GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 6: Mono e Mono

(First of all, yes, I realize the correct expression is Mano A Mano but let's not let that ruin a clever title and pun)

Welcome to the (un)official GRM - Project CARS2  series #6.

This is a 7 round GT1 Championship series hosted on the PlayStation4. Although highly competitive the main focus of the racing is fun clean racing. Because of this, rough driving is highly discouraged. The Stewards will be watching.

The series will be run on **Wednesday nights at 9:00ET**.

The first race will be on: **February 20, 2019**

PS+ is required to participate.

Car Class: BAC Mono (Road B)

Rounds:

Rules:

• Will use the Online Championship in PCars2 named "BradLTL #2" because I can't figure out how to rename it
• Races will be based on time as follows: Practice 60 minutes / Qualification 15 minutes / Race 30 minutes
• Realistic Driving Aids
• Fuel usage is set to Yes
• Tire usage will be set to "Accelerated"
• Damage will have a visual impact
• Flag will be ON
• Standing starts
• Track Limit Penalties will be OFF
• Drive Through Penalties will be OFF
• Ghost cars will be ON
• AI drivers will not exist in this series
• Competitive Racing License will be ON
• Time progression 2x

Points:

• Default Online Championship Point System

Championship Standings:

Does the weather happen automatically based on the dates? What about the in game race times? If they are at 2000 local time, I suspect it will be dark. Do these cars have lights? Looks like a good selection of tracks that I am not familiar with.

I suspect that I will miss a lot of these due to work, but I'll just have to see how it all works out.

I kept the race date and weather simple. They are all “Summer” and have a single weather slot. It varies between clear and medium clouds. 

The date is actually the first of June except the New Zealand race which is in December because they are upside down. 

In reply to BradLTL :

Can you change me to one of the white cars instead of a black one?

I did a few laps at Snetterton 300 - I had driven on the other configurations of this track as part of the career mode, but I don't remember the 300 version of it. Not sure yet about the Mono. Seems ok to drive, but I don't expect to be very fast in it. It should be a good learning experience for me.

Are we running with other class cars?  It's a pretty interesting mix of cars, mostly fast street car types.

In reply to aircooled :

No AI cars at all, only humans,so just BAC Monos.

aircooled said:

Are we running with other class cars?  It's a pretty interesting mix of cars, mostly fast street car types.

No... single make, no AI

FYI, semi-slick tires are grippier than track tires. Makes a couple seconds a lap difference. 

I originally went with track tires thinking they were the best ones. 

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?61604-Semi-Slick-vs-Track-Tires

Hopefully we can get some practice before Wednesday. Driving against the AIs is one thing, but doesn't replicate actual people all that well.

The more I drive the BAC Mono, the more fun I think it is. I wasn't too enthused at first, but now I am really looking forward to this series. My fastest lap at Snetterton 300 so far is in the low 1:50's. I haven't gotten into the 1:49's yet, but it is definitely possible. 

Tire wear does not seem to be an issue. I need to play around with a few setup changes still to see if I can get the setup a little better. There is not much choice for gearing, since there are only 6 gear ratios, so we really only get to choose the rear end ratio. Seems like there are 2 that will work on this track - i get about the same laptimes with either of them.

I am looking forward to this series.  Based on my first few laps, the Mono seems like a lot of fun.  I like the idea of no AI this series.  So far, looking ahead, I don't see anything that will cause me to miss races in the near future.  I would like to make all the races for a change.

Did some laps with Sauce last night. Not surprisingly he is a little faster on outright pace. The most interesting thing I learned is that this car is a bit setup immune. Meaning two very different setups don't feel all that different and seem like they both result in fairly similar laptimes. This is good news for Air and anyone who doesn't typically spend a lot of time developing setups.

I've got a few changes to try out still before tomorrow's race just trying to find the sweet spot, but I think having just the right setup may only net time measured in tenths and not seconds. This car just drives like this car and seems pretty insensitive to setup changes. I think most of the gains have to do with developing familiarity with the track and getting used to the car more so than with the setup.

EDIT: While I still stand by that the feel of this car is relatively insensitive to setup changes, I was wrong when I said setup changes may get you tenths and not seconds. I started over with springs, roll bars and damper settings and raised my tire pressures a bit this morning and found a little more time over what I could get last night. Sauce - you were right my setup from last night needed some rear bar.

