[Poll] Car selection for an upcoming sports car league

[Dennis]

Before you vote, please consider:

• Every LMP driver will need to purchase URD EGT
• No performance/balance changes by us; EGTs will stay the way they are, as provided by Ales

Fairly soon RD will hold its first Virtual Sports Car Championchip, in the spirit of TUSCC. It will consist of four 4 - 6 hour long races, and allow for driver swaps.

For this, we would like to have your input on the car selection. Do you prefer different cars per class, or perfect balance? And are paid cars OK, even if you race in a different class?

Please note that this league is not intended to be a successor or replacement of the VWEC/RDLMS, and will run as a completely separate entity.

More details will be released in the near future.

 

[Jari Vinnari]

URD mod will probably be the most complete endurance mod in rF2 when the prototypes are released so using EGT mod would make interesting choice in long term plans of any endurance league. Enduracers modding teams next project will probably be great but they havent decided which game platform they will release their upcoming mod.
Sadly EGT is payware mod so many RD members will probably decide not join this league if they need to spend any money getting the mod or access to the league.
I think we need over 20 teams in this league so using free mods is good solution If there is not enough people interested driving in this league.
I find using only one car per class quite "boring" but thats just me.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

URD mod will probably be the most complete endurance mod in rF2 when the prototypes are released so using EGT mod would make interesting choice in long term plans of any endurance league. Enduracers modding teams next project will probably be great but they havent decided which game platform they will release their upcoming mod.
Sadly EGT is payware mod so many RD members will probably decide not join this league if they need to spend any money getting the mod or access to the league.
I think we need over 20 teams in this league so using free mods is good solution If there is not enough people interested driving in this league.
I find using only one car per class quite "boring" but thats just me.

I don't think it is booring. It was pretty exciting last year with one car per class. I think in GT4 the gap from the leader to P2 was never bigger than a few seconds over 8 hours. With all the custom skins it looks great and for me from a drivers point of view it is much better and less time consuming as everybody has the same baseline to work with. If you have 5 or 6 diffrent cars per class I as a very competetive guy, who likes to win, would need to test all of them in depth to see, which one is the strongest car and gives me the best chance to win.

For club races it is fun, but for a competetive leauge I would prefer to have the same car for everyone in my class. I mean if you get your car choice wrong at the start of the season you are pretty much screwed as there will be no additional BOP.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

The URD cars are very well balanced.
If you can't extract the speed of a certain car I suggest to spend more time with it and adopt to it. As far as tire wear goes I think the driving style has quite a big influence on the tires of the URD mod too just like on the ISI Vette. It's just different from track to track. At the end you end up driving those cars the same way as the ISI Vette. I'd even say the ISI Vette is a more layed back ride than the URD cars.

I love the ISI corvette, it's my fav car still, but still I'd rather have 5 or 6 different cars in the class then 1 car overall and 5 classes with 5 teams in each class.

That said the Apex AMG GT3 Benz is an awesome drive too!

 

[David O'Reilly]

Tyres are so much part of the depth of RF2. Any compromise on tyre wear (ie not enough wear or too robust a tyre model) would in my view diminish the challenge in so far as endurance racing is concerned.

BOP. There is no better BOP than 1 very good car. In VWEC last year we had one GT1, one GT2 and One GT4.

Variety: Once they are all skinned the colour is is there if not the variety but to me it is second to a first rate performance platform.
BUT: However having said that I love the variety of Club Races EG Bathurst last night where differing cars had differing strengths. In my perfect world these strengths and weakness would even out over a season but it would require a lot of thought on track selection.
Maybe Club Races is where I should look for variety I don't know.
The other thing is I love the 911 so long as its physics are very correct. for Example the GTE mod drives like its rear is glued to the road-very unrealistic, the APEX modding one (currently) even worse as its compounded by no front grip at all. However their Benz SLS is lovely.The BES 1.0 911 is very good. (I have raced the 911 IRL BTW).

