Old Racing Club Threads (merged)

[Will Marquez]

Servername: Racedepartment.com MX-5
Password: Same as RD Club Events
Track: Brands Hatch GP
Class: MX-5 Cup / Roadster

Official Practice: 30 minutes (21:00 GMT / 4pm EST / 1pm PST)
Qualification - Lone qualifier (2 hotlaps)
Race - 18 laps (Standing Start)
Entries - 36
Fast tows - 1

Notes: Must be a RD Licensed member
http://www.racedepartment.com/misc.php?do=form&fid=1/

Read the password and golden rules.
http://www.racedepartment.com/rules-passwords/

 

[Glenn Petersen]

I think if we ran the race again with the same group, it would be much more successful. This race is much too ambitious for so many of us that haven't raced this type of race together. A shorter race or two leading up to the 500 would have helped us get used to racing together. I did alot of practicing leading up to the race but no race starts or first few laps to get better prepared.
I learned alot and I got better as the race went on, but my back couldn't take the stress any longer and I had to pull out. I've raced with most everyone out there and know everyone to be great competitors and fair racers and am looking forward to the next event with you all. Thanks Will and Kevin for setting this event up, and RD for venue to gather and race.

 

[Alan Wilson]

I pulled out after lap 87, i will admit i did cause one accident with a scoolboy error and did not select 1st gear ans did not pull away quickly enough, but i have raced 10 or 15 indy races this year and the problem we had was start up after yellows the leaders were too slow going away, you dont have to wait until the green lights come on to start, soon as the pace car enters the pits you can go from there too the start line, and once started the drivers were going miles to slow dropping back to 3rd gear going into turn 1 so others behind hit the brakes(big mistake lol) so they spin out and we get another yellow. single file starts do give better starts but practicing starts would have been prudent, when we were running on green we had some good battles but they were too short in distance, after reading the write ups it looks like it settled down after the half way, and well done the people who stayed the full course, .congrats to Abdul, shame about the constant flashing, i am afraid if you did that in most of the races i have completed in you would have been booted, driving at 235 mph behind a flashing car is not the best experience, not good for the eyes. To sum up i bet most people would do it all again but we need to practice starts and maybe a fixed setup race would help over a shorter distance to get people used to this type of racing, racing long stints at 230+ mph is really great fun

 

[George Pilkington]

Sounds like most had FUN guys and thats what its all about huh?
Wish I could have been there.
Abdul, your getting too good mate. You need a worse connection to give us a chance mate.... lol.
Be Cool Dudes

George
who will get his sim back asap...

 

[Richard Sobolewski]

To sign off, please do come back next weekend and tell us all how smoothly and caution-free the 'official iRacing' Indy 500 events went, lol.

Sadly I can't make the official event, hence why I wanted to race successfully this evening

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

Report from podium finisher and 2nd rookie of the day Ramon.

This is me AFTER the finish. Bram did a tiny bit of bump drafting Marshall had a very big time collecting my car from above. After 6 hours I was still hanging there.... Really!

On a more serious note:
The only Oval experience I had before this race was 1 Arca event. I only did max 1 hour of practice on the track and was confident I could drive 4 or 5 laps without crashing

Even during Qualify I crashed for some stupid reason and started almost last, maybe it was last... Can't remember.

Start went well and I could lucky escape the mayhem in the first 2 cautions. Then on the restart it was my turn, drove too fast on cold tires and into the wall. I think at the same time another accident happened. If i am correct no caution for only 1 carcrash.

Later a few more cautions happened and during halfway the field was finally set for some endurance.
I can remember I drove lap after lap within 1 meter distance (even closer I think) to the guy in front. Can't remember his name, maybe he does ?
I was a blast at that time. I was still 2 Laps behind but doing some consistence driving. Then I was exactly in the right spot to get my laps back and with the right amount of fuel.
During the last part of the race I was even driving at P1 and the finish was very well in sight. I think only 2 drivers were on the same lap, maybe even only myself.

Then Bjorn was a bit ambition in trying to get his lap back and tried to pass on a no-go area. First a nudge and a lucky escape. Then a big kiss which sent me and himself straight into the wall. Again back to pits and 1 lap behind.

Then Abdul was P1 and Bram got his lap back also. The order did not change in the last laps!

Very cool driving. I enjoyed it very much. More more more!


Grats to Abdul for his superb win. Have some milk!
Also grats for semi-rookie Bram (he did lots of Arca, but still iRacing Oval rookie).

Great job all drivers who finished the race and thanks for racing everyone.

@Bjorn: no hard feelings about the crash. It is part of the oval racing. Next time we do better

 

[Lars Strijdonck]

Richard,

To sign off, please do come back next weekend and tell us all how smoothly and caution-free the 'official iRacing' Indy 500 events went, lol.

