AC GT3 @ Watkins Glen - Sunday 10th May 2020

[Norkin]

@Norkin what a great battle we had in the end. That GT-R has some rockets attached o it's bottom in 4th, 5th ,6th. I wasn't able to gain on you beeing in the slipstream at 0.3-0.4s back I justcouldn't pass you. your car was so big that all the line eevery time ) and the R8 is not small either.

Yeah those rockets are nice at straights, but at fast corners like that it’s like driving a ship. Luckily for me that was a very poor track for overpassing my ship I was so sure that I would have done a mistake cause you were so close to me, but I survived

 

[Medilloni]

Thanks for putting on tonight's race @Chris Down and congrats to the podium guys

Had a couple of great battles in the race, most of them super fair - George, Miika, thanks so much guys, hard but fair as it should be,

Apologies for disappearing near the end, had a bit of stutter, then a a second or so of black screen, just into the final bend, not the best place for it

Just re-installed Real Head Motion before the race, which is where I think the conflict is (happened before), but will def work on sorting it, makes a huge difference.

 

[Raresch]

Thanks for the apology Raresch, I saw you disappearing completely off the track on Helicorsa (and watched the replay, which confirms it), never expected you to rejoin and be on the inside.

I see, I use Car Radar, and you were always there, for me at least. Your red rectangle never disappeared from my screen. but, yeah, some might say it was careless reentry on the track. sorry
In my defense, I could say I was back on the track when we started to brake, and my front wheel was around your back wheel. Was that enough? maybe not. I really thought you saw mee all the way, like I did because the red dot was there and I thought you would take it wider.
Also, I could have steered more to the right because you were there, and when i felt the aero can't hold it I released the steering angle. Maybe I should have released the throttle? I was pumped by the battle, so I didn't of that as a possibility.

 

[Chris Down]

And as usual, my VR onboard. Thanks everyone for the great race!

Here's the replay, as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OEBIVjxKe79GkXOz2hd8RS8AlvwzX560/view?usp=sharing

 

[HTIDRaver2k8]

What happened Thys? I went on the grass to avoid the first lap chicane mayhem and didn't have enough grip to get back on - re joined in 32nd place. When I came up to you I expected a battle but I cruised past on the straight as if I had DRS. You didn't have any straight line speed.
But later in the race after I had lapped you, you caught me quite easily and if you hadn't been letting leaders through, I thought you would have caught me. A race of two halves? Or a radical strategy?

Overall very good race for me, probably my best. Without dropping back to 32nd on lap one I may have even got near the top ten.
Question for Nissan drivers - Is this car slow off the line or is it me? I must have lost half a dozen places at the start, last week as well.

Thanks for putting it on guys. See you next week.

Mate.

Where do I start.

Wrong setup, 9 million rear wing so I could manage about 45 mph on the straight.

Pitted and swapped setup, immediately did a 1:46 and started catching people.

Just plain bad strategy/lack of practice and overall inability to focus

 

[GeekyDeaks]

Sorry, about my poor exit at 31:20 @Chris Down - I was really struggling to keep my left rear cool when you came up behind me. I'm trying to think what I should have done differently (other than try and boot it a bit more)

 

[Interslice]

Question for Nissan drivers - Is this car slow off the line or is it me? I must have lost half a dozen places at the start, last week as well.

Thanks for putting it on guys. See you next week.

I nearly ploughed right into the back of you off the line!
One of many survival swerves early on! I actually anticipated the early mid field richochets this week. Big shout out the @Michel vL for being on the ball and getting us both through the gap on the back straight.

Ended up in a great battle at the end with @Luca Badin - I couldn't get a good slip stream off you at all! I had a click more wing here than road america and could really feel it on the straights. Tried to launch it through the bus stop on the last lap to put the squeeze on for the last sector but didn't manage it! Well played by you I could see you were having the bad tyre wobblies!
Hope you change your mind and come back next week. The midfield is a bit of a lottery early on. You need on eye defending your arse and another looking up the road for a potential spinner and another watching the car beside you just to give yourself some chance. You're nearly better off starting further back. It's all about survival.

See you all next week

 

[Medilloni]

I see, I use Car Radar, and you were always there, for me at least. Your red rectangle never disappeared from my screen. but, yeah, some might say it was careless reentry on the track. sorry
In my defence, I could say I was back on the track when we started to brake, and my front wheel was around your back wheel. Was that enough? maybe not. I really thought you saw mee all the way, like I did because the red dot was there and I thought you would take it wider.

I didn't see you Raresch, you went off track, rejoined and hit me, sorry I can't be more polite about it.

