RDRC S9 Round 6 - Rally New Zealand (12th April - 18th April 2021)

Ole Marius Myrvold

JWB 96-13
Staff
Premium
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For the second time in RDRC we will visit New Zealand, but this time it's more traditional New Zealand rally stages. The roads feels like they've been made specially for rally, not for everyday use. They flow, they invite to dancing with your car, and they have an amazing scenery. If you have time to look at that while driving... After the insanely fast Rally Spain, this rally will bring somewhat more sane speeds, and the most generous amount of services for the season. Which can be a blessing and a curse! Almost 140km of special stages on the smoothest gravel roads RDRC have to offer will certainly be a fantastic experience for all the drivers!

After a slight change in the standings after the tarmac made a difference in Spain, we are not any closer to any drivers taking any class-titles early. The fight for the titles and podiums are raging on, both overall and in the different classes. We didn't get an outright RDRC-2 win last time out, and while it looks unlikely that it will happen this season it is certainly possible. The last time RDRC visited New Zealand it was the same feeling, but that gave MINI and Emil Pribanic their only overall-win, so this is a rally that can throw up a surprise or three!
To read more about New Zealand, how Spain unfolded, a feature on our perennial runner-up driver and more, take a look at our Rally Magazine for New Zealand.


View the New Zealand Edition of the RDRC Rally Magazine here.
Download
the New Zealand Edition of the RDRC Rally Magazine here (32mb)

RDRC Rally Magazine is designed and developed by: RACEM (Jack Hintz), Ole Marius Myrvold and Michael Nelson
 
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Important Notes:
  • The Rally is from 12th April 00:00 UTC+1 until 18th April 23:59 UTC+1. You must finish and have uploaded your times from the last stage before the end-time to register the stage result. Note: Timing have changed from UTC to UTC+1 due to daylight saving in Europe Sunday 28th March. Local start times for Europe have not changed. If unsure about what time UTC+1 is now compared to your time, check here
  • Remember to join the correct league/club for the class you drive in. If not, you will not be able to participate.​
  • If your name on the results shown at dirtrally2.dirtgame.com doesn't match what you signed up with, or doesn't match what you have on the official entry list (see first post in the Sign-Up thread) and fail to inform us about your correct name within 48 hours of the provisional results being published. You will be removed from the results. There will be no exceptions to this. See Directors Note for rules-clarification on this.
  • If you haven't signed up, you can do that here. You must sign-up to be able to participate. The sign-up must be accepted and valid before the end of the rally to be accepted.​
  • Feel free to take screenshots and videos and share it in our Rally World Thread. Screenshots can be end up being included in the next magazine!​
  • Feel free to share your experience from the rally in this thread, share the perfect runs and the perfect failures! All in the name of fun!​
  • Driving in more than one class will lead to an instant DQ(removal) from the results.
  • Any rule changes will be posted in the Directors Note Thread. Please keep yourself updated on any changes.
  • Good luck and have fun!! :)
 
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As usual, at the end of post 4, all information is given, and the thread is open!

The magazine is a bit delayed for this event. It will likely be released within 24 hours. It's completely due to me personally not being effective enough with articles during the week. Sorry for this.

Regardless we in the RDRC-Crew wish you all the best of luck, and a lot of fun on the smooth extremely nice roads in New Zealand!
 
Ah yes, time for my (close to) home rally. My PR team spoke to some people during the break and we managed to acquire a few sponsorships for the rest of the season (I don't know how they managed to secure fundings from these people but I'll take it!)

Car's still making its way to NZ from Indonesia so I'll update once we're done with the first day.
 
Definitely an endurance event this one, I'm 7 stages in and it's already taken me the best part of 53 minutes. They passed largely without incident but didn't feel particularly quick either, the tyres seeming like they go off particularly fast here.
 
Definitely an endurance event this one, I'm 7 stages in and it's already taken me the best part of 53 minutes. They passed largely without incident but didn't feel particularly quick either, the tyres seeming like they go off particularly fast here.
Good thing the roads are nice and the amount of services are generous then :) I still believe that the tyre wear actually are somewhat affected of how people drive, so it would be logical that the tyres go off a bit faster in NZ, as the roads are not made for non-sliding driving!
 
