RD Le Mans Series Season 4 (rFactor)

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Preparations for this race were extremely tough. The 2 drivers that I drove the previous races with told me they wouldn't be able to make this race. So in order to defend the 2nd position in the GT2 championship and to take part in this race I had to find replacements, and damn quick.

After testing various drivers I found two who had very good motivation. I decided to recruit them for the Brigata Orso team and drive the 24h with the 3 of us. That turned out to be a monumental challenge, but more on that later on.

Now that I finally had a set line-up for this race, we had to find a setup for everyone to be comfortable with. Complicating that, we had 1 guy who had not raced rFactor 1 prior to this, it was his first time trying rFactor 1.
We were miles apart in the setup department. And for the guy new to rFactor 1, it was quite a while (felt like ages) for him to find the right wheel settings.

I think we had two weeks to prepare. Thankfully, in the last days before the event, we managed to find a setup we were all comfortable with and quick as well. Qualifying came too soon, lap certainly wasn't great and the setup wasn't there yet either. But we managed a starting position of 4th.

So came the race. It felt like a huge achievement to be even starting in it. Start (and restart after server crash) went quite well. Was inhaling exhaust fumes of P3 all the way. Lost a position after the restart because I couldn't judge my braking zone well being closely behind another car at Mulsanne. I overshot the corner but slotted right back in behind the car that advanced to P4 because of this. Again, closely behind him all the time, managed to pass him as well, but oversteer coming onto the straight immediately after allowed him to pick up the slipstream and get back past me.
I continued to be within a second of him for lap after lap until the P1 of Manwill-Rayner was parked shortly after Indianapolis and decided to back in to me when I was making my move to avoid him. This brought significant damage onto the car and cost me 2-3 seconds a lap.

So the art of endurance (getting the car to the finish) began. After my 1st stint my teammate took over to get a fresh car again. After some slight damage, all the previous damage returned so I took over again after that stint. Somehow, we were quickly back onto the podium (P2) because of other cars running into problems as well.
This stint went well, apart from a catastrophic mistake on my part. I was on to lap a GT2 car that didnt let me pass easily. He seemed to be letting a bit of a gap right before the first Porsche curve, I decided to go for it, noting the storming P1 in my rearview mirror. I came in a bit too hot, slid onto the gravel and that was it, didnt have the grip to return to the track and slid sideways into the tyre barrier. Thankfully this was at the end of this stint, so strategy wise it was OK.

This was another stint where my teammate had to take over immediately afterwards. I took over again after his. That turned out to not be a double stint either. I overshot indianapolis, decided not to go on the asphalt run-off, but misjudged it. I slid onto the gravel, kissed the wall every so softly, but it still resulted in some slight damage, meaning all the previous damage was back as well. Again at the end of the stint, so strategy wise still OK.

After another slight mistake resulting in damage returning by one of my teammates we decided to make repairs to counter this problem. Unfortunately, we had to do this a couple of times, because one of my teammates' FFB was reversed 2 times upon taking over. This resulted both times in significant damage and significant time lost.

At this time, nighttime was already in effect, we were P3 in class and I prepared for my scheduled sleepy time (which was already delayed by the rescheduling needed after all the damage suffered). However, when I was finally almost slipping into my temporary coma, the server crashed and my teammates woke me up because they didn't know start procedures (1st time for both l0l).

After the race had resumed, I managed to grab about 2.5 hours of sleep, before I had to wake up again and practice to drive in the pitch black. I woke up feeling very tired. When I took over for my triple stint in the early morning, the adrenaline coarsing through my veins thankfully made me able to complete the triple stint succesfully. With no mistakes, finally. The whole triple stint duration I pushed to get closer to the car in P2. the server crash at the start of my triple stint cost us more than 2 minutes unfortunately.

One of my teammates took over after my triple stint and completed his stint succesfully as well. I took over after that. No big drama anymore, everything seemed quite set. We were now a lap behind P2, but multiple laps ahead of P4. P3 seemed set in stone.
But I blew my engine. Then after I joined, I timed out. My teammate took over and still managed to complete the race in P3, thank god!

Exhausting preparations followed by an exhausting race, where the part on saturday didnt go well for me as I made some mistakes, the part on sunday went well though, apart from the blown engine.

P3 in race and finished P2 in the championship! Very happy! Was a good first season of endurance racing! The GT2 pole position in Silverstone is ofcourse my highlight of the season.

Now started practicing rFactor 2. Hoping to take part in the rF2 Endurance league coming soon here on RD!
Although I wouldn't mind another RDLMS during fall/winter! To cover ground untill Enduracers release their rF2 gem!
 
Until the first SC (which was at night) we had a big gap on the first place, with 2 laps.

Actually, it was 1 and half a lap gap to us, but as the server crashed, we hadn't completed that lap yet so you got an even bigger advantage over us.

