rF2 Week 33: Nissan GTR Sebring

[Ian Franssen]

I don't understand. When is the race ?

We re already practicing for a (real 12H) Sebring race. I hope it won't be at the same time ^^

with the 370z I just made 2.06.1 if it could be a reference for your own lap.

Races are every day of the week, at 19:30 GMT the qualifying starts. So enough days to participate and practice for your big event.

 

[Hugo von Falken]

Races are every day of the week, at 19:30 GMT the qualifying starts. So enough days to participate and practice for your big event.

Okkkk but it's only with the GTR ? Cause I won't have enought time if it's another car than the GT4

 

[Ian Franssen]

Yep sorry, we have to pick one car for the format we chose, we will be driving this car a few weeks before we change it to another for a few weeks.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

I don't understand. When is the race ?

We re already practicing for a (real 12H) Sebring race. I hope it won't be at the same time ^^

with the 370z I just made 2.06.1 if it could be a reference for your own lap.

2.06 mate?
Just tried this combo for few laps, never driven the 370 that much before but way way of that pace.

 

[Mickael Folcher]

Damned, I did last sunday a one hour event with the GT-R, and today, the car wasn't the same at all. Gearbox and braking were different.
Congrats to the guys.

 

[Matt Sentell]

You were quick, Mickael. Kept the pressure on for a good while there.

Stefan, my suggestion if you want to try variable weather is to set it so that there's a low-ish chance of rain, something like 20% perhaps. Maybe try just setting this across all periods of each session, so from one session/event to the next it's really unknown what's going to happen at any given time.

I've run some online races with weather and in my opinion it works decently enough to use, especially in a format like this, but there are issues. The biggest is that the track conditions change too quickly, as everyone knows. In normal dry sessions that's something that people probably like because it means the track rubbers in very quickly. However when it goes from dry to raining it means that the grip can suddenly disappear in an area of the track and sort of catch you out. Occasionally it's more like what happens in real life when a section gets oil deposited on it.

So that's not ideal but usually it's not like that. I think it would be really interesting to try in this format and might even spur some more interest in the races. If you set it so it's probably going to be dry but you just never know if there will be an occasional shower then it can make things really interesting. Even if it only rains briefly it can change the surface, washing away some of the rubber, and force you to adapt, which is a lot of fun with this sim's tire model.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

After my bad performance last week. This was my first race. Hadn't driven the GTR properly for a very long time. Qualy was ok P2 could have been better, but 15min practice don't deserve pole

The start was in the wet and I stormed into the lead. Had 2 second in hand in Sector 3 of the first lap, but the first time into the last corner I lost a lot of time and after 2 laps 50% of my tyres were gone oO. After 6 laps they were completely shot and I took a pair of Drys and was in P3.
I was catching David and Matt. David somehow left and I was taking time out of Matt and was wondering why he didn't pit. It was bone dry, but his wets were in good shape not as mine and he was doing great laptimes with it. I got the gap down from 40seconds after the pit stop to 12 seconds at the end.

Was really good for my first wet race and judged the crossover point perfectly, but ISI has to do something about the wet tyres I shredded mine in the wet and Matt could drive 10 laps with them on a dry track with good laptimes.

 

[Matt Sentell]

Yeah, good race, Frederic. I have a little bit of experience with online wet weather events in rF2 so I probably had a leg up strategy wise. As you say, the wets don't work as they should in the dry. The outright lap time difference on a fresh set of each is reasonably close IMO, but the real issue is how they can be made to last if you're just careful not to slide them too much. And we were on 2x wear rate, so just imagine at normal settings.

So hopefully we'll see that stuff improved. I still enjoy the dynamic weather because you just can never be sure. If everyone else had pitted around the time you did then I would have as well, but David stayed out and was only about 13 seconds behind me. Given the time remaining I wasn't sure if I would be able to run him down after such a long stop to change all four tires on this car. And it could start raining again, which would basically hand him the win if he decided to stay out!

So I thought, "well, I have to try and make these last." But I really didn't know for sure until the last few laps if I was going to be able to hold you off. The tires do fall off a cliff at some point and I was getting near it!

 

[Dino Paolini]

Great race with Matt again.
Again just missing inches for me; first in qualy where I cound't bring 3 good sectors together and than in he race where I've ended up 1,5sec behind him in the finish.

Nice motivation tyring to catch you

Thanks to the guys racing today

 

[Matt Sentell]

Yep, thanks for the race, Dino. Always a challenge keeping up with you.

Not sure what's planned for next week but here are some thoughts/suggestions on the format since I ran a lot of them this week:

- Two events running simultaneously doesn't seem great. I was hoping to run the FR3.5 the past two days. I would join the server with it being empty, wait until ~15 minutes before qual time, and then with no one on but seeing a few on the GTR server I would switch over. It just doesn't seem like there's a large enough community to run 2 at the same time and have good turnout.

- Running the same event/mod all week doesn't seem great either. I understand the theory, that it gets people more accustomed to the combo and the races later in the week are potentially better, but the reality seems to be that people tire of the combo and stop showing up. I think this is evident in both this and the GSC club, where attendance is better early in the week than later.

- I think a fair number of the people who show up on the server don't know that there's a scheduled event. It seems like this often has to be explained, which means that there may just be a percentage of people in attendance who jump on the server at random. If so, they're going to be more affected by the fatigue of running the same mod all week.

- So maybe if you want to run two mods each week, have them on a single server that alternates each day? Maybe this is too much work. It might alleviate some of the end-of-week fatigue since the same mod wouldn't be up every day, but who knows.

- Personally, I kind of wish it were more like the previous format, where there were several mods used on different days throughout the week. That seemed to create better attendance.

- Variable weather used or not is tricky. There's the risk of it driving people away because it's more difficult but it sure makes the races a lot more interesting. It's one of the things that would keep me racing even with fairly low attendance.

 

[Bruno Sousa Ferreira]

Yeah, I agree with Matt I was hoping to do a FR3.5 yesterday and when I jumped onto the server there was no-one, Now having an alternate day on which type of event occurs could funnel the number of people into that race.

 

[Matt Horst]

My opinions on the new format have been posted in a new thread in the feedback forum,but in short i agree with you Matt.Same races all week long bores me to death and at this rate it will be forever before we get to do clio's or camaro's again.

 

[Dino Paolini]

2 combos per week is not that bad, but it should never be on the same days, as this virtually guarantees one of the races to never happen and it unnececairly spreads the few entrants into 2 servers.

But yes, I agree with Bruno and both Matt's

 

[Steve Combey]

hmm yes its 19.40 gmt now and nobody is in GTR server. If anyone wants to race pls join me I'm waiting there now.