Assetto Corsa Round 2 Road America - Mon Mar 15, 2021

Boy, great racing up front and great pace. What a demanding and nimble car! I drove it a little before but not racing online where I could compare laptimes with others. I wish I had the time today to check on all the possibilities with pit strategy. I wasn't planning to pit at all, but then someone yelled 'there is a pitstop' at the chat hhahah Seeing my great pace over others at the start, I thought someone might have been messing around with me Still, took just 50/50 fuel and strategy. Didn't know what's the tire change time also, so I didn't take those. Apparently, I should've done that instead! Anyway, great battles in the opening laps with @Jos Ogos and @Laurent Londes
There was an incident with me being side by side with Maddie, and Jos in front of us at turn 1 - lap 3... I've seen Jos suddenly rubberband/lag to the right at the apex, and I don't know if @Maddie Shepherd got caught by that too? I certainly was surprised, so she rear ended him since she had no where to go and we had a silly incident. I relatively easy went out of that, but unfortunately Maddie spun there. Hard to nail the lap around here for me. But she showed stunning pace in the race, especially later on.
Oh, I apologize again to @Davide Ricciardi who I bumped and turned around at the Carousel. Being too close following him through, the gap suddenly narrowed to 0.... baah I didn't judge that good at all. So I decided to slow down and let him catch up and pass me. I had quite a good litte battle later on with him and @Mark Johnson!

 

So many stupid lag incidents tonight. Got punted because of it at turn 1 which cost me around 10 seconds. 3rd is fine but could have been a lot closer to the top 2 without that.

 

Yep, flew into the gravel because of that. Jos was definitely lagging a lot during the race.

 

I guess it was not specifically related to Jos, as I was seeing Philip lagging all along the first stint, being really difficult to try a safe approach for a manouvre. Watching at the live broadcast by Caitlin that issue seems randomly appears from time to time, and reading the comments it doesn't surprise me that a lot of drivers had same issues.
Server was probably not so "healthy" tonight, despite this I had a good race from start to finish, and apart from some lag by Philip I didn't suffered anything like this in my battles against Jos during the first half of the race.

 

Fantastic race tonight, what a great combination, this car was made for Road America.
Couldn’t believe the pace, even with a 1.14.7 I was only 11th
Race start was okay but I got distracted by the two cars coming together on my left, braked later than intended and the car just understeered at T1. I think I tagged Lorenzo (sorry) so eased off down to t2 to let him back through. We then had a fantastic battle for about half an hour, often side by side. I finally got past with a clever switchback in the middle sector and was upto 7th .
Took my stop with half hour remaining but rejoined in 13th despite a clean stop This put me in a 3 way battle with Filip and Davidde? But I wasn’t sure if they had pitted yet so the racing was a bit confused for a few laps until Filip pulled away. Soon the stops shook out and I had a quiet final 10-15mins to the flag. But there was awful lag in the last laps and I was sure the game or server would crap out but it held thankfully. Finished 7th.
Well done to Matteo, podium and finishers, it was a tough hour of racing but really enjoyed it

 

Quite an intense and competitive race yesterday.
I managed to break to the 2:13s in practice (showing the way to the other top runners ) and repeated it again in the early stages of qualy. Unfortunately, I didn't time well my first stint in qualy and ran out of fuel so had to spend the last 5mins in pits seeing how I was relegated to 4th in the grid .
The first few laps in the race were hectic. Managed an overtake on @Laurent Londes when he was punted by @Davide Ricciardi? on T5 and kept P3 for a while, challenging @Matteo Santini for P2 at times and later on engaging in a fantastic defensive battle with @Filip Stoyanovich and Laurent to maintain P3. Filip consolidated the overtake but Laurent and I were exchanging P4 and P5 in different parts of the track. That fighting couldn't be good for our wider battle with Matteo, @Philip Kraus and Filip, so I decided to pit early and clear the way to, hopefully, not lose much time on our dog fight...
A few of the front runners lost quite a lot of time during the pit stop . Filip made the 'rookie' mistake of not preparing for the fuel strategy before the race (I'm sure this won't happen again), but having timed Matteo's pit stop and compared it with mine, I can see we are exactly the same time (11 secs) actually stopped changing tires and refueling. The big difference (2.5 secs) on the overall pit entry is due to Matteo's clever strategy to use AC's benevolent take on those dive-bombing into pits at maximum speed. If you do that in almost any other sim, you get a massive penalty including a 10 secs Stop & Go... I suppose we could all dive-bomb into pits but it might be more proper to enter the pit without killing 3 entire crew teams on your way...

