AC GT3 @ Bahrain - Sunday 28th March 2021

[random2k4]

Great, but mostly uneventful race. I started practicing this track on Friday and based on the laptimes from last race I thought a 2:00 flat would be enough to qualify in Top 10, but boy was I wrong. Luckily, I could just dedust my Imola setup and made some changes quickly in the practice before the race.
Was stunned to start P4 with all the fast guys around me. Place 4-8 were only 2 tenth apart in total.

As always, I messed up my start... I got the inside into T1 and only lost 3 positions. A short but intense battle with Ernie followed. We switched positions a couple of times, but I could eventually outbreak him after the straight into T1. Thanks to my good only trusty BMW breaks . I realized that he had to put some effort in to stay behind me, so I could focus on getting closer to Brian and Han only 2-4 seconds in front. Couldnt manage to get into punching range.
I put a little more fuel in then it would be necessary for the first stint to adjust my strategy. Brian and Han went into the pits the same time, and I could stay out just a lap longer to try and overcome my 1,5 second deficit. Pitted next lap and it almost worked out. We went three wide onto T1. Knowing I got the inside just by exiting the pits, I tried to push a little harder.
Brian and Han traded a little paint and banged doors which just opened up the corner exit enough for me to push through resulting in a 3 second lead. Over the next few laps I could establish a comfortable lead of 5-6 seconds. Looking at the lap times, I noticed I am a little faster then Andreas in P3 but there was just not enough time left to catch him. so for the last 15-20 minutes I started to conserving tyres and kept the distance to Andreas and Brian unaltered.
Traffic at the end also was not a problem, there was always enough room to pass, and all drivers did their best get enough space between the two cars.

All in all I finished P4, and could even get a new PB during the race. Very happy about the result.

See you all next week!

 

[Interslice]

Great, but mostly uneventful race. I started practicing this track on Friday and based on the laptimes from last race I thought a 2:00 flat would be enough to qualify in Top 10, but boy was I wrong. Luckily, I could just dedust my Imola setup and made some changes quickly in the practice before the race.
Was stunned to start P4 with all the fast guys around me. Place 4-8 were only 2 tenth apart in total.

As always, I messed up my start... I got the inside into T1 and only lost 3 positions. A short but intense battle with Ernie followed. We switched positions a couple of times, but I could eventually outbreak him after the straight into T1. Thanks to my good only trusty BMW breaks . I realized that he had to put some effort in to stay behind me, so I could focus on getting closer to Brian and Han only 2-4 seconds in front. Couldnt manage to get into punching range.
I put a little more fuel in then it would be necessary for the first stint to adjust my strategy. Brian and Han went into the pits the same time, and I could stay out just a lap longer to try and overcome my 1,5 second deficit. Pitted next lap and it almost worked out. We went three wide onto T1. Knowing I got the inside just by exiting the pits, I tried to push a little harder.
Brian and Han traded a little paint and banged doors which just opened up the corner exit enough for me to push through resulting in a 3 second lead. Over the next few laps I could establish a comfortable lead of 5-6 seconds. Looking at the lap times, I noticed I am a little faster then Andreas in P3 but there was just not enough time left to catch him. so for the last 15-20 minutes I started to conserving tyres and kept the distance to Andreas and Brian unaltered.
Traffic at the end also was not a problem, there was always enough room to pass, and all drivers did their best get enough space between the two cars.

All in all I finished P4, and could even get a new PB during the race. Very happy about the result.

See you all next week!

Sometimes it's better to be safe as last of a group of 3! We came out of the pits and had little heavy fuel cold tyre battle and then got slightly stuck behind john in front of us after, on the last of his tyres. I kept thinking he would pit! I think you would have ended up right between us?

 

[random2k4]

Sometimes it's better to be safe as last of a group of 3! We came out of the pits and had little heavy fuel cold tyre battle and then got slightly stuck behind john in front of us after, on the last of his tyres. I kept thinking he would pit! I think you would have ended up right between us?

