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Week 5
Jan 11, 2022 3:09:23 GMT
Post by tomlory on Jan 11, 2022 3:09:23 GMT
Daytona!
Or make that, Daytona.
One of my favorite tracks because of how it races and probably because I've had lots of good races there, at least with Efnet and the rFactor sisters.
Pretty hard to get super excited about the probability of practicing for hours only for the race (ROAR before the 24) to statistically probably be negatively impacted by at least one sim gamer. At best, maybe we'll have a clean race but I have no fantasy about the event coming close to Efnet's epic 2.4 hour races as far as close finishes. Too many bad drivers regardless of their speed and iRating.
I took a Safety Rating (and iRating) beating again last week. With my only sim racing goal being to climb to an A(4.99) Safety Rating and feeling like this (A(4.23)) is as close as I'm going to get anytime soon after Week 3's disasters that dropped me from A(4.70) to A(4.01) so I'm especially scared to enter any race this week lest I drop below 4.00 which would plummet me to below at most 3.60 by iRacing's goofy process of giving us a bonus 0.40 when we ascend to a whole number and then take it away on the way back down.
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Week 5
Jan 18, 2022 1:19:50 GMT
Post by K Juliot on Jan 18, 2022 1:19:50 GMT
Pat and I did Street Stock races at Charlotte Saturday and Sunday night. Saturday nights race I qualyed 3rd and by lap two was moving into the lead going into turn 1. But a guy behind me decided to to take it 3 wide dipping down onto the apron, freaked me out a little so I moved up a little but was trying hard to not drift into the guy on my outside. My car slide the backend and I took out a good portion of the field, big mistake on my part. Still finished but in 11th.
Sunday we did two races first one went really good, qualyed 6th and think Pat was 7th but we were in separate splits, I ended up finishing 3rd with 0 safety hits, Pat was 4th. Race two started out good was in the top 4 and then got caught up in a car starting to spin and came down and hit me, big crash for me the others kept going. after coming out of pits was 11th and for the most part driving by myself, passed one lapper and ended up 10th.
Overall fun stuff and they count towards the Oval rating. I tried the Legends at South Boston, 18 second laps and I was off by .3 in practice. After running a bunch a laps was getting nauseous, so I wont be racing those. Pat and I at the end of the night tried Dirt Street Stock, was ok but again small track going around and around.
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Week 5
Jan 18, 2022 20:13:37 GMT
Post by tomlory on Jan 18, 2022 20:13:37 GMT
Ran the 2.4 hour ROAR Before the 24 (BMW M4 GT4)
The race went fine, I can only blame myself, only came across a couple of drivers that I would rather avoid in the future. 2X incident total from tire offs @ Bus Stop.
Only one major scare when a TC Civic lost it under braking for T1 and slid by the front my car in a cloud of tire smoke, some fraction of second difference and my car would have been badly damaged.
More good luck perhaps later in the race when I was pitting and an incident sent a Miata sliding through the infield grass to crash to a stop at the inner pit wall. I think that cars are non-collide-able when pitting but that was only a few stalls ahead of mine and I could easily have been exiting when it happened.
I had practiced pit entries many times to identify a brake marker and technique for max speed but I braked too late in the race, possibly switched my timing up from brakes then pit limiter to pit limiter then brakes so I was 15 km/h fast at the limit line incurring a 40 second hold before release. Way better than a subsequent stop and go, though.
I may or not have partially made up for it by running the entire race on one set of tires, rather than going to a fresh set on my second stop. Coffey thinks that tires and fuel were serviced at the same time but I believed from testing in practice (GT4 this week, GT3 weeks ago) that it was fuel first, then tires. If it was like Coffey thought, I would have probably taken a full load of fuel and tires on Stop 1. The fronts tires started to concern me with about 10 laps to go, started sliding around more easily but the rears stuck well enough all the way to the end even with minimal wing. All that rF1 HGT&TC experience paying dividends with throttle control (and the ol' emergency brake jab).
