Rally - "French Affair" - Mon 13th & Tues 14th December 2010

[Warren Dawes]

@Warren: Warren could you teach me how to do it with the keyboard ? )

The only advice for you Robb, get a FFB wheel. :tongue:
You won't believe how much more enjoyable this Sim is with a wheel, the FFB is brilliant.

 

[Robb Kulcsar]

I'm pllaning to Warren, but it's not first on my list. . No.1 for next year I wanna attend Monte Carlo rally in January, is the 100 event in Monaco .

 

[Dariusz Swiderski]

GL guys

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

yes, Dariusz, good luck all.

 

[Robb Kulcsar]

Good luck, never had a chance to even try the DS .

 

[Senad Subasic]

Wow, 9 of us there, nice field . GLA

 

[Senad Subasic]

SS1
I found the car quite strange there... Had a crash where I never saw anyone have a crash before . Also had huge issues on the hairpins, and a nice save at the middle. 15 seconds behind Simone, not looking good

SS2
Tip-toeing around got me 2nd in the stage, and 2nd overall in EU.
Was very careful, had no idea how the stage goes, and had no idea how to drive the car

SS3
Epic fail. One call for help, several other incidents. But at least managed some nice hairpin slides.

SS4
Had a couple of fails, but overall a nice experience . Great gravel stage, nice slides.

SS5
Worst stage evah.

SS6
I was mostly holding on, and bouncing off fences.

SS7
Lost my nerves, retired about halfway in.

SS8
See above.

 

[Robb Kulcsar]

Lost 3rd overall in this session by 0.11 sec . Senad I'l send you the replay about how you can finish ecologicaly one stage, only if is downhill . Never drove this car before, but I don't like it and for sure it's not going to be like this next year, they have plenty of work on 2011 WRCs.
Thanks everybody who participated, will participate and who created this event.

 

[Simone Demi]

Ok I have finished this race
This is a difficult car to drive....I had made some errors,especially a request of help in ss2...but it was a good race for me!

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

TBH I hated the car in general. SS1-2 went expectedly mediocre, but I couldn't complain. SS3 was in fact quite enjoyable. SS4 saw me nudge a tree early in the stage, damaging the radiator. Cooked the engine 1km before the finish line, but I started to "accept" the car's handling. Till gravely Bisanne, that is. The thing is I hate this stage in general - notes are too tightly packed in places and if you start to push and don't know the stage (like me) it's easy to hear an "easy left" in the middle of flying off it. Got fed up about halfway through. At this point I got easily irritable, so clumsy SS6 was wall-riding, resigned and with damaged cluth/gearbox, just not to DNF.

On SS7 on snow tyres car felt absolutely weightless. I couldn't get convinced it's a good thing and had another appaling stage (I don't even remember whether I've finished or not).

To avoid not having fun at all I tried to run SS8 on Wet Tarmac tyres and found it to be a pretty sweet experience. I was very slow compared to the fastest guys on the road, but it just felt so real to push on the dry bits and tip-toe it on ice. Ah, like the real Monte with a risky tyre strategy . At least I was 4th of 9 on this stage, so not a tragic run after all, and only one spin when I got too hot on a dirty path of the road.

 

[Hans Sneep]

Wow wat a night,most of the stages ware not that good for me, having trouble to slide through the hairpins an there where a lot tonight.

ST 3 left with only first gear ( lol ) must be looking very strange in the replay..

Best stage for me was ST 8 I think third place, so Wow!

Thanks Warren an Senad an the guys on track, like the view with the Monte Carlo mod !!

 

[Mick Aspinall]

Rally to forget!! First i thought we were doing round 5 of championship, was puzzled to see French Affair?. Once i figured out what week were in i was in at the deep end, having never driven the car before first stage. What a baptism of fire!, 4 rolls in first stage. Did'nt get much better untill stage 5. Stages 7 & 8 felt like i had put the L Plates back on. Never mind there is always next week.
SORRY i did not sign in before rally, like i said thought we was doing next weeks round. Will try and wake up for then.
Thanks to all.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

lol Nick!

had a very draining day at work and the mother of all traffic breakdowns on my way home because of a fresh 10 cm of snow (my daughter tzook 2h30min back from school where she usually takes 25 mins) so I messed up the first stage and took about half an hour to feel for the first time being "in" the game:

stage1: got strangely stuck to a barrier took ages to get off (programming mistake), two half flips, 3:28:22
stage2: 2nd to last , flipped her pretty early on on an innocent enough knoll of grass, had to call for help, never got into rhythm after that
stage3: another small mistake got me stuck in one of the hairpins shortly after the start, nice run after that
stage4: first good drive, got carried away after about 2/3rds of the stage and that is never good in RBR DNF
stage5: one flip ended up facing the wrong way, an extremely careful run after that gave me pos5 for the stage
stage6: 1st good and uneventful drive of the night
stage7: one pirouette downhill but luckily ending up unscathed and facing in the right direction, 4th pos for the stage, love the Monte mod
stage8: really bad run, never found my rhythm, car moves to right after serious flip early on, second flip two turns away from finish

still, a great rally, thx Warren and all others for setting it up, overall 6th of 9 is ok with me.

