I think I've established in earlier posts that I'm a cheapskate.
And such is life imitating art I'm in a situation that involves me saving my pennies (cents apparently) and that means old car remains new car for some time.
And much like me it's got a few KMs on the clock now and whilst it functions fine it's a bit wobbly and parts are starting to fail. Unlike me, it's possible to swap stuff out. I'll not bore you with the garage trip today to try and tune out the "It's like an old dryer on spin cycle" handling that it has developed at what I consider low speeds.
No. This post is the apoplectic anger of fitting a new bulb. It's hard enough trying to pull apart a modern car to fit a bulb. I'm no vet, but I reckon I was up to my elbow in my car, and that's not including the 180.deg bend I had to put into my wrist as my arm seemed to be too long and passed the bulb 'pit'. The clips are different on every car, and once my minor panic of removing the entire light fitting was over I was good to go with the 'hard way'.
But what made it worse, far, far worse was the packaging for my discount bulbs...
These in fact:
Plus 60 (...minutes to get into the packaging)
They're not fancy. Not blue, green, red or anything other than normal. They don't discharge in an intensely high way. They are better than standard (of course) but I doubt it.
The packaging though... Clearly, DaVinci had the code to open this. I on the other hand had a screwdriver, pliers and eventually some safety glasses.
You see these lights are entombed in tough brittle clear plastic, in places two layers of the 2mm thick stuff. It was damn near bulletproof frankly.
It wasn't old git proof though... Half an hour I spent getting into this packaging, with shards of plastic flying off all over the place. It really was a war zone as I tried to get into f'ing thing.
It's worse as you're not supposed to touch the bulb too, so they're loose(ish) in this hard casing, and as you work you through the layers to get them like some miner who's seen the diamond but needs to get through 3metres of granite you run the risk of ruining them with the excavations.
Finally I had them free. Then, then the fun started of traversing the front of the car "not touching the bulb" (tm).
There surely is an easier and cheaper way to package these please Repco.
We decided to race online in a proper racing league race. Wins and losses, mostly losses if I'm honest.
What remains is the decomposition as a record for posterity.
The race, if you can watch the entire hour, is here:
Pre-Race
Setup for this car is tricky, mostly as there's not a whole lot to be done to it, and what's more, with no traction control it's a bit of a beast to drive consistently to be honest. Nevertheless, time was spent...
I just wasn't fast in this car. Not even close actually, Evan was a solid 4 seconds a lap faster and the crazy folks were nearly 10.
The challenge really was outright grip, I couldn't seem to get the car to grip. It rolled down to two issues. Mostly me but also tuning...
A quick search through the Interweb and there's either no-one posting setups or they're hiding them until after the race. I suspect the former, nevertheless, I found a setup for Silverstone, that'll do...
Checking it out, it wasn't too bad, I had to adjust some of it to make it symmetrical - figuring the fine tunning like that would come later, it never did, and I think it really doesn't need it at Bathurst anyway...
This got me into consistent 2:10 lap times, essentially 2 seconds better, which was certainly better than I was getting.
Happy with the setup being right(ish) for me I settled in for some testing sessions. Things were going well enough, 2:10 and occasional 2:09 was solid for me, happy days.
Though I did recall talk of tyre pressures being key in this game - a read up online and blimey, I've been running super under-inflated. This means an uneven contact patch at best and all sorts of deformation woes (and punctures) at worst.
Adding more air and getting the tyres to be evenly inflated really helped.
And so it was, a change to that, and I was into solid 2:09's and occasional 2:08's. Awesome. I messed with brakes next. Adding a diagnostics page to my sim dash to see brake temps. Cool... so I changed them to the over the top brakes to really give me some stopping power.
This worked a treat. With ABS on low it meant that I could really hammer the car into the corners and the brakes and tyres were set right and at the right temps - 20mins of practice and all good, this is key in the race report...
My final hot lap session netted me a 2:07.8 - this isn't far off the fastest I've ever driven around Bathurst in any car, super pleased and given it was with a 1/4 tank of fuel I reckoned I had a chance to be at least with the pack if not outright competitive.
I think though that what got me the final second or more was, in fact, that I slowed down and concentrated on smooth corning and throttle maintenance - the keeping of some gas on around the corner.
The comment in a recent article that racing is a series of drag races down the straights has really stuck with me - no one can pass you in a corner if you take a spot-on line (or at least a lot harder) and then if you're set for the next straight you're in a good place to challenge and be faster.
Practice & Qualifying
First issue, Evan, my racing team-mate didn't make it. We suspect SteamID issues, I also think it was highly suspect that out of 42 entrants in the race only 25 made it in. I think ACC configs somewhere limited the server numbers - not that we'll ever know! Certainly, organisers tried a restart of the servers to no avail.
