RDHCS - Merged Previous Season Admin Threads

[Bram Hengeveld]

RDHGP S3 - Merged Season Admin Threads

RDHGP 2009 - RaceDepartment Historic Grand Prix 2009

Details: TBA!

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Hmm what else can I let slip?

1. The schedule (including a testing day) covers 3 continents and 8 countries
2. Each of the vehicles chosen are from a different nationality of manufacture
3. Each of the vehicles will have a "home" event on a track in the country of their manufacture
4. One of the Add-on tracks is a "home" track to one of the vehicles

 

[Stuart Thomson]

I'll probably fill in the blanks when I get home from work later on.

Tata for now.

 

[Yoeri Gijsen]

I suggest Abarths and Falcons @ Monza and Ben drives the only Abarth. :sinister:

See, that sounds spookily like some sort of anti-Tusting discrimination.

I like it! :good:

I call it "balancing the field". It sounds fair to me.

The cars Stu choose vary enough for everyone to pick a suiting car.

 

[Andrew Evans]

i've never felt so compelled to join a league in all my rd times.... bring it chommo!

 

[Hans Sneep]

Guessing-Guessing-Stuart nows how to keep the Suspense building up!!

Hans

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Righto then - I suppose it's time to confess all.

The RDHGP is going to be a GTC65 league.

The cars we will be using are:-

Austin Healey 3000
Ferrari 275GTB
Mercedes Benz 300SL
Renault Alpine A110
Shelby GT350

They are all very close in times, but how you end up getting those times differs wildly depending on the car involved. I can almost guarantee that you'll have one right now you like the look of, but further testing will probably change your mind into something you never considered. I know that happened to me.

Each of the cars will have a "home" race (Donington/Imola/Hockenheim/Magny Cours/Mid Ohio). There will be 3 other races, two 100k events @ Mondello Intermediate & Interlagos, and the third of which will be the season ending double lengther (oo-er) @ Spa, a nod to the 6h race they do in the Real Life Historic racing season (watchers of the GT Racer series will know all about that race).

We'll look to be starting this at the start of May, it'll run on alternate Thursday evenings in place of that night's GTL club event.

It kind of makes sense that the Club events and the CotM events around the period of the league will be biased more towards TC65 & GTC76 events. There may still be the odd GTC65 event, but the cars in the league won't generally be involved.

Right, that's the scoop.

I await the howls of derision and disappointment from you all.

Let's be 'avin' yer.

 

[Ben Tusting]

Thanks Stuart. I can't wait, At the moment i'm heading towards the Healy

 

[Hans Sneep]

At first I am exciting -Tracks and Cars, good choice !

Second - the start of the event May 7 ? this means I can do max 4 races I am going on Holiday 6 of June , OK well still 4 races to do.

Hans

 

[Warren Dawes]

Love the car choices Stuart. These are cars that don't get a lot of airplay, but since I have tried most of them, I quite liked them all. The best example was the Healey for me, I had never driven it till I tried it in your recent all in event, and found it really nice to drive. The others are all good too, and I agree, they should be competitive over a range of tracks.

All looks well thought out to me, and most importantly, should end up lots of fun. :good::good:

Didn't see any "home" track for me though.

 

[Knut Omdal Tveito]

Couldn't be more happy with this Stuart. Can't wait At the moment the Alpine would be my choice. Just love that car!

 

[Stuart Thomson]

At first I am exciting -Tracks and Cars, good choice !

Second - the start of the event May 7 ? this means I can do max 4 races I am going on Holiday 6 of June , OK well still 4 races to do.

Hans

Hans, we are racing on alternate Thursdays, so for example race 1 is on 7th May, but race 2 will be on 21st May, race 3 on June 4th, so you might not get 4 races in at the start, but there will still be some for when you get back. :good:

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Love the car choices Stuart. These are cars that don't get a lot of airplay, but since I have tried most of them, I quite liked them all. The best example was the Healey for me, I had never driven it till I tried it in your recent all in event, and found it really nice to drive. The others are all good too, and I agree, they should be competitive over a range of tracks.

All looks well thought out to me, and most importantly, should end up lots of fun. :good::good:

Thanks Warren - yeah fun's the prime objective.

Didn't see any "home" track for me though.

I know :disapointed:, if that 67 Bathurst would definitely have been done, it'd be in there, but as it is I found a couple of issues with Warwick Farm, and I thought (and testing proved) Lakeside and Amaroo, while excellent tracks with the right cars, wouldn't have had the broad performance equality that the tracks I ended up with have.

