GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 3: Blancpain in Air's arse

Thanks Argo for the initial tune, as well as Dean for a few more tips before the race. Softening the suspension and taking some camber out of the car made all of the difference. No more random snap spins and finally got some actual mid corner grip! I only spun 3 times during the whole race and all three were my own doing. I got a little greedy and clipped curbs twice, and missed a braking point on the other one. 

This is was the first time I actually enjoyed playing the game. 

Great job Sauce on taming the Merc and driving a good race. I could catch you in the chicanes, but you just walked away from me everywhere else. Good job man. 

In reply to Argo1 :

Apparently it is at Monza 

Thanks for the kind words, I was pleasantly surprised how well the car worked. I also got lucky when I decided to add 4 liters of fuel just before start for some added buffer, I finished with 3.8L. 

It became apparent in practice that the Merc had a bit of pace advantage over Spool, but its real strong suit was recoverability. For the most part I could get corners a bit wrong or clip curbs and not lose it, though it would get loose under trail braking so I had to be careful in the hard braking zones. My game plan was to run a bit conservatively in the high risk areas (chicanes) and hammer down in the sweepers in the hopes that over the course of the race less forgiving cars would cost others time. 

Overall that's pretty much how things worked out. I out braked myself going into T1 but Spool followed me so it ended up being a wash. After that he got loose in the second sector and dropped back about a second, and we pretty much held that gap for several laps with some back and forth between different areas of the track. Periodically I would gain a chunk of time from his mishaps, but I think our average lap times were probably similar for the most part. 

I think the Merc will be able to hold its own on most tracks, but the high speed tracks like this really suit it. I'm expecting that it'll be a much more uphill battle at Brands. 

Sauce was 1-2-4 seconds faster at Monza with a pole time of 1:47.000. Not sure if this will make us feel better or worse, but he is a full 2 seconds off world record pace of 1:45.023

Nearly all my laps, minus the spins, were in the low 49s with my best a 49.000. I felt pretty good with the consistency. Hopefully I can have similar consistency at Brands. I wish I had tried the softs at qualifying to see if it was any closer to Sauce’s pole lap. 

You can get DQ for speeding in to the pits in practice.  I have done it and I think Spool did it last night. 

In reply to BradLTL :

Having watched numerous videos for laps and tunes, those record laps are set with fuel and tire wear off and like 2L of fuel in the car.

That said, since you don't have to run the same settings in both qualifying and race pole time doesn't mean much. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who had a dedicated qualifying tune with soft slicks and low fuel. 

Spool, for the Merc I had very different settings for soft slicks. Just taking my race tune and throwing softs on wasn't much faster as the car plowed so badly in sweepers. Other cars may be different, just be aware that changes may be needed between compounds. 

In reply to e30Matt :

I guess the Bimmer is easy on tires. I’m able to run softs for the race with a reasonable amount of wear. So my quali tune is just fuel load (I like to try and get 4 laps a run). 

Throwing hards on it does completely change its handling. I’m not sure if that is related to track temp or not yet. I’ve not tested in higher temperatures. It may result in the need for a second tune, but I really hope not. 

There is a little more to the incident between Brad and I. In some ways I took a calculated risk and was counting on Brad to realize what I was doing 

I saw Brad get a great run out of the last corner and knew he was going to draft pass me close to the first corner so my strategy was to try and make him brake later than he wanted causing him to run deep and completely miss the first apex in the chicane at turn one. It was then just a simple over under for me. The risk was I would be on the outside exiting the chicane. I would get a much better drive out and it would pinch Brad down on track out meaning I should end up in the lead again. 

The risk was Brad would not fall for being bated in to late braking on corner entry and my entire plan fails and the other risk was passing on the outside exiting the chicane. I was hoping Brad would realize the trap I had set and know what I was doing and where I was going to be. This part did not work out so well.  

In the end I could have not tried it and just given Brad the corner but what fun is that. 

In reply to BradLTL :

It looks like track temp at Brands is going to be 95F. Not sure if that makes sense for a track outside of London in April, but that's what comes up for me when I put in the date and use 1300 as the start time. I ran softs at Zolder and they lasted the whole 30 mins without issue for me. I'll have to play around with the hards a bit if it is not simply a matter of changing tires.

In reply to dean1484 :

Actually... I knew you were going to bait me and I damned near fell for it. I was braking with my foot to the floor and just barely made the corner. I figured that your plan was to kill my exit speed and that you were lining up to take advantage going into the next chicane where you could potentially get a gap from me. I was trying to get as much power down as possible out of the corner and started to look for you only to see you off behind me. 