In all fairness this was ridiculess, i expected alot more from a club event. And even the official event will go with less cautions.
There has been made one big mistake and that was unlimited tows, normally the field wil get better as the crashers wreck out of the race. 5 Yellows in 30 laps and 64 minutes in, even the most experience driver will start loose his focus and from then on cautions start to breed cautions.

I needed to quit as my alarm bel rings at 6am. Hope the guys left had some fun in the end. This events despite all good intentions and all effort made by the admins was a big Blow down.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Nice report guys cant wait until the next race

 

[Yoeri Gijsen]

Thanks for setting the event up. I must say it looked great with a big field like that.

I was a bit disappointed about the continuous cautions, especially the ones that were caused within the first lap after the green. After a series of these one-turn green flag periods I decided to sign out. I was tired of it. I'll be there again next time.

Maybe it would be good to precede such an event with a junior version about a quarter the length so people can get used to oval racing if they haven't already.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

or start with something like the firestone 100 with indy lights ( star mazda )

 

[Ingemar Petersson]

A BIG thx for setting this up . I´m hopping for some Nascar events i´m willing to host some of them.
Cheers

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

Oh yes, I already thanked them in a PM.

Another big thanks for Will and Keving for setting this up! Good job!

 

[Dawid Kus]

please anyone can upload replay?

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

please anyone can upload replay?

Uh, when I saved my replay it was 1Gb... But I can try to compress it and share it somewhere.

 

[Kevin Watts]

Well that will be a night to remember for both good and bad reasons! In the end a lot of drivers enjoyed the race with some good racing towards the end but the event did leave me a little disappointed that as one of the event organisers I couldn’t deliver an event that everyone enjoyed. It certainly did turn into a marathon for those of us who stayed and raced. Thanks to everyone who did start the race, it was great to see such a good turn out and Will and I appreciate your support. I’ve slept since then and had last night’s event buzzing around in my head today at work.

I’ll start with the bad. Yes it was very frustrating to have a number of cautions follow each other in quick succession. It seems that the practice sessions we scheduled and the drivers briefing sent out to all registered drivers and posted in the event discussion thread were not enough. I knew we would get some caution periods and reminded drivers to hold onto their frustrations but this was ignored. Since we started running events for iRacing here at RD I have never had to reprimand a driver during an event for using foul language until last night. It is absolutely NOT acceptable to use the language that one driver used last night during an event. There is no defence no matter how frustrated or upset you get it will not be tolerated. If it happens again we will stop drivers from entering future events. It stops here, it stops now.

I’ve not reviewed the entire race and I’m not going to go through it and pick out drivers publicly who were involved in incidents. Despite the race introduction and then the drivers briefing and also the briefing given over the radio at the start of the race that this race was a marathon and not a sprint we still had drivers ‘drive like they stole it’ rather than ‘drive like you have to pay for it’ as one of our more level headed drivers put it. Too many of you tonight were racing like it was a road race and others seemed to want to driver like it was one hot lap after another and ignore the length of the race.

Restarts are restarts, it doesn’t matter a whole lot if the lead driver goes early or not, it’s up to the drivers behind to be ready and lots of drivers (I include myself here) left their cars in too high a gear to get moving quickly. Oval racing is a different beast to road racing. Its ok to give up a corner, even 5 times NASCAR Champion Jimmie Johnson can often be seen giving way to a faster car only to come back strong later on in the race, when a race is 200 laps long discretion is the better part of valour.

Onto the good - it was a very good turn out and we had a lot of drivers joining us in the two practice sessions we hosted in EU and US time zones. As always with our iRacing events here at RD we had drivers helping each other prepare days before the event with setups and advice on race strategy.

This good natured competitive racing carried on into the event with drivers helping each other out and calling to other drivers over the radio to check their cars for damage, I even managed to convince Bram his rear wing was falling off, that flames were coming out of the back of his car and his wheels were about to fall off in the vain hope he would pit and let me by We all shared some good banter during the yellow flag periods and words of encouragement between drivers which helped keep frustrations down.

Once we got past the half way mark things settled down and we had some good periods of close racing with good green flag runs. It’s a shame more racers didn’t stick around as it was good experience for future oval racing events at RD – this event has not dampened our enthusiasm for more oval racing here! The last 80 laps were certainly enjoyable.

We learnt a lot from this race and hope that the newer drivers that joined us for this race did also. With version 2.0 of iRacing we’ll be able to run heats and have separate qualification sessions carry over into an event. We’ll also look at possibly making a mandatory practice session to ensure all registered drivers have time on track running in traffic. Indy Lights in the Star Mazda is another option open to us though I believe we can still go forward with the Dallara.

Thanks to you all for supporting this event, we’ll be back here again next year for RD’s 2012 Indy 500 for sure a little older but a little wiser.