So in short I want a nice 911 with which to do the season. Can anyone tell me how good is the URD one?
which brings me to
Payware.
If the 911 is excellent and the tyre model is as good as ISI I am very happy to pay for the mod. For the hours we race its chicken feed.

Classes. I would most likely race GT3 rather than LMP1 in a mixed class race. LMP1 I would save for dedicated endurance racing.

Finally: The admins will in the end use their wisdom and this poll and make a judgement. Whatever the majority vote for I will join in. If more ppl want something else then I'm most probably wrong.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

The URD cars are very well balanced.
If you can't extract the speed of a certain car I suggest to spend more time with it and adopt to it. As far as tire wear goes I think the driving style has quite a big influence on the tires of the URD mod too just like on the ISI Vette. It's just different from track to track. At the end you end up driving those cars the same way as the ISI Vette. I'd even say the ISI Vette is a more layed back ride than the URD cars.

I love the ISI corvette, it's my fav car still, but still I'd rather have 5 or 6 different cars in the class then 1 car overall and 5 classes with 5 teams in each class.

That said the Apex AMG GT3 Benz is an awesome drive too!

I do agree, that they are very well balanced, but the smallest variation has a big impact in endurance racing. If one car just lacks 0.1 seconds per lap in a 2 minute laptime, you loose 18 seconds over 6 hours. Last year P1 and P2 were seperated by 10 seconds after 8 hours in Bahrain.
If you really wanted to find out the best car for you in an objective way, you would have to set them up all perfectly and drive at least 2 one hour stints in each car, which would cost you at least 18 hours or more.

I think you saw in the 4 hour race we both entered, that less experienced and usually slower drivers can get very fast over a few laps by just practicing like mad and we both saw the outcome and it wasnt nice.

As well the mod didnt make for great racing in the races I joined so far, because it is very easy to keep the tyres alive for 1 hour. So the field spreads out fairly quickly as it is all down to raw pace.

With the URD EGT it is more pushing and flat out as much as you can, with the ISI it is more keeping it smooth and use your head a bit more. We saw cars being faster in the first part of the stint ans then getting caught up again in the second part etc. I havent seen that in the URD cars so far and I entered several races.

I think the URD cars are very good for sprint racing, but for endurance races I would prefer the ISI car as it is way more relaxing to drive, which leads to less mistakes and the gap between the very fast and reasonably fast drivers seemed to be bigger in the URD cars.

In a perfect world everybody would own the URD Mod and we could just run it in two seperate classes.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

With the URD EGT it is more pushing and flat out as much as you can, with the ISI it is more keeping it smooth and use your head a bit more. We saw cars being faster in the first part of the stint ans then getting caught up again in the second part etc. I havent seen that in the URD cars so far and I entered several races.

I think the URD cars are very good for sprint racing, but for endurance races I would prefer the ISI car as it is way more relaxing to drive, which leads to less mistakes and the gap between the very fast and reasonably fast drivers seemed to be bigger in the URD cars.

As far as the 2013 ALMS season goes the GTE tires were designed for one stint full sprint pace. That's what all the GTE drivers loved about the tires and the 2013 season.
2009 AFAIK it was more like it is with the ISI Vette.

I know managing tires in sim racing is more or less a new aspect and cool stuff with the way rF2 allows it with the tire model but it's not allways something I want to have. Of course to a certain degree you have to keep it clean and not overshoot every corner and even have a decent setup for tires but I still want to push propperly and race. That's what I kinda like too about those cars.


As far as last weak goes I don't see that really as bad as you do I guess.
The start thing could have been avoided by both sides. Going 4 wide into the first corner without a accident ain't that bad I guess neither.
Otherwise it was very clean for us and some good racing under the way. We just did the misstakes ourself lol.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

As far as the 2013 ALMS season goes the GTE tires were designed for one stint full sprint pace. That's what all the GTE drivers loved about the tires and the 2013 season.
2009 AFAIK it was more like it is with the ISI Vette.

