I think i'm in love

[William Nowell]

I brought the Lotus 79 this week and I just can not get enough of it. This car oversteers, understeers and can have very bad manners on cold tires and I am hook on it like crack. The car feels like raw power, I can use my H shifter, and the sound is intoxicating. Each lap it begs you to push it just a little harder and then it rewards you with yet another purpler sector. I think my star mazda will be getting very jealous. As of right now this is my car of choice, possible the best in the sim, anyone else feel that same?

 

[Stuart Whitehead]

Haha, classic


There's a replay of my 2.03.263 in this thread if it helps anyone http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/25/1390218.page

 

[George Pilkington]

Right thats it dudes, I am sick of all this talk about how great that lotus is...
Someone needs to tell me how to load the set ups coz I am going to fire the pc back up and buy that mota now! (So I can crash it in the morning... : )

two years ago, I was told to take a lotus exige out for a thrash when I had been turned down for a track day at Snetterton. (I had not done a track day before and this session was only for experianced people) So in the lunch break Chrissie and I jumped in the little orange car and drove out of the circuit.
I have never driven someone elses car as hard as I drove that... blow me, it went like the proverbial... did not see the shift lights on the wheel till we were nearly back at the track. 'Ooo look shift lights' I said as we hit 110mph 'Keep your bloomin eyes on the road!' said Chrissie... wicked time.

If this Chapman car is like that one, Its got to be worth 12 Bucks.

See you on the track guys.
George

 

[Stuart Whitehead]

Just stick the setups in your Documents/iRacing/setups/lotus79 folder and load them from the garage tab in game.


...and it's nothing like an Exige

 

[William Nowell]

The only way this thing will remind you of a exige is if you trade the wheels for roller skates and strapped rockets to the side. I think it would then have ACME written on the side and your name would be coyote.

 

[isamu]

This car sounds like fun. So which is closer to the 67's in gpl...this or the skippy?

 

[George Pilkington]

Ha Ha Stuart & Will!
Acme rocks eh?
George

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

I'd love to race the Lotus more, but it's not only the lack of races that prevents me from doing it, it's a number of reasons.

1) It's a hard car to drive, let alone to master. The aero effect is puzzling.
2) No races at my time slots, but most of all almost no practices. I use practice to learn from others and in the lotus (as well as the indy and vette) practices are usually sparsely populated. So I miss that a lot and I cannot learn to drive it in traffic in a race.
3) I am slowest than slow in it. At least the SM and the Skippy always have a healthy number of new guys coming in and anyone with a bit of experience can at least finish relatively well. In the SM I always manage top 10 finishes and lately I have been in top five or podium almost every race (except the ones I crash). That would be impossible in teh Lotis at this time.
4) My SR would take an unrecoverable hit. I drove the lotus at spa yesterday and almost every turn I got a 1x.

If the Lotus guys want more participation, maybe they could get involved with the "Racing School" idea that's been floating around and help the new guys getting familiar with the car. That would actually be a good thing to do in every series that lacks attendance.

 

[Dazmaniac]

Ohhhhh you guys.

Payday tomorrow and I can see me adding to my iRacing garage after reading through his thread, lol.

Whilst I know I will never be at a level where I will be eligible to race all the cars in official iRacing series, I do intend on becoming a member of the 100% Club, as well as having the necessary cars/tracks that may be required for future RD iRacing League series.

:wink:

 

[William Nowell]

1) From what I can tell is that the aero is either on or off. Meaning in fast corners this thing is railing but in the slow stuff if you have a heavy foot, it will bite you.
2)Use your race planner! Get on the fourms and find out when people are racing. As far as practice, I also see alot of empty rooms. But in pretty much all cases if I hang out in the room for more then 10 mins people start to showing up.
3)You are not slow alone. By looking at some of the times in the practice session alot of peoples times group closely together. Granted the difference between the fast group and the slow group can be large. I'm usually 3-5 seconds off the lead guy.
4)If I can't keep it relatively clean in practice, then I don't race. I passed up on Spa because of this, but I did get in a lot of practice on it and will be really for it next season.

Seems like Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday are good days to race. Road America is one of my fav tracks and this car feels good there.

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1361273.page

 

[William Nowell]

I got in my second race with the Lotus today at Road America. I started 13th in a grid of 19, my plan was to hang out in the back and not get together with anyone. Had a decent race and finished in 9th. I did learn something about the car, the deeper I got into the race the more different the car started to act. I've only practice with race fuel load and the car felt predictable and calm. Right about the half way mark I could start to feel little changes in the front end and how the car wanted to behave. By lap 18 the car had become a handful on corner exit, oversteer or understeer your choice. I collected my first 1x that lap, running wide out of T13a I hit the curbing at the top of the hill and throws me offline for T14 where I drop two wheels in the sand. The second 1x came on lap 20 same exact thing, carbon copy. So now I'm thinking that I've killed my tires and tried to focus on finishing the race and not collecting anymore 1x's. When I looked at my tires after the race the lowest was the FL at 86%, it wasn't my tires at all. My question, does fuel make that big of a difference in how this car handles or did I just give myself a mental block thinking that my tires were bad? I started the race with about 100 lbs/15.4 gals of fuel, and got the 5 lap warning with about 3 to go. Congrats on the win Stuart, your laps times were very tight.

 

[Stuart Whitehead]

Yup, the fuel makes a lot of difference to the handling. This is mainly due to the ride height. With race fuel you have the car set up as low to the ground as is legal, and as the fuel burns off your ride height gets higher and you loose a lot of that lovely ground effect downforce.

I find the car starts out very "safe" with hint of understeer and the rear end completely planted, about 6 or 7 laps in it gets a lot more neutral and i'm confident of pushing it pretty hard. With about 6 or 7 laps to go it starts getting a bit slippery and more balanced towards oversteer. One you know it's going to happen you can be prepared for it.

Speed wise, the straight line speed the car gains over the race distance due to the fuel burn makes up for the loss of grip due to the loss of ground effect, meaning you should be able to do pretty similar lap times over the full race distance.


14.5 Gallons is plenty by the way. Brings you home with about a gallon left.

Hope to see you in Sundays races!

 

[George Pilkington]

Well got to do 15 laps around Spa last night in the 79. Coool.
Should have been training for the MX5 league but got sucked into Spa... : )
Wicked fun. Took it easy and spun twice and parked it in the wall once. Dropped the PB by 5 I think.
Nice car. I think I'll be driving that alot.

 

[William Nowell]

I hear you George, like the post said I am in love with the Lotus.