Congratulations to Abdul for taking the win!

 

[Dazmaniac]

Nicely written Kev.

Wished I could have stayed longer, but the prospect of 1 green flag lap every 5 run just didn't fill me with positive vibes, lol.

I would hope we all learned something from the session, and agree 100% that the profanities are not wanted here at RD. I didn't hear exactly who or what was said, but definitely heard Kev's reprimand over the air waves, lol.

Congrats to Abdul for the win. I guess no-one dared try and pass him whilst he kept enabling his Romulan Invisibility Cloak, lol.

 

[Dario Jagar]

had a family party planned long b4 so could not join you guys, next time will be there for sure (to complain about Abduls ping at least) :funnypost:

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

1 thing is sure for the 2012 indy 500... I will come back and i will take that milk

 

[Bob Luneski]

I wanted to thank Will and Kevin for setting up this wonderful event. Despite the some of the struggles it was a wonderful experience that I thoroughly enjoyed until I had to drop out around lap 120 because shoulder pain. I hope that all view this as a fun learning experience from which we can all benefit.

 

[Will Marquez]

First off, Congrats to Abdul for the race win. And also to those who stuck it out all the way to the end. There was definitely some great racing in those final 60 laps.

Have exactly the same thoughts as what Kevin had posted about the race. There was definitely some good, bad and the ugly from yesterday's race. Everything was set out quite clearly in Kevin's write up in the Drivers Briefing. Before the race, there was even an announcement that this race is not won in the first lap, lap 10, 100 or even 150. So that is twice that everyone was reminded but seemed like once the green flag came out it was like this became a sprint race or something. One thing that Kevin pointed out is that any excessive language is NOT accepted on the race server or here in the forums. Not necessary whatsoever.

There are some great suggestions that Kevin and myself have noted from the feedback given here to make not only the next year's RDiR Indy 500 better but the next oval event we have planned for everyone. The one thing we are all here is to race for the fun and enjoyment that it brings. That is why Kevin and myself started the iRacing club here on RD. To race with like minded people regardless of skill level. Everyone is welcome to join in. I hope we have all learned something from this, which can only make the racing in the future that much more competitive and enjoyable for all.

Thanks to all who showed up and supported another RDiR Club Event. Hope to see many of you at our future RDiR Club Events that we have planned for this summer.

 

[Willie Watt]

Congratz to Abdul on the win. And thanks to Will and Kevin (and RD of course) for organising.

I was looking forward to this event and had even cleared it with the mrs as it was being run just when we should be getting the girls ready for school the next day and off to bed.

I screwed the pooch on the quali set up and should simply have taken some fuel out of the race setup. Anyways dead last which in a race of this length is not too much of a problem.

I suppose I have two things to feedback (from experience in racing Ovals in iRacing) whils we all like to think that we are in days of thunder, even in these open wheelers when there's smoke on track, in front, keeping the foot down and hoping for the best only results in a bigger accident and you 2, 3 or 4 laps down whilst you wait for the tow, and the repairs. As i was in the middle of the pack, I was caught in alot of the incidents but avoided 2 by slowing down. The straights are long here and you can easily see what's going on way down the track and take action accordingly. I did have one incident that caused me to pit running wide in t3 but I stayed up til it was clear and run into the pits leaving the race in green and being back out, more or less on the same lap that I went in on.

I did eventually quit when i slowed up to avoid an incident moved to the inside of the front straight to avoid and other drivers were running full speed into it. I was launched in the air over the pit wall, had a 2 min tow and fall to the back of the line. I think that I left in lap 40 or so and in that time (well over an hour since the start) I'd run a handful of race pace laps needed over 8 mins of tows (putting me around ten laps down only 40 laps in!) from poor driving from other drivers and really wasted what was a free pass from the mrs.

I will join the Nascar league in whichever form it runs but if you're not used to it you'll need to practice in traffic (now that they are open to all license levels). Join the Free practice sessions hosted or otherwise to get comfortable - there's no SR or iR hit and you can learn the lines from some of the really fast guys. If you crash someone out in FP, it's rare that you'll get shouted down as they just Esc, get a new car and start again. All of the Nascar sanctioned cars drive differently. The trucks are very loose and the CoT is much easier to drive on the superspeedways than you'd beleive. Everyone makes mistakes and the "red mist" that descends even in virtual club racing will sometimes cloud our judgement make them in FP and learn to control the red mist in the race - practice is the best way to do that.

When it comes down to it, it's just a game (it's not like we're running Pro W/C licenses fo $10,000) but we do rearrange our lives to compete with our friends. if there's only you left at the end of the race then it's not really that much fun.

Ps Joe although my wing was damaged, it didn't appear to affect the handling and I could have run it to the scheduled stop quite easily.