I finished 5th with a penultimate lap pass to gain the spot. Once I realized that I was going to catch him, my plan was to wait for the last lap to easily make the pass after Bus Stop. From observing his driving, I didn't want the car in question behind me to wipe me out at T1 but he turned out to be slow so that I was worried that I in turn was going to get caught from behind. That created a dilemma that I sought to clarify by feeling out if I could gap him between Bus Stop and T1. If not, then I'd let him go ahead at T1 for a last lap pass before Start Finish. With the white flag out, I was clear at T1 and he spun on his own a few corners to make the run to the checkers zero pressure for me.
I'm most disappointed about the speeding penalty, would probably have been running nose to tail with Coffey (he finished 4th) after the pits stops which would have been more fun. My crazy late braking hit the line with a 1 km/h margin was dumb; trying to save one second cost me 40. Better now than in a team race, though.
Traffic kept us entertained the whole race, lots of Miatas which we just blew by everywhere and anywhere between an apex and braking zone. The TC cars weren't much slower than the GT4s so we often needed to follow them through a corner or hang back a little to be able to have normal line and speed apex out.
2.4 hours went by quickly, no physical discomfort during, after nor day after. I wouldn't have wanted to do it again this morning but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.
Q7 / R5 / 2X / +0.27 (A / 1456 / 1530)
IMSA Endurance @ Daytona (Mercedes AMG GT3)
Coffey and I have been bouncing around running the Daytona 24 and the ROAR inspired him to suggest that we enter the IMSA Endurance race (160 minute) that requires at least two drivers, so we did that starting 05:30 local time on Sunday. Coffey was quicker so he qualified but we went for comfort over maximum competitiveness and changed drivers at each of two fuel stops with only running the middle stint.
We probably got lucky with no prototypes in our split, recipe for disaster and this way it was an all GT3 race.
Rich got caught up in and got the worst of the lap 1, turn 1 incident (a car spun on its own), so we were immediately down 5 or 6 laps after repairs and a fuel top off.
The first stop and driver change went fine. I think that we took tires as the car ahead was on another lap as was the car behind.
The next problem came at the end of my stint coming in for the second stop. I have Crew Chief set to give me a countdown of time to our pit stall and did many practice stops with that in place. Unfortunately during the race, "Jim" was busy telling me something else and failed to even start the countdown and I blew right by our pits. I maybe, possibly could have been able to slam on the brakes and make a very accute turn into the pit stall but my reflex was that I missed it so I need to do a drivethru and pit again but unfortunately that left me with about 1/2 the fuel that is required for a lap at race speed. I went straight to 6th gear and started limping around the track until I started looking for the fuel map adjustment and distracted myself offline on what may have been tires that had cooled off and pushed off into the tires at T5. Happily, ironically, that probably saved us, as I got towed almost immediately with a less than 2 minute cost, the impact scored as a 0X despite obvious body damage, we didn't lose a position and the car drove fine after the repairs.
Problem number three became obvious maybe 15 laps later as Coffey wasn't going to have enough fuel to finish the race. Again, Crew Chief was set to add the correct amount of fuel to finish. With us being 6-8 laps down, having topped off on fuel on Lap 3, a conservative fuel estimate by me pre-race, it made sense that less than a full tank was added during what was supposed to be the last stop but it was way short. This time, it cost us a position but the car that gained it was apparently down on speed, as Coffey was able to catch and pass easily. Benefiting from the spotter role, I could see that Coffey would catch the car ahead and could simply follow until the last lap and then easily draft by to the finish line but it didn't even need to come to that, he was able to pass and pull away to a safe distance.
Despite all of our problems, we got out of there gaining Safety Rating and only losing 1 iRating point. It was fun and the ~1 hr stints were easy, a piece of cake after the ~144 minute ROAR which itself wasn't that rough.
Q35 / R24 / 0X / +0.19 (A / 4.77 / 1529)
I'm stuck on reaching 4.99 SR so I avoided other races. I don't know that I would have had time anyway but aside from the risk, I somewhat regret not doing an IMSA Pilot Challenge race or two after the ROAR. I'm relatively struggling compared to years past with rFactor but Daytona remains one of my favorites and I had plenty of practice.
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