Catch up time...

Hi folks,
Apologies for not updating following race #0, it was a top night even with just four of us racing.
The AEM S2000 racers really require some serious control on the throttle, I think all of us crashed at least once - and it did become a war of attrition as we also had room updates happening too, causing complete game crashes for most.

Advice is to get online and race before Thursday, as after the first half hour it all came good.

So the results

Race1
1. Chris
2. Paul
3. Andrew
4. Evan (DNF)

Race2
1. Paul
2. Chris
3. Andrew
4. Evan (I think DNF again actually!)

But then things got interesting...

We had a go in our GT590 racers around Madrid. Epic fun for sure, and I'll make sure we have another street race or two in these cars (I think there's a points race at London actually).

Next race

This Thursday sees the start of the season proper. And there's no room to ease yourself in (that was the S2000 race!).

It's a classic race for the TC500 cars, on our very own FCT GT5 race track. This track suits these cars totally and the brave can make the cut on corners whilst the ballistic can do it on the straights. Every race is close, and every race has some incidents. Marvellous.

Personally, I'll be driving this:

The Lexus is a fast car and no mistake. Literately, no mistake or it changes ends...

I'll endeavour to do a test'n'tune on Wednesday, if you've not raced this circuit before it's well worth it.

Official event details:

Host: Andrew

Date: 18-Oct-2012

Start time: 9:15 PM

Lounge: FCT GT5 Andrew

Track: Eiffel TC500 Track#2

Laps: 6

Cars: TC500

Tyres: Racing Med

Boost: Low

Clubman:

Host: Andrew

Date: 18-Oct-2012

Start time: 9:00 PM

Laps: 5

Cars: Fixed

Tyres: Racing Med

Boost: High

What else

Also, one car you'll need this season is a 540pp 60's race car, something like this:

More on the night, but Targa Florio is an old school epic race, one not to be missed.

Laters!

SuperStars Season - League Race #0

A new season...

Welcome all to what is surely the biggest case of Déjà vu since racing in our league began. Why?

Well mostly so I can reuse the pictures from the previous race, and because that race above was one of reasonably epic proportions.

Close racing it was, mad fun it was. Fast? not so much, the cars were/are very tail happy...

The cars:

AEM S2000 - on racing medium tyres. All aids except for ABS off. It's a car from the online garage, so you don't need to have one to race it.

The track:

Autumn Ring - how hard is it to get a map of that now!

Anyway, you all know the track by now, it's not the mini, that's all you need to know...

Official event details:

Host: Andrew

Date: 18-Oct-2012

Start time: 9:00 PM

Race starts: 9:15 PM

Lounge: FCT GT5 Andrew

Track: Autumn Ring Full

Laps: 7

Cars: AEM S2000

Tyres: Racing Med

Boost: Low

Clubman:
This is solely a clubman event - i.e. the championship round and clubman round is merged into the the one event. Reason? I'm lazy.

Notes:

Notice that it's seven laps folks - we're running longer races now that we're all 'pro'. Nice.

If you need to practice (and why wouldn't you) remember there's arcade mode which has the cars in the setup that you'll be racing.

That's it folks, lock and load... happy racing folks and here's to a top season ahead of us!

Errrrr

Ooops.

I think I'm right now. Seems that playing on my PS3 these days involves 4 hours of test and tune of my router. Damn.

Things I've learnt in the past week

• When one of the team has connection issues - don't go messing with your own.
• ...Especially when there's a PSN issue globally.
• If you gently tug at the dodgy extension cable for the (only) phone, the end comes off, leaving you with no phone at all.
• Re-wiring said bare cables doesn't ensure connectivity due to miss-wiring in the Telstra box.
• Re-wiring that requires some rather special connectors.
• Plugging in the wrong blue network cable causes an IP storm which effectively disables your network.
• Resetting your router to factory spec as a result of incorrect plug doesn't fix it - pulling the cable out does.
• Resetting your router enables IPv6 by default (amongst other incorrect settings).
• Whilst setting up IPv6 correctly on your router is great, you do need to turn it on at the ISP too.
• Even when you've turned it on, if there's some DNS error in IPv6 land, your PS3 will find it.
• Spending time ensuring UPnP is working for your PS3 ensures that when it finds an error it'll force some sort of router restart.
• When your router is restarting every minute or so, it's hard to google for topics on the subject.
• It's possible to lock out your DSL line - to the point where you need to call your ISP to get it unlocked/restarted.
• Billion Routers are over engineered in terms of complexity.