 

[Kek700]

Suprise suprise... A road america setup does not work well on Watkins Glenn...

Can someone explain me why my car would drive all right in the beginning of the stint, but once I got to like 15% tyre wear the rear would slide all over the place? It was like someone flicked a switch and all of a sudden and my rear grip was just gone... And it seems weird to me that that happens when there is still 85% of the tyres left (even in green).

Also, does someone have the full replay? For some reason my computer only saved the last half of the race

I was following you for the 15%, it got to a point we’re you were putting in so much effort into passing @640er , almost as soon as you went by I could see you struggling to hold the car, I assumed you were on softs, and the battle had consumed them to past their sell by date.
I assumed the constant battling had done them, I know because it has happened to me in the past, I always try and get my overtaking done quickly, if it is not achievable I back off and stabilise the temps before I try again. May be a load of tosh .
I’m fooled .
Had a great battle with Andreas, I think the 8 laps of constant battle with Bart had taken most of the fight from him, had @GEO147 snapping at my heels, but had the advantage of knowing he would struggle to get past Godzilla.
The rest of the race was knocking off laps,.
I’d like to thank every one I came across for making it a good race and @Chris Down
For his faultless organisation.

 

[Luca Badin]

no. you shouldn't. it's a whole week where you could practice with some AI. make a 10 min race, start from the middle of the back some AI around 90. If you pass all of them in the first lap, just put it stronger until you can barely take a few places. That's how you could improve your startup awareness.

Thank you for the advice Raresch, I guess it's all a matter of getting more experience under my belt. Can't be all cautious into T1, avoid risky overtakes, let people on different strategies by, only to throw it away because I haven't learned when to lift.

Ended up in a great battle at the end with @Luca Badin - I couldn't get a good slip stream off you at all! I had a click more wing here than road america and could really feel it on the straights. Tried to launch it through the bus stop on the last lap to put the squeeze on for the last sector but didn't manage it! Well played by you? I could see you were having the bad tyre wobblies!
Hope you change your mind and come back next week. The midfield is a bit of a lottery early on. You need on eye defending your arse and another looking up the road for a potential spinner and another watching the car beside you to give yourself some chance. You're nearly better off starting further back. It's all about survival.

You were so consistent man, but I think you were a bit slow out of the bus stop and into that long corner after, so I always got back like half a second on you, but I just couldn't get it done on the back straight and didn't have the balls to send it anywhere else.

And yeah, I was just a bit frustrated with myself, I'll probably be back - @Chris Down isn't the only one who needs these races to stay sane

 

[Kek700]

Question for Nissan drivers - Is this car slow off the line or is it me? I must have lost half a dozen places at the start, last week as well.

@Steve O'Malley

The Nissan will only launch of the line with a first gear below 60mph.
Fast launches are a specialty of the. 911, then the mid engine cars, then normally aspirated RWD, then back of the field the Nissan.
Below 60 mph the car is , well ok, does not loose much boost.
I used to start at the back, so it did not bother me, kept first gear as a usable gear, but now people are so much better , need now to reasonably qualify, so first on a fast circuit has to be abandoned for start only.
If the gear is much above 60mph , it will bog down, and you get toasted.

 

[Interslice]

@Luca Badin I thought I had a decent line for the bus stop practising on saturday. Just wasn't happening for me today! I usually have a bogey corner or two at every one of these tracks. It's hard to tell which one it's going to be until you feel the consequences of it in a race!
I was just happy to have zero spins. Hit a road block on the last corner early on but i couldn't do much about it. Put me back to 21st after an ok start. The yellow flags were a bit sensitive, 99 times out of 100 it's nothing, not so much as a cloud of dust... until your flat out around a blind corner straight into 2 cars parked sideways

 

[SOLO59]

@SOLO59 you've let me pass on the straight, why?

Yea that was just me a bit nervous I guess and thinking for some reason you were a lead lap car attempting to put me a lap down lol. No blue flag, I was even on the freaking lead lap... I still thought you were trying to lap me lol again, thought I was gonna be lapped today due suffering x2 spins from other guys hitting me. A case if over thinking way too much.

Thought I had a random bad connection on the last lap, but it was a error code on the server?

Suffered 2 incidents early at no fault of my own, but still pulled off P11. 46:00x in qualy, but Couldn't get below a 46 at all.

My 3rd race with my new T-LCM pedals finally dialed in how I like, and I stayed consistent throughout the race and played some tight D when needed except for @Raresch my bad, I owe you a good clean fight next time... Only if you let me be as quick as you though lol. Went with 1 set of mediums and only a few liters added in the pits. By the end my lowest tire wear was 45% LF. Rest above 50%. Guess I could have adjusted front camber and toe in.

