GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 8: Not bitter at all...

In reply to BradLTL :

Lol, yes. Fixed it. 

Last night I tried a different setup with stiffer springs, dampers and roll bars. Inconclusive whether it was better or worse. Feels good everywhere, but it is hard to make the three right handers without coming off full throttle at some point during the turn. My other setup is better there, but the new setup seems like it may be better in other places. Better as in easier to drive, but not necessarily faster.

Will have to mess around a bit tonight and figure out what setup I want to use Wednesday.

I had to work last night but should be on for a bit tonight. I need to work on setup as well, my car is too loose through the esses and practically undrivable on cold tires. 

That was fun last night, but there was no reason to try to be nice to the tires over a 10 lap race, so tonight will be a little different.

I think I'll try to loosen up the coast ramp angle to try to improve turn in on turn 13. I couldn't improve it with minor bar changes. I softened the front bar a click between qualli and the race. I don't want to add more camber or toe out. I could try to soften front compression damping (and/or rear rebound damping) a bit and see how that feels, but I fear that may make the car unstable at turn in at T12 after the hard braking at the end of the back straight. I've not had good results by trying to trail brake to get the car to turn in at this corner. I could try to move brake bias back a percentage or two as well to see how that feels.

Car feels pretty good everywhere else, so I'm going to try to make some small changes and see how it goes.

In reply to T.J. :

The tune you sent me is great for one lap pace, I think my first flying lap was a 2:14.8 which is nuts. It is a bit tight for my preference so I tried to adapt a couple of your settings to my tune, but had mediocre success with that. I think I'm going to try loosening up your tune and can send it back to you if I find a happy medium. 

In reply to e30Matt :

2:14.8! Holy balls that is fast. I've been in the 2:15.1's a few times, but haven't dropped into the 14's yet.

I softened the front bar one more click and changed the coast ramp up to 50. Moved brake bias back a couple clicks and initial impressions are that it feels great, but I didn't do enough laps to get the tires all the way up to temp/pressure. Didn't make a huge change to the car, but T13 turn in seems better. Will play around with it some more during our 45 minute qualli tonight.

I'll send you my original setup. That one is looser than my newer one. I think it may be to your liking.

So, did "we" (by we, I mean Dean) ever figure out the stalling at start issue for the BMW's?

I may have to try using the clutch if not.

In reply to aircooled :

I found that using the clutch is the best way to get off the line in the Megane. Takes a little practice to figure it out, but avoids the bogging.

In reply to aircooled :

You can also shorten first gear at COTA to mitigate the effects if it happens, unlike Algarve you don't use it anywhere else on the track. 

e30Matt said:

In reply to aircooled :

You can also shorten first gear at COTA to mitigate the effects if it happens, unlike Algarve you don't use it anywhere else on the track. 

This was what I was going to say. I also have only had it happen once so I have not tried messing with it at all. 

I was actually thinking of dropping all my gears by one click as I have not maxed 6th anywhere on the track. 

I’m not gonna make it tonight. 

In reply to Ed Higginbotham :

You missed a fun race. Hope you can make it next week. Although the rain tends to be challenging. 

Good fun tonight everyone!!!  

Not looking forward to the rain at all. This should be interesting. 

Sauce, the top time on the PC leaderboard for the Megane at COTA GP is 2:15.3. I was really happy to be able to get the occasional 2:15.1 time, but your laps in the 2:14's are crazy. In theory I could've gotten there, but just never put everything together in the same lap to pull it off.

Before you got your damage, you were on pace to win despite the 20 seconds penalty. You had more than a 10 sec lead after a third of the race or so. I'm pretty sure I was doing 2:16 laptimes and you kept extending your lead. I was only hoping that I could either not change tires at all or just change the fronts to save a few seconds in the pits to gain some of the time back, because I wasn't catching you on track. I suspect that if you didn't have the 20 seconds penalty to make up, you wouldn't have been pushing so hard and would've gotten an easy win.

The COTA backstright is 0.62mi, but the Fuji front straight is 0.917mi (according to Wikipedia anyway). I wonder if these TC cars will hit their terminal velocity and just stop accelerating before braking for T1.

In reply to T.J. :

Without the 20 seconds I wouldn't have pushed quite as hard, but I'm not sure it would have changed the result. In testing I  had never hit that curb the way I did last night, if tire wear was the factor then it was just a matter of time before it bit me. The thing that I don't really understand is that I had hit the curb before without a hint of the car being upset. Then I barely touched the curb with almost zero lateral load and on full throttle so the rear should have been loaded, and it broke away like the right rear hit a patch of ice. The second time was pure user error, I overcorrected and put myself into a tank slapper, but the first one was just a sucker punch. 

