That setup I linked to earlier is really damn hard to drive. Feels like it could be fast if you're good, though.

I'm just gonna stick with the iRacing setups.

The iRacing basic is pretty good. It's not fast, but unless you're absolutely by yourself that won't be a problem. Within 1.5-2 seconds of the driver ahead, it will probably be good to have a very stable set even if it's slow because you'll get sucked up onto their tail regardless. IF you find yourself stuck alone, then just pray for a caution or wait for a faster driver to catch you haha. It will most likely come down to pit strategy and a couple lap shootout at the end, anyway. Make sure you have enough fuel on the last stint, and add a click of weight jacker when you get behind somebody if it starts pushing too much.

Will be datalogging and running telemetry tomorrow to get a little improvement on the Basic setup. A bunch of guys on my team are running the Indy 500 but we sort of procrastinated the whole "getting ready" part... lol.

-Travis

Well that sucked. As soon as I joined the warmup, my ping was all over the place. I quit to try and fix it, came back and missed the start so I had to start from the pits. Then I forgot to turn on the speed limiter and got a black flag right away. So I went a lap down serving that. After that I was blinking and having network problems, which distracted me quite a bit and I ended up hitting the wall. ARGH

Just finished mine. We were the middle split of the Rookie - D. I started 9th. I was one of two rookies in my split. I was doing pretty good but got loose avoiding a guy ahead who got loose but didn't hit the wall. Managed to stay consistent for a good number of laps and hit the wall a couple of times. Took enough damage to be a second or two down from my normal speed. Kept it pretty consistent till the end and I ended in 6th. Got 1.94 in safety rating. Just need another race and I'll get out of rookie...

I ended up having to pit and run and grab the phone to buzz my wife into the building as she forgot her keys.

Results

Fun but tiring.

Still not sure if I want to try the Euro friendly timeslot later today, those pace laps at Indy are so long...and I would guess there are a lot of them.

@iron1c: Your race might. Be better but I believe my race was 20 laps in the first hour. The other two and a half with one caution.

@iron1c: For what it's worth, they're doing the quick cautions so it's not as bad as I expected.

Welp, I got you all beat. Started 5th, caution comes out before turn 2. Pace car ignores the shit out of it, and we pace under yellow for 15 minutes featuring intense discussion about what to do. Ultimately everyone quit. Unreal.

Does anyone have a setup done for Suzuka yet they would be willing to share?

@connorpoz: Suzuka was run in official, so there are a couple of setups on the official forum. Not a bad place to start.

I heard about that from someone in my race who was talking to a friend on teamspeak :D what a nightmare that would be.

As for me, I tried again today after having big problems yesterday. Things were going much better, my internet was mostly stable, and I was running 4th just trying to save some fuel when this happened:

@slowbird: It should buff out... Sorry though.

@slowbird: Advanced toe/camber strategies.

The worst part is, I crashed because I was looking at the fuel map setting while trying to go through turn 1, and I later realized there was no point in saving fuel because I never could have saved enough fuel to make one less stop than the others :( My math was off by ten laps.

2 hour open practise for Formula Duder is go. Suzukaaaa!

I will have setups shared in the pre-race practice session when it goes live! Have a setup from Suzuka that we used at the Glen, and now I have a setup from the Glen that should also work well at Suzuka. So three or four setups available, my current Glen setup probably has the most data/work put into it and should probably out-perform the Suzuka set from weeks ago even though that one was MADE for the track.

-Travis

Hey Guys I'm friends with @connorpoz and am looking to join the league which I hear was filled with a bunch of great guys.

Well, that was interesting!

Dumb mistakes on my part but it was a lot of fun haha. My mind started wandering after I spun it going INTO the hair pin (I don't believe I've ever done that in any car on iRacing lol). Once Khann got on my tail I decided to just settle down and get into a groove. Which was going fine up until the point where I heated the front tires up through the Esses and it went straight on me in the last left-hander of the section. Outside wheels got in the grass and I quickly 360'd it to try and stay with Khann, but going into Spoon I just absolutely botched the corner entry and about made a two person Star Mazda. Good times though, I suppose my streak has been broken! Actually wasn't expecting to win this one, I think you were quicker outright Khann. I just didn't beat you on consistency this time haha.

-Travis

@travis_mihm: It was a fun race. I got into a groove too and then spun it at the end of the Esses. I'm beginning to like the course and hopefully enjoy it tomorrow.

Good fun race today, that first lap with cold tires though, especially that start... I realised on watching the replay that I spun a tire real bad on the start which is why I couldn't dodge @hayfourzee. Also, huge thanks to @mouse for cutting the chicane when I spun like an idiot in front of him. Loving these field sizes, even though we were missing some regulars.