My initial thought after I exited the pit was, I would eihter squeeze between you and Han or stay behind the pack again. I didnt saw John in the first place, as I was focues on Han flying by. Realizing he missed the break point, I turned in even earlier to close the potential door for the left hander, but at this point it was not necessary. I knew I now needed to overtake John as soon as possible, I could really see his tyres were on the last breath. Luckily for me, after overtaking, he stayed out one or two extra laps maybe slowing you down a little.

 

[Interslice]

My initial thought after I exited the pit was, I would eihter squeeze between you and Han or stay behind the pack again. I didnt saw John in the first place, as I was focues on Han flying by. Realizing he missed the break point, I turned in even earlier to close the potential door for the left hander, but at this point it was not necessary. I knew I now needed to overtake John as soon as possible, I could really see his tyres were on the last breath. Luckily for me, after overtaking, he stayed out one or two extra laps maybe slowing you down a little.

I knew that corner/pit lane setup would cause hassle! John i think was understandably a bit early on the brakes because of his tyres and a half eye on your car too, meant he went for a late turn in to leave a bit of room. The 2 of us behind had the shoe in on full tanks of fuel, trying to brake into the same space.... Didn't end well.

 

[random2k4]

I knew that corner/pit lane setup would cause hassle! John i think was understandably a bit early on the brakes because of his tyres and a half eye on your car too, meant he went for a late turn in to leave a bit of room. The 2 of us behind had the shoe in on full tanks of fuel, trying to brake into the same space.... Didn't end well.

Just watched the replay. Yeah seems you were a little surprised by John breaking early. Han was just so nice giving me space on the inside realizing also too late you were slower. Now I would say if there would have been no contact between you both, I would be right in the middle of you both.
But I honestly dont see anything that could have gone differently. In fact all 4 of us were pushing it

Also sorry Han for the kiss at the first lap. Missed my breaking in T5.

 

[demetri]

Not a bad race. I had a terrible first few laps. Headset was acting the goat. Apologies to those involved in my poor driving. .. Need to ditch the swivel chair or improve lighting..... don't think the moving chair goes well with the VR. Got going then and caught up to han but used most of my tyres doing that. Even in the Lambo it was difficult to get past with no DRS so I just followed him to the pits with stefan in hot pursuit. Got the jump done in T4 on the cold tyres. Tip of the hat to the pit crew.
Unfortunately it all got messy into T1 a lap or 2 later and we didn't get the battle that the race deserved, as stefan reemerged from his stop. We were all 7 seconds apart when the dust settled and so it remained for the last 20 minutes. Needed a battle or a further incident to make it interesting. Part of me was glad of the more relaxing second stint. Brought it home with music on, elbow out the window

Swivel chair??? How do you even brake in that thing?

The race was surprisingly uneventful for me, given how close the quali was. I though going just under 1:58 would settle it and went out in the race trim for a short practice run, but @pattikins managed to also post a sub-58 lap, less than 4 hundredths behind. Luckily for me that was his last hurrah in that session, because I didn't have time left for another try and frankly I don't think I would've improved my time anyway.

I had a good launch off the line and managed to pull a sizeable gap after T1-T3 and was really astounded when it grew to nearly 3 seconds by the end of the first lap. It then continued to grow by a few tenths every lap and I even thought Patrick went on a rare 60 min softs and splash and dash strategy. This track seems to be realtively easy on tires, one 30-min stint driven on the limit would wear out rears down to 52-53% during my pre-race practice, so whole 60 minutes might be just about doable. I half-expected him to jump me in the pits, but no, he was on the same tried and true 2x30 min softs strategy. Not sure what made him slower in the race, maybe the McLaren is more affected by the fuel load that the Audi. I ran basically the same setup I used in the quali just with rear ARB dialed down by one click to compensate for lower rear grip by the end of the stint.

I had absolutely no traffic ahead until a few laps after the stop, so the whole first stint was basically half an hour of solitary driving. Not very exciting and barren landscape was only adding to that boredom. In the second stint, I tried to make it a 31 lap race, but ultimately fell short by 7 seconds. Sometimes a bit of traffic slowed me down a little (I have no complains, everyone was very accomodating even when they were battling each other), but mostly it was my sloppy driving, making small mistakes here and there and not really matching the pace of the first stint. Hard to keep the concentration for basically 60 minutes of hotlapping.

