Alright guys! Successful Road Atlanta and successful Bathurst 1000 is DONE, so let's go to Brands Hatch!

So, let's not change setups last-minute this time around and settle on one around Thursday/Friday, so other people who don't/can't practice immediately before the race know what they're in for.

Also: The Endurance Race slot this Sunday overlaps with real life 'DEGA. So, Team BMW is gonna race the Saturday slot this time, right? Like we talked about during the Atlanta weekend?

Boohoo, my neighbours have started complaining about the vibrations from my rig.. No worries though I've ordered three different dampening solutions and will smack them all together to make the ultimate dampening for my rig. :P Will be tight to get it for this weekend though, but hopefully I'll see you at Brands!

In the meantime, why not watch what the team was up to last weekend.. we're actually interviewed at the end of the race (4:30:52 spoilers for the race of course). Interview was nothing special but pretty cool since it's our first time. ^^

I'm good for Saturday only this week. I'm going to try to get some seat time in tonight late in the evening.

@phouchg Bummer about the neighbor complaints since there's not much you can do about it except turn down the force feedback until you get some other solutions. Maybe just stacks of rugs? :) Nice job on the GOT race.

Yeah a real bummer. Don't think lowering the feedback is enough either because I imagine the pedals create more sound and vibrations/slams since i have a pretty solid brake that you really need to stomp on. But yeah rugs, gym puzzle mats, washing mashine dampeners and dampening rubber mat. Hopefully that will do the trick.. at least i'll use that until next neighbour complains. ^^

Good luck on saturday! I wish I could race the sprint series this week as well since I got all that warm up through GES, but haven't had the chance yet because of this issue..

@iron1c@khann So I ran about half an hour of practice tonight in a practice session. I forgot to check the weather before it ended but I got down to a low 1:25 and opt in the 24s. I was using this setup which was a Mid-Ohio set just changed to a standard gearing. It can get a little tail happy for sure, but I think a lot of that is just this track and the need for high corner speeds. For me it was always a bit of a dance to see how far I can push the curbs in each part of the corner for more corner speed without hitting the dirt and spinning out. Seems to be a fine line in some corners. I imagine passing might be nigh impossible but I wasn't running in traffic at all during practice.

@datarez: Currently super sick, so I didn't do anything this week. Will try to get in a quick 30m of practice tonight though, to avoid last race's setup kerfuffle.

Finally got it all set up so hopefully no more complaints :p

We'll be doing the 2nd and 3rd race this week. I'll probably be slower than usual because of lack of practice on the week. But hope I see you guys out there and good luck! :)

Nice work getting the podium in the race on Saturday we shared.

Our race was interesting but fun. Khann couldn't make it and Iron1c was sick but we made it work. Iron1c was able to drug up enough to do the start and the race minimum 17 laps and then I took over and did the rest. 107 laps I think it was. The slight problem there was there was a little hargy bargy at the beginning and we had already used 20 of our 30 incident points when I got in. So I'd have to drive it clean for sure.

I took tires during the driver change and short fuel to get me back on a normal sequence for the end. But I decided to gamble and took full fuel only for the next stop to see if I could make up some time from the extra pit stop. It was fine for a while but didn't pay off as I had to do 65 laps on that one set of tires and the lap times were bad. The last stop I took tires and fuel like normal and the car felt great again. Problem was I was getting a little brain fade and leg stiffness and lost it a couple times. Luckily only one of them didn't count for any incident points since I was able to slow it down enough. Ended up racing the last couple laps with one of the cars we had contact with early in the race but it was clean and even though we lost the place I was happy with the result in 15th.

Looking at the unofficial standings we're 137th and High Octane is in 97th. About where we were last week I think. The official standings are broken and mostly impossible to read anyway, but they're only counting 160 teams in the unofficial sheet now. I wonder did only 160 teams do both weeks or just no one from beyond 160th has a chance so he didn't go down that far?

Seems like they have fixed the standings now. A lot more teams in it. High Octane in 95th and GBeast in 143rd.

Was a pretty messy weekend for us. That 3rd place took some work after 4 spins and a little damage that hurt us on the straights (10kph at the end of the long straight).

The Sunday race was just a mess.. seemed like everyone was trying to make up for bad results earlier. I seemed to get caught by every spinning car and had 25 inc after first stint. We still had a shot at 4th after starting 24th so we were moving up, but it ended early in second stint when a spinner backed out in front of us in turn one.