Congrats to @Chris Down for the win and congrats to the podium finishers

Thank you @Chris Down for another kool packed Sunday server event!

 

[Evgeniy Neytman]

It was a tough race. The track itself is tough because there is only one line and on 650 you need to push throttle even before the apex Compromised the quail because i came back home late Then lost tons of time battling Aki and Giuseppe. With Aki we had a contact so i had to give a position back and to make a move again, which is very tough when you want to pass GTR. Tried to switch to softs after a long stint, but it too late to make most of new tires. So that was p4

P. S. Suprised that i had to make small tweaks in every aspect if the setup for this track. Training best was 44.3

 

[HF2000]

Thanks for putting on tonight's race @Chris Down and congrats to the podium guys

Had a couple of great battles in the race, most of them super fair - George, Miika, thanks so much guys, hard but fair as it should be,

Apologies for disappearing near the end, had a bit of stutter, then a a second or so of black screen, just into the final bend, not the best place for it

Just re-installed Real Head Motion before the race, which is where I think the conflict is (happened before), but will def work on sorting it, makes a huge difference.

I saw your post about RHM and I also installed it just before the race. It feels good because in turns you get a better view on the apex which was very nice on Watkins. I didn't improve on race pace but maybe I should get more used to it. A drawback of RHM is when you have fast steering actions like correcting to prevent a spin, the screen is then moving very fast and that's makes it hard to gain control.

 

[Luca Badin]

If I can give my 2 cents, I would recommend you take your time and watch Chris Haye's excellent setup guide,
[...]
I'd like to think that understanding how to build my own setups has made me a bit more consistent/aware of what I'm doing

It's pretty ironic that I posted this earlier this week, given that I had to revert to my 1.0 setup for the race, as with my "final" setup I couldn't even get into the 46s in quali (while I was expecting at least a low 46 and perhaps even a high 45). I guess I need to amend my suggestion - learn to build your setup, but also take your damn time to test it properly, or else you'll need to accept to qualify well below your target

 

[GeekyDeaks]

I forgot about that guide @Luca Badin - Just looked at the 'other' section about tyre heat. I thought my overheating was solely because of my driving style, and I was overcooking the gas on the exits, but I was wondering if I could have alleviated a little of my problem by reducing the rear toe? When I get on tonight I'll review the replay, but I'm not sure if the telemetry is saved to tell if it was all over the tyre?

 

[Chris Down]

It's pretty ironic that I posted this earlier this week, given that I had to revert to my 1.0 setup for the race, as with my "final" setup I couldn't even get into the 46s in quali (while I was expecting at least a low 46 and perhaps even a high 45). I guess I need to amend my suggestion - learn to build your setup, but also take your damn time to test it properly, or else you'll need to accept to qualify well below your target

The trouble with setup guides like this is that while they're not bad for a first pass, and generally they have the right idea, you still need to be able to get experience to know whether the change was a good one or not. For example, it mostly qualifies "oversteer" as being one thing, but there are many different types of oversteer, and it takes experience to learn which kind of oversteer is being experienced and how to compensate for that.

As an example of discussing this before at RD, where the actual thing you probably want to do is in opposition to this kind of setup guide, see here: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...gp-sunday-22nd-march-2020.180104/post-3134760

I still use these kind of guidelines when I'm doing the first run through of a setup for a car, but for highly granular setup tuning, they're unlikely to help you too much. For that you need to make your driving style highly consistent and stick with one car for a really long time so that you can learn the car and what it responds to inside out.

 

[Chris Down]

I forgot about that guide @Luca Badin - Just looked at the 'other' section about tyre heat. I thought my overheating was solely because of my driving style, and I was overcooking the gas on the exits, but I was wondering if I could have alleviated a little of my problem by reducing the rear toe? When I get on tonight I'll review the replay, but I'm not sure if the telemetry is saved to tell if it was all over the tyre?

It's very unlikely that rear positive toe will cause more heat on a track like this. While sure, it will have a (very) small passive increase on heat on the straights, the increase in heat in the corners is going to if anything be reduced since the loaded tyre is already angled towards the new direction the tyre wants to go.

The 911 in general runs its tyres pretty hot and requires really smooth driving to avoid going out of the optimal range.

 

[Interslice]

I could't get a decent quali run in. I kept cooking my front left when running the softs. I even tried 2 laps of fuel and coasting the outlap but it no luck. I was only a half a second quicker than my race pace in quali. More due to fuel load than anything else I somehow managed a pb to start 19th.
It kept going red and 27+psi from the loop around corner after the bus stop chicane. I was getting heaps of understeer through the next 2 right handers.