Once again, I managed to come up with setup (attached) that felt really nice and safe and was capable of being pushed for all 15 laps. The main challenge was to adjust dampers so that I could use some of the curbs, especially those in T5-T7, without the danger of losing the car. The gearing was also giving me headaches as I was jumping back and forth between a set that used 2-6 and the other one with 1st gear for T10. That all took a lot of trial and error, but I was pretty happy with the end result.

I still stand by my initial impression of the track and especially this particular mod. T11-T12 clearly have some surface issues because every lap I went there my wheel was jerking and I think I could feel traction control engaging on "bumps". I don't know if the real track has such a bumpy surface there, but most likely it is a low-poly artrefact of conversion from an RFactor mod. The majority of the track is smooth as glass, I could take my hands of the wheel and it wouldn't even move. Also, the track has some major performance issues. When I did a test offline race against AI starting at the end of a 24-car grid my GPU could not keep it at 90 fps and I had some major stuttering on the race start which never happens for me with stock tracks and good mods. AI line provided is terrible, e.g. they can barely stay on the track in T5-T7, this results in them running pretty pathetic laptimes on max difficulty. And don't even get me started on run-offs that all have too much damping and will catch your wheel like a spring trap if you put it there.

Anyway, thanks @Chris Down for organizing this race, hope to see you back at Road America!

 

[random2k4]

Swivel chair??? How do you even brake in that thing?

Haha I also race in an office chair with rolles at the bottom. Fortunately my carpet is doing its best to counteract the load cell break pedal. Still in negotiation with my wife about a proper rig

 

[demetri]

Haha I also race in an office chair with rolles at the bottom. Fortunately my carpet is doing its best to counteract the load cell break pedal. Still in negotiation with my wife about a proper rig

I tried to use a chair like that in the very beginning, but quickly switched to a folding chair. It was not comfortable at all, but at least it didn't roll or rotate. A dedicated solid rig is the way to go, you won't regret getting it, so keep nagging your wife

 

[demetri]

The second stint was b-o-r-i-n-g and lonely but I tried my hardest to not have @demetri lap me....one lap short! Despite being lapped it was the first race with no self-induced spins or wild off-track moments. I'll chalk that up as a win.

You were quite far ahead, more than two seconds, so I think you didn't have to lift-off and let me through there. Generally, having a car running more than a second ahead does not affect you. Anything closer than that makes you run in dirty air and also forces you to think about how not to rear-end the guy in front in the next braking zone, especially if that's a slower driver who tends to brake sooner

 

[640er]

Thanks for hosting Chris, congrats to Dmitry and Patrick

Unfortunately not much to say from my side. Started P3, finished P3, had not much action. Patrick had some troubles in the first lap but I couldn't find a hole to get past. But other than that it was a boring race. Had some framerate issues as well but at least no crash like in the MX-5 race.

Looking forward to Tuesday, Group C @ Watkins Glenn Boot Classic. If you're not already signed up, today would be a great day to do so

 

[Programmer_Rich]

I must apologize to Richard B for my aggressive driving. No excuses. Really sorry. I got hit twice in turn one lap one and lost patience trying to get back up the field.

Dean, thanks for the apology it's appreciated and these things happen to the best of us! I did also notice you sportingly waiting patiently for me to return to the track after the contact before you pulled off, cheers.

 

[adie_the_badie]

You were quite far ahead, more than two seconds, so I think you didn't have to lift-off and let me through there. Generally, having a car running more than a second ahead does not affect you. Anything closer than that makes you run in dirty air and also forces you to think about how not to rear-end the guy in front in the next braking zone, especially if that's a slower driver who tends to brake sooner

You're right but I was playing it safe. I could see from your pace and track map that you'd catch me soon and I didn't want that to be into T10. If P13 had been closer I would have taken my chances but given the gap, I didn't feel obtuse lifting on the start/finish.

 

[pattikins]

Swivel chair??? How do you even brake in that thing?

The race was surprisingly uneventful for me, given how close the quali was. I though going just under 1:58 would settle it and went out in the race trim for a short practice run, but @pattikins managed to also post a sub-58 lap, less than 4 hundredths behind. Luckily for me that was his last hurrah in that session, because I didn't have time left for another try and frankly I don't think I would've improved my time anyway.

