Le Mans Ultimate Bonus Round 8 COTA (DLC)

Hopefully I didn’t get in the way too much.

No practice and I haven’t driven on this circuit in a few years.

I’d probably get better after some setup changes but just no confidence in the car at all. Kept locking up or running wide. Understeer was hard to control but I’m tired and probably just unable to concentrate. Car just wouldn’t behave. Haha.

Anyway, stuck round till the end and it was nice to finally race the livery.

 

those last 2 laps were epic @Lewis Middleton & @Toni Talvitie.... well raced!!

 

I'll crank out the World Series (round 1) points in due course when the admins have finalised the results from today.

 

well done to Phillip for taking the championship, and matej for the race win and my team mate robin for getting to the end!

My pace was similar to matej in the first stint and ruined a set of tyres in qualy so took another, rather than put on a worn set at the stop I decided to roll the dice and not take tyres, took on a little too much fuel so only had a few seconds advantage in the end and knew it will only be a matter of time before matej would pass me on fresh tyres, was not going to make it easy for him tho, good hard racing.

As we were struggling for numbers in this series and it looks like it will be the same for the Asian le mans series, perhaps we should forgo the multi class racing for now and just have multiple series one after each other with the different cars instead so everyone has someone to battle with regardless of their pace and everyone gets to drive all the different types of cars, just a thought.

 

Game crashed in practice, was the third time overall but the first after the update. Not sure what is going on, you get a prompt which enables you to send a crash report. I did, hopefully that helps to fix this...

Anyway, what a tricky track. My first 20-30 laps were so horrible and I was clueless what to do. Fortunately it got better, but I had to let Robin in the first part of the race, he was simply faster. Maybe because I gambled on a more low drag set up, I corrected that at the stop.
I was then able to overcut him and then put the hammer down. To my surprise I did not only increase the gap to him, I went purple in the first sector and some laps later even got the fastest lap, which also reduced the gap to the top two. With my fresh tyres I was then able to be 1-2 sec per lap faster then Nick.

Just running out of laps, three second gap with one lap to got and he faced traffic in the esses but I turned out to be one of the Hagemanns Was not supposed ot be. Was a tough but rewarding series, thanks for running. Congrats Matej/Hue for another win, spectacular battle with Nick according to the broadcast.

Oh and congrats Lars, if my math is correct than he leads the overal series.

 

joined practice and tested some cars out, wanted to take something new.
For the race no high hopes but eventually i saw that P3 beeing possible and my tires held nicely whole race, even tho realizing people are fighting for points so kept everything super clean.
Good racing guys!

 

It was really close between me and Nick, already in Q only a tenth apart with a really good lap! I managed to keep the lead at the start of the race and then steadily pull of a few tenths a lap, so at the time of the pit stop i had about 5-6s comfortable lead. I should know that Nick would try to go w/o changing tyres as he must have had a spin in Q (no fast lap in first try and back to pits). Anyway, I was quite surprised to see Nick ahead when I got beck from pits, but soon realized how he did it. So I said to myself, just take it easy, I have plenty of time. I was then caught out by much more grip, specially under braking. It was the reason for a half dive bomb into the last corner and a spin, luckily just for me. A few laps and I was back on Nick's tail and after some close racing I managed to get by. His deficit in grip with old tires was quite big, but I could have a problem as Nick was faster on the straights. Enjoyed this race very much! Hope to see a single class champ now to get a full grid hopefully! See you all there

 

Just a quick question on technique for these cars because maybe I'm missing something or a feature in the game.

One of the reasons why I had issues on this track was the A pillars blocking my view of the apexes in certain corners. It made turn in and braking points really tough. Hence why I was having difficulty gaining confidence around this circuit. On most other tracks it's not an issue. Spa was fine for example. Silverstone has been fine as well.

In some other sims you can of course "cheat" by using a nose cam (RF2) or even an elevated view (roll hoop on a formula car for example) which gives a wider field of view. Which i sometimes use to even just learn a new track.

Are there any techniques or view settings I can try to make this a bit easier for me?

Otherwise I wasn't too bad. I was on for 1m 57s most laps but usually I would catch a kerb badly or get a track limits warning and lose the time.

 

Congrats to Matej and Philipp on the race win and the series win!

My main goal was simply to make it to the finish. The first stint was good fun, but after the pit stop I felt like I’d lost some pace. I also took a few too many risks trying to get past the GTs, so after that I just focused on bringing the car home. By the end, the race definitely felt a bit long.

Thanks to @Rob Milliken for hosting!

 

Great series of races. Not really spent a lot of time in LMU which has meant this has been a great learning curve, not only the driving itself but also the strategies possible on pitting. Experimented again last night with a halfway fuel/VE only stop. The last 10 laps were a series of adjusting to the increasing understeer while trying to maintain a decent pace. Held on to 6th despite a slide through T4 and T5 that I was lucky to hang on to. Congrats to the winners and thanks for some great racing

 

Thanks for the broadcast Rob I enjoy watching them, great race, is that the end of the championship now?

 

Thanks for that Lewis. Yep, at the moment I tried to copy what I'd seen on various YT videos so higher up and forward enough that I can still see the top of the steering wheel and the front corners of the car. Seems to work ok but as I mentioned the nature of the corners at COTA just made me look like a learner driver on their first lesson! lol.

It could just be a learning thing, I normally do a few hours against the AI and then ride onboard with a few AI cars to learn their lines, braking points, etc. In this instance I just didn't get to do that.

Apologies that I haven't been much use on this series, I normally find much more time to practice and enjoy the racing more. Work and life in general has just made it tricky the last few months.

Not too sure at the moment if I'll do the next series or not because I know I'll have the same problem but we'll see.