GRM Project CARS Racing League - Series 1

My race was pretty sad. I ran 2:31's in practice at the top of the charts. Couldn't put together a clean lap in qualifying so I started back of the pack. Slammed Brad in the first lap kerfuggle which damaged my aero. Worked my way up to fifth, got a little loose and was assisted off. Slapped the barrier and damaged my suspension. From then on it was all I could do to keep the car on the track. My steering wheel was turned at about a 20 degree angle to drive straight. Unlike GT6, the cars don't heal themselves. I knew better than to pit for repairs as that puts you a lap down - a lesson I learned last race. So I just tried to limp to the finish ahead of Brad. I saw him steadily closing the gap behind me and tried to push the crippled car a little harder. Bad idea. Ate the barrier again and let Brad past. On to next race...

Brad, I didn't use your setup but ran some laps at Dubai with your MB. I decided to start from scratch and build a setup. I like your MB M-U-C-H better than the Ford! So much easier to drive. I put in about 12 laps in your car. Haven't driven mine around Dubai yet but it is the type of track the Ford hates. After 12 laps and a bit of tuning I was able to run a 2:11.6 with the setup below. I am sure that there is more with more tuning - and driving practice - I've never driven Dubai before. Online time trial times are 2:12's with the MB at Dubai.

Setup:

LF 159 bar

RF 155 bar

LR 151 bar

RR 148 bar

Brake pressure 93

Balance 56

Brake Duct 50

Downforce 1.0

Longitudinal Bias 52%

Steering 7.6

Front camber 2.9

Rear camber 1.9

Front toe -0.2

Rear toe 0.2

Front ride height 50

Rear ride height 70

Front spring 90

Rear spring 100

Front bar 90

Rear bar 30

Fuel to taste. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So last night at Dubai sucked. Shocker, I was off the pace. This time only by a second or so. I could have been competitive for the race... could've. I got off the line a bit slow, but started making up ground about mid way down the front straight. I climbed all the way up to 5th, and got in sight of Argo. I watched him over cook it into T1... and then promptly did the exact same thing. I ended up in a half spin and let the whole field go by me again. I went off in pursuit and caught them up heading to the back straight. I tried to get a good run out of the corner and gain as much as I could on the straight, but I failed. Instead I broke traction on the rear tires, chased the car across the track and smacked a wall.

I don't really want to talk about the rest of the race.

Argo's 8th place finish netted him enough points to reclaim the lead in the championship.

Also, I forgot to save the replay, so you are stuck with my in-car replay of the disaster.

In reply to BradLTL:

So Argo blew T1 and your subconscious said "that looks like fun. YOLO!!!"

Each of the AI drivers have a different style and personality. After the second shove off track I was ready to hunt down and punt the blue MB driver. Knocked out of 5 once. Knocked out of 7 the second. Problem is, if they hit you, you spin. If you hit them, they just get a bit sideways. :/

In reply to Argo1:

I noticed that playing yesterday.

FWIW my Oldest is starting to play. He doesn't quite get it and the hand eye coordination thing is a bit much for him, but he has a good time. Especially wrecking the cars. PC has such an epic graphics engine that the cars look really well detailed when they are wrecked. He laughs extremely hard every time something blows off.

Kids...I am going to let him learn to drive on his Mom's car.

In reply to Happy Carmore:

LOL. Sounds like my grandson!

Are you going to join us for some races?

Honestly I am glad I never joined the league, life has been a little nuts. Having fun keeping up though.

Last night was the most entertaining and challenging race I've had this series. By the end of the race I was sweating like I had been outside running.

I actually had some time to get practice earlier in the day, so I wasn't scrambling for a setup and trying to learn the track. My pace was pretty good comparably. Argo was faster, but I think difference from his fastest lap to mine may have been 1/2 a second. That said, I didn't really put together a clean lap in qualifying and ended up 8th on the grid. Argo was in P1.

I (all humans?) are way better at the starts than the bots, my hope was to get up to P2 after the first couple corners. It didn't quite go as I planned, I only managed to get a couple positions in the first 2 corners. There was still 3-4 bots between myself and Argo. Headed into the tight hairpin, I dive bombed the crap out of the bots (it was a bit of a dick move). There was some contact and I ended up way over shooting the corner, but it ended up having the desired effect. All the other bots slowed to avoid the mess I made and I was able to come out of the corner in P2 chasing Argo. I was catching him in the braking zones and corners, I closed the gap to about 3-4 car links by the end of the first lap. Knowing we were heading to the part of the lap he was going to be significantly faster, I tried to carry as much speed as possible through T1. I ended up hopping the curb on the outside of T1 (which I'd done many times in practice), this time my rear tires broke traction and I snapped sideways and hit the wall at high speeds doing damage to the car's handling and performance. I said a curse word, very loudly.

