AC Multiclass Abarth500/Mazda Mx5@Sandown, Wed 19th July 2023

[JOSEJ]

A crash in the first lap, followed by a desconexion with another crash, and two times passed by Jason. Defeated...
The thing is I feel I can not go faster... And I am still slow.
Anyhow, will try it next week again.
Congrats to the podiums, and thanks Han for organice it.

 

[RS242]

A crash in the first lap, followed by a desconexion with another crash, and two times passed by Jason. Defeated...
The thing is I feel I can not go faster... And I am still slow.
Anyhow, will try it next week again.
Congrats to the podiums, and thanks Han for organice it.

So sorry to hear that Jose.
But don't give up!
You may feel slow but I think everyone can see you improving from race to race!
It can get hard to judge when everyone around you is also improving, but if you discount the accidents your consistency is improving and so are your lap times.
The gap to the middle of the field has been bigger than what it is at the moment.

 

[Boukâh]

Intense, this one!

PB'd in qualy, P8 on the grid, survived first lap, losing not too many positions, could barely avoid a nice save by Kimi and tried my best to keep Ernie behind (useless effort, caught me on the next straight ), John disguised as Han on my tail and I kinda dive bombed him, luckily without killing him, unlike myself spinning next few meters after dancing with The Real Han a little, dropping some positions. From there played with Ricardo, Dave, Steve, Paul and Raul for a while, most of us doing some extra meters of sand diggin' along the way. On Rauls tail who was battling with Steve, my better exit made me just kiss Rauls rear a little (sorry man, luckily no harm done) but then I drifted out into Soundless Steve (sorry, nice job keeping the car on the track there!!) spinning myself to car heaven (great crash in the replay though).

Ugh... back to hot lapping again, slowly catching the guys ahead. But every time I got closer, I screwed up a bit, so had to redo the catching up a few times. PB'd along the way, that was great.

In the end I let Thomas and Robert by, slowed down a bit on the left but I think I confused Thomas a bit, sorry mate!

Last laps had some fun with Dave, we were at kinda same pace, trading positions, nice racing man, thanks!

Congrats to the podium, thanks Han (get yourself a nice long ethernet cable, drag it from your modem all the way to your cave, don't bother the misses complaining about how awfull such a white cable across all floors of your house looks ( I don't even know how to spell esthaetiks) and there you have it: no more drop-outs! )

See you next week!

 

[Shed 17]

Sorry to anyone who suffered at my ridiculously high ping during qualy and got the shakes on the start line. I have a new pc and it decided to do an update at that moment which made the ping hit 750.
I did a restart during the race countdown but then forgot to load my setup which meant I was on qualy fuel so I decided to use this event to do some testing of ffb etc and pitted twice to make some changes.
But when I was able to get going I really enjoyed this track ( apart from that deadly T6).
Well done all and thanks Han for hosting.

P.S. my old PC has gone to my eldest son George who is hoping to join us at some point soon. The last time I raced against him was on a PlayStation 2 in Colin McRae rally! He left me for dead then so maybe now is the time for me to get revenge.

 

[Medilloni]

From my perspective following you John, I saw no problems.

Thanks Ernie

My son was here tonight 'cos this problem has been going on for weeks (intermittently, ffs), he ran Open Hardware Monitor and found a problem.

I don't understand what he said, but seems my graphic card has "lots of headroom" (duh!) but my cpu is struggling, so he's coming 'round over the weekend to fix it.... he reckons it's an easy fix. I wish I wasn't a tech knuckle-dragger

Thanks for organising the race @HF2000 and congrats to the podium guys

 

[a_murel]

Sorry, Jari that I hit you....

 

[Medilloni]

John disguised as Han on my tail and I kinda dive bombed him, luckily without killing him

No problem Bouke, you've always been one of the fairest racers here - we all drop the ball..... unfortunately I do it too often these days

edit... and yeah, where did my lucky colour go?