I know managing tires in sim racing is more or less a new aspect and cool stuff with the way rF2 allows it with the tire model but it's not allways something I want to have. Of course to a certain degree you have to keep it clean and not overshoot every corner and even have a decent setup for tires but I still want to push propperly and race. That's what I kinda like too about those cars.


As far as last weak goes I don't see that really as bad as you do I guess.
The start thing could have been avoided by both sides. Going 4 wide into the first corner without a accident ain't that bad I guess neither.
Otherwise it was very clean for us and some good racing under the way. We just did the misstakes ourself lol.

Ok, yeah I got hit by a few drivers, so it might have not been bad for everyone.

I really hope we get a lot of people and can just run both GT Mods.

Looking at the result so far we maybe could have another poll:
"Do you own the URD EGT Mod or would you purchase it to run in the RD sports car leauge?"
I think we would end up with around 90% "yes" and at the end of the day even if you won't run the car 10€ to start in a well organized endurance leauge with hopefully 40 or more cars, with broadcast and everything is not a lot of money compared to what PC, a wheel and an rF2 license costs.

I know several guys who voted for Single GT car do own the URD Mod and I am sure a few others would buy it to run a big leauge like this at RaceDepartment.

We had 30 cars in VWEC 2013 and since then the club racing has really kicked off here. Around that time last year we may had grids with 10 guys maximum and yesterday we had 33 drivers on track.

So I would expect at least 25 sign ups in the GT class and with that number we should split the field up to give more drivers a chance to finish top 10 in their class. I know some drivers even love to battle for P23 in class, but it is much nicer to battle for P10 or P5

 

[Jimi Hughes]

Multiple classes with multiple cars is my 2 cents, pay ware is fine as long as it is quality, which URD is.

 

[Jari Vinnari]

So in short I want a nice 911 with which to do the season. Can anyone tell me how good is the URD one?

I like both BES and URD Porsches while they are quite different. With default setup the BES Porsche V0.99 has less grip and its more nervous to drive compared to URD one.If you like the general feeling of free URD Corvette then you should be able to enjoy the Porsche too.
I think URD GTE mod is one of the must have essentials for rFactor 2 even when you need find 10€ buy it.

Somehow this video resembles me rF2´s current situation...

 

[Christian Michel]

As far as tire wear goes I think the driving style has quite a big influence on the tires of the URD mod too just like on the ISI Vette.

Hm interessting to hear this stuff from several guys, cause in my opinion the influence is not much compared to the Corvette from ISI. Especially when you are pushing with both cars. Maybe that has something to do with the Driving Aids several guys are using - where this "easy" feeling of the Corvette comes from?

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Hm interessting to hear this stuff from several guys, cause in my opinion the influence is not much compared to the Corvette from ISI. Especially when you are pushing with both cars. Maybe that has something to do with the Driving Aids several guys are using - where this "easy" feeling of the Corvette comes from?

I dont think you have a big influence on tyre wear in the URD Mod. It is really hard to destroy them unless you are locking a lot etc.

I think easy is the wrong word for the ISI Corvette the car has more "depth" in terms of feel and it is easier to lock up, overheat the tyres and sliding the rear, but once you got that sorted you can get very consistent laptimes out of it without pushing super hard.
With the URD Corvette on the regular URD tyres (soft) you have to push the car a lot harder to extract the laptimes. I know it is diffrent with diffrent cars etc.
I just dont like the way you need to push the car like in the times where rF2 had no tyre wear at all. In these hard pushing situations the URD Corvette can get pretty unpredictable.

I know it may be diffrent with the othr URD cars and when I tested a few of the others I felt, that the Corvette might have no chance on tracks like Silverstone as it is lacking some of the front end bite other cars have.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

Hm interessting to hear this stuff from several guys, cause in my opinion the influence is not much compared to the Corvette from ISI. Especially when you are pushing with both cars. Maybe that has something to do with the Driving Aids several guys are using - where this "easy" feeling of the Corvette comes from?

