rFactor 2 Round 2 Mont Tremblant 24 H - Sun Sep 20, 2020

I have to duck out of this one so have dereged - have a good race all

 

Ferrari should have splurged on the number of candles they put in the head lights. I can't see s**t or that is all I can see.

 

It's OK this is a day race I think

 

What about Le Mans?

 

Lap 3 a bit wide over the crest. Hit the barrier. Suspension broken, no way to get to the pits. End of race

 

Universum gave me a slap for beeing too arrogant.
Id done 1.19.4 or something with meds and full tank so was so sure this is ride in the park. only swap tyres once during race.
Took with that attitude the 1st lap and crashed for 120seconds of repairs.

Well after repairs my wheel was straight aswell so figured, hell with it, ill doit and win this one or atleast be close.
Ment i had to push and go with the limit and eventually crashed then after 1st pit stop.

Car was great. Havent been into it in year or 2 and it felt like home.

 

Thank you for the race. Great duel at the end @Paul Anstey . Sorry for the hit. It was my first race with LMP and I really enjoyed it.

 

Grats Paul and Barrett! You guys did good.

First half the race was clean, on a role. Second half went to shit. Speeding in pit lane, watching Darrel Krugers rear end dancing around/became hypnotized, lost control, spun and took out Kruger on my way out.

Sorry Darrel. I zoned out lost the rear end and took you out sideways.

Their was no such thing as resting on this track. Such a mean track! It'll bite you when you least expect it.

Good racing all.

 

Didn't realise you had

 

What a great race. I had to really battle for this win. After Toni span on the first lap I took the lead and created a little gap to the guys behind. Toni came out of the pits just ahead of me after his repair (a lap down) and he acted as a pace runner which settled me down into a good rhythm. Span as I entered the pit lane for my first stop and with Marcos right behind me I felt sure I'd lost the lead but somehow I still retained it after everyone had pitted. It wasn't to last as soon afterwards I came down the hill at the start of the lap and slightly lost the backend. By the time I'd gathered it up I'd run out of track and bumped my way across the grass giving Marcos the lead. I managed to stay with him though. I always drive better when I'm chasing someone. My 2nd pitstop was a disaster. I changed my front tyres which was a major mistake. The next lap I span or half span a couple of times as I had massive grip on the front and the rears just couldn't keep up so they kept loosing traction. So I had to pit a couple of laps later to take on new rears. By this time I was 3rd. Began chasing Roman but every time I made an inroad into his lead I got caught in traffic. As a result of this he extended his lead from 4 seconds to 9 seconds. Found myself in 2nd place after Marcos had his incident so catching Roman was now for the lead of the race. Think I past Roman during the 3rd pitstop phase. He closed the gap soon afterwards and again the gap ebbed and flowed through the traffic. Think he was better than me at getting through it though. I guess at some point he hit me but I don't know where that was although he did suddenly drop back. I thought he'd pitted as the gap went up to 30 seconds. All I now had to do was bring the car home. Wow what a race. Drama from beginning to end. Absolutely love these long races. Brilliant track.

Please don't reduce the racing length. Run the series for the people that have turned up not for those people who probably won't show up even if you did drop the race length. There will be large gaps after 30 minutes of racing so changing it to 90 mins will make little difference to the race experience. I personally had a great enthralling race from start to finish here and had a great race at Sebring.

Well done to the LMP2 podiums and to Barrett and the GTE podiums

 

I hate this track
After a few laps I made a slight mistake where you shouldn't make even the slightest mistake. It took ages to go back to pits and repair. When I was able to run again I was 5 laps down and 3 laps behind the last GTE. Only thing left for me was to chase down the GTE pack to unlap myself and come back ahead of them. I made my best to be patient and took my time when passing them because there was no blue flag to announce me.
4th in the end, but a pity as I was able to follow with ease Marcos and Roman when they lapped me. Could have been a good race but, somehow that was fun to make my way through GTE field.

As Paul said, please don't reduce the racing length. I think the track is the one to blame for the low sign-up of this race. That's a hell of a track and pretty hard to master, hence probably the bunch of deregs we had for this race. Next tracks are better for long races, would be a shame to not have a long time on them.

 

I like the current length. I'm not just driving alone for an hour, i'm closely watching gaps and traffic and plotting my pit stops. This track can easily discourage drivers, so i don't think we should adjust anything before we see what the turnout is for LeMans.

I ran alone for a lot of this race, but i was constantly aware of and trying to improve where i was relative to Johnny vis-à-vis our pit stop strategies. It's the reason i felt compelled to be a bit of a bully with you, John, with that T8 pass .

 

As for the rest of the post-race report:

When the day began, i wasn't feeling too good about this race.

I thought i knew the track sufficiently, and I've had 4 or 5 races in the M8 since the "BOP update" that had ruined my base set. But i ran all of them with the LeMans package, mostly because i couldn't solve the problems i had with the standard downforce package and, while i'm pretty confident that the new LM base set is working, I figured this track needed the standard downforce package.

So i started my practice early, and discovered that not only did my LM shock and spring settings not work well with the standard downforce package, but i didn't know the quirks of this particular version of the track all that well either. So i was scrambling.

Eventually i got it into the 28s and took a break for lunch.

When i returned to the server, as expected with more cars on track, the grip levels seemed lower, but a couple ticks of wing solved that without sacrificing lap times, so, good to go, right?

Except Q was in the dark...

Now, i knew this was going to be because i'd been on the server when it transitioned, but did i prepare for it? Did i do even one lap in the dark to see what i could or couldn't see? No, of course not. I'm a lazy dumb shit. But thanks to a long and private Q session, i did manage to eventually get comfortable enough to claw my way to 2nd on the grid by taking chances i never would in a race (like holding the fast pedal down thru T1).

As for the race...

Johnny pulled away in the first stint. Especially when the proto's started coming thru. The timing favored him and he played it very well. Then that fortune reversed a bit later as i caught a few breaks from the lapping protos. It was all great fun!

We were approaching cars in our own class when my pit window opened and my crew chief said i'd come out in clean air, so i went for the undercut. Thought it was a brilliant maneuver as i saw the gap to Johnny (who hadn't stopped yet) closing to the point where i might have come out 7 or 8 seconds ahead after his stop, but then i screwed up by getting too close to John v G in that high speed right hand kink and thought it would be a good idea to down shift where i'd never down shifted before. Brilliant! Went into a half spin and cooked my rear tires, which were shit for the rest of the 2nd stint, giving me big time oversteer. I made A LOT of mistakes trying to deal with that, losing up to 2 seconds on some laps. Johnny, having stopped, eventually got by when i made a huge braking mistake, sending me off-track, just before my pit window opened again.

The new tires were the thing, and i set about trying to close the gap to Johnny (who hadn't made his 2nd stop yet) to the point where i might again take the lead.

Unfortunately, Johnny then had some trouble about the time of his second stop and wound up making two trips to the pit within a lap or two. I wound up with a huge lead just when i was thinking we were on for an epic closing stint battle. Lots of fun up to that point, expecting a lot more at LeMans.

Grats to Paul! A good day for BadVoicesRacing!

[edit: corrected a spelling mistake]