I just had the strangest race ever.

I start 2nd in car #1, so I know, I must have the highest iRating of the field and only one racer qualified faster than me. I think, well, this is my chance to have my first win ever...

We grid. The guy on 1st jumps the start when the lights pop up. I'm thinking: okay, I don't have to worry about this guy anymore, my 1st win ever is getting closer. Lights turn red ... I jump the start. I'm thinking: Well, you can imagine ... Lights turn green and I get away terribly. But I've given up on the chance of winning this, so I figure, just be clean and don't mess up your SR, and who knows, maybe a couple of people will crash and you might get a decent finish.

I serve my time in the pits and head out again. I'm in 8th now. Could have been worse, I'm thinking. One lap later I cross the finish line in 6th, because two guys in front of me crash or spin or whatever. I get by the mess safely. One lap later I'm in 4th. You know, people spinning etc. I reel off two safe laps an I am gaining on 3rd ... which is where I find myself on lap 7. The guy on 1st obviously spun or crashed, or whatever. I'm still gaining on the guy in front of me. On lap 9 I pass him on the s/f straight, iirc, because he got out of shape through the downhill. I'm thinking: well, let's see if the guy in 1st is much faster than me. He's not. I'm rapidly gaining on him and I'm up his bumper by lap 13 or 14. On lap 15, I get a run on him out of the last turn (again, iirc, it all happened so fast, I tend to forget). I'm on the outside and only a nose in front. I brake late and see him slotting in behind me nicely with a large safety margin. I'm thinking: Bring this home safely and it is in fact your first win ... if a little different than expected. Well, I do. I finish 1st with 0 incidents.

The guy in 1st actually let me by on lap 16, because he desperately needed to get his safety rating above 3.0. He was afraid I'd punt him off like had happened to him in the previous race. Plus, I was quite a bit faster. More than one second on average, actually. And it was certainly not my fastest race ever, tbh. I had an average of 1:05.5 (which was his pb). SoF was a measly 1.337, btw, which explains something. I must have been just the best of the rest.

Somehow, I had hoped my first win to be a little more gratifying and exciting. Well, maybe next time.



Edit: erm, I just realized that this wasn't my first win ever. It was my second. How I could forget that, I don't know, but I guess my first win wasn't all that exciting either.

Last edited by Linsen, Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:17.

He could have made it easier for me to pass him by staying left, but he was pretty much in the middle of the track the whole start/finish straight, so my line into T1 was very tight. Still, if I hadn't overshot the corner under braking, all would probably been good.

Oh, well, better next time.

Quote from spanks :

woooooo another race, another .13 to the old safety rating

In a couple hours I hope to have a repeat performance and get above 2.99

I'm at 2.87 right now.

I was grid against some guys that were .1 and .15 faster than me. I started 3rd and had a mission...to get out in 1st and drive the wheels off the thing so I could get a lead built up. I set a new pb, 103.62, with a 66 and 69 before it, and had a comfy lead most of the race.

btw, I saw you linsen ;D

Good race, Daniel! Congrats!

I on the other hand had a quite appalling race. I started 5th and had made it to 3rd place by lap 9. I stayed there for 4 laps until I tried to outbrake some lapper into T1. I overshot the corner and the lapper turned into me.

From there on I limped around the track with a broken suspension in 7th position to fnish in 8th, because I let the guy behind me by. There was no way I could have held him behind, my car was so out of shape. SR went down by 0.02, also.

Quote from spanks :

At the moment the clutch is pretty unnecessary anyways.

That's one thing I didn't even know until earlier today. Auto-clutch is a completely useless option right now, as you can shift just fine with it turned off, and probably faster. Needs to be fixed, imho.

Quote from Nick A :

Ok, I didn't realise they were allowing that at the moment but it does make sense. Hopefully they will allow it for one more season, I'm still at noob pace in the Solstice (and still enjoying it )

According to the rules you can't do it though:

"2.9.2.In all cases – except Rookie Series – drivers may “race down,” participating in series primarily intended for drivers at lower license levels.
2.9.3.Rookie Series are open only to rookie license holders."