Well not in my case at least.
Its not like the ISI Vette is easier technicaly to drive but it's rather an easy "ride" even on the limit compared to the URD cars. You still have to be spot on with your inputs and all but it's just a bit more relaxed that's all. Don't know how to describe it exactly.
As already said the 2013 ALMS GT cars are kinda every stint is a sprint stint and that is the difference in the sim also for me. Maybe that makes sense.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Well not in my case at least.
Its not like the ISI Vette is easier technicaly to drive but it's rather an easy "ride" even on the limit compared to the URD cars. You still have to be spot on with your inputs and all but it's just a bit more relaxed that's all. Don't know how to describe it exactly.
As already said the 2013 ALMS GT cars are kinda every stint is a sprint stint and that is the difference in the sim also for me. Maybe that makes sense.

To me it does. It is exactly the same for me As I am more a smooth driver I do prefer it thats all.

 

[Morne Du Plooy]

A good point as you said some Posts ago Frederic is the tyre wear of the Corvette, there you really can make a difference and if you compare this to the URD / BES Stuff its kinda a joke. The tyre wear is not really effected by the driving style - at least if you don't lock up all the time.

I would personally like to see only one class in the GTs, maybe its a bit boring in terms of variation but so everyone has the same stuff to work with and we have guaranteed close racing which we don't have if we take so many cars in as theyre not balanced at all.

I don't really know if its the best idea to mix it with LMPs. It is fun for sure if you have the lap traffic to manage but to make this really fun for everyone you also need a huge driver field and tracks where it works - both is not as easy as it looks in my opinion

I fully agree! URD +LMP

Whoops... wrong message quoted lol . but I voted for URD & LMP

 

[David O'Reilly]

Oh one more thought.
This is sports cars not strictly speaking Endurance although it seems the races will be quite long.
The longer the races the more important it seems to me that the tyre model is first class.
In last season of VWEC it was so satisfying to play with a setup and get better tyre life/performance across a stint.
If we don't have to manage tyres well it wont be the same.
So please bear this in mind when we look at the WEC league as opposed to this Sports car league.

 

[Jari Vinnari]

Well...4 to 6 hours with driver swaps is enough endurance race for me at least.
Im sure there is performance gap between different cars but the gap between drivers can be even greater. Pick the car you think is the best and fastest but perhaps other drivers have their reasons to choose differently. At least we would have freedom to choose our "poison".

 

[David O'Reilly]

Well...4 to 6 hours with driver swaps is enough endurance race for me at least.
Im sure there is performance gap between different cars but the gap between drivers can be even greater. Pick the car you think is the best and fastest but perhaps other drivers have their reasons to choose differently. At least we would have freedom to choose our "poison".

I think you have hit the nail on the head.
Its weighing up the issue between,
a) Having a wide choice or cars and
b) The subtleties of beating another driver on tyre/fuel strategy.
The second can only happen with a first class tyre model. Its where someone goes as fast as they can and nukes their tyres, or goes light on fuel for the best lap time but forgets the issues with crashes and lapping traffic. And someone else manages it all with a setup thats not so tyre hungry, a fuel load that optimises tyre performance across a stint.

In testing last season with setup alone we reduced the lap time delta across a 100 litre fuel stint from 4 sec to .5 sec due to (less) tyre wear. We ran 100 litre fuel stints and beat faster teams who went the other way.

My point is that none of that beatiful engineering/strategy depth stuff happens if you can sprint all stint on your tyres. It becomes a long sprint.
I plan to get the free URD Corvette and run a long stint tyre comparison at Bahrain vs the ISI corvette. I'll optimise the setups and run a tank of fuel at race pace and check tyre wear figures and lap time delta across the stint.
Maybe then Ill have some data and can stopguessing and surmising. Hope to have news soon.
in the meantime can anyone point me to a link to download the free Corvette? Thanks
edit: I found it and downloading now

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I think you have hit the nail on the head.
Its weighing up the issue between,
a) Having a wide choice or cars and
b) The subtleties of beating another driver on tyre/fuel strategy.
The second can only happen with a first class tyre model. Its where someone goes as fast as they can and nukes their tyres, or goes light on fuel for the best lap time but forgets the issues with crashes and lapping traffic. And someone else manages it all with a setup thats not so tyre hungry, a fuel load that optimises tyre performance across a stint.