@khann I noticed that the GT race tomorrow is set to a standing start, is that final or is there some consideration given to rolling start? I'm fine with keeping it standing since we have traction control in GT3 but people were pretty against it last time (at Lime Rock?). Different Track, different scenario but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Also, week 13 has Star Mazdas @ Lucas Oil which will be fairly cool, maybe we could try to get a group together for some time with that?

GT CARS DO ROLLING STARTS. (I actually prefer standing starts, but rolling starts just is the way you do starts in those things)

@travis_mihm: Nah you definitely had the edge on pace. Not sure if I could have had you in qualifying. I ended up only getting 1 flying lap in qualifying, but dipped a wheel out of T2 and that was that.

Was maintaining the gap for the most part, but a dumb spin out of Spoon put me 10 sec back, which sucked. Was going to have a bit of a fight with you on that last lap, then probably give you the position. Didn't feel like I'd earned it. But then we had our moment so figured I might as well bring it home ;) Not my favourite win, but oh well, a win's a win.

@sebw Yeah that wasn't meant to be like that, thanks for pointing it out. I swear the hosted session setup thing doesn't save my options sometimes, because I went through and sorted out every race.

Programming note! As of this minute, I have yet to finalize which version of Phoenix we'll be using in 3 weeks for BOMBCAR. I'd like to use the new one that will be released next week, but if there's any objections then I would be willing to consider the old version. If it's a matter of cost, please PM me.

@khann Hey man, a win is a win haha. It wasn't my plan to spin either of the three times, you still earned that. I've been practicing in the RUF Cup and when I tried to get in a groove after the spin in the hairpin, I think I sort of got back into the RUF groove and started driving the car too light on entry and too hard on exit. Eventually the front tires got mad at me and the second time I went off it felt like the tires cooled off in the dirt and all four corners felt pretty squishy like I was on cold tires again. All went to hell from there.

-Travis

Also RE the dirt sprint car thing... I didn't get to talk much about it while you guys where talking in the practice 'cause I was deep in conversation with Marco lol. But I grew up at a 3/8 mile asphalt oval AND in dirt track country haha. Winged sprints, World of Outlaws sprints, dirt modifieds, midgets... dirt track racing might at first seem pointless or stupid, but I'd have to say that those boys are to motor racing what Formula 1 was in 1986. They take something completely out of control, and they control it through chaos. After watching a guy qualify and run about 9 consecutive 13.1XX's... On dirt... in a 900hp methanol ANIMAL... riding the cushion on one corner, dropping low into the next, and pulling up the inside front tire all the way down the straight... lol. No amount of letters on a keyboard can express the amount of respect I have for those guys haha. They strap themselves onto a bomb and make it their b*tch. 'Nuff said.

The winged, methanol breathing World of Outlaws sprint cars literally blow your mind out the front of your face to see in person. But then you watch the boys in the wingless sprints hit the track for the one week each year that sums up their career, and you will seriously start questioning reality itself. See for yourself, yo.

That's a great video Travis. I didn't even realize there were that many dirt ovals in this state. I'm from Terre Haute. I grew up at the drag strip there, so to speak. Never used to watch the sprint cars there for whatever reason, but my family would go to Putnamville on the weekends and watch races there. Stock cars, modifieds, and the always insane sprint cars. As a kid, I had no idea those cars were pushing horsepower in the range of drag cars. All I knew was they were really fast and had the best crashes. One guy launched off of turn 3 one time and went right into the woods (there was no retaining wall or anything to stop the car, but you can see there are billboards outside that turn now at 5:58). He went high enough that the car never hit the ground. It got wedged into the branches. Naturally, I didn't see it since that was the moment I decided to go use the restroom.

I probably haven't been to a dirt track race in 20 years come to think of it. Definitely going to fix that this year though. Was just talking to one of my buddies about how we should try to get to a race soon. After watching that video, I'm more ready to go than ever.

Also, an online-enabled sequel to this game needs to happen

@slowbird: Even though I just bought old Phoenix fairly recently, my vote is still in for new Phoenix!

@maxx77 said:

Also, an online-enabled sequel to this game needs to happen

I'm pretty sure there was one for the 360?

I think I may have figured out why I feel like someone has screwed with the settings every Formula Duder race I've joined. It turns out I'm practicing each track with the air temperature set to 80F. I think I probably just need more air pressure in my tires to compensate for the cooler temperatures.

I would just like to confirm that for all the Formula Duder races the temperature is set to 65F. Or that I'm crazy.

Yep, weather is always 65F, 0 wind, 0 humidity, Clear. I may try "partly cloudy" next week.

e: 2 hours of open practise for GBGT is up.

On the discussion of Dogs and Cats, I could never get my cats to do this.

There was a game like that, but it wasn't a sequel to that game. It was also a different developer. I don't remember if it was any good, but it probably wasn't since I can't really remember playing it.

