RACE UPDATE - 31 March

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As most of us were at the conference and subsequently nursing major hangovers on Sunday, I'm proposing that we use the track that I've uploaded as the track for the night.

If anyone feels I'll have an unfair advantage I'm happy to do a new track - but following a few (about 5) practice laps, I love it... so don't want to mess with it unless we really want to.

In terms of the track...

Consider a fast 180Mph straight, with a 5th gear kink half way down, leading into on camber switch backs and open wide roads.

There's a carousel of sorts in there, a second over crest drift bend (hard not to) and some really fast sections where the racing line is aided by the cambers.

A fast car of pp 587 is going to be around the 2:40 mark to get round the track, despite it being a 4 mile circuit. Longest straight is .5 of a mile, with a big dip in it.

There are a few gotcha corners in there, requiring 2nd gear, and a couple of those are led into by fast sweeping bends, so a a well sorted car and a few practice laps are needed.

In summary, a fast flowing track that inspires hard driving, but the unwary will crash at least once in a lap.

Non official race Thursdays 31/03/2011

Date: Thursday 31 March
Track: New Toscana road track - I'll make one of a similar standard to the last race, I think that worked well.
Race times - 9:00 room opens, 9:10 racing starts.
PP - 587 (again).
Tyres - open (we'll all be on racing soft of course).
Car - Non-liveried cars only - i.e. no race cars, for the fun of it let's race supercars etc only, no RM cars included in ban. Any other aero mods are fine.
Weight - Thinking I'll set this to min 1200kg, but happy to adjust if we want to.
Penalties - off.
Catch up - maybe high so we keep it close!
Aids turned off.
Damage off - worked well in the wet.

As per the last non-league race, I'll set up a track and share it this weekend, then before the race I'll create a new one based on the shared one, so car setups should be in the right ballpark. We'll then race 'fresh' with a bit of learning time...

Note to those new to this course, it's a road course, so less grip, and there's a lot of over crest corners in the toscana circuits generally, so a car that can turn in well will benefit in these races.

And... this is about racing for the sport, not the win. Personally I'll not be picking my 'best car', more a car that gives me the most rewarding drive - although there's no frickin way I'll be racing my enzo, that has the characteristics of soap when it comes to cornering...

Race 3 Results

The race was pretty good, I quite liked it.

When the race started my (Baloo) car was a bit slower than others even though I was pushing full throttle. And for some reason the slip stream didn't work for me, so I followed the leaders and waited for their mistake when I can overtake them at the corners.

Wet track was fun with the WRX and the race was close thanks to the high boost and low penalty.

After the race when I reviewed the replay realised that my pedal was sending up to 90% of the full throttle when I push it to the metal. It eventually went up to 100% but for only an instant. So it seems I had a faulty pedal. I opened it and the connector was a bit loose inside. That was one of the reasons why I was always last apart from my crap driving.

So I decided to take of 10% of everyones lap time in the past 3 races and it turned out that I'm at the second place at MY(!) league.

No, I was joking, no change in the result :-). There are plenty more races for me to catch up with the repaired pedal, so be aware, I'm coming...

Race 3 Result are here:
Paul 1st then 2nd - 8pts
Andrew 2nd and 1st - 8pts
Baloo 4th and 3rd - 4 points
Ben 3rd only played first race - 3pts
Pete 5th and 4th - 2pts

Overall results:
Andrew 15pts
Baloo 7pts
Ben 9pts
David 0pts
George 7pts
Henry 0pts
Pete 2pts
Sharim 0pts
Will 13pts
Paul 22pts

Race 3 - 17/03/2011 Thursday

Date: 17/03/2011 Thursday
Time: 9pm
Race starts: 9:15pm
Lounge: FCT GT5 Andrew
Track:Suzuka (Wet)
Laps: 5
Car: Nissan 370Z
Tyres:Open

Regular racing times changed

I changed the monthly race time to Thursday so we can see George as well who can't make Wednesdays.