That kinda sucked. As I was braking I was already trying to think of where I would be able to pass you again. I was looking forward to a back and forth battle with the baller-mobile. 

The crash with Air was just one of those bad luck things. I was content to just follow him. It was what I was doing when I was just caught up in his screwup. I was going to say something to air but figured I would make him watch his mirrors. That plan did not work out. 

Baller-Mobile.  Ohh I like that. However it kind of ruins the highly sophisticated presence that is in keeping with being a Bentley driver. 

Yeah, that wouldn't have mattered.  I was well aware you were there and was the reason I was pushing a bit and got loose.  My initial plan was to just follow you also.  From the look of the replay, you either got a bit of a run or was just behind me when I got loose.

Argo, the tune worked out great, I didn't change anything.  Quit driveable, and without the aero (I am assuming) was much more "normal" to drive.  It did get a bit squirrelly as the tires wore down, but that's essentially expected.

The fast AI cars (especially that 911) were pretty damn fast on this course (compared to me of course) and I ended up in a pretty good dual with the 911 and another car.  That was actually the source of my offs later in the race.  Otherwise I could have just cruised in for a 3rd place finish.

I will have to give Dean's tune a try and decide which works best for me.

I ran some laps at Brands tonight, my Monza tune doesn't play well here.  I'm not sure if it's the rendering vs GT or if it's just been a while but the track is a lot bumpier than I remember and at different points.  There are some bumps near turn-in or exit that definitely make things interesting, being consistent is going to be very difficult over the course of a 30 minute race especially considering the width of the track.  

TJ and I ran a bunch of laps last night and it was quit un event-full. The Bentley likes this track but I think I am loosing a bit of time due to sliding the car to much.

I like this track I think it I fun to drive. I am not sure I am that fast on it but some of the corners at great fun.

I've pretty much got my tune sorted out and am working in consistency at this point. The Yorkie videos are very helpful when it comes to setup. I re-watched parts of the suspension one and one thing I picked up on is that he says adjust camber to get a 5-10 degree delta T across the tires, but of course he is talking in C, so the spread in F then is 9-18 F. I should be able to put some more camber back in and see how that feels.  I have it now to aim for 5-10 F difference. 

I am enjoying the setup process in this game and it is interesting how the various changes impact other settings. Last night I closed down my brake ducts by 5% and then had to lower my cold tire pressures a bit to achieve similar hot pressures for example. 

I made a couple small tweaks to my Monza tune and it felt decent but still needs some dialing in. I'll probably be on most evenings to keep playing with stuff. 

And because I was curious I ran some laps at Monza with fuel and tire wear off and 2L of fuel to see what the actual difference was between that and how we run. I had to loosen the car up a bit more but it turns out that it's worth almost a second. 

Tires: if the RS dash is accurate I only used 8% of my tires at Monza so I may not need to be on the hard slicks after all. I'm going to try some long runs on each compound and see what shakes out. 

I just got back and haven't run any laps at Brands yet.  I am hoping that my Zolder setup is close.  It looked like the AI settings at Monza were spot on.  The AI cars were nearly on pace, enough to be a bit challenging, and seemed to be well behaved around others.

AI was at 79/25

My RS Dash was syncd to a Bot. I think it was because I forgot to start it with the game, so any information it gathered was useless. I’ve run soft compound tires for both races so far without any real issue. I think temperatures matter more than anything else for tires. 

Argo1 said:

and seemed to be well behaved around others.

So what part of me getting run off the track on a straightway by the AI was the well behaved part? 

First few recon laps around Brands in the overcast conditions that we will race in has me at low 26's.  Not too many changes needed from the Zolder setup. Hard to keep temp in the right side tires.  I find running brake temps at the upper operating range helps.  I see the fast times online are in the 25's so there is work to do.  Mostly, I need practice as I have never been good at Paddock Bend or Surtees.  I know that I lose a lot of time there.

I was very disappointed with the on line tunes I found for the Bentley. All of them are much worse than what I am currently running and some are worse than the base tune. 

More practice last night and learned that the weather is going to play a big roll in this race.  I also learned that the curbs in the high speed rights can and will turn you around if you are two aggressive.  

Sauce has the Merc dialed in and is going to be a force to be reckoned with. The Bentley can hold its own as a chase vehicle. Keeping it on the track is going to be key for this race. I did some more tuning on the Bentley and now have taken some of the slide out of it while still getting the mid corner rotation you need. Slow speed corners it will plow a little once the tires are a bit worn. Brake temps and engin temps are going to cause people problems. As things cool off keeping temps in the brakes is interesting. I also found that the more you close up the radiator the more aero front grip you get.