A little tale about preparing for a race.

David O'Reilly

A bad quali means I can go forwards in the race.
A little story about preparing for a race. #2

I've got a 60 min race coming up at Sao Paulo in the brilliant ASR OWC 1992 cars.
I did one a few weeks ago in the unofficial FSR Winter series in the same car.
By the end of the short season I was loving the car and getting more competitive.

However In the Sao Paulo race (race 1) one of my rear discs shattered at about 80% race distance.
That hardly qualifies as good prep so I needed to sort out the issues.

I ran a 60 min test race with pretty low wing against AI. At 48 mins my rear disc shattered again.
Looked at Motec and I was at or just over optimum temps in 2 corners every lap but nothing glaring.
The low wing package was hurting the fronts by about lap 9 of a planned 16 lap stint and to lower the tyre temp a bit I moved brake balance rearwards as this occurred. Maybe that was part of it.

I made a setup (B) with a little more wing and more oversteer to save the front tyres and ran a 9 lap stint and compared the motec traces.
Temps were surprisingly similar. Front wear was only 2 % less but that 2 % meant I would have 65% at lap 16 instead of 59%in the fronts. In my experience the (edit: rate of) wear gets worse later in the stint. Understeer-fronts wear and get too hot, then they wear more and get hotter and understeer more etc.

What was interesting though was the brake temps were about 20 deg cooler with the B package. Make sense when you think about it.
Slightly lower top speed + slightly higher cornering speed and some more braking by the wings themselves added up to less work for the brakes.
I lowered brake pedal force a few clicks and added 2 clicks of brake cooling.

The decrease in understeer meant that instead of just getting it turned in and planting the throttle, I had to take care with the throttle on turn exit. Manageable but a very different style. With the understeery A setup the front end didn't write cheques the rear could cash.This one could. So I also had to tweak the diff settings a bit to avoid nasty power over-steer out of T12 “Juncao” onto the big uphill straight.

So I elected to run the B package. I set up another practice race.
The car felt great. I settled into the oversteer setup and my front tyres were keeping in very nice shape. Lap times were more consistent right into the pit window.
I avoided moving the brake bias rearwards and managed the (less) front wear by being more careful with brake application.
BUT....at 48 mins the engine died. There was no temp warning in the HUD, no smoke beforehand indicating temp issues it just stopped dead on the back straight “Reta Oposta”.

Thinking hat back on.
I was checking temps regularly but not everywhere.
Also the maximum safe rev limit for this car is 14200 but the red line is fixed at 15,000.
I don't have “auto lift” activated (payer JSON file) and was seeing the amber warning on the Dashmeter Pro on many up-shifts that indicated an over rev.
I figured that I was possibly so close to over temp that the regular over revving when I up-shifted and didn't lift was hurting the engine.
So to be safe I added 2 clicks more of Radiator cooling and set my new Dashmeter Pro with a warning if I went over 110 Deg.
Also set a rev limit in the Dashmeter Pro of 14,500. I would upshift on the shift lights.
Set auto lift in the JSON file so the throttle would momentarily lift on up-shifts. (Heck I was racing against Schumacher in the Benneton and he and Flavio were bound to be using it.)

So I had a few things to keep an eye on now (Revs and Temp). I figured lets get fuel load close to the limit too. So I short fuelled a few litres. By setting Dashmeter Pro with the race length it will calculate fuel delta.

Attempt #3.at 60 min practice race.

The car felt great. The jerky-ness on full throttle up-shifts was gone.
But temp wise I was getting a flashing gauge over temp warning at the end of S2 EVERY lap. Just 111 or 112 instead of 110 and then ½ way up the long uphill start finish straight it would disappear. S2 was increasing oil temp.

My fuel delta was also going slightly in the red (-1.4 lit predicted). So I figured a little fuel saving can help temps too. I started short shifting in S2 and when I overdid this the temp warning didnt occur, when I did it a little the temp warning happened for a few seconds only. My fuel delta went back into the green. I was “managing fuel and temps”-cool.

Lap times were as good or better than setup A and much more consistent into worn tyre territory.
I was as quick on lap 16 as on lap 1. Fuel effect equalled tyre deg.
The pit stop would then find me another second in pace.
Exit of pits after stop 1 I had over temp. So I cooled engine a little in my next in-lap.

After stop 2 at lap 33 (delayed 1 lap due to a bunch of AI entering pit lane) I was into the final stint. The AI all blew their engines at lap 35 or so (can't help them can I).

Brought the car home with a fast final stint and got within .5 sec of my quali lap.

Fuel level =3 litres. Someone 30 sec in front of me could have started another lap so I'll leave that as it is in case I need it.

I now have a fast consistent car that will survive a 60 min race.
Job Done-finally.

Bring on Sunday.
 
Last edited:
Again nice engineering talk. :thumbsup: Love it. :inlove:

Keep in mind: Auto lift throttle and auto blip are disabled on the RD servers. ;)
You can use auto-clutch on the RD server. But it won't activate auto lift or auto blip, no matter what you set in your player.json. :D

Good Luck Sunday. :thumbsup: You'll probably the only one crossing the finish line. :D
 
Again nice engineering talk. :thumbsup: Love it. :inlove:

Keep in mind: Auto lift throttle and auto blip are disabled on the RD servers. ;)
You can use auto-clutch on the RD server. But it won't activate auto lift or auto blip, no matter what you set in your player.json. :D

Good Luck Sunday. :thumbsup: You'll probably the only one crossing the finish line. :D
Thanks for that info. I wasnt aware. However It's allowed on the server we are using.
With some luck no one has done a race distance and are using hot lap setups.
But I just checked the fastest lap times and I need to find about 1.5 sec now.
Today will be about hot laps.
Cheers Guys.
 

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