AC Race #2 Fat-Alfie's championship@Bremgarten, Wednesday 15th September 2021

[Douglas Aird]

Well, my race was defined by opening lap crash where I came round a corner to find Rasmus spinning, Han crashing into him, followed by me. I don't think there was any way I could have avoided it. I lost a chunk of time and a load of places.

I made a couple of mistakes later that let Han catch up. I thought that we might have a bit of a battle but we caught up with Allan who spun, another pc issue, and collected me but not Han.

Second last for a bit, started putting in some good laps, aiming to catch Raul but he was putting in good laps of his own. Eventually he had a crash and I overtook when he was slowed by an Audi.

Got into the 2.31s on 2nd last lap.

Positives were that I managed my qualifying well, no errors and built my time each lap. Also managed my race well, apart from the incidents mentioned and didn't lose significant time being lapped. Plus I was in the ball park of Han's laptimes.

Thank you for organising, Han, and thanks to the other drivers.

 

[RasmusP]

I hope I have nothing to do your demise @Rasmus,

I don't think anyone is to blame for my time consuming issues. Not even me, lol
It were just the most unlucky crashes I've ever had.. I'll record some hopefully funny 1 minute crash-highlights video tomorrow with sped up reverse/1st/reverse/1st and some slow motion triple flip throughout the forest

It all started in Lap 1 when I did a very small mistake, rear wiggled too much, kerbs making it trip over.. I think I did about 11 spins until everyone had hit or passed me apart from you and the Mazda's which crashed in Sector 1

 

[Interslice]

Man I am glad i didn't have to race here for a living back in the day! So many corners that are flat and slight lift and after all that you have to bring the thing to a near stop on the cobbles! Looking forward to taking out the old lotus here later in the week!.

Congrats to Lars and Richard for the wins! Top survival skills from you both!

Same old mazda race for me! Early carnage followed by a long period as a rolling chicane. Getting a little more feel for the car every time. Looking forward to the next one!

Thanks @HF2000 for organising

 

[thom462]

 

[thom462]

.......lap 26 and going within half a second.... What a sweaty race.....great battles, some stupid mistakes, but lots of fun. Thx Han for organizing and this community for the great racing. cu next time

 

[JamKart22]

Enjoyable race. Largely crash free with only a few slides into the barriers. At one point I was 1st after Richard did his early pitstop and Neal threw his car at the hay bales.

Unfortunately I'm a good few seconds off the pace so it was inevitable that the fast guys would stop crashing and eventually get past. Yet again I'm not sure where I'm losing time but this track punishes less than perfect corner exits - which means I lose speed/time down the fast flat out sections.

Congratulations to the podiums and especially Richard for his first win and championship lead! I'm going to regret suggesting he joins this group if he keeps beating me

Thanks as ever to Han for the time he gives up to organise these races. Really appreciated.

 

[JamKart22]

Does anyone have any problems getting the clutch to work on the TT? I have auto clutch off and the clutch pedal works on other cars but it has no effect here.

 

[Dzul]

View attachment 503358

Ah!! The Three Compadres of Doom! At least in my rear-view mirror it felt like that...

 

[JamKart22]

Enjoyable race. Largely crash free with only a few slides into the barriers. At one point I was 1st after Richard did his early pitstop and Neal threw his car at the hay bales.

Unfortunately I'm a good few seconds off the pace so it was inevitable that the fast guys would stop crashing and eventually get past. Yet again I'm not sure where I'm losing time but this track punishes less than perfect corner exits - which means I lose speed/time down the fast flat out sections.

Congratulations to the podiums and especially Richard for his first win and championship lead! I'm going to regret suggesting he joins this group if he keeps beating me

Thanks as ever to Han for the time he gives up to organise these races. Really appreciated.

Appears I was running with a corrupted setup last night so things like aero were at default. Tried again this morning with my normal setup and 2sec quicker. Won't make that mistake again.

 

[Shed 17]

Report from the back of the Audi grid.

I couldn't get a clean lap in qualifying so started in P7 between Bart and Thomas. I got around Bart early on lap 1 but got collected in Rasmus’s incident which set me back a bit.

But then a really intense 4 way battle commenced with Colin, Thomas and a fast incoming Ernie. This went on in one way or another for most of the race with all of us making mistakes at some time, (for me, 2 spins on the cobbles at the last corner) and trying to attack the car ahead while defending certainly provided some fun racing.

The last lap had me, Ernie and Thomas all in contention for the second step on the podium and it all came down the that tricky last corner again. With a Mazda up ahead ( I think it was Doug) it was anyone’s guess how it would turn out but lucky for me I managed to get by while Ernie tried everything he knew to get past. So Q7 to P2, I didn’t expect that at the start but really good fun with some excellent side by side racing going on.

