AC Mazda MX5/Abarth 500@Barcelona, Wednesday 18th May 2022

[Dzul]

Guys, I have to skip this one due to a work deadline for tomorrow.
Hope you have a good race, looking forward to the reports after!

 

[maxilogan]

https://simresults.net/220518-eW8

Results for the moment, my comments later on..

 

[abecede]

Great battle with David Jevons! I had a lot of fun following him UNTIL he tricked me in the last lap where I did brake waaay too late and got overtaken by Simon Hodge who had lurked behind me for some time, and I didn't even see him before...
Thanks David for the great battle!

 

[tomash47]

With

I guess the following would be illegal, right? If this happens e.g. in qualifying or in the race we would need to lift to compensate and lose a bit of time?
View attachment 567691

I misunderstood, I trained without affecting the white line, it does not matter it will be a good race for the next time even if I was running 5 6 seconds slower

 

[danny26]

This felt like the perfect mix, both cars and track - the Mazdas were quicker through the corners, and then the Abarths got away on the pit straight.

Apologies again to Markus after I responded to his lovely overtake by missing my braking point a few turns later and punting him deep into the gravel, bringing David straight into the mix. What could potentially have been a mad 3-way fight was cut short for me when I lost the rear in the T4 hairpin, but I was watching it all from about 4 seconds back. Really top class racing from everyone.

There's something really intriguing about slow cars on a big track - every tiny mistake costs momentum and bags of time. Really keeps you on your toes when you're trying to put some good, clean laps in. Loved every second of it.

Thanks again for organising it all Han!

 

[AW939]

@HF2000 thanks again for organizing the race. And also nice race to everybody, especially to Thomas Kimmich and @640er.

Had a nice battle with Andreas (after he made sure that Allan is no threat anymore in T4). At least for a few laps in the middle of the race, a little bump into the last turn nearly got him spinning (sorry again for that) and let @stigs2cousin catch up to about +3s. Next lap Andreas did spin out and even lost the place to Carsten, so I had some room for breathing.
Andreas and I immediately gained some pace afterwards, he was slowly catching me, I improved my PB lap after lap and was also gaining on Thomas. But not even remotely enough.

Nevertheless I'm most surprised that I did not bin it. Just some gravel taps here and there but no major error. Really love the atmosphere in this group!

Oh and a question to Thomas and Andreas mainly: Did you change something in the setup besides the tyre pressures? I decreased the ride hide quite a bit and it felt more stable to me. Most likely it's a bit slower driven perfect, but I couldn't really overcook it in the corners with that, which definitely helped.

 

[abecede]

Apologies again to Markus after I responded to his lovely overtake by missing my braking point a few turns later and punting him deep into the gravel, bringing David straight into the mix.

It's all good, I had a wonderful battle later on with David!

Much more interesting was in lap 7 when I heard my spotter "THREE WIDE"... I KNEW this would be trouble... Sadly I was the one who lost two positions due to a bit of paint trading...

 

[thom462]

Oh and a question to Thomas and Andreas mainly: Did you change something in the setup besides the tyre pressures? I decreased the ride hide quite a bit and it felt more stable to me.

I had stock setup, only increased tyre pressure. As you already mentioned I think some setup work will improve lap time but I am not good at it. Great pace Arne and Andreas, would have been close if the gap was not that big early on.

 

[Kek700]

One of my most memorable races, my now Abarth buddy Han made the most of me running wide and I got, got, on the long straight.
Next thing I know Mazda Alan is behind , did my best to hold him up, until I made the same mistake on the last corner, could never get that right.
Both were now 3 or4 seconds up the road, as the laps counted down managed to be on both Alan and Han’s tail. 3 corners to go, Alan and Han side by side. Suddenly Han was sideways, Alan sideways, and just two corners to go.
So I managed to punt Han straight, now he had a straight run for the finish, low and behold, how Alan managed that I will not know, got in front of Han, and the two poor old Abarth were humiliated by a Rotter Mazda.
Well done Alan, great racing with you.
Well done podiums, nice to see how quick Thomas is now, especially with Andreas and Arne giving a run for his money.
Shame about the end result @HF2000 , gave it a good shot, pity we could not get on the front row, that would have been an epic battle, seeing how difficult it was for Mazda Alan to get by you.