 

[Chris Williamson]

SS1 - Very nervous start with 3 small spins. Dislike the car on tarmac.
SS2 - Took things more steadily, but lost a bunch of time with a spin & recovery.
SS3 - Car felt better on gravel, but slid wide into a fence on the fast section and killed the car.
SS4 - Felt more focused now and had a much better drive here.
SS5 - Stage went well apart from a very bizarre low speed roll halfway through
SS6 - Fairly cautious but clean, so not far off the pace.
SS7 - Liking the icy conditions and unusually for me I had some nice hairpins on the downhill section. Had a silly 360 near the end, but only Simone was faster than me in EU.
SS8 - Another solid drive with no major mistakes and near the front again.

Overall I would say this car certainly is a handful, but after a shaky start I managed to get more of a feel for it. In fact, the more slippery the road got the more I enjoyed it and accordingly my relative pace became better.

Very surprised to have jumped into 3rd overall on the EU round - albeit by just 0.11s over Robb! No hard feelings mate. :tongue:

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25700474/FA_SS5.rpl
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25700475/FA_SS7.rpl
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25700476/FA_SS8.rpl

 

[Dariusz Swiderski]

So much negativity about the DS3 but i liked it. Only the engine was its weak point, didn't like the turbo lag at the hairpins. All in all good fun for me, finished 2nd in EU, 2 min behind Simone ( congrats on EU win ). I,m very tempted to start practicing before rallys as i,m loosing big time not knowing the stages, can easly shave 10-20 sec on the average stage time by just being familiar with it. Have to find a bit of time for the practice runs, somehow. I just want to be able to fight for the wins, enough of being a backmarker lol.

Had my usuall spins and kills but also some good ( crash free ) runs, there are my replays.

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25698113/DS3_ss4.rpl
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25698115/DS3_ss6.rpl
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/25698114/DS3_ss7.rpl

 

[Senad Subasic]

Have to find a bit of time for the practice runs, somehow. I just want to be able to fight for the wins, enough of being a backmarker lol.

Pft, you high ranking competitive types :tongue:

I can count the times I practiced RBR on the fingers of my hand. Mostly because it bores the hell out of me . But also because there is a limited number of stages, and I prefer not knowing what's coming up next all the time. Keeps true to the nature of rallying

Thanks for the replays

 

[Aaron DeMarre]

I must admit, even tho I love RBR, I get bored practicing too. I used to recce the entire rally every time, but now I am lucky to run a stage or two to get warmed up for a rally.

The worst was when I was playing a lot of Forza, doing lap after lap gets so old very quickly.

Then again, I am sure you guys know this from my results

 

[Senad Subasic]

Circuit practice is ok for me, because the lap is shorter, it's very tidy and predictable and precise, it's easier to work with. And there are people there too

BTW, are you running in the rally tonight? I haven't set up the US session yet.

 

[Aaron DeMarre]

Nope, taking a break this week. Thanks tho, and will be back for the RDRC season finale.

 

[Warren Dawes]

Nope, taking a break this week.

Pity really, since I was the only one signed up for Oceania, I was thinking about joining Aaron for the USA Session.

Well the good news is that I won the OC Session, lool . I didn't really push too hard this time, I was still trying to get a feel for the DS3, but each time I felt like I was getting used to it, the surface got more slippery and I was back to square one. At least I managed mostly clean Stages but had a few scary moments and banged a few walls etc. Almost had a horror crash on the finishing downhill section of Joux Plane (SS8) and still not sure how I survived it as I scraped along the trees and mountain at a 30 deg angle. :eek:

I quite enjoyed the Citroen, it was pretty stable and controllable, just awefully slow exiting the hairpins as Dariusz reported. I kept bogging it down all the time. That probably helped in the wet gravel and Monte Carlo Stages though. :wink:

Anyway, I had some fun, even though it was very lonely. :frown:

Hopefully I'll see you all next week. :ups: