Team Event - Lotus Elan/Porsche 914 @ Spa Thursday 25th June

[Stuart Thomson]

Servername: RACEDEPARTMENT.COM
Class: Team Event
Track: Spa Francorchamps GP
Conditions: 15.00 In-game race time
Practice: 20 min
Qualification: 10 min
Race: 10 laps (See Note 4 below)
Note1: Click here to read the password and golden rules!
Note2: Porsche 914 skinpack will be used Download if needed.

Team Event Rules:
1. Teams consisting of 2 drivers will be allocated at random, on or before the day of the event.
2. Drivers must sign up before the event takes place to be allocated a team at random. Drivers who arrive not signed up before the teams are created out of the signed up drivers will complete the rest of the teams in the order whihc they arrive.
3. Each team will be allocated a skin to use for each car in the sign up thread. These skins must be used by that team. The skin choice is not open for debate.
4. Drivers will alternate the cars in the two races.
Race 1 - Driver 1 = Elan, Driver 2 = Porsche
Race 2 - Driver 1 = Porsche, Driver 2 = Elan
5. In the event of an odd number of participants, one team will have 3 members allocated, and the best 2 scores per race will count in the event totals for that team. Driver 3 should mirror Driver 1 in car usage (Race 1= Elan, Race 2= Porsche)

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Server's up :good:

 

[Hans Sneep]

Stuart, Cars not on the server!!

Hans

 

[Warren Dawes]

Stuart, Cars not on the server!!

Hans

Yep!! I just tested it and the Elan loads ok but with the Porsche, I get the message "Car not present on the server".

Has the 914 skin pack been added to the server?

 

[Warren Dawes]

Hmmmnnn!! This event should prove to be "interesting".
I just had a brief test run (offline) to check out both cars, and was much quicker in the Porsche (about 3 secs), but my chances of survival in the Porsche are extreeeeeemely low. :shame: My love / hate relationship with these Porsches continues. :love-over:

Plenty of demolition screenshot opportunities coming up I think. :nailbiting:

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Mea Maxima Culpa :shame:

Sorry chaps - they (the Porsche skins) are there now.

Apologies

 

[Tim Ling]

The Elan is much more forgiving, but seems very twitchy. Sam's Porsche setup is good, but keeping it on the track is the tough part

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Anyone having issues with the Porsche skins - delete the skins from your GTL install (GTL\GameData\Teams\GTC76\Porsche 914\ or similar - delete all the directories except "370"), re-download and install from the thread link.

There shouldn't be any differences or mismatches, but I had that issue with Melbourne the other night, and the above process cured that.

 

[Sam J Simpson]

Guys, I've been doing some testing offline and have had to drasticly change the setups for both cars because the sets I had were from relatively short, point and squirt tracks, managed to get the Porsche a bit more stable and the Elan reasonably manageable, altho it is still a Lotus and Mr Chapman was renowned for making them twitchy anyway, the Porsche too will try to spit it's self at the scenery unless taken in a firm hand, even with a "stable" set, I'll upload in a few minutes so they are available for testing.

Sam

UP now, 914-6 Sam and Elan Sam

 

[Tim Ling]

Ta Sam

 

[Stuart Thomson]

OK - I'm about to leave work for home, so I'll be out of contact until just gone 7.

Anyone who wants to drive in this, just leave a note, and we'll see what we can do :good:

 

[Tim Ling]

That was fun :messed: One day I will learn how to keep the car on the road, and I'll be able to race.

Race 1-Lotus Elan: Great setup from Sam made this drivable, and in practice I managed a 2:57. Come quali, and 3 minute+ lap puts me last. Come race start, I jump the start AND run into Bert, spinning him round (sorry mate :excruciating. I somehow manage to take my SnG, and then spend the race in 8th until Bert gets a black flag for missing a SnG. I come in 7th and last.

