iRacing Mazda Cup @ Lime Rock Park

[Shilka]

Wow, this sure is a learning curve.
My consistency is zero, but I guess (lots of) practice makes perfect.
My first decent lap was 1.17 (lmao) but now I'm getting into 1.05's
Saw that's still 4 seconds of your lap time, so still plenty to improve...

First gotto work on that consistency though, haven't been able to do 4 laps in a row yet without spinning...

I absolutely hate #3 curve with a passion, so I'm really slow there.
And that last curve before the finish, wow, that's crazy bumpy, I've seen smoother cobblestone roads!

Having a blast though!

 

[little P]

Yeah I've been experimenting with different lines on the final corner and have found something fast but more importantly I can hit the apex with this line most of the time, which as you say, is key to racing. I love nothing more than someone who's maybe 2 100th's of a second faster per lap than me pass, then spin it as I go sailing by waiving out the window as I take the win :icon_lol:

Turn 3 I'm still toying with, at the moment I'm staying out wide for a late turn in (unless I have to defend) which gives me the smooth line for turn 4 carrying more speed up to turn 5. I do love that corner though because it seems a lot of people are going off there or the next corner as they are trying to correct a mistake they made at turn 3.

I've been on a bad run the last few races so that win I just got really did my iRating no harm at all and was much needed to boost the confidence.

I need to get my safety rating up a bit now, every time I'm on the grid I promise I will get 0 incident points but it very rarely works out that way lol ...but I swear it's the others... Mr. Race Marshal sir...

 

[Shilka]

1.03.3 now.... slowely getting there...
But boy is it hard to be consistent...

It actually helped to watch you practice yesterday P, noticed that I braked way too early for #1 corner on a really bad line, just that alone helped me take a second off. Won another second by going slower into #3 so I can exit faster at #4.

Amazing game this is, I notice stuff I never noticed before in any racing game, and the way you get to know the tracks is absolutely fantastic. You even start memorizing locations of little bumps in the track and all, good stuff!

 

[Shilka]

Just had my first training session with other people. For some reason I'm more consistent with other people around, perhaps because I'm being more careful or something.
Scored a best 1.02.4 with an average 1.04.2 over 24 laps. Did have one 1.01.9, but had cut a tiny bit over the grass so it wasnt valid Messed up a few laps, but other then that everything else was in the low 1.03's or high 1.02's at least. Slowely getting there, and starting to notice the less hard I push, the better things go...

First time I heard; 'Car on your right, stay left' I immediately went into the left wall XD
Other then that it was a good practice in mainly getting passed, though I finally did do my first overtake, which was surprisingly clean. Love how courteous everyone is so far!

 

[little P]

Just had my first training session with other people. For some reason I'm more consistent with other people around, perhaps because I'm being more careful or something.
Scored a best 1.02.4 with an average 1.04.2 over 24 laps. Did have one 1.01.9, but had cut a tiny bit over the grass so it wasnt valid Messed up a few laps, but other then that everything else was in the low 1.03's or high 1.02's at least. Slowely getting there, and starting to notice the less hard I push, the better things go...

I noticed that too, the less I pushed, the faster I got. And yes totally agree, it's really hard to explain to someone why iRacing is so good until they experience it for themselves. It's the feeling of realism and reward of mastering it knowing it's not some dumbed down representation of driving fast like Forza and Gran Turismo, let alone Need for speed etc.

I put a ridiculous amounts of time into Forza, I was a massive fan of the whole series, and Gran Turismo before that. But after getting into iRacing they will never be the same again, they feel like arcade games.

First time I heard; 'Car on your right, stay left' I immediately went into the left wall XD
Other then that it was a good practice in mainly getting passed, though I finally did do my first overtake, which was surprisingly clean. Love how courteous everyone is so far!

:lol: Oh yes I remember doing this a lot (still do )

 

[Shilka]

Well tried some time attack. Hadn't looked at the properties of the race, but should have, because thetrack had a very different time and heavy cloud cover, which made thetrack very different from what I had been practicing on, and some corners were very hard to see....
Learned something again I guess. Though my average time and fastest lap were ok and even an improvement, I made so many mistakes I managed to lower my irace rating...
Oh well, up to the next one tomorrow.

 

[Kenadian]

Well tried some time attack. Hadn't looked at the properties of the race, but should have, because thetrack had a very different time and heavy cloud cover, which made thetrack very different from what I had been practicing on, and some corners were very hard to see....
Learned something again I guess. Though my average time and fastest lap were ok and even an improvement, I made so many mistakes I managed to lower my irace rating...
Oh well, up to the next one tomorrow.

You need 8 incident free laps in a row at Lime Rock for your TT to actually count toward your MPR. Any 1x event reset your clean laps back to 0 and if you can't put together 8 clean laps at all your TT amd iR go down; even more so if you have a lot of incident points on top of it.

 

[Shilka]

yeah, funny enough I had less problems with that in practice while dodging dozens spinning cars along the way then when doing the time trial on an empty road. It was so stupid that the practice after it I was doing lap after lap after lap while there were like a dozen people on the track at any time, and ended up with 4th best average laptime, and 40 of 43 laps were clean...

 

[little P]

It does sometime work out like that, it's interesting, the concentration required for this is intense eh. How are you getting on in the races Shilka?

I'm chuffed, I just got what I've been striving for since I started this, a 100% clean race with a win It got sketchy a couple of times and I had to balance keeping it on the track and keeping a gap between the cars chasing, the last lap I slowed right down to ensure the 0 incident points

 

[Shilka]

Ohhh nice!!!

I just need a lot more practice to get some consistency. I guess I could just do a time trial and make 1.15 laptimes just to make very sure everything stays clean, but I guess thats just not me... Entering a race is something I dare not do yet, need more practice!

