iRacing Blancpain GT3 Endurance / Sprint series

Yeah I switched over to running the sprint series in the McLaren for the extra practice with it. I did two sprint races Monday before it flipped to the next track. I didn't do so well. I got treated like a pinball a bit and also got a wheel off going into 3 and killed a Ruf that was on my left. Note, don't touch the grass/dirt under braking.

I made a chart to try to make it easier to say what time slots we're ok with. Sorry if Sydney isn't your timezone down under, I just picked a timezone to use for reference. Everyone reply with what hours they're available and we'll start filling in timeslots.

Minimum drive time with the fair share rule puts it at 45 minutes for a 4 driver team and 36 minutes with a 5 driver team. Well I did it in minutes but it's done by laps in the sim. (total laps/drivers)/4 = fair share

X = available

I'll be around for the full 12. I may have a nap mid-way through, but probably not.

Probably the full 12 for me. First 3 for sure, but there's a very small chance I get pulled away from my cockpit during the afternoon.

I dunno if I'll wake up for the start of the race, but I should be available for most of it. I still need to do some practice to make sure I don't bin it constantly.

I'll be there for the last half, from hour 5 or so.

Awesome. So looks like we're plenty covered. I'd suggest @mouse@khann and I swap out single stints at the beginning to keep us fresh and then just work it out from there based on who's on at the time.

I did some practice at Sonoma and found some good speed in the McLaren. I went back to Sebring and thought maybe that'd translate to finding some speed at Sebring but alas, no. So I'll dig into iSpeed to see if I can find where I'm losing out. Practice sessions are up for the 12 hour btw. Might be a good idea to get some practice with HPDs.

I know i'm a bit late to the party, but does anyone need/want another team member?

thanks

Hey, are we going to qualify for this thing? I suppose it's not necessary and probably a good idea to start in the back? Speaking of starting... who's doing that? I would probably have an anxiety attack if I start, so I'd prefer not to.

Anyway, I did a bit more practice, and I'll register the team to a session tomorrow night (around the FNT time slot) for anyone who wants to practice a bit.

Is the qualifying session separate from the race session for the 12hr?

I don't mind starting, though like the 3hr, I'd probably lose some positions in the first lap due to being cautious.

I started the other car last time and spun on lap 1! I vote Khann starts, caution is definitely what we need on those first few laps.

Edit:　I don't mind doing a qual session at some point, I have managed low 2:03s in practice so far.　Need to be an admin for the team though.

It's going to be the same as the 3 hour race, a 10 minute joint qualifying before the warmup I believe. I'm always in favor of starting as high as possible just to miss the wrecks but I haven't been doing qualifying practice, I'll try tonight and see what times I get. The person that qualifies doesn't have to be the one to start.

@pick_lock I think we're pretty set for the 12 hour but join us for the fun run nights or another endurance series race.

Qualifying is not in the race session, it's separate (every hour).

Updated the first post with the stream link www.twitch.tv/datarez

I'll be broadcasting for the whole race hopefully.

hey! Was racing in another team yesterday and imagine my surprise when one of the cars on the grid was called Giant Bomb. :o

You guys seemed to be doing well, we were racing for first when crashing out with a little over an hour left. Had to do an engine change and that was our race over..

Edit: High Octane Motorsport is my team

@phouchg: Awesome. We were watching you guys and saw when you crashed. Surprised you were even able to get out of the pits as fast as you did after the initial crash. First did not seem to be the place to be in our split in GT or in HPD. Halle racing's race in HPD went to hell in a handbasket on lap 295, some of our guys were watching them when it happened to them too.

I have some screenshots and found some youtube videos of the 2nd split's crazy crash that I'll post later.

@datarez: only reason we got out so fast was that the crew wouldn't fix the car for us. We had to drive t with the broken engine until I blew up and then tow it and switch engine. It was mildly annoying but didn't really matter since our race was pretty much over anyway.

That second split crash was insane. you wouldn't have expected that from such a high split.

Anyway are you guys racing in blancpain as well? In that case we might see you this weekend at suzuka. :)

@phouchg: Yep! There will be at least one team, and maybe a GBeast team if there are enough of us.

I did some laps at Suzuka and spun a lot, so I made this SUZUKA SETUP. It's edited from the baseline. Definitely feels way more stable and I was able to do turn 1 and Spoon without issue. I can free it up a bit if you guys want. Let me know what you think.

By the way, @datarez, now that Sebring is done, could you rename this topic? I was going to make a new one but it's not necessary with this one here. :)

So are we gonna have a BMW team this week, or is everyone happy to just stick with the McLaren for now?

I'll be at my parents house for easter this weekend and while my dad has a racing rig, I'm not super comfortable with it. So I'm not racing this weekend, but I could act as a reserve driver - although I doubt that would be necessary in a 3h race :D

Okay, I did some practice laps with Mouse's setup and it felt fine. My best lap was a 2:01 but I dunno if that's any good.

Hopefully my computer won't crash from overheating, now that I've dusted it with some canned air.

@slowbird: Well it wasn't until like hour 10 or something that your PC died anyway, was it? You'll be fine :D

@khann: let's hope so :D

Regarding the new starting times: Saturday would be at 8/9pm (depending on daylight savings) my local time so that interferes with Saturday evening social stuff. I might be able to get a few races in at that time when nothing is happening, but definitely nothing regular.

The European F1 races start at 13 GMT, the new iRacing start time is 14 GMT, so that's off the table for me during the F1 Euro run, at least the first stint would be. Otherwise I'm fine with it.