Yep, that's not in effect currently. But even if they enforce it for next season, you can still race the Advanced cars, afaik, and I'm sure you'll find your proper competition there as well. I'm more or less at noob pace myself (depending on the track), but still found the competition in the Advanced Solstice to be very well suited for great close races. And the more people are in, the more even the fields should get, no matter what pace you're running.

Quote from Nick A :

Just realised that in order to race in the Autumn Skippy league I will also need to buy 2 tracks (Infineon and VIR) - another $45! Also it's a bit of a shame that I won't be able to race as a Rookie again after Friday but hopefully there will be plenty of Class D drivers by then.

You can always "race down", Nick. So, as a D license holder you will at least eb able to drive the adv. cars. Currently even the rookie cars are allowed, but that might change later, as they might just have allowed that to make sure that there are large enough Rookie fileds in the beginning.

Quote from JJ72 :

And it's clarkson, who exagarrates almost everything.

Jason Plato did give a little more insight in exactly how it drives, I wish Tiff or Martin Brundle can someday test it too, much better reviewers.

I'd never trust Clarkson, tbh. But to be fair, every single review I've read about this car has been hugely positive. So, going by empiricism I'd say it can't be all bad.

I'm really waiting for the "sport auto" review and when they put it around the Nordschleife in their supertest. If that is positive as well, I'll have no further doubts about it's capabilities. I bet they won't like it all that much, though. They just have their heads too far up the german car industry's behinds.

Quote from spanks :

(...)

Daniel! You desperately need to work on your SR! You're not gonna advance to Class D if you can't get it above 3.0 by the end of the season. I mean, currently, you're not even allowed to race the Adv. Solstice, and I would imagine that most of us will probably leave the Rookies behind and race at least the adv. if not the skippy in the coming season.

Also, seeing your pace, you'll probably crush the competition in the Rookies next season, as there'll be many new racers coming in...

I'm in for a full year. And I agree, it's not a bargain, but it's a lot of fun and it doesn't hurt me to shell out 13$/month. I mean, I'm paying 10 times as much for the two daily newspapers I've subscribed to.

@aoun: If you're registered at iRacing.com, there's a good chance that you will receive an invitation at the beginning of the next season, which is only 1 1/2 weeks away.

Quote from spanks :

oh man, if you hate the jefferson course in the solstice, give it a spin with the adv. legend car

I was just messing around and checking out the other road courses in the game, and its an awesome track with the little monster

Yeah, seems like the Legends car is more suited to such a Mickey Mouse course.

As far as LRP goes, I was struggling to get clean laps in at first after coming back to that track. I believe it's the psychological effect that you think you know the track and are reasonably fast at it. So you don't concentrate like you used to (also, personally, I can never really concentrate in practice sessions, I need the SR-threat to be clean and consistent). Once I had that figured out, I set a 1:04.1 with my previous best being a 1:04.4. I just had to force myself to concentrate on all I knew about that track and how to drive it. Took me 16 practice laps to get to that point.

And welcome Nick A.

Anybody tried the Adv. Solstice on the Jefferson course, yet? Not my favourite kind of track, I must say. It's more like a very, very short Rallye stage than a road racing track. I'm really struggling to get into the mid 1:00s. And consistency is, well, I'm currently not even sure what that word means, tbh.

It would have been stupid for NP to try to defend and risk what is his only good finish this season. Prior to the race nobody would have bet a dime on him finishing in the points. So, of course he let the faster LH by.

As far as Massa goes, MS said after the race that he had serious trouble with brakes and tyres, which is why he couldn't even remotely keep up with LH's pace. MS said something to the extent that LH would have probably gone around the outside just as well.

That said, LH did show some remarkable pace this race, although fastest lap goes to Heidfeld. Hamilton obviously was the only one who was consistently fast over all stints.

Great drive by LH, I don't think anyone could seriously doubt that he's a very fast driver. I'm still not so sure about his actual racecraft, as far as passing etc. goes, but than again, he's still young.

I'm quite happy about Heidfeld's 4th place after he again had such a poor qualifying. He really needs to get that sorted.

According to your start position, you should have an iRating of over 2.000 points yourself, you know. No wonder you end up in fields of that magnitude. Good job, Jeroen.