Last nights GT3 race was a lot of fun. I had some company for a good portion of the race, thanks for hitting stuff @slowbird and having some aero damage. I looked back through the past records and I believe that this is the only FD or GBGT race that everyone ended on the lead lap. As much as folks were having issues with some corners we still did fairly well driving it.

Anyone interested in a build-day hosted session tomorrow? Possibly the new Road DW12?

Once I found the ispeed app it has helped out a ton. You can dive in super deep but the main thing I like to use are the gear and line breakdowns. Knowing that you can take a turn in a specific gear or that you are taking too wide a line through a turn or missing the apex saves you a ton of time. The best part about it is that people that use the app upload their times automatically so you can always grab someones lap time that is slightly better than yours and see what the difference is. I don't have a ton of time during the week to practice so I study the data in this app and it helps when I get out onto the track.

Software page... http://www.nessoft.com/ispeed/

Here is a brief breakdown... http://www.nessoft.com/ispeed/lapanalyzer.html

Great write-up on the software... http://www.schulzworld.com/images/iRacing/docs/one_second_at_a_time.pdf

If you don't want to read, here is a video overview... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8ZEWqYk2rU

Great race last night. I had to stay on point each lap run a clean race. The pit strategy worked and the cross up was perfect. Laguna Seca next week!

@iron1c: It depends on the time but I could be up for it.

@noryia: Well, the time could be the same as on the weekends? I don't know how that would work out for you. Also I thought about going all new-content, so Road DW12 at Donington maybe. I'd just put it under hosted sessions and let other people join, but reserve some slots for league members.

@iron1c: I'm usually at work during those times. We'll see.

@iron1c: if there is anything going on after 6pm PST I would be up for joining in.

Okay, so if iRacing isn't horribly broken after the update and everything works as intended, I'll host a new content race at this time: Click!

The track will definitely be Donington and the car will probably be the DW12 Road Version. It'll be 2 hours of practice, some short qualifying and ~40min of racing, I'll figure out the amount of laps needed for that.

It's gonna be a hosted session, so it's open for everyone. Hope to see you there!

iRacing just gave me $11.95 because I recently bought the Impala <3 I felt stupid at first for getting it but now it's cool. Also, I'm so excited for the DW12 road races. It'll probably be the next car I buy (yes, for some reason I still don't have it)

Edit: The release notes are out, just read through them... "Many cars will now spit out backfire flames when appropriate. Some cars backfire when off throttle, depending on their engine tuning. Others will backfire if you hit the rev limiter or upshift if their engine tuning implements these features via an ignition cut (which passes unburned fuel through to the exhaust). And some of our cars don't make flames at all, typically the lower level cars. The visual effect and the sound effect of backfires are not synchronized at this time. Also, opponent cars do not make backfires during upshifts at this time, only off throttle backfires."

What is this sorcery?! I must see for myself

Yeah, if they "update" an old car with a completely new one you usually get the credits back if you bought it within the last 90 days. If you bought it prior to that, you still usually get 5$ back, which is nice.

Remember when we used to do the figure 8 at Irwindale? We maybe did it a little too frequently and it got old... but I kinda miss it now. I started a Week 13 race last night with the Spec Racer. Gridded in 10th but somehow dodged all the people wrecking in turn 1 and wound up in first place for several laps. Eventually got collected and did a repair, no biggie. But then I got collected immediately again. Turns out you get just one quick repair. Really defeats the point of doing a figure 8 race if you're only expected to get to finish a few laps. I just quit the session, which is the first time I've ever done that.

Any chance the GBRL will do another event there again? I don't think I care what car(s) we use, just so long as there's no fog.

Hey everyone, I'm hosting an open session with the DW12 Road Car at Donington RIGHT NOW! Practice is open for 2hrs, followed by 20min of qualifying and a 35 lap race that should take ~45min.

You can find it under the Hosted Sessions! Hope to see you there!

I'm downloading the content now, I'll join once it's finished. Soooo excited :D

Since I now have enough tracks/cars, I get the 25% loyalty discount. That means free Donington (with the Camaro credit they gave everyone). Woooo!

Let's race the new stuff! :D

I've been stuck at work late. I won't be able to make it. Have fun. Hopefully someone will stream it.

Guys... the Star Mazda feels awesome now. Bit more understeer, but the rear is planted now :D No more weird floatiness.

Matt Orr (Empty Box) stopped by and practiced most of the session but left the race 3 laps in. We had all 34 pit spots taken up although only a third of them raced and only 5 of us finished. It was still fun.

I thought the Star Mazda felt relatively planted before. I was finally getting used to controlling the oversteer and now I have to work with understeer? Blasphemy! *removes rear wing*