AC Multiclass Abarth500/Mazda MX5@SPA, Wed 24th August 2022

[HF2000]

Well that was fun! Qualified 3rd but at the start Allan in his Mazda was much faster so I lost a place. After LaSource Allan gave me a slipstream and the higher top speed was also enough to overtake Ernie for 2nd. It took me some time to get my pace (probably the low grip) but then I slowly started to close the gap to Hank. But meanwhile John was close and I lost time defending him. And in vain, because after a bad exit he could easily pass me. Moments later Ernie did the same so now 4th. I was surprised to see Ernie going to the pits after 10 laps because in my calculation you could do 11 laps with a full tank so one pit stop should be enough for the whole race (22 laps).

On the next lap Hank, John and I made our pit stop but as I didn't change tires I got ahead of them by about 13 seconds and Ernie close behind. Fulvio had passed me during my pit stop, so he was now the leader.

In the second stint I had a long battle with Ernie where he was faster in the technical sector where I gained time in the Bus Stop and La Source. He must have gotten pretty desperate so he tried to overtake in the Bus Stop, but he went past his breaking point, so he got a little off track. When he came back on track, he hit me and it took me about 5 seconds to get back up to speed. Ernie waited for me, but barely so that he could attack me immediately after letting me pass (the Rotter!). In retrospect I should have let him pass without defending because he still had to do a 2nd pit stop. Learned something for next time.

This and all the fighting made it possible for John and Yoko Hank to close the gap. With my front tires at 40% I couldn't defend against John for long. With 2 laps to go Ernie left the race due to insufficient fuel and I had to defend my 2nd position hard against Hank who also had better tires. At Stavelot Allan joined our fight and we went three wide towards the Bus Stop. Not sure how exactly it went, but I was the first to cross the finish line with Hank 0.05s down and Allan 0.4s.

Great clean and respectful racing from everyone as far as I could see and hear. Thank you all for that. Congratulations to the other podium boys (Fulvio: when I get back from vacation we should discuss some BOP for you, don't you think?)

As I said on Discord, I will set up the races for the next three Wednesdays, starting with Zandvoort and Monza (following the F1). The 3rd I don't know yet. I don't know if Brian or Markus can attend these events, but if they don't, I'm confident you all are able to keep it clean and respectful.

I wish you all great races like this one and I'll be back on September 21st.

 

[HF2000]

For example I noticed "dive bomb" in the last chicane with the huge speed one of the Abarths and only my assumption what can go wrong rescued us from the serious accident.

Hi Krzysztof,

Would you please contact via a PM the guy in the Abarth and discuss the situation with him? If you disagree you can send me the details of the incident (which lap/time and which corner) and I will have a look at the replay.

 

[Dani Martinez(Chechum)]

Have a very good holidays, @HF2000 !! Let me thank you very,very much for organizing all these events on behalf of the comunity It's thanks to people like you that we can have such good fun (not for me when people decide to spin in front of me, damn! Haha)

 

[Dani Martinez(Chechum)]

So Fulvio won again? I have known him recently but I think he must be one of the best talents I've seen. In every qualy he decides to skip it just for not getting bored during the race And also yesterday he could skip the mess in front of me, which I couldn't.

 

[Krzysztof Babij]

Would you please contact via a PM the guy in the Abarth and discuss the situation with him? If you disagree you can send me the details of the incident (which lap/time and which corner) and I will have a look at the replay.

Sure, I can I will manage it on the evening when I will be back home.

 

[maxilogan]

Pretty disappointing race. I connected for quali at 21.20 and found myself with 5 minutes left. I checked the schedule right now and there seem to be no change to the usual 21.20-21.40 timeslot.
Long story short, I just had one full lap for quali, which lap I trashed at the last chicane as I quasi-spun. Recovered the car but finished in the 57s so dead last.

I somehow managed to not being involved (well, not too much) in the first corner mess and gained some position but then I got caught in the bigger one after Pouhon and found myself last and with a lot to re-gain. As my pace wasn't much better than the mid-back field one, the race became basically a lone hot warmlapping around the circuit up until 2 laps to go, when something happened to my connection and I was loner than lone. I can't understand what happened because the game kept indicating a good ping (69) and I continued hearing everybody in Discord so the internet connection was definitely OK.