I'm not able to do the Saturday races now, as they're right in the middle of the afternoon and I can't be on my PC from 3-6PM or my girlfriend will hate me.

The Sunday times are fine, though (10AM) and I'll be up to do those. Anyone want to race that day? I guess we might have to split our attention. :/

@iron1c For F1 days, missing the first stint is fine. We'll work around that!

Yeah Saturdays would be 7am for me, so I can definitely do that. Sundays would interfere with F1 at certain times, as Iron1c said, so I would have to avoid that for those events. Or just miss the first stint.

Bummer to these time changes. I'm in the same boat as Mouse. The days that the Sunday timeslot overlap with F1 are the best times to watch F1 in the US too. Ugh. All the way around.

I didn't even know the times changed...why did they do that?

anyway though, I could do Saturdays or Sundays, but the Sunday one would force me to wake up at a normal time instead of sleeping in :P

Maybe we can find 2 people for Saturday and 2 people for Sunday, and then double-stint one of the people, and then we can do BOTH timeslots! :D

I can do either timeslot this week but likely won't be the case in the future. Sundays may work best in the future unless they add a Sat morning timeslot for US.

So yeah race on this week though! How are you guys doing on times? I raced and qualified with these setups: http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/3307280.page#8863970 I did a 2:01.5 in Q and not great in my race. But that was just because I didn't get much practice. I think I might be able to get in the 2:02s in a race pace. I keep getting put in the top split and bringing up the rear, but that's where it expects my iRating so I end up keeping the same rating. Bit frustrating being 1-2 seconds off the field you're racing in.

I'll be up on Sunday ready to race with whoever is there. :P I'll do my practice tonight.

I'll be available for both races, most likely. Don't want to take the drive of anyone that hasn't had a go yet on Sunday, but I'll be happy to jump in if there aren't enough people around.

I'll probably be up for tomorrows race (the Saturday one) and almost definitely for the Sunday one (this week only). I've done sprint race, though I retired from that with 16 incident points, 8 of which were off tracks so I need to work on that before I race...

Doesn't really matter... they've removed the incident caps for the endurance races now.

Just did another race and the setup I posted is a bit too loose, especially on the end of the run. Two spins in the race.

Have you tried Mouse's setup?

Mouse's setup worked great for me. Managed to get down into the high 2:01 range. Still seconds off the fastest pace, but better than my old time.

Hey Neemer, haven't seen you around here for a while.

Are you racing any endurance races at all, or just the sprint stuff?

Holy sh*t, I am soo sorry guys!! I can't believe I took you guys out after only a couple of laps. I watched the replay a couple of (million) times and I have no idea why I suddenly turn slightly to the right and touch you. Ruined both of our races probably, so stupid, sorry once again.

/Joakim from High Octane Motorsport

@phouchg: Haha yeah, we were a little miffed by that. It's all good though, we ended up getting DQed anyway. Looks like you guys didn't fare too well either; you were in the pits for quite a while.

@khann: Yeah we had another crash while working our way through the field again. This time it wasn't my fault though. ;)

Surprised so many got DQed, I was sure they said they had removed the incident limit this time.

About half the field (in each split) got disqualified. I don't understand how such a stupid mistake can happen. It's one thing for servers to fail, but this is just dumb.

Anyway, at least we'll have another chance tomorrow, and I'll be ready to go. Maybe we can run 2 teams again.

@khann: Sprint mostly, still ruining my own race every time. A little skip barber thrown in too for practice, but only because I find that car really hard to drive.

Yeah that was weird.. not that you should actually get more incidents with no limit but of course you do. :p

and you guys got some extra from me.. but tomorrow well be back, probably in the same split again and we'll bring some more (better) drivers ^^

Well today's races were fun, outside of my big crash in turn 1 :P

I found your stream for the races and been watching today's race. Real unfortunate there slowbird, but glad I wasn't the one causing it this time. We decided to start from the pits after yesterdays mess, but don't think we needed that today cause the start seemed really clean and I wasn't starting..

Anyway, good race today for us. Made it from 48th to 20th, so we're more happy with this one. Hope to meet you guys again next week (and no, not meet like we did in the saturday race). ;)

@phouchg: Yeah kept an eye on you guys through the race and you seemed to be making solid progress all the way.

Unfortunate accident for us, but all things considered (~20 minutes in the pits), we finished OK. Suzuka is such a great track.

So, who's in for Zolder next week? I know that some people don't have that track. Won't be home until Friday, so I can't practice or run setups through the week, but I know the track fairly well and I am fully aware of it's challenging nature :D

@phouchg: No worries on the Saturday deal. It happens. Just crazy how much these GT3 cars hook when there is side rear bumper contact like that.

But @sebw and I fared a lot better in the Sunday race. We got a top 10 in the bottom split. Then after that I finally got a clean sprint race in. It was a fun battle and thanks to @Trace for streaming all 3 races this weekend. Now we need to get you out on the track. (Saturday End, Sunday End., Sunday Sprint)

Regarding this week at Zolder, as of right now I'm good. Might have some family stuff to take care of so may not be able to make both races. Also who knows if the schedule will change again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah I'm in for Zolder. Should be good for both races again.

I just realized the end of the race yesterday was the most excited I've ever been about a battle for 31st place. :D

So yeah, I'm gonna try real hard to get good at Zolder this week so we can fight for a position higher than that!