Round 4 Nordschleife - Thu Nov 12, 2020

Here's my race replay, Mac and anyone else if you need it. A while ago I set it to record at medium quality and 1000 MB max size so I don't have to worry about longer races. This one's about 600 megs. Higher replay quality in AC to me didn't seem to matter much.

Aaah but how come you didn't know about European Stock Car series called ESCORS which was running from 2001-2002 I think? I joined there late 2004, caught the eye of the admins' team in one good Darlington ride x) then ran two full seasons with them in what would be a Grand National series. I was commited to that only back then. On rare couple of occasions I had the opportunity to take a seat for someone else who couldn't make it and raced in the primary Cup series with simracing legends like Greger Huttu, Germany's Volker Hackman and Andy Wilke, as well as UK's Richard Towler and USA's Ray Alfala, iRacing champs. I had to make a break from it all and was on a hiatus ever since 2007 until 2019. Was still in touch with some of them. In 2008 most of the people from there switched to iRacing or rFactor then anyway.

 

Will do, thanks John! My situation might be different in a month or two from now when the new Fiscal year starts, so we'll have to see.

 

I really enjoyed yesterday's race. I think div2 has a plus of interest as it naturally finds more traffic and battles than the fast running div1s when they clear away (more difficult for sustained battles to last there). That was rightly picked by our fantastic commentator @Caitlin Penny (although I am a bit biased on this obviously).

Before I get into a brief summary of my race, I think it is fair to say that there were 4 deserving winners for div2. From @Toni Talvitie that could have had a commanding win without @Louis Defor technical problems to @Mac Shepherd that had a great start and consolidated a solid lead after my mistake in Mutkurve, and of course @Henri Miettinen for such a great performance and pace with the Escort. Well done to you all for making a fantastic race. As always in racing, the deities are playing games and throwing randomness to our races while having fun watching from the Olympus above. I was the chosen one yesterday but, I'd say, not less deserving than any of the other three (you can judge by yourselves watching the video of my race).

The video shows, btw, huge frustration with @Kimi Martikainen which is totally undeserved as he was racing for position and for which I apologise. His packing the field was actually brilliant for battles although this is only an after thought . At the time, with the heat of the moment, the increasing pressure from Toni and the blockage from Kimi was driving me mad . I also had a good lift on some occasions at Dottinger Hohe that were more than welcomed . This is where I got the turbo at 100% to compensate for the lack of power of the Escort. I am starting to love the car despite its weaknesses when compared with the rest of the field although it would be unfair to only look at them. The Escort is a master at cornering and a fiery underdog that has its tracks and moments .

Other than the mistake already mentioned, my race was quite solid. Managed to overtake Mac and Toni in fair and beautiful battles, was outraged at the brutal top speed of that BMW but confident I could make up for it on the rest of the track. The battles behind, especially between Henri and Mac were fresh air for my lungs at the end of the race and I manage that distance to keep a memorable win for the records.

Thanks again to everyone for a great race, @John vd Geest for setting up the series and Caitlin for her streaming and commenting.
Congrats to @Matteo Santini (Ford had a fantastic day yesterday ), podiums and everyone for finishing the race and the nefarious (but extraordinary) Nordschleife.

Enjoy the race from my perspective here:

I missed the first 7:25 mins of the replay and the external camera doesn't get in until then...

 

I tried to overtake Jos a second last lap, but there wasn't any room

But I think I lost the chance to win here because Jos got so much gain because of this. And there was two cars to overtake after that.

 

Oops xD

 

That, Sir, must be really annoying, some may think that I try to help my fellow Finns there...but thats not true at all. I can see that Escort took same top speed than my japanese shitbox when slipstreaming, in that point of view Filip did excelent job driving 3rd. I really hate that car tbh, but I'm not going to change my habbits, pick a stupid car, don't even try it and have fun.

 

Well have had bad luck this season.
Punted to last or something at T1 in brands Hatch and 1st lap incident here.
Cursing myself why the heck even continue this shit lol.

But look at the reports and pre-race activity here on forums!
Next season, if its not madza787b or whatnot,
why not some drm ?

 

That mazda btw is the best ever simracing car..just throwing it out there

 

Great save in the second clip!

 

Hahhah your approach reminds me of some adventures I took when racing on SRS with some cars and tracks I really wanted to run. I just jumped in and see how I would do, just watching not to crash or ruin someone's race. This Toyota proved to be very drivable when I got used to it. I didn't race it before. Good RPM range all around the track but has the least power in division 1. Like 280 kmh down the Dottinger. Even less power in the older 1977 version.

But let me also make something clear: I'm not some big DRM beta tester or part of the developing team. Most of my experience and speed with DRM or anything is when I did many races, also at SRS which all started like year and a half ago. Shortly after I got back to simracing and into SRS. I raced against pretty fast guys there which made me turn practice laps to see how to go faster and faster, that's all. And this is not all I was running from vintage or other cars too. So I got in contact with Dennis during this time, talking about the mod and how awesome mod they made. This last summer, just before this patch came out, Dennis told me they would make some changes mostly to the tires and better handling, the M1's improvements and introducing that new BMW 320i turbo Schnitzer. So he sent me that to check them all out and to turn some laps around a fast track to compare laptimes and send it to him. That's it for my beta testing, and the next thing is that it came out in this 1.3 version. Oh, and how even I missed that both Fords had an issue with tire wear, I don't know. Probably because I didn't run long stints

Other than that and until SRO, I didn't see a group of people who were willing to do a season with these cars in Assetto Corsa. Of course, it was ported and the mod exists since rFactor and Automobilista days. Maybe it's not that popular now and of course there is a lot of good cars around for Assetto Corsa. Some cars are not in the mod or weren't important in those DRM days, but still there's 11 different cars in this pack, plus some variants! That's a lot of work. The performances in DRM Revival mod are very different and close to realistic but also balanced just a bit for online. There can be some really unfair advantages, from track to track. Like it was then, and always was in racing.

For some next DRM season, I can right away propose the Ford Escorts against the older BMW 320s. That combo is so great to run and competitive.

 

As a self-post mortem, watching Tim’s lap (yet again) after the race, I noticed how much steering input he was using and realised I wasn’t getting that kind of range with my wheel. Dropped my ffb another 5 points and went 4 seconds faster no wonder it felt such a boat in the twisties.
Expect me to be fighting for pole at Sebring

 

this one is for Kimi, apparently you cant overtake at Nordschleife

 

Have you seen how much slower these other cars are? It's like playing against AI with the AI set to 50.

 

If you got 2 times more power & grip than others is easy to overtake anyone...anywhere.

 

i'm assuming he was very out of position? as he's in the M6 and most of those cars were lower class division. Going onto the grass downhill at full chat whilst overtaking two other cars opened my eyes utter adrenalin rush for him i expect.

 

Even VLN is 3 hours - with nearly 150 cars on track it's not hard to catch a train, within 30 minutes it's almost impossible to look at the track and not always have a car in sight.
Or he may have had an issue and pitted real early I guess, and then been caught on the back of one of the safety car trains before a restart.

 

Ah yes, sorry for the late reply. I'm going to do that just now.