There is an issue that I believe we should investigate before the next races. It happened in Zandvoort and massively more in Road America... The brutal lag moments (I'm not sure what caused them but it wasn't only me, @Maddie Shepherd... I think it was a server issue) impacted heavily the race yesterday . For starters, the initial spin from Maddie when Filip, her, and I were approaching the real T2, wasn't just me lagging. You can see in Caitlin's replay that her system was also affected. I saw several instances of the server ping going all the way to 2480!! I'm not sure if this is caused by the server, the car, or the tracks that we are using, but something is going on and it is worrying because it's having a real effect on the races. In Zandvoort, @Csaba Lako and @Mark Johnson had a massive wreck of their races without fault by any of them. Yesterday, I could see cars' relative distance shortening and increase due to netcode issues that gave you no confidence to get any closer to your opponents . @John vd Geest, not sure what can be done about this but something is going on...

I'm not even sure if the 7.5 secs difference between front runners after pitting between Matteo/Laurent and Philip/I which @Caitlin Penny rightly pointed out during her stream, could have also been partially the effect of the server losing net data (leaving aside dive-bombing technics...) After pitting and more collective lags, I overtook Philip and @Lorenzo Galluzzi for P3 and the final battle with Philip was unleashed in the last 15mins of the race. This finished earlier than expected with an incident that will be under investigation so I won't comment on it here... History repeated again after Zandvoort and I found myself ending in 5th after giving a good fight for the whole race.
Congrats to Matteo, Laurent, and Maddie for the podiums... And sorry to see my teammate @Maxime Tendil having a bad day and binning the fantastic effort his cats put on the great setup that gave us a competitive car .
Video of the race here as usual:
I'll have to upload the video again as there was a processing error from minute 48...

 

I'm not very happy about last night, since i'm moving in another house i hadn't time enough to practice, i was really struggling with setup, hard to avoid blocking the front wheels when braking, and a lot of understeer. Fighting with @Mark Johnson was really intense and clean, it's a pleasantly repeating situation lately.
Thanks everybody for racing and Caitlin for the amazing broadcasat.
See you in Laguna

 

@Jos Ogos in race 1 I saw people entering pit going on the guard rail, jumping their pit stall and putting reverse gear, so a "dive-bomb" into the pit knowing that my crew was at a safe distance, wasn't surely an issue . @Filip Stoyanovich that was right behind me did simply the same. The difference was due to the fact he did my same mistake of race 1, something that I mentioned in my comment to Zandvoort race but he probably missed not having joined it. I lost some 14 seconds by Laurent and Maddie in that race for that stupid move, so the "strategy" is not a great factor in this races. You have to refuel less than 20 litres to match the time the crew need for your tyre change.
Maybe who did persevered on adding half tank at the pit should have read my Zandovoort comment with more attention

 

Qualified in P3, could have been better but I was happy to get a good lap in as I made small mistakes on previous laps during the session. Not much separated the times at the top which was great to see. I was not expecting this.