I had a good launch off the line and managed to pull a sizeable gap after T1-T3 and was really astounded when it grew to nearly 3 seconds by the end of the first lap. It then continued to grow by a few tenths every lap and I even thought Patrick went on a rare 60 min softs and splash and dash strategy. This track seems to be realtively easy on tires, one 30-min stint driven on the limit would wear out rears down to 52-53% during my pre-race practice, so whole 60 minutes might be just about doable. I half-expected him to jump me in the pits, but no, he was on the same tried and true 2x30 min softs strategy. Not sure what made him slower in the race, maybe the McLaren is more affected by the fuel load that the Audi. I ran basically the same setup I used in the quali just with rear ARB dialed down by one click to compensate for lower rear grip by the end of the stint.

I had absolutely no traffic ahead until a few laps after the stop, so the whole first stint was basically half an hour of solitary driving. Not very exciting and barren landscape was only adding to that boredom. In the second stint, I tried to make it a 31 lap race, but ultimately fell short by 7 seconds. Sometimes a bit of traffic slowed me down a little (I have no complains, everyone was very accomodating even when they were battling each other), but mostly it was my sloppy driving, making small mistakes here and there and not really matching the pace of the first stint. Hard to keep the concentration for basically 60 minutes of hotlapping.

Once again, I managed to come up with setup (attached) that felt really nice and safe and was capable of being pushed for all 15 laps. The main challenge was to adjust dampers so that I could use some of the curbs, especially those in T5-T7, without the danger of losing the car. The gearing was also giving me headaches as I was jumping back and forth between a set that used 2-6 and the other one with 1st gear for T10. That all took a lot of trial and error, but I was pretty happy with the end result.

I still stand by my initial impression of the track and especially this particular mod. T11-T12 clearly have some surface issues because every lap I went there my wheel was jerking and I think I could feel traction control engaging on "bumps". I don't know if the real track has such a bumpy surface there, but most likely it is a low-poly artrefact of conversion from an RFactor mod. The majority of the track is smooth as glass, I could take my hands of the wheel and it wouldn't even move. Also, the track has some major performance issues. When I did a test offline race against AI starting at the end of a 24-car grid my GPU could not keep it at 90 fps and I had some major stuttering on the race start which never happens for me with stock tracks and good mods. AI line provided is terrible, e.g. they can barely stay on the track in T5-T7, this results in them running pretty pathetic laptimes on max difficulty. And don't even get me started on run-offs that all have too much damping and will catch your wheel like a spring trap if you put it there.

Anyway, thanks @Chris Down for organizing this race, hope to see you back at Road America!

Even though I lost some time in the last corner, the sub 1.58 was a PB. It's a PB that will last as I have no desire to race there again.

I tested the 650s & SCG for an equal amount of time, right up until the last 15 minutes before the event started. Foolishly, I went with the quicker car. I hardly recognised the McLaren, I was having to brake so hard that the ball of my foot was aching before I even started the race.

You seemed to make a blistering start, and after you put in a 1.58.2** within the first few laps of the race I knew there was no chance of catching you. Fortunately, I was able to pull away Andreas a few laps later and from there on in it was a matter of maintaining the gap to finish second.

I like fast flowing tracks, ones where I can find some sort of 'tempo'. Bahrain, however, felt like the polar opposite. So you can imagine my surprise to find that I had best consistency rating - I lost control of the car twice, so what were you guys doing to score less than me .

I also had some frame-rate issues during quali & briefly @ the start of the race. What makes you think it was GPU related?

 

[demetri]

Even though I lost some time in the last corner, the sub 1.58 was a PB. It's a PB that will last as I have no desire to race there again.

I tested the 650s & SCG for an equal amount of time, right up until the last 15 minutes before the event started. Foolishly, I went with the quicker car. I hardly recognised the McLaren, I was having to brake so hard that the ball of my foot was aching before I even started the race.

You seemed to make a blistering start, and after you put in a 1.58.2** within the first few laps of the race I knew there was no chance of catching you. Fortunately, I was able to pull away Andreas a few laps later and from there on in it was a matter of maintaining the gap to finish second.

