Round 1 Brands Hatch GP - Thu Oct 1, 2020

Think you may have fun with tires at the next race. Just done some laps and the front left gets red hot within a few laps.

 

The Ferrari was difficult to get off the line so I arrived at Paddock with plenty of time to react to the incident. Looking at the replay there was a car behind Stefan trying to squeeze into a gap that just wasn't there as they approached the braking point for Paddock and the ensuing contact caused the mayhem that unfolded. While not intentional it was certainly avoidable!

Anyway, I joined at the back of the queue and then wrestled for an hour trying to claw my way back. Had some nice battles along the way but had a bit of a moment when I put a wheel on the grass which fired me across the track into the side of a Lancia. Think it was either Toni or Fabrizio who must have been wondering what was going on.....apologies

Quite like the Ferrari but I'm slow as a snail. At least I'll be able to have some good racing with the Div 2 cars

 

It's not : the Escort (Gr2) also. And yes I was in endurance tires of course. Though I really didn't skid/trail-braked/drifted sustantially, my rear tires were red-dead by the half of the race. In addition, there is no rear geometry setting available on the Escort. (Dunno if it's the same for other cars ?)

 

The Ferrari is not good at rotating through the corner it seems to understeer a bit. Damn fast down the straights. I love driving it though. The next track should suit us better.

 

Escort, Capri and Toyota are all live axle so don't have geometry (It's in the release notes for V1.3 )

 

Well, hadn't thought about that. Still I don't see how I could make the car hold the 1h duration for the moment. And how to make it actually turn neither. If I make her trail brake or drift I will kill the tires even much sooner.. Any idea ?

 

Out of curiosity, what does the "Next" column mean in the driver championship tables?

 

I did practice but ill be honest i really dont know how to setup DRM cars and went on a witchhunt looking for Lancia Beta Montecarlos and if they slightly tuned it like F1s in that era (smaller front tires wider backs). I couldnt find anything on them (if someone out there knows where i can find some more info on how these bad boys where setup point me and ill do the research) so i ended up going to championship streams trying to find something on how people set them up. Low and behold found a few and seen that they keep turbo between 80 70 percent (track dependant of course). My biggest issue was the differential and gearing (where my pace was widely affected) and not even the live streams could help with that. Again if someone can point me to a basis usually im quick to digest and divulge info into my car but on that i was running on limited info and it showed in my pace. Also im not a big fan of Brands (i know shocker since its kinda like Laguna Seca which is near my home track and home county Sonoma Raceway and Sonoma County respectively).

 

even so, because wanted to do div I but got redlighted so went to div II then.
Anyhow mod is great and heat is on so trustfull about getting season 2 aswell.

 

We're outnumbered by Div1 yet..

 

My racing in this simulator - I'm still learning.

Before racing at Brands Hatch, I tested all Division 1 cars and chose the one with my worst times.
There was no time for setup, I limited myself to setting the gearbox of my Porsche.

Let's skip qualifying, the race. Race, race .... the gentlemen from Division 1 have gone, I, in my class 1.5, barely broke away from my colleagues from Division 2 ... that's it. Lonely 60 min race.
But I made it all the way to the finish line. I hope that the "mechanics" will fine-tune the Porsche settings for me and that it will only be faster.
Regards

 

Turn can also be affected by shock, spring, diff, ride height (front Vs rear), camber and and ARB settings. Less camber can give lower temps in some cases if you setup to maximise contact in the highest stressed corners rather than purely for lap speed over a few laps.
Toe is more of a fine tuning mechanism in most of my setups, in fact I try to keep rear toe as small as possible - If I can achieve 0 degrees then I'm a happy camper..

Over-heating rear tires mean you're using them far more than the front tires, so you need to take load off them and put it on the fronts.
Easiest way is to induce understeer, as that makes the front tire do far more of the work, freeing the rears up concentrate far more on pushing the car around instead of skating around doing the cornering too.
As you know, I normally 4 wheel drift in classics. But the Slicks in the DRM mod really don't like you doing that due to the heat generated, so I'm having to drive much straighter now.
Without trying it yet myself I'd probably start with stiffer front ARBs, softer rears, and a more open diff for acceleration, with it tighter for deceleration.
That will already move your bias well towards or into understeer. Springs, shocks and brake balance can then be used to fine tune the car behaviour.
Set them up correctly and the car will still trail brake/turn better under brakes, but will be less likely to step out and actually start sliding (Use the same ethos in the RSR's we're currently racing also, that's exactly what I did for the Anglesey round when my original setup was too unstable). Side slip and wheel spin are your enemys in this era - it IS quicker, but only for the lap or 3 until the tires over heat. After that you have a choice of slowing to cool your tires, or trying to maintain pace while melting them away from under you at a huge rate.
As I mentioned before: I'm pretty certain that AC simulates the increased tire wear that accompanies over heating.
Keeping tires cool can sometimes mean slowing as little as a few tenths a lap, conceivably (and I intend to test this) the Capri's could have made it to the end had they driven to a lap speed just fast enough to keep the rest of us behind. It's a very real technique in endurance motorsports, and one I recently used to great success in the Saturday ACC events too. It's just slightly less exciting...

In qualifying you can go nuts with the setup as it's always possible to have a cool down lap when all 4 tires have turned red, but a setup that does that will never be a fast setup in a full race as it will cause massive lap speed degradation over time.

This will apply to all F/R cars and seems to works for the Porsches. The M1 seems to want something else I haven't found yet though as I can't remove my own understeer still! Odd really as my test runs in the Lancia showed it to love getting it's tail out in inappropriate places

 

The K3 is easily the fastest car in Grp1 - you'll go faster once you get to grips with it trust me
Most of the time to be gained is learning how to drive it fast, it's very counterproductive. It's almost American muscle in its' handling. Terrible turn in, slow mid corner, and then it makes the world spin backwards underneath you when you hit the power.
If you find yourself going slow you may actually be over driving it - Both K2 and K3 hate that, same as the BM - you just can't throw them around like you would the Capri's, Toyotas or Grp2 cars.
If you have a replay it might be worth seeing how Mark is driving his K2. Given that car is about 1.5 seconds off the (Grp1) pace at Brands he has to have pretty much sussed it out to have finished as well as he did from so far back on the grid

 

Interesting info Tim. I will re-read this when I'm practicing for the next round. Hopefully I can improve my setup. Thanks.

 

I didn't test/prepare the Escort more than a few laps before this 1st event but as I said, the problem here is that I am understeering yet and my tires don't get very very hot but still rear mostly but front too were literally dead not much later than mid-race..
I need to practice a lot to learn that mad-ish track you reserved for us in Porkers but I'll try to work on that Escort as soon as possible, probably with the help of Jos.