Well done to Richard on the maiden win, thanks to the Mazda guys for giving the Audi’s space ( it must have been scary at times) and of course, thanks to Han for another well run event.

Raul coming into land.

 

[Shed 17]

Does anyone have any problems getting the clutch to work on the TT? I have auto clutch off and the clutch pedal works on other cars but it has no effect here.

Hi Colin

I may be wrong but I think in real life the TT has a semi automatic gearbox and doesn't have a clutch pedal. There are one or two other cars in AC with similar configurations, just click it into gear and go.

 

[thom462]

Does anyone have any problems getting the clutch to work on the TT? I have auto clutch off and the clutch pedal works on other cars but it has no effect here.

Same here, clutch does not work on TT. I learned that the hard way in another race being teleported to pits for false start as I forgot that clutch does not work.

 

[HF2000]

Thanks guys for joining. And congratulations to Richard for his first win! Must have felt good!

My own race, well the stats say P11, Q11, R11 so looks like very boring. But it was far from that.
In the first lap I was the 2nd Mazda close behind Lars and planning a great exit in Tenni to get him on the flat out part.
But then after a turn an Audi had spun right on my raceline. No chance to avoid it. So everyone passed and I was 17th and last.
Got Brian but screwed up my brakepoint for Tenni so he could easily overtake me again. Lost more time due to concentration failure but after that I could pick up the pace. And had a very enjoyable race catching up the other Mazda's. Broke my PB several times and got even into the 2.30's. At the end the gap to Guido was to big for me to get to the podium.

I really love this track with the Mazda. Great corners that you can (almost) take flat out but only just. A mistake is easily made.

Next event is the Deutschlandring. It has also a long flat out part, a part with fast turns but additional a part with a lot of hairpins. This time you will have to use 2nd gear also. It's 10km so if you don't know the track, start practicing in time. And enjoy the scenery doing that.

@Fat-Alfie If you read the posts here, you'll see that we had a great time on your track!

 

[Kek700]

@Dzul @Douglas Aird @ltnordb
I must apologise to Douglas Lars and Raul I was under too much pressure in this bleeding race, after looking at the replay I was not alone.
Normally I am only stressed for a very small proportion of the race, I was on the back foot for the entire race. The fat controller was doing his best to give me as much grief as he could, again not alone there.
The Fat Controller was giving most of us grief.
But I had assumed that all Mazdas had seen me coming, forgot how fast Audi's approach the Mazdas, in all the cock-up's I managed, thought I was seen, obviously not.
But at least after looking at sim results none were affected for race position place, but I doubt if any were impressed.
Really felt for Rasmus after looking at the replay, he had a good pace, but he too must have upset the fat controller, Neil, too.
Lesson learnt.

I have given myself a starting from the back ban, next race.


PS
thank you for the clutch information.

 

[Programmer_Rich]

Firstly, thanks Han for organizing again, certainly a challenging and exciting track to drive!

Thanks everyone for the congrats on my first RD win. The luck definitely went my way this race but that’s obviously part of racing and it still felt great to get my first victory, just hoping it wasn’t a one off!!

I certainly wasn't the fastest Audi but I think I had the cleanest race of the fast running Audis but had a close battle with Neil with him running right behind me at the start and then overtaking me on track after my early pitstop, when I was heavy and on cold tyres. Nice pass Neil and I was watching our gap closely hoping I could keep close enough to retake the lead when you pitted (thankfully I did!).

Likewise congrats to Lars on his Mazda win and thanks to all the Mazdas for doing their best to keep to one side to allow clean passes down the straights, most appreciated as it was a tense hour leading (besides the period between my early pitstop and everyone else’s more normal mid race stops).

PS Love all the amazing aerial stills that everyone has been posting, keep them coming!

 

[Taj Johal]

My race was rather boring but I'm grateful for that
I'm usually fast enough to battle with the mid pack runners but so inconsistent and I usually have a few off road excursions. Plus I've been having problems with pedals again (again ) recently, but more on that later.

