My VR onboard:
@Chris DownMy VR onboard:
@Chris Down
I noticed in the replay that I am always a gear down on you on slow corner apexes and the fast exits. Trying your way stabilises the car and reduces exit understeer a lot no matter what the setup. I was using the LED's as a guide for which gears to use, but I noticed that you don't always - e.g. exit of the esses and the left hander you did in 6th and I was in 3rd there ... which is an amazing difference,
Is this because on a big circuit we are interested in keeping as much power (high speed everywhere) as possible as opposed to acceleration ? For some reason I was thinking "max torque, max torque, max torque !" which is harder to drive and eats up the tyres and fuel.
I just cannot get rid of exit understeer - if I try to adjust the rear springs, it helps in flat corners but in one's where the exit has a gradient, the car spins out under hard braking. Messing around with the arb's produces the most confusing results...I was running more or less the default setup but it really made me suffer with understeer .
Group C . Really looking forward to the upcoming Monday and Wednesday events. Hopefully they will draw enough participantsEspecially I'd like to invite the new guys because most of the combo's are not as intens as the GT3 events. Most of the used cars are easier to drive and have far less setup options.
You did the whole race with the 911 on one set of tyres ?? That's impressive!Had a really fun race driving the only 911 in the field. It's a fun car to drive, but it's nearly impossible to recover from little mishaps with throttle and steering inputs. And the times that happened to me in practice sessions, rear tires heated up so much, the car would easily spin for almost a full lap until the cool down (without spinning, which is again, nearly impossible lol). So as much as I like a stable car like the R8 and Z4, think I'll get some more use out of the 911 to help build my consistency, because I need some work in that area lol. I suppose I can learn to play with suspension to help stabilize the car better. But I always tend to continue to make minor common adjustments and spend more time on track. I usually have to slightly and briefly left on some corner exits where I know others go flat out. Probably my driving style, but I guess a suspension tweak might help too. In setup, I usually only tweak tire pressures, onboard TC/ABS, wing, and brake bias. The times I would tweak suspension, it never feel right and I go back to my basic setup lol.
I really wanted to peak at a high 1:35 in qualy but made too many mistakes. P13 it was meant to be then.
Had a really really good start of the race! Then shortly after about the 3rd or 4th lap, I completely missed my breaking point while on the defensive line and lost a couple spots going into turn 1. Didn't lock up too much and never spun, so the tires where still good. That was my only major incident, and had some good battles and tried to stay out the way of the faster guys. Finished the race on some old but some how very manageable 60 minute + tires in P9 and only pit for 3 liters of fuel.
Damn, Chris, seen your onboard and feel bad for that incident. But you managed to recover alright lol. I've gotta learn to slide the car but under control and smooth like you fast guys lol
Congrats to @Chris Down and the podiums and thanks Chris for hosting! Thanks everyone for coming out!
Below is my onboard
Dont know whats going on with my pace recently. I managed not to get taken out in this race but kept binning it all by myself.
Can I ask that people refrain from discussing the race until EVERYONE is finished the race? It seems the top drives will immediately start discussing the race once they've crossed the line with little regard to those who may still be battling for positions for the next couple of minutes. We (mostly) try to ensure you guys get by without incident, could you return the favour by keeping quiet for an additional couple of minutes please?
When the limiting factor for a corner is grip (as opposed to aero, for example), it becomes especially important to consider that there's only a limited amount of lateral and longitudinal grip available. Staying in a higher gear in some corners allows more grip to be used for lateral grip, at the expense of less traction.
You'll notice that I often actually do exactly the opposite in T5/T6 -- overload the longitudinal grip by using a low gear to get the best slip angle for the corner. It's actually not for traction, but instead for rotation. It kills the tyres though.
Torque is all well and good, but only if the tyres can actually transmit it to the road without other negative effects
Wikipedia has a pretty good article on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_forces
My recommendation is to focus on one setup item at a time. Find a setup which you find compliant and reasonably fast (as opposed to maximum optimisation for speed) and tweak one thing at a time from there.
For exit understeer in slow corners (like T12 for example), raising the rear can help, but it will certainly make the car more edgy. Personally, I don't find it a great tradeoff for VIR.
I have always driven by holding the throttle flat, and it has come as a painful realization (again connected to slip-angle) that in order to go quickly you need to lift. And it hurts so much to lift off the throttle, as it does to be overtaken - something I am working on. When push comes to shove in a race I find myself trying to go flat out instead of trying to look at the principles, which become just meaningless numbers on a page.
I worked hard in the race and was very pleased with my tenacity and the results, but the disease of braking late, too much throttle kept throwing me off the track which was quite disappointing. When I saw how calmly you drive the lap, 7 secs faster than my best one, it sort of shows me that what I believe is wrong, tyres instead of throttle, are the key.
If you need encouragement to "do the right thing" during a race, I encourage you to put a lap delta on your screen somewhere When you become more willing to get off the accelerator you'll clearly see the effect on lap times as you're actually doing it -- maybe that will help incentivise the right things.
Tonights race with the Escort is a good exercise on tyres vs throttle! Plenty of room for overtakes so don't worry about blue flag situations.I will integrate all of your above advice, step by step, into my training - thank you also for the article on Wikipedia. And I really thank you for the advice which means a lot to me.
A bit off topic waffling:Huh, apologies if that was me. I usually try to wait 2 minutes after the race before starting talking (and I'm usually the one telling others to be quiet until then!) but I could have misjudged, my apologies.