Season 5 Race 8 Hockenheim - Post Race

[Daniel Hansson]

Thanks for appretiation about the weather. Nice to hear that you can actually have some fun in the rain.

It gives me a lot of info just from reading your race reports. And it's good you are being so open with which one of the tyres that works and how they last. :good:

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

This is my very rough impression of the wetness scale. It would be interesting if others included/adjusted/corrected according to their own experiences:

10% - Slicks are fastest and last long.
20% - Unsure what is faster, but inters will overheat and wear out fast
30% - Inter are fastest, but overheat and wear fast. Slicks are a bit slower (1 sec?), but last much longer.
40% -
50% -
60% -
70% - Wet are fastest

Of course this might vary slightly from track to track, but the general tendency should be the same I think.

 

[Reik Major]

Yeah Nico, this impressions seem very correct in my eyes. That's why i've nearly allways choosen meds in this season's wet events. Only in Singapore I started with inters and got punished for that choice.

If I had one wish to the weather man, I'd like to see more changing rain conditions during one session. Until now it seemed very consistant over one session, no matter if dry or damp or slight rain...

 

[Graham Healey]

If I had one wish to the weather man, I'd like to see more changing rain conditions during one session. Until now it seemed very consistant over one session, no matter if dry or damp or slight rain...

I think that is partly a limitation with the game. If you want it changeable from wet to dry you will inevitably have a "drying track" = damp for the rest of the race. In fact, in the race we had, it went from raining to drying to raining again and back to drying.

I guess if you would like to have a bigger contrast you could go from a completely dry track to rain. I assume you can also have medium or heavy rain in periods too, but I think it is unlikely you get a dry track after rain. So maybe the best you could do if you want maximum changing weather is to go from dry to medium/heavy rain then back to drying/damp.

In my view a bigger flaw is the tyre change problem. When the game takes 20+ seconds to change tyres, it takes a lot of the fun out of it, in my opinion.

 

[Anthony Ishak]

just as i turn in im smacked from the side, it was Anthony, he obviously well misjudged his braking and ran right into me, luckily i had no damage, and it didnt alter my line much,

all in all a good race for me, i finally manage to turn a good qualifying into a good race result, bit late in the season but good all the same.

my apology David for that contact , the least i wanted there was to destroy your race , and i am happy for you that you finally turned a good qualy into a podium finish , you deserved it m8:thumb: , i backed off couple of times at the start when you were fighting with Mark and Jim as it was a bit too risky to involve a fourth car in the fight but then i saw you taking the far left at the apex when Jim and Mark were covering the right side , so i thought i would have enough room to stay on your right when entering the apex but i was wrong and misjudged the situation as it seemed you had a better plan by taking a tighter turn so you could have a faster exit to get the guys on the strait , i realised that late , oh well , braking on soft tires did not help stopping the car on time either :tongue:..

On lap one Superangelo came in behind me after the hairpin incident. He followed me to T12 where I got a bit wide and slow. He had the margins on his side and did not run in to my rear. Immediately after that, during straight acceleration we had a sync problem between us and he collided with my rear right tyre(with lot of air between us in the server replay).
I wish I could have made a better job in that turn so this wouldn't have happened. I saw that you had trouble in pits after that and overheated or something. Sorry m8.

...

you are a gentlemen Valter and thanks for the info , i did not know our contact was related to sync issue, i tried to steer away from you there and was surprised that i hit you, my steering was of-center and i thought the car did not turn properly or something, then when i pitted to fix the car the crew did not do anything , i was waiting for nothin then i decided to do another lap and pit again but the engine blew up at the exit..puh...

i was so excited coming into this race and i had hoped to score some good points here as i always enjoy racing on wet , the weather man is doing great job this year with the weather so big thanks Daniel for all the fun ,i was reading all the reports and could see how much fun the guys had in the race, the only thing i would like to see more next year is a bit more like dry / more wet / dry during the race, i think Graham had a good/ idea / explanation in his post..

well-done Reik for another super race , you are unstoppable m8 , well-done to FIREFOX as well for a solid second :thumb:..

cheers

 

[David Turnbull]

no problems here Anthony, as i mentioned, it didnt change anything about my race, might have took 10mph off me at that moment but thats it, no damage either

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

I do love the strategy side of these races, I just wish it has rained more!

If I had one wish to the weather man, I'd like to see more changing rain conditions during one session. Until now it seemed very consistant over one session, no matter if dry or damp or slight rain...

So maybe the best you could do if you want maximum changing weather is to go from dry to medium/heavy rain then back to drying/damp.

the only thing i would like to see more next year is a bit more like dry / more wet / dry during the race, i think Graham had a good/ idea / explanation in his post..