Given the short remaining distance, I finished the race anyway..

Only positives are that I managed to improve my PB and in the stats in S.GP I'm really in the midfield in terms of lap time. Should anyone have the more complete stats to upload to Simresults it would be very good to see how good (or bad) I was in terms of consistency.

Cheers to the podium finishers, thanks Han for organising, and see you in the next race!

 

[HF2000]

One thing I forgot to mention: beforehand I was hoping to get back behind a lot of Mazdas after my pit stop, which should have been nice to overtake in my second stint (especially Carsten), but although there were 17 I only saw Fulvio and Allan. Where were you all???!

 

[maxilogan]

I wish you all great races like this one was and I'll be back on September 21st.

Enjoy your (yet another) holiday Han!

 

[gearwhine]

We were all short of the Abarth pace Han. My race was a disaster unfolding after getting caught up in the bigger crash half way through first lap. Found myself close to the back and with every Mazda doing around the same lap times it became a procession to the end. Still very enjoyable though and thanks again for putting it all together for us.

 

[maxilogan]

We were all short of the Abarth pace Han. My race was a disaster unfolding after getting caught up in the bigger crash half way through first lap. Found myself close to the back and with every Mazda doing around the same lap times it became a procession to the end. Still very enjoyable though and thanks again for putting it all together for us.

I hoped I could catch you but actually the pace was very similar between all of us, so I stayed very far

 

[Dani Martinez(Chechum)]

Although I'm not sure if I'll participate in the Mazda/Abarth league, is it possible in Simracing.GP to use one different car in every GP? For example, race 1 obly Mazdas, race 2 only Abarth.

 

[maxilogan]

Although I'm not sure if I'll participate in the Mazda/Abarth league, is it possible in Simracing.GP to use one different car in every GP? For example, race 1 obly Mazdas, race 2 only Abarth.

If you mean to have everyone select one specific car so to have a mono-league, it's possible on S.GP. However Han always monitored the situation so to change it to an actual mono-league even if no more than three Abarths joined the race.
Do you want to hijack the next races profiting of the organiser absence?

 

[stigs2cousin]

I don't think Han will go for that, he really enjoys "annoying the Mazda drivers"

One of his nicer characteristics

One of the things that made me take the sabbatical also is exactly this grinding incompability of the cars.

Makes for a quite frustrating experience.

Was no problem yesterday as I never saw a cornerparking shitbox.

MFG Carsten

 

[Kek700]

Is this service available for everyone?

In the excitement of getting the most out of the 3070 I think I messed up something and from the initial 150+ FPS I dropped down to having 75 (because of VSync I assume) but in any case having 80+ in the benchmark. While this is ok in local, I'd hoped to get something more so not to have issues in multiplayer.
I think that it happened when I installed and enabled reshade. Also, I'm not convinced about being getting the best out of it.

This is not a I’m alright Jack post.
I have virtually the same card, just a bit posher, 3070ti.
Running triples 1080 screens I am nearly always at 140fps.
Most of that comes from a particular patch that Rasmus provided, and a lot of help over time with PC settings..
Collectively, but with most support from Rasmus, as a group we can all provide some help, not Just yourself Omar , others too.

 

[Dani Martinez(Chechum)]

I meant if it would be possible to alternate between Mazda and Abarth during the season, I mean, for one race everybody using Mazda, the next race everybody using Abarth, and so on. But I guess people wouldn't want that and also I'm afraid Simracing.GP can't allow us do it (I assume the app would put the two cars every race).

 

[Kek700]

I always use more fuel than anyone else, I just cannot get a lovely trail brake into the corners, feather the throttle progressively from the apex.
A lot of time goes by not being able to do this. I should know because that is what the delta tells me all the time, but I can do nothing about it.
So, in all other classes I take the penalty of this by having to add 5 litres more fuel for a race than anyone else; I have assumed this from listening over the years when there is talk about fuel required before each race.
Now I am in the ridicules situation of virtually being relegated to last place every race 2 laps from the end.

 

[HF2000]

Actually, I like this combo not only for the different characteristics of the cars which provides interesting battles (annoying was just a joke) but also from a educational perspective.

When I started organizing events for RaceDepartment I had one major goal: to have a community where experienced and newcomers both have fun and keep participating. This evolved in the Wednesday events.