I haven't been racing with a steeringwheel in years (only truck driving ), so I guess I'm properly rusty. Also my steeringwheel is that old its not that good anymore, it has a lot of free space in the mid position, and sometimes it suffers from directional twitches that almost send me off track, lol. At times my brake pedal hangs up and doesnt release all the way and I need to slam it to make it release XD

Other then that, I need practice, practice and more practice.
Good thing about being a lousy racer is that I'm quickly improving in catching my car when things go wrong, so most of the time I'm able to correct for over and understeer without leaving the track, lol
Another good thing is I'm recognizing where things go wrong, and why, and there's a bunch of stuff I need to work on, especially pedal handling, and exchanging entry speed for exit speed more.
Other then that I need to learn the track a lot better, and I slowely discover how to gain time for each corner.
I also focused a lot on looking ahead further, which really helps me catching those apexes a lot better.


I'll have time this euro evening for practice btw, was wondering if anyone is up for joining me in practice session and TS, and perhaps give me some pointers?

Also, are there any changes I should make to FOV?
And have you made any setup changes to the car at all?

 

[Kenadian]

The Mazda Cup is running fixed setups only so you can't make changes to the car at all.

FOV probably should be adjusted, I adjusted mine to mimic how I see out of my real car all be it assuming I'm sitting a bit lower in the seat (to see the dash gauges without having to look down).

It looks like I'll be on much of the weekend so I'll hop on TS tomorrow (Saturday).

 

[Shilka]

k cool, hope to see you this weekend then.

I'll hook up my wheel now for some much needed practice again
I'll be in teamspeak in case you or P decides to join up anyway.

 

[Kenadian]

I would join in now but unfortunately I'm at work for the next 4.5 hours :icon_confused:

 

[Shilka]

Well training started off lousy anyway, even pulled my steeringwheel from the table once which was actually quite hilarious, but at least after some warm up I ended up with a new personal best of 1:01.999 (lol!), so at least I'm in the 1.01 for once now ....
Funny enough all time gained was by braking more/earlier for corners.
Finally got #1/2 corner down a bit, saw in the replay I take it so fast at times that my right front wheel doesn't touch the ground over half the time in the corner XD

 

[Shilka]

Just did another time trial, and it went much much better then the first one;

Gained back my lost safety rating, and ended up with an average 1:03.9 with a fastest 1:02.0 (8 incident points total)

I also think why it went so bad the first time; Do you leave the pit in test and practice on warm tires, and in a timetrial on cold tires?

Finally figured out if I took it easy the first 2 laps I'd be home free after that. Had to pit once because a bad spin ruined my tires, and the second time I pulled out the pit did it easy and got no incident points anymore... Had I known about the tiretemp difference in advance I could have done this one with only 2 incident points...

 

[Kenadian]

You always leave the Pits on cold and slightly underpressured tires unless you Pitted during practice or the race.

Nice work on breaking 1:02! I've been 1:01 and still haven't been able to do it. I know where on track I can make up the time too but unfortunately it messes with my consistency so bad I'm just leaving it as is.

This is the one time I wish we could adjust gear ratios because I know I could easily make that time up if my gearing was changed up a bit in 3rd and 4th.

 

[Shilka]

Well, I watched the tire stats, and I discovered that during practice (I mean the seperate practice sessions, not pre race practice) there is no change in tire temperature or pressure, it is completely disabled. No wonder timetrial felt so different...

Late yesterday I was on schedule for a 1:00.x time, but someone on the straight for the finish i was overtaking pushed me onto the grass

It was a great practice though as I almost went into a trance like state. I was taking corners like I thought I never would be able to, hitting the rev limiter on 3rd gear in #1 corner, didn't even think that was possible, and in 4th gear before hitting the outside on #2 corner, then back to 3 for #3, and into 4th before hitting #4 apex, and almost hit rev limiter for 4th gear just before braking for #5, man I was flying around the track at times...
Difficult thing was with all the increased exit speeds I had to adjust all my following brake points accordingly which wasn't easy and takes lots of laps to adjust.

I was having an absolute blast yesterday, felt like things were finally coming together a bit. I even think I might need to take things a bit slower again, because it feels I'm throwing the car around the track in such a way that my tires won't last long in a race. But it sure is spectacular, or at least it feels that way, adrenalin pumping and all!

 

[Kenadian]

It's amazing the rush you get from this game, it's like nothing I've experienced before. I'm actually hyped up with pre-race jitters, nerves so amped up that the only thing that ever came close was scrims with Reddit and Shot Docs in competitive BF.

I finally broke into the 1:00's tonight as well with a whopping 1:00:915 and I know there's still a few more tenths left on the track if I hit all the Apex's right (which I can't do) in a single lap.

There should be a bunch of us on tomorrow so hopefully we can hijack a Practice Server and race each other.

BTW, I have a mockup Fragtard skin if anyone is interested in using it?

 

[Shilka]

I actually watched you doing a time trial earlier during my breakfast, well done, awesomely consistent!

I'm confident now that I wont be bunches of seconds from the rest in laptimes, so I'm just going to practice laps for consistency, and speed will come in time.

And sure put up a downloadlink for that skin and I'll check it out!

 

[little P]

Loving all these comments, I can identify with all of it, and when you think we're only just scratching the surface of this it boggles the mind!

Yeah Duke link the FT skin and i'll use it! Maybe we could have personalised skins in the future? I have no idea how to skin otherwise I'd do it but yeah if there was some way of identifying each other in the replays that would be cool, maybe having our names somewhere in the car in inverted commas or something?

Thanks Duke And well done Shilka on those lap times! (and not injuring yourself when you pulled your wheel off lol!)