 

[Alfred Wayne]

Don't get too frustrated Jose, you're on the path many of us have been on. When I first started with this group I got lapped routinely. you've definitely gotten faster with less offs since you joined. Problem is (and we all have this problem) is that so has everyone else



Had a great race on my end. And early off and an early pit had me chasing down Andre for 40 min, with Thomas joining in the middle after his pit. Visited the beach for a second time with 10 min left, and couldn't get the spot back from Thomas, not for a lack of trying. Way to keep it together under pressure

Thanks as always Han, really hope you get those PC gremlins ironed out. See you all next race.

 

[Kek700]

As I have said many times, everyone on this forum is skilful and fast, it is just those rotter aliens that make it seem the way it is. and it really is just a stop watch that makes people think that way, the reality is so different.
Even the fastest drivers race at a mean lap time per race, if you take the slower drivers mean time it is only a few percent slower, especially if they are consistent drivers.

PS.
I understand the frustration from the back of the field or anywhere come to think of it. Unfortunately I am not exactly devoid of such feelings. It can get to you, you say what's the point.
But i console myself by just enjoying what I do, knowing that there are many ponds on the way up the ladder. It does not take long before even our aliens are in a pond in exactly the same set of conditions you are in or me.

There is no escape, just listen to Hamilton bleating on that he does not have the fastest car, like the one he won all of his championships in with an unfair advantage, he did not bleat on then about his unfair advantage, and try to get all the other teams cars up to speed.

Vive La RED BULL I say, is that too political.

 

[thom462]

In the end I let Thomas and Robert by, slowed down a bit on the left but I think I confused Thomas a bit, sorry mate!

No worries, was not confused, just tried to get a little slipstream as I had Robert right on my back. Was glad for every kph.

 

[thom462]

Was an intense race with good racing against Jari and Robert. Was great fun and great pressure to go to the limit every lap. Had the pace but not the consistency and made too many mistakes. Spun twice which cost me so much time.
Fastest laps in results are not correct as lap 1 was not stopped correctly which led to a wrong delta afterwards. Glad I did a faster laptime later so I had a correct reference for my delta time.
I think Joseph's fastest lap was a 1.24.2 (congrats, great pace), my fastest was as well a 1.24.2 but had too much laps with little mistakes, man these kerbs...
Congrats to Jason as well.

cu all

 

[Captain Condescending]

Great racing last night everyone! So nice to be back doing RD races - it's certainly been a while! Summer holidays mean I'll probably be on for a few more so see y'all next time!

 

[stigs2cousin]

The thing is I feel I can not go faster... And I am still slow.

In this stage there are two possible ways to improve:

the better way would be to find a coach who can analyse your driving and give you drills to improve in certain fields. (been looking for two years now, only found coaching for ACC and Iracing )

try to analyse your driving yourself by using telemetry and swarm inteligence from books or internet, Ross Bentley is my favorite.
Z1Analyzer is my go to telemetry software, payware but way easier to install and use than Motec I2. (though I had great help with Motec from some lovely guys here. I´ll protect their privacy here, you know who you are )
What I havn´t found yet is the most valuable resource, telemetry shared by better drivers.

In the first step you could compare your best lap with that of a "frigging alien" (replay) only look for oblious differences in the racing line and begin of acceleration.

Anyhow, will try it next week again.

That´s the spirit.

 

[stigs2cousin]

.... he reckons it's an easy fix. I wish I wasn't a tech knuckle-dragger

Well, you did the smart thing and spawned your own tech support

 

[JamKart22]

In this stage there are two possible ways to improve:

the better way would be to find a coach who can analyse your driving and give you drills to improve in certain fields. (been looking for two years now, only found coaching for ACC and Iracing )

try to analyse your driving yourself by using telemetry and swarm inteligence from books or internet, Ross Bentley is my favorite.
Z1Analyzer is my go to telemetry software, payware but way easier to install and use than Motec I2. (though I had great help with Motec from some lovely guys here. I´ll protect their privacy here, you know who you are )
What I havn´t found yet is the most valuable resource, telemetry shared by better drivers.

In the first step you could compare your best lap with that of a "frigging alien" (replay) only look for oblious differences in the racing line and begin of acceleration.

