Round 15 - College Station (Dec 4th)

Thanks all for the congratulations!
And to the admins for making it all happen, of course.

This season has delivered some of the fiercest and most rewarding races that I've had the pleasure of driving and I'm just grateful that I could bank the early points I needed before the likes of Jukka, Richard, and Jacob found their speed and started pushing me down the finishing order.

As for this race, I went too conservative and so it was a bit dull overall. Knowing that all I needed was to finish in the points, I didn't risk racing hard and gave up positions just to keep things safe. Then, when backing out of everything and sitting in the draft gave me great fuel economy in the first stint, I tried to force a two-stop by cruising around in the draft in my fuel-saving gear. It took me some 80 laps to realize that I was just slightly short of that goal and, only then and only when I was in clear air with no hope of catching anyone, I dropped into my go-fast gear and...improved nothing.

Now I'm eager for Phoenix where I can go maximum attack for the first time since I got points on the brain at the Bettenhausen 200.

Okay, here my view of the replay:

Lap 57(my running lap), Richard Wilks(who had changing ping, sometimes low, sometimes 400 and more IIRC) was moving in on me.

As I wasn't sure if I should stay low or high with Richard's lag, I made the bad decision to go high.

At the exit of T2, Richard was basically through, but I went too wide and instead of clipping the barrier, lost the car on the small bump and spun to the inside(thankfully missing Richard), but then kept spinning along the straight.

While going backwards along the barrier, I decided to turn the car to the infield while making sure nobody was going to cross me at that time.

I saw Jason coming and wanted to straighten the car out as soon as possible. I struggled to get the car quickly up to speed and away in first gear, so I was concentrating on getting away without dropping it once more and tried staying away from the high line.

Thus at right THAT moment, I didn't really see these three cars moving in on me and I expected that there was enough space on the right(yes, I didn't expect you guys approaching me in the formation you did) for people to pass.

Thus I neither expected someone approaching me that was about to pit and thus also going left!


Sorry that you ended up hitting me in the process, I can't even tell what would have been better as you were about to pit. If I had been going to the right, Jukka&Dave would have been... uh... surprised. If I had been going more left, I could have been alright. Then again, you were about to pit, not sure if it would have been different...

Your path(between Axel and Jukka) unluckily led straight into me in the end


That's why I said "out of nowhere" and "nailed", since that was my perspective of the incident at that moment.

Scott Urick wrote:

And I personally saw you pull up and out of the way enough times that, after 60+ laps, you knew damned good and well the lead groups were coming down the backstretch on that bottom line! The apron is a perfectly drivable surface for cars driving up to 150mph, but you stayed above the line doing less than 100mph.

Yes I did and yes I know, but I was so busy trying to not make a hash of speeding up too hard(and spearing across the track and INTO you guys' normal line that I wasn't left enough. Once again, I also didn't know you were going to pit!  

Scott Ulrick wrote:

In addition, according to my replay, I didn't see you close enough to anybody who needed giving room. It look to me like you had warped to the garage and the back to the track, which caused your loss of control.

Erm... nope? As I mentioned, Richard came to lap me and that's where I started the unfortunate chain of events. I guess the replay's a bit bugged, even I have several moments where the cars lag back to the pitlane.


Expressing my sincerest apologies to you, I destroyed your chance to win

Scott Ulrick wrote:

Welcome to the oval racing party, pal.

Alberto Ibanez wrote:

I'm afraid it will if you continue to come to the races with no previous preparation.

I don't want to be Arnd Meier!

I have to admit I have been doing some lously one-offs, with the engine blow in the previous race...

Alberto Ibanez wrote:

Nobody who had practiced at least a bit was running more than 10 (minimum) on the rear wing, and I even told you so in the chat during the practice/warmup.

Did I react to the rear wing being too high? I don't remember after the issues with the DTs

Petr Hlavac wrote:

No surprise that you were slow with so much downforce. I drove 3/10 with very loose setup in order to eliminate understeer. And still i was not fast enough.

Damn Then again, I struggle when I have a loose rear end...


Oh, and also congratulations to Dana from my side! Well done!

David, before the season is over there is another race at Phoenix. May I suggest that you pick a car and I help you with a setup and preparing it a bit? Being a short track it will be much closer to road racing, and once you test try this with a decent setup and say one hour of preparation, you will be hooked and in much better shape for next season's ovals. I can couch you a bit on the server if you want.

I've switched to John Martin's McLaren(#89) for that race.

If old Phoenix is about the same as new Phoenix, I at least know the rough shape of it.



Well, I do plan on doing more for a full-season return next year, not just diddly-dalling and goofing around at the back like I kinda do now.

And if I still wasn't fast enough, I'd offer myself as pace car driver...

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

David, before the season is over there is another race at Phoenix. May I suggest that you pick a car and I help you with a setup and preparing it a bit? Being a short track it will be much closer to road racing, and once you test try this with a decent setup and say one hour of preparation, you will be hooked and in much better shape for next season's ovals. I can couch you a bit on the server if you want.