I wasn't sure if I would make it tonight, but it looks like I am in for tonight!  

I plan for making up for my lack of practice with extreme-ultra-super-late-braking! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Vrtpr4CWI

In reply to aircooled :

That looked a bit like T2 at Hockenheim.

Speaking of Dean, where has he been recently?

Yeepers I did not realize we were starting up so soon!!  I will be around tonight.

I have had some things going on that have been rather mentally taxing and sucking my time away for the last couple months but I am here.  A couple of the races I missed just due to me being mentally exhausted and wanting to just be a couch potato and or just have a nice single malt scotch and relax with some quiet music and something to read.  Ya I know old school but hay I am that way.  

Anyway I am around I will see about getting on line tonight. I don't think I have touched the game in 3 weeks or so.  

In reply to dean1484 :

These are fun cars and there are no AIs this series. 

Apparently if I click continue we don’t go back to the lobby... ok, lesson learned. 

That was fun last night although I am a bit disappointed that I managed to pull of the rare combo of a false start and a slow start. Since I was already 20 seconds behind at the start and Sauce got ahead in T1, I decided to just try to follow him, but since it seemed unlikely I could get my 20 seconds back, I wanted to make sure I didn't take him out, so I tried to give him a little more room than I normally would. Seemed like a good plan until lap 2 when I spun at the end of the long straight because I changed my braking point a bit and braked earlier, but easier and as a result had a little brake in while making the left turn and the rear came around on me. I lost 14 seconds and rejoined in 6th place.

From there it was just trying to see how far back through the field I could get. Too about 3 laps to catch up to Argo, then after a couple laps he had a small error and I snuck by. Took a decent bit and then I caught up to Air. Same story, couldn't get past without him making a mistake, so I just tried to stay close and wait for the chance. When that finally came and I got back to P2, I realized that there was a chance that I could finish on the podium if I had at least a 20 sec gap on Argo who was P4 on track. So for the last 6 laps, I just watched the gap to Argo and was happy when it pushed out to 20 seconds.

In the end I was able to claw back nearly 3 seconds on Sauce from lap 2 to the finish. Hopefully I'll be able to give him a run for his money next week. Other than laps 1 & 2 all of my laps were in the 1:49-1:50 range - it was just the 20 sec penalty and the 14 sec crash on lap 2.

Ran some laps at the next track. It is really narrow. Put your car in the center of the track and you can only be passed if the car passing you puts two wheels off track. There is also a place where you can go airborne. Sticking the landing is not easy. 

Off topic but has anyone tried the vintage Indy cars?  

Last night was an ok showing for me. I have never driven the car befor and I really did not remember the track at all although I think we ran it before.  At the moment I am way behind in learning how to drive this car. I am going to need to get some practice in if I am going to be competitive.  Really is not my preferred style of car but it is a good excuse to learn it and get better at it. I actually think I may be faster with it if I take some power out of it. I was getting some strange snap oversteer coming out of some corners that I tamed by going to the viscous LSD. But my setup still feels like I am riding up on the road where as when I tried TJs setup the car feels much more planted. 

You might want to just get used to it with the stock setup, then modify once you can drive that.  I ran the stock setup (with a bit more rear bar) and had no issues with snap oversteer.  It does step out, but it's easy enough to catch. Unless you are going very slow you could generally just hammer it and adjust (probably a bit faster to feather a bit though).

I had no issues with spinning other than after running off the track.  The primary challenge was keeping the car straight under curved braking.

A VERY nice drifting car.  That first kink was a blast.  Full speed across the start/finish, let off a bit and flick it into he kink, down shift then hammer it and drift through the corner (not a smokey drift, a more classic drift).  The tendency for the car to oversteer a bit on power coming out of corners can be very useful.

Sounds like Cadwell Park GP will be all about track position and not making mistakes. I think I've driven on one of the shorter versions of that track before in one of the career mode races, but not on the full track yet.

This track looks like racing on someone's driveway in places.

I think this is the track we started our Rocket series in.  The one where Dean thought it was a grand idea to swap his rear tires out with offroad tires RIGHT before the start.

The track would be balls of fun in most cars for a solo run, and a bit of a nightmare with a bunch of cars in a close race.  The large numbers of corners and elevation changes should make for plenty of mistake possibilities.

This track is going to be a real test of pashence.  I do like it better then the one we just ran.  For some reason it is easier to learn.  The track we just ran all the corners seemed to look the same