I had a few laps in free practice, but didn't fare too well. No big crashes, but at 4am it's hard to be consistent (unless snoring). Track temp was woefully cold, but in the race pre-chat there was talk of it being warmer. I assumed that the track was going to warm up, so I left my tyres as they were. Big mistake.
Qualifying - yeah, a 2:12. 5 seconds off my best, and I blame a. trying too hard, b. tyres that never warmed up (quite literally still blue) and c. me trying to avoid everyone and everything, so ending up without a clean lap.
So at the very back. I was OK with this as it meant that first lap carnage (surely) wasn't going to involve me. I'd be able to tip-toe past half the field, let the track warm up and like a strategic genius I'd finish top 10 easily. I'll skip past the lead car doing a 2:02 and most of the field being not far behind...
The Race
Lots of lessons learned in this race, given I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of the entire race (fading already) I'll just list up what went well and mostly, what went not so well...
The strategy was fairly solid - a 1/3,2/3 with the pit stop around 20mins to fuel to the end. The assumption being that anything that happens in the race will happen early on. I was expecting 40 racers after all. I elected not to change this strategy with fewer runners, it was still valid.
First lap carnage didn't happen. In fact, everyone trundled round for the first lap, I almost overtook a few cars, but really on cold tyres not a smart move. The result, no places made through attrition.
A few bumps and scrapes early on, nothing too serious. I attribute this to ice-cold tyres. Track temp wasn't far of 10.c lower than I was used to.
Minor scape and light damage around 18mins in. I collected all the walls across the top. Luckily I recovered and decided to wait for a lap to pit in. This was a smart move as although rattled and a bit slower I pitted in whilst the leaders lapped me. Safest for all!
Position now was around 19. I was happy with that. Though mostly that was folks dropping off or having big crashes and pitting in.
And then not so good strategy... I didn't notice that I had to opt to change disks and pads. I assumed they were going to be changed. And being on the extreme set I had to change them...
More racing and frankly the car wasn't at all nice to drive. I think a combination of poor brake performance, flat-spotted tyres (didn't know you could do this with ABS) and general race stress meant I was lapping around 2:12. Not optimal, but really, I was experiencing pretty severe juddering through the wheel, something wasn't right.
Soon after the stop the disk wear indicator lit up. Uh oh. Then the brakes started to shine yellow into big stops. Braking was becoming a suggestion...
About 15mins later (I think just after halfway) I collected the wall badly through the dipper. This didn't do me any favours clearly. I will say by now the car was nearly impossible to drive. The decision on staying out and getting to the end and pitting in to remedy was made for me.
Down conrod straight and into the chase (biggest stop of the lot) my brakes faded completely, the tire pressures spiked (30psi+, should be 27.6psi) and it all went horribly wrong. I learned then that ACC has fade, tyre grip degradation, and a suitable lack of handling as a result. With my foot to the floor on the brake pedal I went straight on. Thankfully I'd been tip-toeing around so didn't collect anything or anyone.
And then I pitted in. I checked and ensured that my brakes were swapped. The tyres were swapped too, but pressures are hard to adjust in the remaining time, and indeed, what to set them to... The stop was 2mins, not bad considering I had big damage. But nearly a lap for the leaders. For bonus grief I forgot to deselect fuel being added, so I had over 70L, and needed about 20L.
Rejoin was just over 20mins to go and I think 21st place.
From there it was a fairly standard race, though the juddering in the corners remained. I read up on carcass (tyres) deformation when they're cold and attribute most of the weird handling to that. The car skipped and juddered on every corner, it wasn't fun to drive that was for sure.
Ultimately I think I finished in 21st place. Probably the last of the runners. I'll take that as in terms of setup for the race I missed the mark and the rest of the race was managing that consequence.
Takeouts
Tyre pressures are critical. If they're not right pit in.
Check the track time - I never noticed it was afternoon till Evan pointed it out. The track was never going to warm up.
Brakes. Change them. And probably don't race on what is a test pad or something.
Preparation is key. This I did right, pre-race practice and testing set me up for success. Mostly.
Would I race again? Sure I would. I'd be happier in a slower class for now as it's a very different thing to race a 1-hour race to what we normally do. And I'll be honest, I'm looking forward to GT4 racing in ACC. I think it may be closer to what I'm capable of - being an "AM" driver as I am...
This is the group that I raced with, lots of effort from everyone, too many to mention, but certainly, if the intent is to bring this sort of racing to enthusiasts then they're onto a winner.
Bonus content...
The results are in, and yes I had a 21st place, but the other non-runners are counted, so I was mid-field! Let the record stand that I finished mid-field!!! Ha.
Not sure when I'll see you again my friend. I've enjoyed driving you, less so being a passenger into the chase and I promise to sort the pressures out next time!