I felt like e36m3 last night. Actually worse today. I tried to hang in the race as long as I could. I managed to bog the start, and being that I was already last, I had a good view into T1. I took the inside and the allowed my car to get really wide and push back to the normal racing line. That netted me like 5 positions. I entered T2 right behind Dean. Focus was a struggle and I wasn't hitting the marks or line as well as Dean and he slowly pulled a good gap on me. I drove defensively for the next few laps holding off the AI. Then I got into a sneezing and coughing fit right before the back straight. I did a half spin and ended up nose to the barrier. By the time I reversed and got going I was well off in last. 

I did know from my sim race that the AI is useless for over taking. So I planned that if I ever needed to use it, I wanted it to be in a clean spot on the track. As I came around to the corner before the pit, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep going or pit. A quick glance at the gaps and I pitted. I estimated that I would come out just in front of Sauce and TJ. I was wrong, but it seemed to work out. TJ passed just as my AI was hitting pit exit. There was almost a 30 second gap behind and faster cars in front. The AI ran 21-22s the entire rest of the race. Tire wear did not seem to affect the lap times. Running in clean air let it make up some gaps on cars that were close together. It ended up passing 3 cars on pit stops. 

The last 3 laps there was literally nothing on any tire. Not sure how it finished but you can put this into your strategy playbook. 

Brad, I hope you feel better next week. 

DARK-KING, good job fighting through your pit issues and finishing 2nd on the lead lap. 

I still say I gave TJ the win 

My thought processes at the start went something like this:

- OK, press ready (jumps into car)

- Oh, wait, I need to do the clutch thing so he car doesn't stall at the start.

- So, I need to be in first, with throttle open...

 - (car moving) Oh, crap, clutch needs to be in first! (this is the point Sauce thinks jumping is a good idea)

 - Poop! Hit brake so to not hit TJ, come to stop (should have just drove off)

- Race actually starts, rev motor, put in gear... car stalls... hit by bot from behind...

(no martini's where involved with the above thought processes)

In reply to aircooled :

I need all the help I can get to try to keep up with Sauce.

I spent the first minute between qualli and the race changing my pit strategies to update tire pressures. Then I had to hit the head. I pressed ready with like 5 seconds to go or so and was not even sitting down yet. With that mad scramble I failed to have my phone with me and so didn't capture all the data from the race, but I did remember to put the clutch pedal to the floor before putting the car in gear.

My evening went well through qualifying, then rather immediately went downhill. Got distracted by Air's false start and did the same, putting me in a position where I really needed to put time on the field to have a chance to win. That was actually going to plan until lap 10 when I touched a curb and went into the wall hard. I had almost 50 damage to the suspension and close to that on body work and had to limp back to the pits. 

Set back out trying to close whatever gap I could, and was doing a reasonable job until the exact same thing happened again, though this time it wasn't nearly as intense. When the car started to get loose I thought it was going to let go as hard as it did the first time, but it didn't and I had badly over corrected, sending me into a tank slapper. Aaannnd back to the pits for more repairs. All told those stops cost me about 3 minutes, which is all she wrote. 

Mrs T.J. is out of town until late Monday evening, so I should be on a good amount of time over the weekend. Curious to see how these cars work in the rain.

Brad, you mentioned about the 5x time progression affecting how much water ends up on the track. If it rains the final third of the race that will be around 25 minutes. If the amount of water is affected by the time progression, then it will be like it has rained for 2 hours by the end of the race and I would think the puddles may be an issue. Hopefully there isn't a low spot like Mulsanne corner at Fuji that becomes an undriveable lake. Maybe we could consider changing the time progression to real time for this race if it makes the rain less terrible?

I'll run some tests and try to see if time progression changes how wet the track gets while it is raining.

So I've been intermittently chasing down a gripe I've had since accidentally resetting my wheel a couple of months ago and think I've finally figured it out. Basically brake force was not always proportional to pedal travel, which has led to inconsistent braking. A quick initial application would spike brake pressure to 100% very early in the pedal travel and set that as max, so modulation wasn't possible. Any change in pedal travel short of a full release would keep the pressure at 100.

However, a slower application would ramp pressure and reach max later. This allowed for modulation, but the slower initial application made the braking performance worse. 

So, after some digging I found that there is a setting on my wheel for brake force, along with a video in how to set it properly. After playing with that for a bit it has made a huge difference in feel and the ability to trail brake. I only ran a few laps with the changes last night but it feels fantastic. The downside is that how I've been braking doesn't work well with the changes, but I'm hoping that once I get used to it I can improve my consistency.