Tough luck with the crash though:(

I'd prefer RDLMS S5 on rF1. Maybe I should post about that in the feedback thread aswell, but several people have already voiced that opinion, so I'd just copying it for the x-time?:p
 
Like

- Reconnection-Plugin(+Running in FP Session)
- Teammates getting more involved and important by telling you gaps, lap times and positions

A whole raced used to be destroyed when you disconneced, meaning game over. Now, even if you probably still suffer from a crash or disco, you still can get your fair share of driving and enjoy the race.

- A big, nicely filled grid(At the 24 Hours, just about ten cars shy from the real Le Mans)

- Live-Timing(I only got to see the alternative live-timing with class colours towards the end, but it seemed easier to read)

- Our class win at Le Mans;)

Dislike

- Calendar problems(Re-scheduled race, resulting in one race less)

Although this only affected the sister car as they did the full season.

- Late Simsync updates before Le Mans(Mainly the one on race day, ofc it was necessary, but it could catch some drivers out if the sync fails)

- Headlights at Night

I was quite surprised how few you could see in the night. It might just ne normal, but it was quite tough to drive.

As for rF1 VS rF2:

I'd be up for RDLMS S5 on rF1.

The base is there(game, re-connection plugin, format, the tracks, the superb mod, the interested teams&drivers, etc.) And who knows if we'd get some new cars before a new season(Aston Martin LMP1, BMW M3).

Meanwhile, rF2 doesn't even have a Prototype and few tracks(Thanks, but Lime Rock being part of ALMS is silly enough).

I tested the demo of rF2 and it works fine apparently, but I'd prefer another season of RDLMS, rF1 and the Enduracers mod.
 
At the beginning I will thanks to everyone organisers for create this amazing season. There was some organise issues but all end fine.

I would like summed up the entire season from our perspective.
When I find out that 4th season RDLMS start soon, we was very excited, we want racing again with the best teams in the world after former SRO and EIIC.

Silverstone 8h: This first race was far not enough for us on position point of view, though 2nd place in Q, and start from 1st place this race we end on 7th position. Many mistakes and issues makes big gap between us and podium teams.

Sebring 12h: Another race with another hopes. After bad race in Silver, we want to improve our style and behavior. Beginning was nasty because of drive through penalty that we got to resolve on the first laps of race [Silver penalty]. Our race pace was really proper that gives very high position[4th], 5 laps behind leaders. It is worth to mention, that after night server crash we had some problems on restarts, costs a lot of seconds, also Mateusz had accident with rSeat 908, and he spun out.

Road America 10h: Event after long break, with medium grid size but very happy for us. We took 3rd place, 4 laps behind winners. Our key on this race - constant pace, and finally we climbed on the podium.

LeMans 24h: Basically, all about wrote Mateusz, but one thing is certain we had a lot of unlucky,
particulary on night after restart. Nikodem want to start with good speed, and meet P2 slipstream, this cause a heavy crash into wall, and massive loss of time obviously we meet some CL's.

So I congrats to all teams and drivers which made pro grid, especially the winners in their classes. Cheers guys!

thumb31_9200736.jpg
 

Marco Bijl

Axe Travels
...updated SimSync

The replays for LeMans is added to the RDLMS S4 Replay sync.
There is 1 issue, we are missing part 1. This is 4.5 hours from the start on to the first server crash. That replay is not saved well. The rest we managed to get back, as all server replays where corrupt as well.
If anyone has a replay from part 1, send me a PM, and we will get it in the sync as well.
 
On this mod I jus tried a long race - swapping with a.i but after two hours in control my a.i partner spun due to not changing tyres. Is there any way to run a twenty four hour race where the ai. Partner driver changes tyres? Cheers in advance for any help
 
On this mod I jus tried a long race - swapping with a.i but after two hours in control my a.i partner spun due to not changing tyres. Is there any way to run a twenty four hour race where the ai. Partner driver changes tyres? Cheers in advance for any help

I've done a couple of long races offline swapping with the ai using the enduracers mod and when i did a pitstop i would first complete the pitstop (refuel and change tires) and only after it was complete i would toggle ai control, it worked fine for me
 
I've done a couple of long races offline swapping with the ai using the enduracers mod and when i did a pitstop i would first complete the pitstop (refuel and change tires) and only after it was complete i would toggle ai control, it worked fine for me
Tank you. I was hoping it would be possible to let the a.i drive overnight? Do you know if this is possible?
Also, the fuel tank seems limited at fourteen laps.is this normal? Thanks again and sorry for all the questions!
 
it should be able to be done, when the ai feels it needs fuel and tires he will stop automatically. i never done that because when i do those races i ussualy stop the game during the night and keep going on the next day so i always keep an eye on the ai
 
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