David, I appreciate your apology and fully understand every aspect of your predicament. I was suffering the same inexperience not so long ago in this mod myself. However, I was just not familiar with the cars but I've done tens of thousands of miles on the ovals. This oval thing is a completely different discipline with a wholly redefined etiquette. Kind of like trying to learn Farsi at 200mph!

Yes, there is a racing line, but it generally get thrown out the window when full-time drafting or slip-streaming comes into play. The entire racing surface comes into play with all of the cars trying to maintain or break a draft, depending on their situation. And if you read David Sabre's post-race, you've already heard that I was using the apron for racing which is legal, just as it was for these cars in '73.

The differences even extend into setup and pit strategy. The suspension to totally skewed to only turn left and there is a black art in that. And the drafting also plays a supreme role in pit strategy. At Texas, for example, in individual testing, choosing a lower boost/higher mileage engine might cost .2-.4 seconds per lap versus the higher boost/less efficient engine but might save you a 20 second pit stop is an inviting option. But one must keep in mind that cars similar to yours, with the stronger engines, running in a drafting group, will be running 10mph and 1.4-1.8 seconds faster and will very probably lap you several times in the course of the race and nullify your lack of a last pit stop if you can't tag onto and stay with their group. That, in turn, dictates that you turn the wick as high as you can, burn the extra fuel and stay with the competition to take advantage of the extra speed of the draft.

With no disparagement to the admins, as they were committed to providing a scheduled race, the last minute switch to "no-yellows" due to unforeseen complications, caught several people with their pants down -- especially the people working a mileage strategy. But I truly don't believe it would have changes the outcome that much on the mileage. But it very well may have prevented our incident, as the yellow would have been waved as you slowed and stopped on the backstretch and I would have been slowing long before reaching you at full-speed.

But that's the hand you're dealt in a great new mod going through its growing pains. A victory for me was nowhere near certain at that point and 40 more laps for you would have been invaluable experience. But many others have suffered the same frustrations, as have the admins with every glitch, and 25+/- people show up for every race. That's proof of a visionary mod.

Sorry to go on for so long. But I echo Alberto's sentiment. There is much mystery and romance in this era and discipline of racing, and great satisfaction in taming these beasts to run well!

So, I also echo his offer of setup help, advice, and any other general help or knowledge for Phoenix. He's right: You'll be hooked! Once Phoenix is available, send me a PM, get your TS hooked up, and I'll try to make myself available at any hour.

And the same goes for anyone else who may be struggling or just want to find a little speed!

Scott Urick wrote:

... At Texas, for example, in individual testing, choosing a lower boost/higher mileage engine might cost .2-.4 seconds per lap versus the higher boost/less efficient engine but might save you a 20 second pit stop is an inviting option. But one must keep in mind that cars similar to yours, with the stronger engines, running in a drafting group, will be running 10mph and 1.4-1.8 seconds faster and will very probably lap you several times in the course of the race and nullify your lack of a last pit stop if you can't tag onto and stay with their group.

Yes, that pretty much sums up my day as I quickly switched to a middle boost, two stop strategy when the yellows were removed.

I qualified well at 12th and after a slow start fell back to 22nd.  I immediately teamed with Simon Wattman and we drafted forward gaining six places in the first 12 laps or so.  Fun racing.

I lost Simon around lap 18 and ran in clean air, alone, for 20 more laps.  After my first pit stop (L33) I found Simon again and we ran 10 more laps together and then I was back in the clean air. A good second stop (L66) and around lap 76 I caught the draft of Bob Holada and we danced for 15 laps till he caught the draft of someone faster.  I cruised alone to the finish getting put down a 3rd lap on the back straight before the checked flag flew.

Several times during the race I tried to grab on to other faster cars as they came around but I just couldn't hang on long at my slower, mid boost, pace. Between that and running 60% of the race alone I finished a disappointing (to me) 14th place.

Thanks to Bob Wilson for the setup help and thanks to the admins for putting on a fine show.  And, congrats to Dana for the amazing series win!

To be honest, my slow speed came from the lack of proper setup, not lack of race craft(although racing with a setup that alters the handling changes things too).

More laps usually never hurt(although I have the feeling I get bored before an event if I try too long), but I think my biggest issue was my setup holding me back. I was never really on the edge because of the lack of speed and instability through low wings

Have to admit I went from the Trendon one, not very clever...


Also, pitting before T3 means I screwed up several times as I pitted like twice after T4

A huge thanks to Bob Wilson for the setup

The race was the usual superspeedway affair for me. I could hang on to anyone I liked but couldn't really get around anyone unless they drifted a bit wide. I lost a bunch of positions early on due to some weird lag which made me back up a bit, fortunately Jacob was there to work with me on catching the leading group again. Another solid finish and a guaranteed second place in the championship, it could've been worse!

Congratulations to Dana for the title, you deserved it