In testing last season with setup alone we reduced the lap time delta across a 100 litre fuel stint from 4 sec to .5 sec due to (less) tyre wear. We ran 100 litre fuel stints and beat faster teams who went the other way.

My point is that none of that beatiful engineering/strategy depth stuff happens if you can sprint all stint on your tyres. It becomes a long sprint.
I plan to get the free URD Corvette and run a long stint tyre comparison at Bahrain vs the ISI corvette. I'll optimise the setups and run a tank of fuel at race pace and check tyre wear figures and lap time delta across the stint.
Maybe then Ill have some data and can stopguessing and surmising. Hope to have news soon.
in the meantime can anyone point me to a link to download the free Corvette? Thanks
edit: I found it and downloading now

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php?t=17266
Corvette C6.r ZR1 2013 by UnitedRacingDesign Update May

 

[David O'Reilly]

OK I threatened to do some testing, mindful of the old saying that "a man with an opinion and no data to support it just is a man with an opinion."


Objective:
To verify if there is any significant variance in the performace/durability/sensitivity of the tyre models used in the URD (Chevrolet Corvette) Mod and the iSI Vette.
Methodology:
From time to time I do a little bit of base setup testing at Nazareth Speedway. I like it because it has 5 turns in a 27 sec lap and so I can test a 5 lap run on a setup change very quickly. You are pretty much turning all the time and you can immediately feel the cars response to setup changes. Its a very simple lap and personal performance doesnt vary much. Its a 1 mile skid pan in this sense. You can feel it and see for example a .5 sec improvement if its there without wondering too much "did I just drive better that lap?"
Its also brutal on the RHF tyre.
So I figured I can destroy 3 sets of tyres and get some consistent data without making a career out of it.
So I set up both cars for optimum lap time there. Loaded 50 litres of fuel and ran 40 laps as hard and fast as I could.
I used a Motec tool and wrote down lap times and tyre wear at 5 lap intervals.
If say that lap clearly had an error I used "data smoothing" and extrapolated from the laps surrounding it.
Results:
Best lap time: Nothing in it. The Endurance tyre is not noticeably slower.
URD Endurance 27.295
URD Sprint 27.464
ISI Vette 27.416.
Lap time delta across 40 laps.
URD Endurance 0.7 sec
URD Sprint 1.036 sec
ISI Vette 0.4 sec. (only ran to lap 28 as tyres were nuked, times would have dropped hugley by lap 40 if they lasted that long).

Tyre wear (RHS Front only) is markedly greater on the ISI Vette. At lap 30 its 29% left vs 62% and 63.5% for the URD tyres.
The URD End tyre keeps appr a 2% advantage in remaining wear over the URD Sprint tyre.
Tyre wear other: Its a brutal test so you ask would it hold true with less stress?The pattern stayed the same with the other 3 tyres.
Rears on URD car. 95% Sprint, 96% and 97% Endurance. after 40 laps.
Rears on ISI 82% and 91% (but only after 28 laps not 40.
Left front: URD 89%
ISI 89.52% (28 laps only).

Tyre Temps: behaved differently too. The URD tyres plateued more, whereas the ISI tyre temps kept rising. For example if we compare at lap 20 the the coolest temp achieved that lap for the hardest working part, the centre of the hardest working tyre the Front Right. The ISI tyre was 147 deg. The URD Endurance 126, Sprint 121. Peak temps were higher too.