The Mazda is a very forgiven car with few setup options so very suited for newcomers that have first to learn the basics of racing and racing with other humans. It has rear wheel drive.
The Abarth has more challenges compared to the Mazda. There are more setup options, there's fuel strategy needed. There's also tyre changes strategy because of the wear of the front tyres. It's front wheel driving and is a lot less balanced than the Mazda. So new learning opportunities for the participants if they step up to the Abarth.
All useful for those who want to step up further to, let's say the GT events of Brian.
From my own experience I can tell you that driving the Abarth has made me also a bit faster in the GT cars because the slow in/fast out is with the Abarth very noticable and when I focussed more on that, my lap times improved with a few tenths.

Those who wants to continue relaxed racing can of course stay with the Mazda but others that want to experience other aspects of racing can try the Abarth.
It is indeed so that coming out of a Mazda your first experience with the Abarth is not a nice one. But using the setup Ernie provided it's far more stable than with the default and after some laps it grows on you. At least that was so the case with the current Abarth drivers.

Another important reason for this multiclass is that I want to have filled grids. Single car events of the Mazda or the Abarth attract less participants. I believe John and Ernie don't like the Mazda. A lot of you probably don't like the Abarth (yet). Fulvio can pick the car which gives him the best challenge. He probably will choose the Abarth for the Zandvoort race which I expect to be Mazda territory and switch to the MX5 for Monza.

grinding incompability of the cars

This is really a nice thing in my opinion. It's very similar to the F1 where it depends on the circuit which car has an advantage. So the changes for the win can differ with every race. This season the RedBull has the highest top speed so their changes on Spa and Monza look good where the Ferrari probably will have the edge on Zandvoort. Same applies to the midfield teams. This has made every race up till now very enjoyable to watch.

 

[maxilogan]

This is not a I’m alright Jack post.
I have virtually the same card, just a bit posher, 3070ti.
Running triples 1080 screens I am nearly always at 140fps.
Most of that comes from a particular patch that Rasmus provided, and a lot of help over time with PC settings..
Collectively, but with most support from Rasmus, as a group we can all provide some help, not Just yourself Omar , others too.

I should have mentioned that I'm running 1440p to give a context to my statements, however you're running double the pixels as me, and the 3070 ti is definitely not double the performance of the 3070 (in fact, not to belittle your card but as I was short in budget I thoroughly read several reviews and watched countless video comparisons, only to get to the conclusion that in the case of the 3070, the Ti conunterpart adds a negligible amount of FPS, not worth the higher expense in comparison to the 3070, at least with current prices..).
I'm not after such a high refresh rate as - at least for the time being - my monitor just reaches 75 Hz (planning to switch to a 21:9 1440p in the future but not before the gas and war situation will be sorted out, a period in which I decided to cut all the unnecessary expenses), but I'd really like to know why I can't reach them. Limiting the FPS to 75 if the board is capable of 150+ would certainly go in the direction of keeping its temperature and power consumption much lower

 

[HF2000]

I meant if it would be possible to alternate between Mazda and Abarth during the season, I mean, for one race everybody using Mazda, the next race everybody using Abarth, and so on. But I guess people wouldn't want that and also I'm afraid Simracing.GP can't allow us do it (I assume the app would put the two cars every race).

Within a championship this can't be done but with two parallel championships and some extra work from me to combine the results (like I did with the classic F1 championships) it is possible.
But most of our Wednesdays races are single events and therefore possible to do one car every two weeks. It's even possible to do two races on one night for let's say both 30min races.
But as you said, I don't think a lot of the current Mazda drivers would like the Abarth although I'm hoping they will in the end (see my previous post).
I'm willing to facilitate every format that gives us filled grids.

 

[Kek700]

My dear racing chum Han, i looked at the replay of our incident from all aspects, it was your kind self that hit me.
I was not involved at all. In the end, I had no choice but to try the impossible, for me to out brake you after spending two or three laps coming to the conclusion that the impossible it would have to be.
My aim was not to dive bomb but to block you from the corner and use the width of the corner as extra braking that I needed, and as it turned out that way without running off the circuit.
You may well criticise the overtake, but I was being cheeky rather than unfair, and for that I apologise.