I like fast flowing tracks, ones where I can find some sort of 'tempo'. Bahrain, however, felt like the polar opposite. So you can imagine my surprise to find that I had best consistency rating - I lost control of the car twice, so what were you guys doing to score less than me .

I also had some frame-rate issues during quali & briefly @ the start of the race. What makes you think it was GPU related?

Yeah, mine was a PB as well and like you I hope not to race here for a long time.

That 1.58.2 lap was probably what made my consistency to fall slightly below yours, I had two such laps and could not replicate them in the second stint. But almost all my laps except the one where I got to lap a pack of 3-4 cars were within a second of that best time, so I'd say I was pretty consistent. No idea how exactly that rating is calculated.

The reason I think it's GPU-related was fpsVR showing me that it was GPU that struggled to maintain sub-11ms frame times. I then dropped my SteamVR SS setting by 15% and it helped for the cost of increasing blurriness, but there's nothing to look at on that track anyway

 

[Interslice]

Swivel chair??? How do you even brake in that thing?

Ah it's not too bad for brakes, once there is abs at least. Its more an issue that your virtual self and real self end up facing different directions in the car. So worst case virtual me is facing 1 o'clock and real me at 11 o clock... I have a plan to make the desk a bit more rigid and replace the chair.

Even though I lost some time in the last corner, the sub 1.58 was a PB. It's a PB that will last as I have no desire to race there again.

I tested the 650s & SCG for an equal amount of time, right up until the last 15 minutes before the event started. Foolishly, I went with the quicker car. I hardly recognised the McLaren, I was having to brake so hard that the ball of my foot was aching before I even started the race.

You seemed to make a blistering start, and after you put in a 1.58.2** within the first few laps of the race I knew there was no chance of catching you. Fortunately, I was able to pull away Andreas a few laps later and from there on in it was a matter of maintaining the gap to finish second.

I like fast flowing tracks, ones where I can find some sort of 'tempo'. Bahrain, however, felt like the polar opposite. So you can imagine my surprise to find that I had best consistency rating - I lost control of the car twice, so what were you guys doing to score less than me .

I also had some frame-rate issues during quali & briefly @ the start of the race. What makes you think it was GPU related?

I was getting the 89 fps stutter for the first time since my discussions with yourself and rasmus about being cpu limited. Adjusted down mirror res and shadows but that still didn't help. Didn't help my poor start. I almost quit after a few laps. I felt it improved as the field spread out and some people quit. A track mesh physics cpu issue i would guess.

 

[demetri]

I think the reason for framerate issues could be that the track is mostly flat, so there's not a lot of culling that can be done to reduce the amount of objects to be rendered

 

[random2k4]

With my I9-9900K and 5700xt i havnt had any issues. I run almost every setting on max, except smoke, mirror resolution and shadows.

 

[Partick Eaton]

Not my best effort. Qualified 15th, was hoping for better. Got squashed in the first corner mess and ended up in 20th place. Really tried to keep it clean, but my efforts did not pay off.

I had some great battles with Mark, Chris and Colin, i think I passed the group twice just to spin off and end up at the back.

My setup allowed for faster corner speeds and slower in the straight. Passing in the corners is risky and my results confirmed it.

In the end I just settled to stay back and not push my luck any further.

Sorry for the bumps guys. Better racing next time.

Congrates to the podium winners and thanks Chris for setting this up.

 

[pattikins]

With my I9-9900K and 5700xt i havnt had any issues. I run almost every setting on max, except smoke, mirror resolution and shadows.

Is that down to the Radeon?

 

[pattikins]

...
The reason I think it's GPU-related was fpsVR showing me that it was GPU that struggled to maintain sub-11ms frame times. I then dropped my SteamVR SS setting by 15% and it helped for the cost of increasing blurriness, but there's nothing to look at on that track anyway

I'm confused. fpsVR was showing me the same, that it was gpu related. Yet my gpu only runs around 50% (1080ti) & looking @ the fpsVR history viewer, my max cpu thread usage briefly reached 85% (bulk @ 55-75%).