Conclusions: The ISI car requires more tyre management. With 70% wear at 30 laps vs 36.5% (URD End) Its tyres wear out approx 80-90% faster. In a less brutal environment there may have been a bigger difference between the two URD tyres who knows. The rear tyre data does not suggest it.

Even on such simple track the cars feel quite different in personality. I wont go into it but when you are curious go and do 10 laps in each.
Thanks all for reading.




The data is available in XL format if you want to see it. see link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l30qm1djsvzbs6g/Tyre Testing Corvette.xls

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

OK I threatened to do some testing, mindful of the old saying that "a man with an opinion and no data to support it just is a man with an opinion."


Objective:
To verify if there is any significant variance in the performace/durability/sensitivity of the tyre models used in the URD (Chevrolet Corvette) Mod and the iSI Vette.
Methodology:
From time to time I do a little bit of base setup testing at Nazareth Speedway. I like it because it has 5 turns in a 27 sec lap and so I can test a 5 lap run on a setup change very quickly. You are pretty much turning all the time and you can immediately feel the cars response to setup changes. Its a very simple lap and personal performance doesnt vary much. Its a 1 mile skid pan in this sense. You can feel it and see for example a .5 sec improvement if its there without wondering too much "did I just drive better that lap?"
Its also brutal on the RHF tyre.
So I figured I can destroy 3 sets of tyres and get some consistent data without making a career out of it.
So I set up both cars for optimum lap time there. Loaded 50 litres of fuel and ran 40 laps as hard and fast as I could.
I used a Motec tool and wrote down lap times and tyre wear at 5 lap intervals.
If say that lap clearly had an error I used "data smoothing" and extrapolated from the laps surrounding it.
Results:
Best lap time: Nothing in it. The Endurance tyre is not noticeably slower.
URD Endurance 27.295
URD Sprint 27.464
ISI Vette 27.416.
Lap time delta across 40 laps.
URD Endurance 0.7 sec
URD Sprint 1.036 sec
ISI Vette 0.4 sec. (only ran to lap 28 as tyres were nuked, times would have dropped hugley by lap 40 if they lasted that long).

Tyre wear (RHS Front only) is markedly greater on the ISI Vette. At lap 30 its 29% left vs 62% and 63.5% for the URD tyres.
The URD End tyre keeps appr a 2% advantage in remaining wear over the URD Sprint tyre.
Tyre wear other: Its a brutal test so you ask would it hold true with less stress?The pattern stayed the same with the other 3 tyres.
Rears on URD car. 95% Sprint, 96% and 97% Endurance. after 40 laps.
Rears on ISI 82% and 91% (but only after 28 laps not 40.
Left front: URD 89%
ISI 89.52% (28 laps only).

Tyre Temps: behaved differently too. The URD tyres plateued more, whereas the ISI tyre temps kept rising. For example if we compare at lap 20 the the coolest temp achieved that lap for the hardest working part, the centre of the hardest working tyre the Front Right. The ISI tyre was 147 deg. The URD Endurance 126, Sprint 121. Peak temps were higher too.

Conclusions: The ISI car requires more tyre management. With 70% wear at 30 laps vs 36.5% (URD End) Its tyres wear out approx 80-90% faster. In a less brutal environment there may have been a bigger difference between the two URD tyres who knows. The rear tyre data does not suggest it.

Even on such simple track the cars feel quite different in personality. I wont go into it but when you are curious go and do 10 laps in each.
Thanks all for reading.




The data is available in XL format if you want to see it. see link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l30qm1djsvzbs6g/Tyre Testing Corvette.xls

As I know from @Simon Christmann who looked at both URD tyre files they are both exactly the same, therefore your results seem pretty accurate as you couldn't find any major diffrence between them.
Backs up my personal oppinion, that you can push the front of the URD cars much harder without getting a bit penalty in wear or in tyre temps, which could cause you trouble one or two turns later.

Nice way to find out the diffrences in an more objective way

P,S, Maybe the enduru tyre is now a bit diffrent as it was a few builds ago, but at least the diffrence should be really small