I don't think I'll be racing the skippy much just yet. I'll concentrate on the Advanced Solstice for now. It's just so much fun atm (at least if I'm not punted in T1).

I just had such a great race!

I'm starting 6th on the outside line for T1 and lose one position. But soon, two guys crash out and for 1 lap I have a very nice view on the battle between what's now 3rd and 4th position. The guy in 4th drives like a madman, swerving left and right, trying to get past. So I hang back a little waiting for the inevitable to happen. Sure enough he spins on lap 3.

I take his position and pick up where he left off -- chasing the guy in 3rd. We 're running very similar lap times with me being a tad bit faster. Lap after lap I'm trying to set him up out of the last turn to get alongside on start/finish and pass him into T1, but I just can't get a run on him. By lap 7 or 8 or so, this gets a little too intense for me. I let off slightly for one lap to calm down.

Then I start to increase the pressure again. On lap 13 he has a moment in the twisties. I'm not close enough to pass just yet, but I am now completely up his bumper again. On the last lap, he again gets a little too sideways (I was so absorbed by the fight, I don't even remember where it was). I sneek past, with only a couple of turns to go, and take 3rd! Yay!

This whole battle went on for 11 laps with 0.2 to 0.6 seconds in between us over the whole time. 0 incidents for both of us, too. I just wish I could have saved the replay.

And btw, I finally broke into the 1:29s - twice during the course of the race. My new pb of 1:29.696 is 0.4 seconds faster than my previous best from qualifying and 0.6 seconds faster than my previous best in a race.

This soo makes up for the race before, where I got punted in T1 and had to reset due to suspension damage and finished 10th, although I clearly had top5 pace.

Well, I'm off to bed. Good night.

Quote from Crommi :

My problem is really the fact that rear is sliding around constantly and it's making braking really difficult in some corners.

I'm using a setup for SP that was posted on the iracing forums. It was actually meant for LS, but I'm using it for all other tracks as well, as I feel it makes the Solstice a little more predictable and stable on the rear axle. A loose setup might be a tad faster, but it seems the difference between setups is marginal in the Solstice. It's more a matter of personal preference. I think Ross J. MacGergor or so posted it. You might want to have a look over there. I'm not at home, so I can't post it right now.

Quote from spanks :

(...)

It's your iRating and your qualify time that determines who you're paired with. SR doesn't play a role there, as far as I know. But considering that you obviousy did qualify and usually finish well, it might be that you're just unlucky and get paired with slower drivers. It should get better, the more people are racing, though. Or maybe you're just too fast for your irating? Looking at your PBs you should actually be able to easily hold your own in the Advanced Solstice races, but you can't race them, because your SR is too low. I mean, 5.5 incidents per race is not too bad, but certainly not very good either. So, I'd suggest you concentrate more on driving incident free rather than going as fast as possible, so you can race the Advanced soon. Competition is usually a lot stronger there.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Bit stupid that you got incident points for an accident that was not even your fault, is there no way to appeal against it? I assume with the amount of money you have to pay that they would have a team of people employed to check that sort of stuff.

Well, you can appeal, but I wouldn't wanna do that unless it's a very serious offense. I wouldn't categorize this one as such. In general, the system uses a "no fault assigned" policy. So, no matter who is at fault, incidents count against both drivers involved. I actually believe this system works, as 1) it evens out in the end. The reckless driver will always get more incident points in the end and eventaully will not be able to advance in the license ladder. And 2) I could have avoided that incident, if I hadn't relaxed after the race and thus had noticed earlier that he was stopping. I will think better next time, not to relax until I'm safely in the pits and the other guy probably won't stop in the middle of the track anymore after the race is fnished, because he got 4 points, as well, of course. So, it's unfortunate, but I think the system works.

@jason: Exactly, the system really teaches you clean consistent racing. That's part of what is so great about it.