Some relevant information:
Before the season Daniel and I discussed the randomness of the weather and we had a mathematical approach to it. One of the points was that the weather should not be scripted. This way one cannot speculate what Daniel might have been thinking when making the weather, because it is mainly decided by randomness in a spread sheet

However, the information and feedback that Daniel receives will help him to "improve the parameters" in his "formulas". Stuff like 0% wetness = slicks, and that the track takes a long time to dry can probably be incorporated to make more changable weather in the future. But I do not wish for us to reach the point where we can speculate in "reading Daniel's mind" because he is instructed to make exciting weather for the race.

I might be stepping on Daniels toes as this is his domain, just airing my thoughts

 

[Reik Major]

Absolutely understandable Nico. I got your point and you both did a fine job. I'll allways take it as it is and in fact, the thing I wish (much changes) is also very unrealisitc in real life. So all fine.

There's no need in the future, that every single or second race gets spiced up by heavy weather changes. Finally most races in dry will show the best racing i think.

btw: I think more temperature than the 20°C we used, would surely also help the track drying...

 

[Tim McIver]

Just to add a little to the weather discussion...

With respect to Graham, I think he is quite wrong regarding the drying track. The track dries incredibly fast with 15 cars on it. If the rain were to stop (change from 40% or whatever to 0%) then the track will dry very fast. This is the case for the racing line. The non-racing line is another story completely. In the races we've done so far the track hasn't dried because the rain never stopped completely, just changed by a few %. If we were to start at 100% wet track and no rain, the racing line would be completely dry before the first pit stop (okay I admit I made that up, but based on last years testing, I think I'm right) the trouble is, on slicks going off the racing line becomes a big problem. That problem is amplified if you want to do some overtaking, or perhaps more worryingly, if the track designer has a different idea to you of what the proper racing line is.

I very much like the fact that some mathematical randomness is being used in the weather, it had occurred to me on several occasions to guess what Daniel was thinking... In watching F1 this year, the thing that you notice most about the weather was that it was all about storms hitting and passing around the circuit. It didn't seem to be about drizzle on and off but more about the rain hitting hard for 15 minutes then disappearing leaving everyone to scrabble and work out how long before the next shower.

I think the weathers been a big success this season, and perhaps it is just a mathematical anomaly, but as Reik has said, it has always been safest and fastest in the races to play it safe and one stop on slicks.

This might not be the time to bring this up, but I would also love to see us run full length F1 races. So much more scope for weather, for different strategies, and just more racing!

 

[Vincenzo Cavaliere]

Congrats Reik, Mark, David and everyone made race..

Sorry guys, I miss this one.. :frown: I arrived late at home..

About changing weather, I think will be very interesting, more real race..

 

[Graham Healey]

With respect to Graham, I think he is quite wrong regarding the drying track. The track dries incredibly fast with 15 cars on it.
..
If we were to start at 100% wet track and no rain, the racing line would be completely dry before the first pit stop (okay I admit I made that up..)

(that last bit made me laugh)

I may well be wrong Tim. I was going by memories of subjective experience of Race07/GTRevo races. In my case races where the rain stopped, or it wasn't even raining at the start, but the track seemed to take ages to dry out. I do not have the telemetry to test it, at least I don't think I do.

But I am also full of respect and will bow to anyone with scientific knowledge or even weighty subjective experience.

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

I am a bit curious. Does anybody have a rough idea about how this drying track works? Is it an equation that factors in stuff like temperature, amounts of cars, sun or cloudy etc? Or in other words, with everything else being identical, would a track with 20 cars be dryer after 10 laps than if it was only 16 cars?

 

[Tim McIver]

Arno and I did some testing before one of the races last season, and had it all worked out perfectly. But when it came to race, with 20 cars on the circuit, the drying was much much faster than with our 2 car tests. I am very confident that the number of cars does effect the rate of drying.

The other thing, which is kind of obvious, but I'll state it anyway, is that the online and offline wetness percentage are always approaching the percentage rainfall. This seems to trump any other variable. Even if it was very hot you couldn't have a stable 5% rain and 2% track wetness. Nor will 10 days of 30% rainfall ever take the track wetness to 31%.

I do also wonder whether there is a variable for the type of car or perhaps even the speed of the cars. This would explain Grahams previous experiences with Race 07 and mine with this mod.

 

[Daniel Hansson]

Have been a bit absent the last days. Just popping in to read the great feedback and comments about the weather. No worries Nico. Your not stepping on my toes. It is important to air your ideas. I'd also like to say that the way the weather is made depends on what the racers want! It doesn't change much for me to do it one way or the other. It's for you guys to have fun with, the way you think is best.