 

[pcmoreno]

Woooooooo! Now this was my best race so far!

I really like the track so I was already happy for that even if I would be really slow, but then I tried @Kek700 's setup for the Abarth and suddenly on my first hotlap with 96% grip and tyres not fully ready I was already over 1 s faster than my best on the previous day so yeah, that tells not only a bit about my car setup skills but also Ernie's

This was one of the few times I felt really in command of the car where I could easily try new lines, braking points etc without having to focus fully on just keeping the car on the track.

It was a very happy sequence of very positive wtf moments like:
- how on earth is my practice time within 0.5s from @HF2000 and @Kek700 ?
- how are there mazdas still behind me on practice and quali
- What? I'm actually overtaking ppl during the race?!
- I finished the race within 15s (on a 45 min race) of the best placed Abarth?!
- I got 3rd best consistency rating from the whole race and the best among abarths? massive wtf!

Even though I botched the start shifting from 1st to 2nd too late I held my postition and on Lap 2 I gained my first spot thanks to Mazdas spinning out. Then there was a full-race battle between me, Richard and Robert. I managed to pass Robert on lap 7 and then Richard on lap 10. I pulled a few seconds away but then on lap 18 did my worst mistake of the whole race and caught some gravel on the last corner exit which cost me about 2 secs and where Richard capitalized by catching me before T1. Then it was a really exciting battle where I had a slight pace advantage but failed to pass him and we ended up less than 3 tenths apart from each other over the finish line.

...just saw another major wtf moment while looking at the stats: I got the best sector 1 time overall?!?! what is going on?!

 

[640er]

Thanks for organizing @HF2000 and congrats @thom462

That was kind of a special race for me. Tom, Arne and myself we were running in 1,2,3 separated by about 1-2 seconds for about the entire first half of the race. Everyone was doing great lap times and held the pressure on the car in front very high. So it was all about being fast and super precise. No room for the tiniest error, especially with a slow car like the MX-5. After a little contact with @AW939 we lost contact with @thom462 so P1 was settled. My battle with Arne for P2 went on and I was the one to make that little mistake Touched one inside curb and lost the car +2 places. Could at least regain P3 and set the fastest lap in the last round.

Anybody else had the feeling that the grip level increased to the end of the race?

 

[HF2000]

Anybody else had the feeling that the grip level increased to the end of the race?

The race starts at 96% and goes up to 100% in about 20 minutes (depending on the number of participants). This is a feature I introduced to get a little more dynamics into the race. I've also tried this without tire blankets, but that combination leads to ice roads (and disaster in T1).

 

[HF2000]

Very positive feedback on this combo!

I myself had a great race with excitement throughout the race. I had a bad start (shifted too late to 2nd) and had to defend Richard who got away much better. Nice battle that I could win by staying inside Würth. Then I started chasing Ernie who surprisingly wasn't faster so I was dependent on a little mistake from him. That came in the final corner when he had the left wheels in the sand, causing him to slow down on the straight for easy overtaking, even before T1. Now I had in the last years my fair share of Ernie chasing me and patiently waiting for my mistake so I wasn't too happy because the race was still long. Fortunately, Allan recovered from his spin on the 1st lap and they started fighting for a few laps causing them to slow down. After Allan finally passed Ernie I knew the 4s gap wasn't enough and it indeed led to a fierce battle with Allan in the final laps which I lost in the closing corners.

But it was nice to have those battles with the different characteristics of these two cars.

As the Abarth is generally a bit slower, especially on tracks with more corners and fewer straights, I will be using these cars next week in a multiclass with 100% fuel economy and 100% tire wear.
This means the Abarth's will need a pit stop, perhaps with a tire change, so it's likely they'll be lapped by Mazdas, but allowed to defend. I hope this will lead to all of you being able to have those great battles like Ernie, Allan and I had.

Thanks everyone for joining, congrats to the podium and thanks Ernie for the great setup!

 

[abecede]

But it was nice to have those battles with the different characteristics of these two cars.

I can't help but put a little shameless self promo in here...