<rant>Boy, am I furious right now! I had such a great race at Summit Point, very even field, was stuck behind a guy for quite some time, couldn't get past, dropped back a bit due to one or two suboptimal laps, slowly caught up again, but wasn't fast enough to pass, had pressure form behind for most of the time -- so, overall a really exciting race, even if I wasn't able to pass anyone -- but then, after the finish line, just when I relax, this guy just stops right on the racing line! When I realize what's going on, I slam the brakes, try to avoid him by going off track, but too late! Made slight contact and receive 4 incident points. Probably the most unnecessary, inane 4 incident points I ever got.</rant>

Please ignore this post, there's nothing to see, just a guy and some anger management...

This is pure speculation, but I'd expect the next wave of invites to go out at the beginning of next season or so. So, that would be like two or three weeks from now.

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

Let's stick to iRacing. I am very close to 3,0 safety rating and nowhere near the times you guys are driving... Still looking forward to the Skippy

I couldn't resist and bought the skippy last weekend (after chaining myself to iRacing for a whole year :schwitz, but didn't have much time to give it a proper try. I did take a few laps around LRP, though, and found it a blast to drive! It's very, very adjustable on the throttle, displaying a huge amount of lift-off oversteer if you're not careful. But it's predictable on the limit and relatively easy to catch.

I'm sure it'll be even more fun once I'm actually driving it fast.

Quote from sosna :

When using cockpit view,are there any adjustments that could be altered?From the screenshots i noticed that i might need to push the screen a bit forward.

Currently only fov is adjustable in the game. It would be nice if you could adjust the seating position forwards and backwards without altering fov and so have some people suggested. Whether it will come is currently unsure, but I would hope so.

Quote from sosna :

About extra cars and tracks:could i buy Skippy even though im rookie and practise with it?

You can drive whatever you own offline in testing sessions, afaik. But all online events are offlimits, I think.

I've tried some oval racing, but the three races I had pretty much ruined it for me. The first one I had to drop out after the pace lap, because my pc was acting up (got random black screens).

Second one I failed to avoid someone spinning in front of me on lap two. I reset, had 36 boring laps afterwards and finished two laps down in 9th position.

Third one I was taken out on lap 1, but could keep going. On lap 5 I proceeded to hit the wall when I tried to avoid someone spinning in front of me. I kept going but my sespension seemed a little knackered. On lap 7 I turned in on someone who had the low line. I had to reset and drove 30 boring laps to finish 3 laps down in 10th.

Oval is not for me, I guess.

Did I mention that I hate LS? Well, I do. I wish I had some sort of useful advice for you guys, but I'm suffering from the exact same problems you are - only I'm slower.

My fastest lap is not even below 1:50 (1:50.1, but offline with no fear of screwing up). In races I'm doing relatively consistent low 1:51's (as long as I don't zone out for whatever reason), usually with one lonely 1:50.8 thrown in. But my line is different each lap. T4 is just about the only turn I can take with some sort of consistency. T9 (Rainey Curve after the cork screw) is also my personal nightmare. I've resorted to lifting the throttle right before the lowest part and than jabbing the brake under turning till the nose of the car is somewhat pointed towards the apex. Then I hit the throttle. That way I'm usually giving away half a mile of tarmac on the exit, but at least I'm not messing up. That turn alone probably costs me half a second, I reckon. I hate LS.

On the up-side, I just had an easy race in a field that was supposedly rated at 1.627 points. Probably mostly new drivers who just started out and thus still had their irating of 1.600 points (although the SR's tell a different story, at least in parts). I cruised to an easy second place, collected 91 points and am now on position 42 for the series. I think I won't race LS anymore this week. It can only get worse.

@jertje: your irating must be quite high if you're getting 2000+ fields. I only get that in Advanced races, where I'm miles off the pace.

I added you guys.

Here's my iRacing info

@jason: 1:51.1 is actually quite good, imho. My pb is 1:50.2, but I'm far off my pace on LS this week. Was barely able to pull off a 1:50.8 during the race and couldn't even get below 1:51 during a time trial. Way too many incidents, too. I hate that track.

@TV: I totally agree, Summit Point is a great track. Suits the Solstice very well. More like LRP. If I wasn't so dreadfully slow compared to most of the Advanced racers I'd just race that. I need more practice, though. PB offline is a low 1:30 and a 1:30.8 in TT. That doesn't really cut it with the other advanced racers, I suppose.