Race start was good, I was on the back of the 2 cars in front but unfortunately Davide punted my in turn 5 I think. He really missed his braking there I think. That put me back in P6 with a 2 second gap to close. Filip and Maddie came together in T1 in a weird accident which promoted me 2 places. Filip was catching me quickly behind. I was guessing he was slower on fuel seeing his pace and didn't make the overtake too difficult, I didn't want to waste time. By the half our mark I had catched Jos as well. That proved to be a fierce battle for a lap or 2. I'm glad he went into the pits when he did as we were both losing so much time fighting. He realized that too and pitted. I had some clean air now and did some more laps before stopping. I came back ouf of the pits in virtual P2 position a few seconds behind Matteo. I tried to push and I was gaining on him.

When I got close to Matteo he did go off track with all 4 wheels at 'The Kink' (turn 11) for 3 laps in a row gaining an advantage down the straight. Because of that I could not get close which I would have been able to otherwise. This is worth a 2-3 tenths advantage down the straight in my opinion. I'd like to hear from @Matteo Santini about this as I think this is unfair driving. He only did it on those laps when I was close.

 

Don't want to be polemic Laurent, but I didn't gain anything with that moves, as in fact I was losing a bit of time when I went with four wheels on the grass at T11 cause I had to lift a bit the throttle to avoid losing control of my car. I have more valid laps than you by what I can see from the live timing, and you can compare my 3rd sector times of the second stint with the 3 laps you're mentioning.
Compare times of 3rd sector at lap 20-21-22 (all not valid for the stracker) with the time of 3rd sector in subsequent laps (23-24-25) that were all valid laps. If you sum the 3rd sector laptimes you'll discover that I was slower in non valid laps, and I wasn't surely gaining 2 or 3 tenths with that moves, unless you're joking

http://managerdc6.rackservice.org:50868/sessiondetails?playerInSessionId=9537#

 

Look I don't like this, and we are doing this for fun, but I must say I was quite upset with it during the race as you don't run that wide unless it's on purpose. Sector times don't tell the whole truth, it's about that part of track and I'm not sure you are right. I tried it myself a few laps later I think on lap 25 and gained from it, you can't see it on my sector time as I let go a bit afterwards.

Here are the shots from those 3 consecutive laps.

 

Laurent, you can think what you want, my non valid laptimes were absolutely in line with the valid laps. Do a protest, but don't go on with this "unfair driving" stories you've got only in your mind. Can I say that you can't prove that I was gaining 2 or 3 tenths of a second by going wide on the grass? Do you guess how ridicolous is this statement?

 

It would help if you would explain why you run that wide 3 laps in a row when I am close behind. That is why I didn't file a complaint yet. Telling me I can't prove it or my argument being ridiculous is not what is convincing me that this is not unfair.

 

Because I was feeling the pressure and I was getting nervous? I'm not an Iceman. I'm Italian, and I feel emotions, even when driving. When you lost contact after we passed some backmarkers I took back my calm, but you're accusing me I did it on purpose to gain time, and it's frankly unacceptable, other than unprovable.

 

Ok, fair, I accept what you are saying and this is what I wanted to know. I don't think it is unacceptable for me to think this is unfair driving when you go that much off track for 3 laps in a row.

I'll leave it at that.

 

I'm just sorry you might think I did it on purpose, that's all. I hope we can go on without thinking again about this. I'll try to be more respectful about track limits, but that was not the right point to risk something to gain a tenth or 2, as I risked more losing control of the car because of my late braking point than gaining something "exploiting" the grass on the outside

 

Every time I went wide there I lost about 2 tenths. Don't think it's faster at all.

 

I try to drive fair myself and that is probably the most important thing for me in racing and I expect it from others as well. As I never went that wide there during the race or practice and I saw you do it 3 times in a row I was pretty sure it was on purpose to break the tow. I'm sorry if I stated the fact that it was unfair a bit too much, but it looked that way from my point of view.

No problem, I'm happier with knowing you did it because you were nervous than thinking you were unfair. We have raced more together and I don't see you as an unfair driver. Case closed

 

Well I tried it semi on purpose a few laps after I saw Matteo did it and if you accelerate from the apex and keep the throttle floored through the grass then you gain a few tenths. I saw it on my delta time very clearly. This car is really stable under power.

 

i went wide there due to my understeer