Race 2-Porsche 914: Another nice setup courtesy of Sam, but I'm struggling with mistakes. another 3+ min quali sees me 7th when Kris doesn't run a lap. A great start sees me in 4th/5th. Amazing! Proper racing...until I hit the gravel. 7th again, until another mistake sees Hans scoot by. I set off after Hans, and start reeling him in, but another off leaves me last and no hope of catching anyone. Only sheer bloody-mindedness kept me going. On lap 8, my cat decided that my foot going up and down on the gas was me playing with her, which also didn't help the concentration.

I guess the one good thing I take from it is this: while I was chasing Hans, I did a lap in 2:53, over 4 secs faster than my best practice lap! So, the ability is there. Hope I can find it again.

 

[Matt Crouch]

Race 1 - Front Porch. Spa is scary at the best of times and driving these round here feels like driving on a knife edge. Qualified in 2nd. Got away in second and stayed there for the whole race.
Was quite surprised that I managed to keep it on the track for the whole race, except for once where I made an accidental cut at les combes, and a very scary moment coming onto the straight that leads to the bus stop where I dropped a wheel on the grass but recovered it [having failed to do so earlier on my first quali lap].

Race 2 was the first time I'd tried the Elan. A bit more responsive but I think it was slightly harder than the porsche in the end (but not so scary). The field seemed closer for longer on this one. Half of this was a mexcellent race with Bert in which we swapped position quite a few times. Bert did a very good job of avoiding me when I nearly lost it completely at Eau Rouge. Then I did a not so good job of avoiding Bert when he span in a later turn.... but I pushed you the right way so there's always a silver lining :heh: :clover:. A couple more little time drops here and there before I finally got ahead in to 5th after another spin.
Came accross the Thomonator a bit later to go into 4th and then another scary moment with Sam stopped in the middle of the track :eek:. From my pov it just looked like you were stopped rather than frozen so tried and completely failed to avoid the car - went right through it and spun round, then spent a while getting on the track and took P3

Spa is a track I've generally avoided but I was pleasently surprised by it tonight

 

[Warren Dawes]

Another new style of event, also plenty of fun to be had with this friendly group, and I think this is something we should do more in the future. These two cars were always going to be a challenge on Spa, the Porsche had me expecting the worst, but I had my teammate Hans to help me out. :male-fighter2:

Race 1: Elan. Thank God (or Stuey) I got to start with the Elan, at least I was confident of finishing. Qualified P4 just behind teamy Hans who was putting down some impressive times in the Porker. We all spread out pretty quickly, the Porsche was clearly faster at Spa, but the trick was whether the Porsche's could stray on track. Sam and Matt bolted away, and didn't make any major mistakes, so I finished P3.
Grats Sam and Matt.

Race 2: Porsche. My usual Porsche fears looked to be surfacing during Qualy, with only 2 laps without major dramas, but they were reasonably fast ones. Now, if only I could string 10 laps together. ray3:
Qualified on pole, but still not confident. Even started ok, made it safely through lap 1 with Stuart hounding my tail, so I was very nervous. Lap 2, I had a big heart stopper as the tail let go through the left hand sweeper, so I expected the usual Porsche "slide of death" but after some major wobbling, I managed to get it back under control. Now Stuart could sniff my fear and was getting ready to pounce. He soon had an off of his own, giving me valuable breathin space. After that, I concentrated like hell on just keeping this slippery Porsche on the black stuff. Managed to keep it together, a minor miracle, to take a comfy win.
Maybe the Porsche isn't so bad after all. :snicker:

WD Kris and Matt for the podium.

Thanks to everyone again for the fun. and especially to team mate Hans who is showing rapid improvement. Maybe the Porsche is your car mate.

EDIT: Big thanks to Sam (Elan) and Stuart (Porsche) for the setups. :good:

 

[Stuart Thomson]

OK - I personally don't think that was a successful as it could be with some tweaking. There was some good racing in there at times (Kris & I had some good dices in both races), so the format shows promise, though. Next time I'll address the following things:-

• Spa's good, but it's too long, so a shorter track
• The Elan & 914 are not the easiest cars to drive
• They're also not as closely matched as I thought.

