Assetto Corsa Comp Round 4 Spa Francorchamps | Nov 14th 20:00 gmt | (120 min 24 hr time accell event)

Wish My Graphics looked like that

 

It was a good battle apart from one thing - on 2 or 3 occasions you out braked yourself into Double Gauche and then rejoined directly onto the racing line forcing me to either brake or hit you - once you forfeit a corner, you've forfeit the corner and can't simply re-join and block as if nothing has happened. Even the strange American rules SRO use will frown on that behavior.

Otherwise my race was intense. For some reason I didn't have my earlier pace when the race kicked off so dropped to 3rd in the opening lap (partly helped by someone driving into the side of me through Eau Rouge??). I had an otherwise enjoyable battle with Christian, but he seemed to have straight line speed over me Vs my far better cornering. Eventually he fell off when the track started getting slightly moist allowing me to try to at least equalize the gap to Simon.

That Thunderstorm picked a very awkward moment to come in - as the optimum time to switch to wets was about 2 laps earlier than I could initially pit (I had to add 32 litres of fuel and had only burnt about 20). Eventually I compromised as I knew fuel burn would be much lower in the rain and pitted one lap earlier than I should.
Somehow I exited ahead of Simon and then proceeded to hold him at bay by throwing 100's of gallons of water at him for the next 20 minutes or so
Eventually I slightly out braked myself into a corner allowing Simon to slip by and he got his revenge - from the replay (Mine starts at the 45 minute point as I forgot to edit the file) the vision is actually much better on a monitor, in VR you're basically blind when following someone closely! The only advantage I had was the ability to look left or right in order to spot landmarks as they passed either side of me (can you use your rain light next time please Simon? ).
Our battle continued pretty closely until we were split by the GT3's coming through, and then a few laps later I put a wheel on the painted green stuff just off track in Les Fagnes and had an ignominious half-spin that dropped me back about 12 seconds.

That gap stayed pretty much rock solid then until the track started drying - I managed to pull about a second across 3 laps before deciding that my tires were getting warm and I could see a dry line forming.
I didn't think I had any hope of catching him from (now) 11 seconds back in the final 25 minutes so gambled on pitting for slicks as the weather was still showing no change.
I pitted, switched to Slicks plus a splash of fuel so I could go full attack and re-joined over 2 minutes down.
A lap later and the weather widget decides to inform me that's about to start raining again in 2 minutes! Who did they employ last night? Micheal Fish!?
Luckily the rain never got very bad so I was still lapping faster than I had been on the wets - I managed to gain a minute on him from pit exit > flag.
But I was still 5-8 seconds off a full dry time, and Simon's tires were being given a very slight re-spite from the utter heat-death they would have suffered had it continued drying Damn you weather gods!

I'd been missing the Maserati on the last round I made it to - with the weather at Spa I can honestly say I didn't miss it's lack of driving aids one bit

Has anyone got the (full) replay available?

 

I have never seen so much water fall out of the sky, Rob outdid himself with the realism. Anyway I'm in the car , at the start and realise i have set up fuel for a 90 min race, lmfao. Got a good start , i think a couple of cars clashed at la source. Got into 6the pos I think with Bill in the Boatly right behind me. Then the rain was biblical. I coped with it at first, then it seemed to go next level, and clattered the arm cove 2 or 3 times. Saw Taner say to hell with this and he left. In the last 30 my wet tyres were at 35 degrees and had become chewing gum. So I pit and forgot to hit limiter , ahh got a drive thru. Glad to finish , a very demanding but fun race.

 

Rob can you post up the replay?

 

Interesting championship order prior to race (and after too)..
Santos
Williams
Grewcock
Sanders

compared to race finishing order
Sanders
Grewcock
Williams
Balli
Santos

That closed the championship up for everybody.

Congrats Alex on a dominating win, and to Bill for keeping it clean to take 2nd step.

Congrats to podium in GT4 class

See you in Misano - will it rain?

 

I wouldnt mind seeing it since I turned mine way down to nothing since I thought I might have stutters at night with a lot of cars.

 

Can you please do the highlights as i really want to see the race

 

Thanks a lot Rob.

 

Pretty sure I had the rain light on, but you are now doubting me. I certainly couldn't see your rain light in the spray, all I could see was a wall of grey. I had to drop back a little and keep ducking out of the spray into the bigger puddles, just to be able to brake vaguely in the right place.

I missed my pit box by a few yards and had to take a few goes at reversing until it registered me in the box, otherwise that would not have been close! I do find it annoying that it seems really hard to work out where exactly you need to stop in the box. I mean the "stop" sign was still in front of me, but clearly I was too far forward. Happens far too often. I took on max fuel, but at half time I only had 75litres left when my calculator had said I needed 80 litres per half, so I was a bit worried. Rightly so as I finished with 2.5 litres (less than a lap) left in the tank.

They really weren't. The light rain at the end did absolutely nothing for reducing the tyre temperatue. Just glad that the incident with Roberto right near the end where he lost it coming out of one of the turns whilst next to me and sending me crashing, causing some damage and losing a load of time was not enough to totally destroy the tyres as they were pretty hot before that, but after that were red hot. I could probably have easily pitted for slicks prior to that and still come out ahead, but unless I needed fuel I didn't think it was worth the extra time and then having to deal with cold tyres.

 

I submitted a screenshot from this race to the grid-finder charity calendar, its a calendar made up of screenshots and is in aid of the mens mental health charity CALM. My entry was picked, my name and the SRO logo will appear on the screenshot in the calendar representing the month of July.
The calendar comes in various sizes but I'm not here to try and sell it to you, just to let the SRO members know that they are part of the calendar. Here is the screenshot that I entered.
https://postimg.cc/vgQ42NM5