There. Let that be a lesson to you all...

Anyway, in light of the fight I've had with my router and all things IP related in my house I'm going to be doing some extended racing over the weekend evenings. Please do join me for a thrash if you can. Or send me a text and I'll make time (Skyrim is a powerful draw...).

League Business

Stand by for the league update for Race 0 - next week.

Cheers.

Its Back....

Welcome back folks.

We're on. I hope you've reconfigured your living room, you know rearranged the couch and shuffled a cushion or two...

I've taken on board Rod's suggestion of some more structured car racing, and behold, we now have the Clubman Cup (points deducted for calling it the Club Foot Cup).

This will run in parallel to the main championship, with races on the same track as the first (or only) track of the championship event. Cars will be picked on the night, and will be stock cars from the online garage. In fairness this is a return to the roots of this league, and whilst we probably have moved on a bit from there, the racing was always intense and great fun - so welcome back to an old friend!

Season Detail

Race 0 of the new season is the 18th October

On the right you'll see the updated dates for the season. And in the race log you'll be able to see the full calendar, which looks like this:

Which I think you'll agree is quite comprehensive. So I've cut it down to the main events:

Much more manageable. Notice the Clubman races inserted in there now.
Overall it's the same calendar as we were going to run before, but with dates shuffled out.

Grid
We've not had the best of grids of late (before my hiatus) and I'm keen to keep the league alive, especially given we now have a comprehensive race calendar. So, if anyone has friends that want in, let me know and get them to send me a friend request too. We'll be keeping the league membership to 10 champion racers, firstly as it's too hard to change the spreadsheet and secondly I don't think we want grids like this:

Tonight
So, tonight's racing is an informal mashup, we'll do a TC500 race, a clubman race (stock cars) and depending on time and inclination we'll have a go at the rest.

Happy racing folks.

Drift like a boss

I know I posted a winning drift some time ago, but this is a different league:

Epic.

Camera on my head...

Following on from Evan's in-car dash mount camera, here's one from a month or two ago of me with a camera on my head, following my mate on the local downhill track.

Nice.

Driver Meet - 11th November?

How about a driver meet then?

By November we'll be back into the swing of racing (I hope) and how about a top event to meet up in...

Noosa Historic Hill Climb

Well, I say top, it's a bunch of beardy types running their particular versions of Austin Healy up a stretch of tarmac.

If you can stand to watch all this (hint, fast forward, a lot) then you'll notice that some of the beardy types have some very fast cars indeed, and aren't afraid to give it some up this closed road.

So, who's up for a session - I think on the Sunday rather than Saturday if only as the drivers will be pushing that bit harder - though I'm open to suggestions.

Obligatory clothing:

More of that hill climb nonsense...

I hope you've all heard of Pikes Peak. And probably the crazy motors that go up there. Well this is the 2011 world record drive. And nice for us it was sponsored by GoPro - so videoed to oblivion. You really need to watch this in HD full screen with sound up loud to really enjoy it...

And if you prefer the old skool approach (and no not an S1):

Anyone racing Dirt3? You'll have these cars. Roll on a GT game that does this sort of driving I say!

Why I broke my hand....

This. This is why I broke my hand (well, not this vid as such, I'm not this fast)...

Most epic riding.

It gets better... how about a but of street if you're not liking the trees'n'stuff:

For the record, that is not why I mountain bike, no way, fecking nutter!

And finally below, this is just nice, mmkay, though I wish I could ride like this...

Martin Söderström early 2008 on Pinkbike

Although, this is the man for all that trials stuff...

Amazing. Bet he's not got a broken hand though...

Running out of replays...

Only one left, then I've got nothing left to post, be afraid, be very afraid!

Anyway, this is just old 'tat' from evening thrashing around, a Lambo in toscana and a type R nsx around Deep Forest. Both were excellent fun drives, and very different cars of course.

Enjoy...