It doesn't help that I was sick as a dog last night and really shouldn't have raced (in fact I'm going home from the office in a minute and getting straight into bed). Apologies to my teammate Bert - I really didn't hold my end of the partnership up - the Elan race was alright, but that took just about everything I had out of me. I was dead in the Porsche, and let the team down somewhat. About 4 laps into the second race, my 914 turned into a wall-seeking missile. :disapointed: I was feeling so grim, it got worse from there.

 

[Warren Dawes]

Sorry to hear you are not well Stu, best wishes for a quick recovery.

OK - I personally don't think that was a successful as it could be with some tweaking. There was some good racing in there at times (Kris & I had some good dices in both races), so the format shows promise, though. Next time I'll address the following things:-

• Spa's good, but it's too long, so a shorter track
• The Elan & 914 are not the easiest cars to drive
• They're also not as closely matched as I thought.

I think the two cars would be more closely matched on a different track, eg. Donnington or similar layout, but the long straights of Spa favoured the Porsche. But I agree, more manageable cars on shorter tracks might help increase the numbers joining, which would add a lot to this format. The format was fine though. Alfa's and Cortina's are always well matched.

About 4 laps into the second race, my 914 turned into a wall-seeking missile. :disapointed: I was feeling so grim, it got worse from there.

One thing I have learned about the Porsche, avoid the first major spin at all costs. It seems that once you spin, it melts the tyres and just keeps leading to more spins with exponential results. It can quickly become evil. :devil:

 

[Kris Leeten]

Ok, finally some time to write down some memories of Spa yesterday.
The entire day was very busy (server down etc...) and I barely made it to the practice session, still chewing on a sandwich. Not too much practice anyway with the Elan which I had to drive first. From the first meters I knew I wanted the Porsche, badly. I did manage to spin out on the (second) straight and do a perfect 360 but I didn't even got below 3 minutes during Qualify so a 7th pos to start from. I had a real good start, no... actually I think all you guys had a terrible start and on the straight I'm already in the middle of the pack in 4th position. My moment of glory didn't last long as in lap 2 I have Hans behind letting me know he definitely wants to pass, which he does very nicely a few laps later. Then began the fight with Stuart for several laps switching positions: ubercool. Around lap 7 we met Hans who was crawling back on the track. The battle between Stuart & me ended after I spun out on the straight in lap 9. Finished 5th

Race 2:
Zé Porsche! Just starting the engine in the pit and you know you're in the better car And it's got it's steer on the 'right' side
Qualify:
After driving a lousy inlap where I crumbled the 914 at the end of the lap, I only had 1 attempt left. Now I had a good inlap and a good qualifyrun untill I was looking at Warren in my rearviewmirror and overshot La source and ended up in the wall... 8th position
Race starts and after 2 laps: 3rd Me likes the Porsche a lot. It was definitely a lot quicker on the straights and if you remember to brake rather early it all goes well . I do have to agree on Warren's golden tip: after 1 spin the tyres feel wasted (for a while) Then again Mr Thompson I hope you didn't spun because I entered that corner like a noob? After Stuart's spin I was following (teammate) Sam and got passed on the straight. Aiming for Warren I wasn't able to catch up on him. Sam passed again after I made an error and I followed him untimm he freezed in the final lap (Very lucky he finished in 4th pos)

Great event, thanks all!

 

[Kris Leeten]

And here the final results!!!

 

[Warren Dawes]

Well done to Sam and Kris. :first:

 

[Stuart Thomson]

Then again Mr Thompson I hope you didn't spun because I entered that corner like a noob?

Absolutely not, that was all my own work :good:

 

[Hans Sneep]

Slide Sow - Team Event

It did take a while to put it together but I hope you like it ,
a slide show from race 1.

I have to make some apologies to Stuart and Bert I was a bid to hard in defending my place.

My third place in Qualy.was my best ever and my fastest time on Spa , It was a great event we must do this more.

My Team mate Warren did a great job so thanks to him we ended hi in the ranking.

So here it is :

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbOI2mw6UOk[/ame]

Hans