Man I've got a bit of a conundrum, I got my first wheel(G29) a couple weeks ago during Spain and decided against using it for the event cause I thought I would be much slower with it than my gamepad. Since then I did some testing to have a better comparison and I'm as fast if not faster but the catch is I'm not quite as consistent, so idk what to use! :cautious: :D
 
In my opinion you should train with the wheel some hours and just use it. Depends a bit on which camera you use for driving, but wheel is much more precise!
Are you old enough and have a driving license?
 
Man I've got a bit of a conundrum, I got my first wheel(G29) a couple weeks ago during Spain and decided against using it for the event cause I thought I would be much slower with it than my gamepad. Since then I did some testing to have a better comparison and I'm as fast if not faster but the catch is I'm not quite as consistent, so idk what to use! :cautious: :D

You should definitely use a wheel and pedals if you have them. :) Granted, it will take you a bit of time to get used to it, but I am sure you not will want anything else afterwards. Simulators cannot be properly used with a keyboard or gamepad, even if it feels OK to you, you are losing out massively. The smoothness of movements, the precision that comes with a wheel and pedals, the force feedback itself, everything is better. And racing simulators are meant to be used with a wheel, they are designed with that in mind.

In case you drive in real life, just imagine steering your car around by clicking on arrows on your smartphone. I am sure you would crash fairly soon or just drive erratically down the road. :D

Give the wheel a go and do not look back. A few hours should be enough to get you used to it. You will also need to configure it properly, I do not know which wheel you have, but in my case, I use full rotation (1080º) in Assetto Corsa and AC Competizione, while in DiRT Rally 2.0 I use about 450º for quick steering. In rFactor 2 I match the wheel's degrees to those of the car I am driving.

I also have a gamepad (good old Xbox 360 gamepad) and it is great for games such as GTA, where the controls are fairly arcade, so the gamepad is perfect. But for simulators, you want a wheel. ;)
 
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while in DiRT Rally 2.0 I use about 450º for quick steering.

With this setting you're taking away part of the realism - I personally consider this a steering assist :p

For sure it makes it easy to drive as you don't have to counter-steer as wildly, but if using in other games to match the wheel's degrees to the cars being driven, then why not do it in this game as well? I can tell you one thing: yesterday I took part in a Monte-Carlo event with the Stratos, with the game's soft lock enabled. That's well above 900 degrees of rotation for this car (didn't chek, but on the snow parts it felt I was navigating a caravelle; and on the Sierra I use for the RDRC it's 960 degrees). Although it's harder this way to be quickest, it was one of the best feelings I ever had driving in a car game - ever! So I strongly recommend it :)
 
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I use 1800º (my wheel's maximum) on AC and ACC because both simulators automatically change the degrees on the wheel to match whatever car is being driven. Sadly, this does not happen in rF2, so I must force my wheel to match the car I am driving, otherwise the wheel goes nuts.

DiRT Rally 2.0 suffers from the same issue, unfortunately. The "soft lock" option does not work in my case, and I am pretty sure that modern rally cars, such as the R5, do not feature 1080º on their wheels, otherwise the drivers would not be able to negotiate the turns correctly (most likely, it is around 540º in modern rally cars).

I remember enabling this option (soft lock) when I got DiRT and I just could not negotiate the turns, especially the hairpins. It looked like I was trying to park the car. No matter what I was driving, the wheel was set to 1080º. Please do not tell me this is realistic, even H1 cars probably do not have as many rotation degrees.

In any case, I do not consider this a driving assist, otherwise it would be listed so in the menu. I would be happy if Codemasters would make the "soft lock" option work across all wheels. Given that this does not happen, I tried to find a good balance between realism and usability. It turned out to be 450º for me. On the other hand, I race without any HUD information (not even co-driver calls) and always in the cockpit. Others will prefer to have the entire HUD or race in the hood cam (no rain there, for instance). Others even prefer to cut across stages (e.g. Poland). I consider this much worse than wheel's degrees.

I am happy with the way my DiRT Rally 2.0 is set up, I have quite a lot of fun and each rally is always extremely demanding on concentration for me. My results here and in other places show I am quite a slow driver, and sadly I am not able to throw the car around and do Scandinavian flicks and all that cool stuff others do, just like real rallying. I end up driving quite "neatly" across stages. But I have fun nonetheless, and that's my ultimate goal in sim-racing. ;) It has been for over 10 years now.
 
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