Guys, I has been brought to my attention that there are a few people who feel that finishing tonight's race on the allotted 55L of fuel at the laptimes a few of us were doing is nigh impossible. The word "cheating" has even been mentioned. You are free to think that, but there is one person I can safely that does not cheat, ME! Infact I've been helping people as good as I can to improve their driving in this series. I have the habbit of sharing my setup to the slower (for lack of a better word) guys out there. For this race I was unable to because my setup wasn't finished until 5 minutes before the quali started. Let me also say that it took me 10+ races to get to this level. And it was Pasha who set me on the right track after last series Spa race. So now onto how we do it. 1- Drive smooth! Do not throw the car around as this will cost you speed and will have you use more fuel to get up to speed 2- Lift and coast! Don't stay on the throttle up until where you intent to brake. Let go of the throttle earlier, brake in a straight line and let the car "glide" into the corner. Its a FWD. This means the front tyres have to do all the work. Coasting into the corner leaves all the grip the tyres has to use as latteral grip. This gives you a higher cornering speed. Higher cornering speed results in higher exit speed. 3- Short shift! Don't go all the way into the RPM red zone! This car has tons of torque. If you shortshift you don't lose time but save a lot of fuel! I can't exactly tell you at what RPM to shift because it differs to the track/corner you are on. 4- Adjust your setup to what's said in points 1, 2 & 3. There are all kinds of small things that can save you fuel. Even if it is "only" 0.01L a lap. If you find 10 of those little things that adds up to 0.1L of fuel per lap. On tonight's track that would have given you 1.8L (half a lap) 5- Calculate how much fuel you can burn each lap to make it to the end of the race! For tonight's race that was 3.05L per lap. Make sure you do not use more than that each lap. Remember that if you do 1 lap at 3.2L you'll need to recover that 0.15L over the remainder of the laps making it even harder for you. 6- Use a Fuel app! This will not save you fuel, but it will tell you how far you can go on the remainder of your fuel. I'm using the ingame one as I feel this is accurate enough for my needs. But there are a good few apps out there. So find one you like and use it! 7- Learn from the fast guys! Look at the replay. Analyse it! See what the fast guys does. Where he shifts, where he brakes, how he uses his throttle ans most important, LOOK AT THE LINES HE IS USING! 8- PRACTISE A LOT! I can't stress this enough. I see a lot of guys (not only here, but in other groups too) that start their practise 30 minutes before the race. How can you expect to win from guys that put in the time and effort to practise almost every night? There is no substitute for tracktime. Now I can understand that not everyone has the same amount of time to spend on this Sim-racing as we all have lives. Me I practise/race on average 10 hours each week. Why? Because I like it and it makes me faster. Having said all of the above I'm sure there are still some of you that will have doubts. All I can say to that is, talk to the guys I have helped and given advice. I've seen a couple of them improve their laptimes by a full second in the timespan of 10 minutes just by listening what I tell them and implementing it on track. I know their names, but I'm not sure they want me to say who they are. Last thing I have to say is, and this might hurt some feelings, Some guys just have a natural talent for driving fast. Some just don't. Its a fact of life.
↑ This. When I start "driving harder" for a quali lap I end up overdriving and going slower instead. This car needs to enter corners slowly and power out of them using torque, not HP. Mashing the throttle on exit just makes the tires spin when the wheels are turned hard over to one side. So lift off before the corner, brake early and gently, and basically bottom out the RPM in the highest gear that will get through the corner, and you'll save a ton of fuel. Since I'm not all that great, and have no pride to lose, I run with the "ideal racing line" turned on, and generally lift off somewhere around (before) the point where the racing line indicator turns red. With today's practice and the race even I got into the 2:17s. I think this lesson finally set in for me at Brno. That course has a specific flow that demands that you're smooth with every corner. Also you need enough practice to try different setups and find the settings that help you get through corners with the smoothest entry and exit, as well as reducing rolling resistance to save fuel. The setup I ran today in the race was the 7th iteration of settings that I've tried this weekend. Road America is much the same and it takes just as much practice to get some of those corners right. This is especially true of Turn 5, which is at the end of a long straight, and turn 6, which you approach over a crest (and must thus brake very early indeed). Also I was watching a lot of people take both T1 and the long sweeper in 4th gear; the folks who didn't pit were taking it in 6th. It was really fun shocking everyone with my no-stop race at Spa last season, but the techniques I used then are the same ones that I made the mistake of revealing to Roy this season. If anyone wants that replay I can make it available, or just watch today's again and see how four much better drivers than me did it at Road America.
Just wanted to bring over a constructive comment from Sean from the RA race thread: Going to a 45-minute format or requiring a pit stop wouldn't solve the problem of breaking up battles. I think we've struck gold with the 40-minute format, because it's right on the ragged edge of this car's range. There are some tracks where no one could make it without stopping, and there are some where (almost?) everyone can make it, and most are right in between. Keeping this race length gives us the whole sim experience --- driving, fuel strategy, pit strategy. Also the cars themselves demand more conservative driving anyway --- focusing on fuel economy has improved my lap times. I think having a double-length race at the end of the season will make this even more interesting, as obviously everyone will have to pit sometime... but how many times? Will it be better to do one long fill or two shorter ones? Should one of those stops include new tires? Should people try to pit together and keep drafts going, or stay out and gain time on a clear track? It's enough to make me wonder if I need to find a human crew chief to help with planning! If we want a series where we don't have to think about pitting at all, the Audi Cup series fits that bill well. (...though I'd prefer the VLN cars, myself...)
Easy if you have a multiple personality like me. Right Roy? WTF Roy, I thought we'd agreed not to tell anyone! Yeah, Sorry about that Roy.