I had to pit, there was no choice. I could not drive the car the rest of the race with how it was behaving. That is usually the kiss of death to a race. When I came out of the pits I drove angry. I knew I had the pace, I knew no one was going to catch Argo, I knew I screwed it up. So I just did my best to drive qualifying pace laps, every lap. After awhile, a car appeared in front of me. Maybe I won't finish last? I pushed more. Next thing I knew, I caught that car and passed it. Then there were 3 more cars in front of me, head down and push. I caught those cars. Maybe I can salvage some points from this race after all? After a few more laps I managed to get up to 7th. Then, I made a mistake. In fact, I made the same mistake I did on the second lap and nearly threw away all my progress. This time, I managed to keep the car off the wall and it only cost me a few seconds and 1 position. Once I got back up to speed, I made quick work of the lost position and kept pushing. I managed to catch positions 6-5-4 on the last lap. I was hoping they would be bunched up enough that I could find a way past all 3 of them, that didn't happen but I did managed to just get by one of them to finish the race in 6th.

I was entertained for the full 30 minutes of that race!

Replay posted. Points updated.

Argo puts together a good week and makes a big jump in the Championship.

My race was different this week because I didn't throw it all away in turn one and generally managed to stay clear of aggressive traffic. Only one brief grass excursion with no damage or much loss of time. Mostly I just ran a pace that kept me comfortably out front.

The "bots" were not as fast at this track as they were last week. My best was about 1.3 second off of the best times posted online but I still got the pole. Last week I was faster than the online times but was only mid pack in qualifying.

Next week Elkhart Lake - Road America. Looking forward to it. I did my Skip Barber driving school there many years back. Also ran a couple of Barber series events there. Also stuffed one of Skip's formula cars into the Armco at about 80 mph there. Sort of messed it up. But that's another story...

This week's race is hotting up. Argo started some smack talk via email about his pace and me needing to get practice, so of course I've found some time to practice. Our times are reflecting that practice.

Argo claims to have run a 2:17.4 in the Ford Cosworth, while I am at a 2:22.1 in the Mercedes 190.

If we check the Leaderboards, Argo is good enough for 5th fastest in the world, and I am 17th.

Here is the other thing about or lap times... we are running full race fuel (~50 liters), and the time trial times are on just 5 liters. There is still work to be done. Argo's setup is unstable and twitchy. My setup is flawless (obviously) it is just down to the driver getting the line right consistently.

I'm probably fighting an uphill battle here. The long straights give a huge advantage to the Ford's horsepower and speed. Comparing the top times between the cars, the Ford is 3 seconds faster a lap. Hopefully Argo will get punted, or make a mistake and at least have to work for his points this week.

You should tune in and watch. The live streams are posted on the first page.

That Cosworth is the fastest in that class. You are going to get waxed.

FWIW I played on Imola short in the IMSA Mustang a quick 3 lap race and lapped people in 3.

Flight Service wrote: That Cosworth is the fastest in that class. You are going to get waxed. FWIW I played on Imola short in the IMSA Mustang a quick 3 lap race and lapped people in 3.

Yea, I've come to that realization. My hope is that he gets punted by a bot in T1. He gets frustrated in traffic, so he'll at least have to work for a victory.

With the bots at 85%, they set qualifying times between 19s and 25s. So, I should top half of the field if I can run my expected pace. I just want to be in a position to capitalize if/when Argo makes a mistake.

Next week looks like a more even match up in terms of top times for the cars.

It has taken most of the series, but I finally feel like we are coming to terms with the tuning, the tracks, and the speed of the bots. With the exception of the first race (bots at 70%) we've been battling it out for the final couple positions. The last race, and looking at our pace for this race we are battling for top positions. We just need a few more people to join and then it would get really fun.

Ran a few more laps this morning. At race fuel, I'm only good for 22.0-22.2 pace. Which ain't that bad, but I'm not going to be running down Argo at that pace. I am hoping for a qualifying time of high 20s. We'll see how it goes.

Here's my full setup: http://projectcarssetups.eu/#/viewsetup/375477973

It really is very well sorted. I wonder what someone with more driving talent could do with it.