If you all like different cars on pace with each other, there is a new little championship starting next Tuesday. We already have 10 11 12 13 fix starters (probably more incoming soon), and the cars couldn't be more different.
A vintage Porsche, a Praga Prototype and a FWD Audi all racing against each other on four awesome tracks by members of our RD community!

I'd love to have more backmarkers like myself on the track, as well as midfielders and aliens. So if this tickles your fancy, join here:

MCMC multi-car-mini-championship​

 

[maxilogan]

Pretty disappointing race. I had the usual pre-race chaos as I switched the computer to sleep mode at 6 PM with everything ready to start, but it refused to start. Had to force stop it, but once started I had no audio whatsoever. Restarted it again and it worked, but with just 12 minutes quali to go. Add this to the fact that I hadn't time to practice before, and the result was that I don't even know how I managed not to be last.

Started the race pretty good by getting some places but spun the car at the second corner, a film already seen and on which I'll have to work to avoid it in the future..
All the group went by and I started battling with @tomash47 for the penultimate place. At a certain point I hoped that we could remain together in the group with David and the other midfielders but it was too late when I started to understand how to remain into the 2.05 realm (which wasn't even good enough to stay with them, let alone to catch 'em up) so I remained there battling with Walter who was very fair (too much in some occasions, don't worry to battle mate!) and took some chances to overtake due to my usual many errors.

All in all, it was very difficult for me to keep the car on track, I had loaded the usual setup but something was wrong and the car had the tendency to lose the rear end.

Cheers to the podium finishers, thanks Han for organising another great event and see you next week on track!

 

[stigs2cousin]

Nice one, Han,

you always have the wierdest ideas

About the race, it went mostly like expected.
I slotted in behind the frigging Aliens, as I was on my best time for the grip nothing else to be done.

Start went ok, contactless first corner which was a great job everyone

One of the aliens (the guy who is 1,5sec than me ) took himself out of the competion at T4 (again, but it looked fishy to me, maybe netcode ) In every case a serious strain of bad luck.

After that it was hotlapping except for little kerfuffle which put me on P3 (at least for a little while )

So I managed to punt Han straight, now he had a straight run for the finish, low and behold, how Alan managed that I will not know, got in front of Han, and the two poor old Abarth were humiliated by a Rotter Mazda.

Here I have to contradict Ernie lovingly but sternly:

after you and Han were yapping at my heels on the grid and after race start immediately started disappearing in my mirrors you were not humiliated by ONE Mazda rotter .

As promised I´ll try your setup, maybe next time we´ll try to humiliate each other on even footing .

MFG Carsten

 

[stigs2cousin]

All in all, it was very difficult for me to keep the car on track, I had loaded the usual setup but something was wrong and the car had the tendency to lose the rear end.

If your problem is power on oversteer try to loose the rear ARB.

And of course practise the "power squeeze" i.e. rolling into the throttle


MFG Carsten

 

[maxilogan]

If your problem is power on oversteer try to loose the rear ARB.

Already done before the race

And of course practise the "power squeeze" i.e. rolling into the throttle

This is definitely the way to go, together with practicing race lines a bit better!

 

[davejevons]

I agree with the consensus that it was a great combo of cars and track. The different properties of the cars meant that in some parts of the track the Mazda was stronger and in others the Audi. Great choice @HF2000 and thanks for organising .

I wasn't on the pace of the faster MX-5s and qualified in the middle of the Abarth pack. I fell to the back after a coming togther with Simon early on and then fought back to join the three-way battle with Simon and Markus. I took advantage of their battle to pull alongside and we went three wide down the back straight I backed out of it at the left to avoid the impending crash but unfortunately the others came together. Apologies to @abecede for not initially waiting. I didn't think I had touched either of you so initially carried on before hearing you shout.

After that it was a great battle with Danny and Markus to the end. All very similar paces but with different strengths and weaknesses.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Extremely nice setup, Bono Wright
( May I call you Bono as a sign of my worship )

I had a little test on the practice server (Thank you Han for leaving it, much apreciated) and was able to cut it down to 2:04,7 within ten laps.
More to be had but that would take some doing.

again, thank you very much Carsten