That´s the spirit.

If there is someone else on the server when you practice then a chat on Discord can be useful. They can sit in your car and offer a bit of advice and you can sit in their car and see what they are doing.

It easier to gain seconds if you've way off the pace. The hard part is gaining the tenths of seconds to match the aliens

 

[pcmoreno]

As I have said many times, everyone on this forum is skilful and fast

hey hey hey, easy with the generalizations

Problem is (and we all have this problem) is that so has everyone else

I remember when I joined this group, I knew that every race I was going to battle with @Dzul . But then I stopped for over half a year and now he's consistently at least a second faster than me regardless of track. So yeah, everybody is indeed improving.

I was ok with my quali time and had a nice start dodging abarths to settle in the midpack. Around lap 10, due to the first Hancident, I got even more positions even though I was being caught by the faster drivers behind me. Ennerving to be overtaken time after time on the straight just before the fast left hander of doom(T6?) and having to brake three times as much as needed so not to kiss the abarths big butt.
At this stage I was pretty happy with my consistency leading a small gap to the Ricardo, Steve, David trio close behind me but around the 2nd Hancident I also took a way too long line on the last turn and ended up reaching the pits via the grass. probably took too long on the pits too but it was ok and after the pitting round it meant I landed right between Ricardo and David. Unfortunately, on Lap 32, I completely lost control on the fast lefthander which would totally wreck the car if not for the 10% damage setting and took me a few seconds to figure out which way the track was again. It was then a lonely rest of the race with plenty of blue flags, but fortunately this was an easy track to give position without losing to much time. Was a bit gutted not to have been able to crack 1:25s like most though.

Nice race and nice track once again. I much more prefer shorter tracks like this one. Also would not mind if we reintroduce some tyre wear again to these races

Thanks @HF2000 and everyone else!

 

[pcmoreno]

Z1Analyzer is my go to telemetry software,

Thanks for the tip, I may give this one a go too

 

[Shed 17]

he thing is I feel I can not go faster... And I am still slow.

Jose, with my ping issues, I let the field go by at the start, had two pit stops and a big off.
That meant I followed you at least three times and believe me................... you are not slow.

As Carsten and Colin have already said, there are things you can do to improve your overall speed, but I got the feeling when I was behind you that you were possibly distracted by your mirror and where you could find a place to move off line to let the car behind pass, as well as getting on the radio.
Of course, the blue flag needs to be obeyed but try to find a spot where you lose the least time (going a bit wide at hairpins or slower corners is a good bet.)

You might like to try and focus on staying on line regardless of who is behind (the really quick guys will get by where they want to) and only use the radio where there is any ambiguity on where you want the car behind to pass. Something else that I find helps is to turn the rear view mirror off completely and reference the Realtime and Helicorsa apps to know who is getting close. Concentration is my biggest challenge, it's so easy to miss a breaking point of go wide when you are thinking of something else, even for a micro second.

Build up consistency, try to complete a race without going off and concentrate on your line and race. Hope this helps.

 

[HF2000]

The race for next week has been chosen by you: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...-mazda-mx5-charade-wed-26th-july-2023.261633/

 

[JOSEJ]

Hi all, thanks so much for the support, a lot of information there. Do not missunderstand me I am not giving up, I was just disappointed because I ruined my race in the first lap, I have had great moments fighting with Ricardo or Domenic in previous races which I really enjoy, no matter who wins.

I really enjoy this group, I was having support from the very beginning, people like Bouke, Douglas, Daniel, Han... etc, already help me when I started and even send me personal messages.

Paul, you are right on your comments, as soon as the blue flags start I get nervous the only thing I do not want is to ruin their race, but I will follow your advice.

Carsten, also good advise, I have a couple of books I read... I learn a lot with them, probably same books you have, happy to recommend to anyone. Telemetric, I do not think I am at that level yet.

As Collin said, when I drive with others I jump in their cars and learn a lot,... That is very good.

Summarizing, I do not complain guys, I just was a little bit frustrated yesterday, but it was only my fault... I like this new hobby and enjoy every track.

Thank you guys