Replay posted on first page. Results updated.

Last night went well, and about how I expected. I ran exactly the pace I was running in practice, as did Argo. Argo almost blew qualifying, which would have made the race more interesting. With about 3 minutes left on the clock for qualifying, Argo was in 12th and I was in 7th. He had enough time for one last hot lap and managed to get one in that was 2+ seconds slower than his practice time, but still good enough for P1.

As the race started, I was able to get a handful of positions on the launch and climbed up to 5th. I picked up another coming out of T1 to climb to 4th. Got a good run coming out of T5 and picked up 3rd. Pushed to get close to 2nd right before the carousel, except I miss timed the run and had to get off the throttle. That gave the car in P2 a gap of about a second. For the next few laps, I was primarily focused on not getting dive bombed at the end of the straights by the Ford behind. I kept in contact with Argo and P2 for awhile, but slowly they started pulling a gap. I was consistent throughout the race, but just not fast enough. By the end I was about 10-11 seconds behind P2 with a gap of about 9 seconds to P4.

I'll take a podium finish. As it turns out, I wasn't all that far from catching Argo either, but I'll let him explain his race.

The clip of my race that Brad linked starts right when I had a "moment" in Canada Corner after blowing my braking point. I was distracted. The back straight at Road America is not straight and I was looking down at the data trying to figure out if I was going to be able to finish the race. At mid race with about a 7 second lead I realized that the pace was faster than I planned and instead of the 12 laps that I planned for, the race looked to run 14 laps. I had planned fuel for 12 laps plus a one lap reserve. Doh! I started short shifting and coasting into corners to try and save fuel while trying to keep up a pace. The lead started shrinking. I tried to see how much fuel I was saving and if I could make it. The lead kept shrinking. Where the video clip joins is with 5 minutes left in the race and the realization that I needed enough fuel for three more 4 mile long laps. I was trying to see what I had left and figure consumption when I blew the corner. Now I had NO lead. The pesky 2nd place bot was on my butt. Now I had no choice but to put the pedal down. I ran the fastest lap of the race with two to go. The last lap I measured just how much I could back off and still keep 2nd place in 2nd. The bot finished just a couple of car lengths behind and I crossed the line with 0.6 litre of fuel in the tank. It ran out on the cool down lap. It made the last half of the race challenging.

Next week is Sears Point. Another track I know well from Bondurant driving school in the 70's. The Ford has an undeniable power advantage in a straight line, however, that won't be useful at Sonoma as there isn't any real straight. The Ford is much slower in the corners and not much under braking compared the Benz. Should make for a challenging event. I'll be sure to add extra fuel this time.

I ran 10 laps to sight in Sonoma yesterday. I have to say that it is the tightest version of the track I've ever driven digitally. It was hard to keep on the racing line by myself, it's going to be a blood bath when the bots are out there as well.

Also, there is very little braking. The hills and turns scrub enough speed that I only had to tap the brakes a couple times with just 2 spots where I had to really get on the brakes.

Yes, that is a very accurate version of Sonoma which is very narrow. If you've watched any races there you know that there is a 100% probability of a lap 1 CF at the first right-hander. Ran three laps and am in the 43's. Haven't set up the car or gearing yet. Fast online times look to be in the 39's for the MB and 41's for the Ford. Should be OK. Also decided to go online to the Time Trials and have a go at Road America fast lap. Reset the Ford fast lap to a 2:16.6

I'm in the high 41s and low 42s with race fuel and gears that are too long. I really don't like the track, which is weird because it used to be one of my favorites. When I drive it, I feel like I am managing the lap and not attacking. There are almost no points during the lap that I am full throttle or full brake.

Honestly, I don't think 39s are a tall order for my car. I'm so inconsistent in Sector 1 and 2, there is easily a second of pace to be had there.

This race is going to be about surviving for 30 minutes. Can you escape the first lap? Can you avoid any mental lapses for 30 minutes.

I've managed a few 41's on race fuel but they have been pretty sloppy. Traffic on this track is a nightmare.

race fuel or race fuel load?

They don't have 89 octane in the game, so fuel load.

Usually for a 30 minute race the load is around 45-50 liters. Qualifying is usually 10-15L depending on how many hot laps you are planning for in the session. Time trial gives you a warmed up car and 5L per lap.

I have having fun with the Ford Escort Cosworth 1600 in the Historic Racing TC2 up against the 6.8 AMG.

The night race is fun.