any of us would want them to read about. We have a reputation of being a club of gentlemen. Clean , fair drivers. Let's try and keep that up right?

I really hope that you guys understand that my request is for the greater good of the group, I'm just looking out for all of us.
I also hope that we agree that there are no hard feelings here. I saw what happened in the replay and it looked like a small mistake that turned into a disaster because of an outside/unpredictable force. Typical racing incident. But that doesn't mean that we can't take steps in the future to try and avoid them.

Thanks.
 
I was trying for lightness from the start, tbh.

It can be awkward as I'm staff. If I PM directly, it can feel like more of a rebuke than it actually was/is. If I complain to Carlos, it can also be construed as more official than was/is intended. That's why it was couched in terms of a 'have a look' request.
 
Not a problem Carlos - I accept full responsibility for the incident and I'm sorry for any upset caused.

In retrospect I should have been more careful as I knew full well it was going to get tight, but at the time I felt I had a speed advantage after a good start and that I would have been able to squeeze through. Unfortunately this was not the case and we ran out of straight too quickly. As a result things got very tight into turn, too tight to avoid contact.

While the contact from Jack only served to make things worse, I should have had a bit more patience and maybe we would have got through unscathed but we'll never know now.

Unfortunately I have the tendancy to be quite aggressive off the line and this can cause issues if we have a tight first turn, I'll try to curb this habit in future races and I'll do my best to ensure we all get through T1 safely.

Stu - I want you to know i'm sory for the part I played in that Incident and that I have absolutly no hard feeling about any of this, accidents happen and on this occaision I am Man enough to accept that it was my fault for being too eager. Let's just move on now and enjoy our future races.
 
Hi guys,
I was just catching up on the events of the last week and came across this interesting thread. I know the rules/guidelines suggest this stuff be sorted out by p.m., but I did find this discussion to be very enlightening. Sounds like I missed a good one.

Congratulations to Carlos on your first RD win! ( I think? )
...welcome Martin and well done also.
 

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