Once that Bathurst gets done and released, I promise you, here and now, a Warren Dawes VB Bathurst special

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Knut, I love the Alpine too, and I was definitely going to run that (I may still do), but since I started testing to get the vehicle list, there are a few other candidates trying to get my attention...

 

[Simon Bacon]

Thanks Stuart, definitely will start booking leave around race days for this. As for car- I'd love to drive them all, but 275 GTB I recently 'discovered' and the GT350 - just for the lairyness - tough choice, oh and the Healy - for the noise........decisions, decisions.:thanks:

 

[Warren Dawes]

As for car- I'd love to drive them all, but 275 GTB I recently 'discovered' and the GT350 - just for the lairyness - tough choice, oh and the Healy - for the noise........decisions, decisions.:thanks:

And the Mercedes for the sheer class. :wink2:

 

[Simon Bacon]

Now you mention it Warren.........:good:

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Yeah, I'm really pleased with the vehicle list, tbh. Just in case anyone gives a rat's ass, here's how I ended up at the list.

The germ of the idea for this was actually the event held at Glen Watkins, as the packs were much closer than I would have thought.

The proper quick cars just drove off (Cobras, Elans), GT40's are in a different league again, and the Elite, while it's such a delight to finesse it round tracks, it's outclassed in this company - so they were out of the running straight away.

The GT350 was struggling in the "US" half of the draw, but only on top speed where it was losing out to the very light and slippery TVRs & Shelby Daytonas. Acceleration was fine, but then it got driven past down the straights (of which Glen Watkins has such a bountiful harvest). Put it in with a bunch of less powerful cars round tracks where it's not at full chat for big lumps of the lap, and it's a contender.

The European side was even closer, I was able to keep up with the E-Types and the Healeys - which were nip and tuck - in my Alpine. I was losing time down those long long straights, but come the corners, it was closing up so much it was staggering.

I thought about all this for a while, did a bit of research, did some initial testing. The different nationality thing appealed to me, so I looked into the rest of the class, did some research, and was managing to get times within a second of each other across 6 of the 8 (at that time) candidates. The 2 that didn't make the cut, as they would unbalance the grid were the Shelby Daytona & the TVR. They were both consistently & significantly faster than the remaining 6 (the TVR is a handful, but you could tiptoe round the corners and just blast past everything else in the straights, there was no need to take any chances), so they went.

I now had a field of 6 comprising Italy (the 275 had always kind of passed me by - firstly because it's so expensive in game, that I couldn't afford it before I did the unlock cheat, and by the time I did unlock it, I was kind of conditioned to ignore it - but it's a heady blend of power and handling - and what a noise it makes!), France (the Alpine is one of my favourite cars ever, both to drive in game, and in real life), Germany (the Merc was a pleasant surprise), the US and the UK. It kind of made sense to have one representative per country, so it gave me my hardest dilemma - E-Type or Healey.

In the end I went with the Healey for several reasons, some fundamental and some cosmetic. They are very similar cars, and yet the Jag was faster on the majority of tracks (about 80%), so I thought it might just become this league's Alfa and unbalance the entry. The Healey was more consistent with the other cars in the group timewise, and gets criminally underused for what is a marvellously ebullient car to drive - the Jag is simply more famous, re Austin Powers etc. - and it's also got some more distinctive and disparate liveries.

So there you go, that how we ended up with the list we've got.

 

[Stuart Thomson]

I mean, I know that there's one big flaw in the above, which is the common denominator:-

Me.

It may be that the cars aren't quite as balanced as I think because my driving style lends me to prefer one type of vechicle over another and that I'm compensating for certain weaknesses on some cars , and repressing strengths on others due to that preference.

I can't completely mitigate for that, I've tried to be as consistent as possible, but there is always that caveat, that possibility, when there is a variable in the mix.

And it doesn't come much more variable than me.

 

[Yoeri Gijsen]

It's fine Stu. It really depends on driving style whether the one car is better for you. If you test long enough you can find out what cars are really faster than other and which are or. In the end you can meet up, even with the cars that you considered abominable.

For me the choice is going to be between the Shelby and the Healey. I already know that I can be fast in a Healey, but the Shelby will be more of a challenge.

I liked how I could compete in the Falcon last year, so maybe I'll just go for the Shelby, however it really doesn't suit me as much as the Falcon did...

Tough, tough, tough...

 

[Knut Omdal Tveito]

It would be really nice to have an open practice pre-season. Open for the allowed cars of course so we could test different cars and see how we do against the others.

I guess you already have that planned Have you driven an A110 Stuart?