I tried to be clever and adjust my setup for quali at the last minute, didn't work, qualied well off my pace. Lesson learnt.
I had a decent start, there was the usual coming togethers up front, the pack seemed to part like the red sea and I moved up a few places.
In front of me were Guido and Andre, I knew they would drive away. Behind were Raul and Douglas, the plan was to keep them behind me. After a couple of laps I realised they weren't making any inroad on the gap, so I decided to drive at 9/10 and just keep it on the road.
A few more laps and I saw Han was behind Raul, could he keep him behind for me? Unfortunately not Started doing some maths, 20 sec lead, he's gaining at 2secs a lap, yep, he's gonna get past. But I wanted to race Han for position, make him work a bit for it.
Did I???? Hell no. spun coming out of Elchholz I knew Han was not far behind so I held the brakes, hoping he would see me in time and make it pass safely, he did
After that, a race in no mans land, Douglas and Raul didn't make inroads and Han just drove away. Fastest lap of the race on the last lap with more pace to come, but boring race was just what I needed

Thanks to Han for organisng and to all the who took part in the race. , Congrats to Richard for your fist win, and the podiums!!

 

[Taj Johal]

Pedal Issues.

I have Fanatec CSP v1 and the throttle occasionally starts playing up. Flickering, not reaching 100% or worse staying on under braking leading to me understeering off

Stripping down, cleaning everything (the magnet of debris or the hall sensor of metal particles etc, not there ever were) seemed to solve the problems for months at a time. But the problem always came back.

Recently I decided to do a close inspection of the wiring. I've always thought that the wiring from the sensors to the PCB was too short and under strain. Splitting open the heat shrink and outer casing, I find a split in the throttle ground wire !!
Either, I somehow damaged it, or it's been there from day one. My cleaning simply moved it into the right place randomly to enable a good earth.
I've repaired it temporarily but I really need to do a complete rewire with new JST connectors and fresh wiring for a full repair.

So long story short, @Bart Snijders check the wiring, connectors for loose pins etc. (jiggle the wiring and connectors to see if it changes the throttle). Your problems seem similar to mine and could also be a grounding issue.

 

[Douglas Aird]

@Kek700

All good for me, Ernie, I don't think you caused me any major issues and it didn't impact my lowly result.

I would point out to all Audi drivers that I am following Han's instructions and taking my regular line in corners. The Mazda is too on edge to be making any significant line changes, especially last second. When racing other Mazda’s, that's a different story, I am taking calculated risks.

 

[Bart Snijders]

Oh man, I can only imagine how annoying and frustrating that is. I have a similar configuration as you, TLCM Pedals and TS-PC with the Ferrari rim... I would check if the SF1000 rim is not the one acting up. I't has it's own signal, right? Do you have the pedals connected directly to the PC via USB or into the wheel servo? Because if it's through the TS-XW then that determines what the pedals do, even if you have them configured with Thrustmaster's own software (that's just the zone/travel/load setup). If they go through your wheel servo the SF1000 software may be the one beigh naughty. Has it happened before? Does it happen with other rims? The original Sparco rim that came with your XW for example?

Yeah it wasn't ideal to say the least
Opened up the pedals checked, cleaned and reassembled. Then I reinstalled all the drivers, firmware and new setup config for wheel. TBH I always used the pedals as stand alone USB device but this was the 1st race where I decided to plug them into base directly, so I went back to original setup. After all this I did an full hour test race on this track with full grid and managed to get through with no problems. For now, knock on wood, the problem seems to have been solved!
So can we now please do a re-run of the race tonight
Oh and on a side note, what an absolute blast to drive these tracks by Fat Alfie!

 

[Douglas Aird]

My race was rather boring but I'm grateful for that
I'm usually fast enough to battle with the mid pack runners but so inconsistent and I usually have a few off road excursions. Plus I've been having problems with pedals again (again ) recently, but more on that later.

I tried to be clever and adjust my setup for quali at the last minute, didn't work, qualied well off my pace. Lesson learnt.
I had a decent start, there was the usual coming togethers up front, the pack seemed to part like the red sea and I moved up a few places.
In front of me were Guido and Andre, I knew they would drive away. Behind were Raul and Douglas, the plan was to keep them behind me. After a couple of laps I realised they weren't making any inroad on the gap, so I decided to drive at 9/10 and just keep it on the road.
A few more laps and I saw Han was behind Raul, could he keep him behind for me? Unfortunately not Started doing some maths, 20 sec lead, he's gaining at 2secs a lap, yep, he's gonna get past. But I wanted to race Han for position, make him work a bit for it.
Did I???? Hell no. spun coming out of Elchholz I knew Han was not far behind so I held the brakes, hoping he would see me in time and make it pass safely, he did
After that, a race in no mans land, Douglas and Raul didn't make inroads and Han just drove away. Fastest lap of the race on the last lap with more pace to come, but boring race was just what I needed

Thanks to Han for organisng and to all the who took part in the race. , Congrats to Richard for your fist win, and the podiums!!

You drove well and did exactly what was needed. I'm going to have to do something similar to catch you in the championship.