I am also looking forward to this series. I think it will be a very good one full of competitive drivers. It will be my second series here at RD. Some of you I know from the WTM series, remembering hard but fair races and epic battles. With most of you it will be the first time that we race against. But I am sure, it will be as good and fair as in the WTM.
Now, I am wondering about the car choices. What car is the preffered one? Maybe can something be read out from a statistic? Let's have a look:
This list shows the car choices until Jari's sign-up, sorted by 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice. What can be seen (just personal thoughts, nothing objective! :wink: ):
- A bit surprising for me is, that the Mustang has no 1st choice count. It is not that bad, imho. On my personal list, It was the fourth car. It has some behaviours which I personally cannot handle that good, so it fell out my top 3. But others should handle it easily. So it's a bit surprising that no one takes it as 1st choice.
- The Viper is either fully loved or not considered - with most of you not considering the Viper. This car has some "special" attitudes, especially when braking, which some love and can handle, most not I think... The good position in the top half of the list comes from the few "lovers" choosing it as first choice.
- The Porsche is number one. Really not surprising. :wink: It is a good, stable AND fast car. So it's logical that it is chosen 1st or at least 2nd. No 3rd choice selection shows me that it might be either selected as first want or as alternative if someone has another good alternative but don't want to be "just another Porsche driver" (like me :wink: ). Also, there should be a coin flip or a admin decision which driver of the five has to use his second choice...
- A bit surprising for me is that the Nissan is selected that much and Cadillac and Pontiac are not that popular. The Nissan is the only car in the field where I thought "Der geht mal garnicht" (german saying for "this one is not working" in terms of "full crap" :wink: ). Cadillac and Pontiac are the opposite: stable, easy to drive and quite fast even with the standard setup. I hurried with my sign-up, because I wanted the Cadillac and was certain that I would not be the only one wanting it. But with only three 1st choices and one 3rd choice, it was not needed to hurry... But with Ben selecting the car also as 1st choice it shows me that I was not that wrong. :wink:
- The Corvette and the Aston are quite the same. Good and stable cars, but in my opinion not that competitive than for example Porsche, Caddi and the GTO. The Vette has imho a slight advantage in stability over the Aston. And as the Vette is generally a very popular car (I thought...) it is a bit surprising that it is seldom selected compared with the Aston which is second in the list and first in overall choices...
The way I did my selection: I drove every car with it's standard setup for the same amount of laps (three timed laps) on the same track. I drove on the original ISI track Nürburgring GP, as it has a good variety of corners. Then I based my decision on the laptimes and on the car behavior with focus on the estimated effort I personally need to improve the setup. The more difficult the car handled, the more time I need to improve the setup. On the other hand, if the car was already handling quite well but another car handled not so good but was as fast, I preferred the more difficult car, because it has more potential in the setup. For example, that's the reason why the Pontiac is number three on my list: It was as fast as Porsche and Cadillac, but "too easy" compared to them... Only between Porsche and Cadillac it was a bit a "sympathy decision"... The Porsche was a bit more difficult to drive, but just a small fraction slower than the Cadillac, so the logical decision would have been Porsche 1st, Cadillac 2nd. But I have to drive a Porsche in an upcoming Porsche 24h event (with training and training and training with it) and I am sure that I cannot see Porsches for a while, so I preferred the Cadillac.