AC Friendly Development Series @ Silverstone GP - Monday 28th March 2016

Assetto Corsa Racing Club event
A big thumbs up for this initiative. Very helpful! It gained me 2-1.5 seconds from below 2.30 to 2.27 something. My driving line was pretty good though there were some slips here and there concerning the gears. Consistency improved as I drove more laps but setup tweaking made most of that improvement.

Looking forward for more events of this kind.
 
thank you guys. my first 18 lap race ever:)
hope to c u next time. my audio didn't work to say hello live.

should I lift off the gas in between shifts with bmw235i ?
 
Sooo... The summary! Feel free to ask any questions left unanswered or correct me whenever I'm wrong. I've got exams and I'm running on very little sleep and a whole lotta coffee.

Racing Lines
The idea (for most corners) is really simple; Outside, inside, outside. Rinse and repeat where needed.
Make the track shorter wherever possible but keep 2 wheels on the black stuff. Long understeery corners like Abbey, Copse and Stow? Clip the inside kerb to make the rear step out a little.
Don't be afraid to push the limits of the car in practice, that's what it's for. Best thing about simracing; we don't have to pay and wait for the repairs!
And finally, you can learn a lot from looking at the faster guys on the server but you can learn more from someone giving you an explanation. I'm usually on the server during the official practice session, I wouldn't mind giving some pointers, just ask. :)

Setup
Assetto Corsa has some short explanation for pretty much every setting in the setup menu and Matheus covered those in detail yesterday. I'm not going to write all that down, some other people already did that:
This is the cheatsheet I used until I knew everything by heart: http://www.apexspeed.com/sim/setups/
It's a pretty old guide but works flawlessly.

This awesome guide tells you exactly where the issues you're noticing are coming from: http://www.racingonthecheap.com/recommended-reading/carroll-smiths-handling-guide/
Please note that it's made for the real world, things like broken suspension or a worn out differential aren't things you're going to encounter during your practice runs in a sim.

We also talked about the order you should follow when working on a setup. Generally, you'd want to start with the gears. Moving on from the gears, you change the alignment, then the dampers to change the way the car behaves through the different parts of a corner, then you move on to the springs and you finish with the tire pressures. Since everything is linked together, you will have to go over everything again to make it perfect.
There are of course some exceptions, these include tracks like Monza, where you want to run a low drag setup. Running with less downforce makes the car unstable, so you're going to the dampers and springs first to make it stable.
Other exceptions include bumpy tracks, odd handling cars and so on... You'll get the hang of it after a while. :)

Racecraft
We hadn't covered this due to lack of time. I know I'm not a really fast guy but I'm really proud of my overtaking skills. Someone called my overtaking a mix of Niki Lauda's brains and James Hunt's balls. On top of that I'm an 18 year old Dutch boy, just like this bloke. So all the parts are there. :p

I'll start of with some etiquette, but I'm sure you're all familiar with that anyway.
Divebombing is allowed, but not appreciated. You can easily ruin both your races.
Always leave enough room.
No intentional contact, blocking or other forms of unfair driving.
Never hesitate! This goes for defending and overtaking. If you hesitate, you'll be unpredictable and that always ends in tears.

Now on to defending.
The best way to defend is to just drive faster, easier said than done of course.
My biggest advice is to stay on the racing line for as long as possible, the other guy has to find a way around you, which will be slower if you're on the ideal line.
Once the guy gets to close for comfort, you can start to defend actively. What I usually do is giving up a bit of cornering speed to make sure I have a good exit out of corners so that the guy will struggle with overtaking down the straight. When you have to defend coming into a corner, try to stop the other driver from driving the ideal line. You can do this by turning in early, for example.

Overtaking.
Drive faster than the guy ahead. Get close to his bumper and pressure him into making mistakes.
It's quite difficult to explain and I'm awfully tired, but there are some good examples on my youtube channel. I will post some more text when I can think of it. :)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59-sdW0nopu2602jYdoSDQ

I will also upload yesterday's race when I have the time for it.
 
To recap my experience on monday evening in short:

1. I was having teamspeak trouble - mic of NEW headset not working. I tried an old solo mic, getting lot of noise - shxx! I seem to need help on how to separate TS from gamesound too. On monday I could barely hear the others. So I was kind of lost.

2. It shows that to start at 21h (local in germany) is way to late for me. On the end I was asleep at the wheel and totaly groggy. So I have to think about my participation. I am not 18 anymore, times 3 + 6=X. Even on tuesday I was suffering - beeing not as healthy anyway.

Besides that I found a friendly atmosphere and I like the idea of FD-Events like this.
:cry:
P.S.
Although the slowest I gained 4 seconds (in some laps :))
 
To recap my experience on monday evening in short:

1. I was having teamspeak trouble - mic of NEW headset not working. I tried an old solo mic, getting lot of noise - shxx! I seem to need help on how to separate TS from gamesound too. On monday I could barely hear the others. So I was kind of lost.

2. It shows that to start at 21h (local in germany) is way to late for me. On the end I was asleep at the wheel and totaly groggy. So I have to think about my participation. I am not 18 anymore, times 3 + 6=X. Even on tuesday I was suffering - beeing not as healthy anyway.

Besides that I found a friendly atmosphere and I like the idea of FD-Events like this.
:cry:
P.S.
Although the slowest I gained 4 seconds (in some laps :))
Start times will be an hour earlier now. It was too late for me as well. :) Glad you still managed to get something out of it.
 

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