rF2 SPECIAL EVENT: 90 Minutes of Paul Ricard - Fri 31Aug18

[Valrys]

Must be the toe settings?

Yeah, it struck me in warmup that that must have been the issue, but at that late stage I didn't want to make change when I at least knew I had confidence if not speed in what I was already using.

 

[alexSchmurtz]

@alexSchmurtz sorry, I'm watcing back the race on replay and I don't even understand why was I so slow at that particular corner... Maybe I slightly locked the front and missed the apex and surprised you with my excessive slowness.

Oh yes you surprised me, I still cannot understand either how we had such a speed difference all of a sudden! No problem, that clearly drops in the 'racing incident' category.

 

[Hailstorm BLX]

I don't know what I did to mess up my race setup - or if my driving was just rubbish The car felt alright for the first few laps but then I had two spins in one lap, dropped way back and was caught by the leaders. Apologies to whoever's way I may have got into

 

[Rui F. Martins]

Yesterday's event was very nice, i really enjoyed it, had some nice battles during the first part of the race, but was driving alone for most of the second half of the race.
The cars feel really nice and immersive for endurance racing, hopefully there will be more event like this in the future

 

[Tero Dahlberg]

Sometimes you race - and sometimes you have a test session while others race. Guess which was the case for me last night?

Anyway, it was somewhat educational

 

[Will Mazeo]

btw thanks @alexSchmurtz for the target skin, it worked

 

[alexSchmurtz]

btw thanks @alexSchmurtz for the target skin, it worked

Oh no!! Unlucky again...
I must admit I was a bit nervous each time I lapped you...

 

[Crashhard Banger]

So once again causing issues by being overly cautious I'm sorry. Managing traffic around me is probably still my weakest point

Can't really fault you for being overly cautious. It was tricky esp. as we were all on different strategies, fuel loads and tyre wear at various points of the race. I should have exercised a bit more caution myself.

 

[Jonatan Åcerclinth]

Overall a very nice event, although I'm not a fan of Paul Ricard.

Apart from a few unfortunate lappings (mainly down to the incident that caused me to drop back with flatspots and forced early pitstop); I suppose me taking a wider entry looked like I was opening up the door for the P2 to dive in just as I started to look for the apex (haven't checked the replay but I assume that is what happened), I got some good data on the setup that I used and what I'd like to change on it for the future and hopefully I'll be back next week with a slightly better car and a bit more pace to bring it to the faster drivers.

Also, I'm really happy that I was able to keep up with @jego if you were indeed running 1 wing as I was running the default drag option and 4 wing and most of the time running 1 or 2 fuel mixture because of my early stop. Was a nice fight, sorry for not being able to give you a run for your money till the very end

 

[Will Mazeo]

Had a great short battle with @Jonatan Åcerclinth

 

[Jonatan Åcerclinth]

Had a great short battle with @Jonatan Åcerclinth

Sure thing @Will Mazeo, I'm always happy to oblige to a good battle

 

[jego]

Also, I'm really happy that I was able to keep up with @jego if you were indeed running 1 wing as I was running the default drag option and 4 wing and most of the time running 1 or 2 fuel mixture because of my early stop. Was a nice fight, sorry for not being able to give you a run for your money till the very end

I must have had damage and was not getting to my top speed anymore by that time I think. I did not safe a reply so I can't check. But the damage also made the car very unstable in the corners....it would explain why I was loosing so much time suddenly, because my top speed should have been much higher then yours, as I was running low drag and as mentioned wing 1. (did not have time to make a setup or practice, saw the long straight and figured this should work )

But it was very intense, you were following close for so many laps.

 

[Daiman Patel]

It seems that these events just keep getting better and better! I cannot express how much fun that I had during this race, and it's great to see that many of you also enjoyed yourselves! I would just like to very quickly say thank you to all of those who participated, and congratulations to everyone who was able to make it to the end of the race!

For me it was certainly eventful from the get go - I was issued a drive-thru penalty as soon as the race had started for overtaking before crossing the line (I have never seen this before in rFactor 2), which I decided to delay for as long as possible so that I could try to build a gap to my opponents before serving the punishment (@Crashhard Banger, just to clarify, a driver has 30 laps to clear their penalty - it sounds like the warning given to you by CrewChief is a bug). And, much to my amazement this actually (kind of) worked - I found myself in 5th place prior to my first pit-stop. @Martin Fiala, @balage06, and @Roberto De Filippis, our battle was epic - you were all pushing me super hard - and then (unbeknown to me) two of you followed my car into the pits before completely making a fool of me by pulling out just ahead. I believe that I had dropped down to somewhere between 8th and 10th, but was able to fairly quickly regain two places as the cars in front squabbled with one another. Unfortunately this was to the detriment of my tyres which became flat-spotted after a (maybe slightly) audacious overtake at the end of the back straight. This wasn't so bad at the time, but by the end of the race it felt as though my hands were about to be ripped off due to the vibration of my wheel. I then served my penalty and lost those two places again, but I was still in a fairly strong position... until I was bitten by another penalty for cutting the track. I decided to hold off a little before serving this one as well, because I was in the middle of a battle with @alexSchmurtz. With about 20 minutes or so remaining I decided it would be best to serve the penalty - I had previously made it past Alex, and he passed me again while I was in the pits, but I thought that I had decent enough pace to catch him again. That was until, at the first corner after serving my second penalty, I was issued a third for once again cutting the track. By this time @Crashhard Banger had started to catch up, and the car was slowly becoming trickier to drive due to the flat-spot(s) on the front tyres. I served my penalty almost immediately as we were in the closing stages of the race, before it dawned on me that I might not have enough fuel left to finish the race. At the point I began to frantically alter the fuel mixture at every opportunity, and I was aggressively lifting and coasting... It was not long before @Crashhard Banger was on my tail, at which point I was forced to do a splash-and-dash for the final two laps of the race. In spite of all the penalties, which were admittedly my fault, I was more than happy with the 10th place finish because I never even expected to race with anyone... I thought I would be so far off the pace that even the lead GTE cars would have finished ahead of me! Thankfully this was not the case!

I would also like to say that all-in-all the behaviour from both classes was pretty decent, and in spite of a handful of incidents towards the beginning it was a fairly clean race. That being said, I shall apologise in case I did cause grief for any of the GTE drivers, and I say this because I do have a few overtakes in mind where I was either overly impatient or just a bit foolish. And I would like to apologise to @avenger82 as well for snapping when you pulled out in front of me down the back straight. In the heat of the moment I was frustrated, though I know why you moved across. However, for future reference, you should not move aside for a quicker car from another class in this car, as it could caused an accident - I was lucky to have not wiped both of us out in that moment, because I would never have foreseen you pulling out in that way. A purely reactive response allowed us to both continue in the race. Thankfully we both came out of it unscathed.

Finally, if you haven't done so already, you can sign-up for next week's race, in the GTE cars at Virginia International Raceway, here! We look forward to seeing you all on track very soon! For now though, enjoy the rest of the week!