Zolder should be fun though, a lot of curb hopping ahead of us. ^^

I guess I'm double posting now but was just gonna see if you guys are doing any races this weekend? We've all ready done one and won 4th split. Racing is very tough at this track but I love it. :)

@phouchg: Nope, I think everyone on both teams is pretty burned out on iRacing right now.

@iron1c: I'm just super sick of GT3, and endurance racing. Been doing lots of league racing though.

Maybe we can do something with the GBRL banner next season.

@mouse: GT3 is not the most exciting thing in the world, but I still enjoy team racing. What leagues are you doing right now?

Ah I can understand that. I'm still having a blast but I'm still pretty new to this iRacing thing. This weekend we're doing GES again and that will be live streamed by Racespot again, so feel free to watch ;)

I think it's on the official iRacing channel on youtube. Otherwise it's the racespot channel. :P

@iron1c: I enjoy team racing too; I wish there was something else for us to run together. I'd still do the races just to hang out with the duders, but that mid-afternoon race time. :S

I'm running some with the Old Bastards racing league; very gentlemanly and laid back. I also do races with the Rumblestrip Racing league and they're a good group of guys.

I found some other nice/active leagues by checking the forum, though most had race times that were too early for me. They're definitely out there though.

Yeah, hands up, I've kinda lost motivation lately. I'll be back in the mood before long, no doubt.

@khann:Just inject some racing heroin and you'll be addicted again.

@mouse: Sucks that the Team Racing time is bad for you :/ To be honest, both of them are kinda shitty for me as well, but they're doable. Would definitely prefer other times.

Also sorry, bad wording on my part, but by asking about the leagues I was more thinking about the cars you drive. Like, what cars do you enjoy driving so that the league is interesting for you? Don't say Skippy.

@iron1c: There's a few league series I've been jumping into here and there: Xfinity, DW12 (oval and road) and L49 on ovals which is probably some of the most fun I've had in iRacing.

To be honest, I'm down to race anything except for the GT cars. I don't like TC/ABS very much.

Well interesting BoP changes for this season (2016 Season 1):

Ford GT GT3
- GT3 BoP Update: Aero drag has been reduced slightly.

McLaren MP4-12C GT3
- GT3 BoP Update: Minimum weight has been reduced by 10 kg.

Ruf RT 12R Track
- GT3 BoP Update: Overall aero drag has been increased slightly.
- GT3 BoP Update: The rear wing gurney flap sensitivity has been increased, adjusting the downforce and drag.

And note there are no BMW changes. Weird but also it's mostly pretty solid all the way around. Also read that the damper changes that happened already might help the BMW the most with the traction issues. Ford needed everything it could get, surprised it didn't get any weight changes. The McLaren is even lighter so that'll be even faster down the straights but apparently their drivers have been complaining about braking and cornering for a while so this might help a little there too. And then the we come to the Ruf. Just aero drag? Pfft. I wonder if they're letting it go out on top since the Ruf and Ford are getting kicked out next season (March 2016) to make room for the Merc and Audi.

The beemer seems like a beast this season, at least on the first couple tracks of the season that I've tested. The baseline setup is really nice as well. The new popcorn fx graphics are pretty cool. Twice I got completely lost in tire smoke from someone going sideways in front of me. Seeing rocks come up on the windscreen is a nice immersive factor when someone cuts a corner in front of you. I'm pretty sure this is also new but I looked over when I was side by side with someone yesterday and could see them turning their steering wheel. That might be part of the more data that they're sending from competitor cars.

First few tracks in the sprint/endurance series seems to be BMW tracks. This first one is definitely one and I've finally learned to drive it. Will be doing the first race tomorrow and then maybe the sunday race. :)

I saw a GB car today at Bathurst... think it was @slowbird driving. He was taking the same approach as me, starting from the back just trying to survive. At least that's what it seemed like. I didn't see the end of it though as someone spun in to me after a couple of laps and I got 35 minutes repairs.. so I gave up. Hope it all went better for you guys!

We were going pretty well.

Then I got in the car and crashed on my 2nd lap. 12 minutes of repairs later, I was back on track. Then I crashed the car on my 2nd lap. 22 minutes later Slowbird was on track. Then he crashed the car on his first lap. He drove it to the end.

@phouchg: Yeah that was me at the beginning there. I was just cruising there behind you. I thought everyone in our race that had survived that lap 4 mess had the same idea of just make it around but I saw someone got into you there in front of us. Your video showed it was pretty unnecessary too. Bummer.

@khann: you left out your second crash I think

@datarez: Yeah everyone did not have the same idea apparently. But yeah I guess I could have just let him by and kept safe, but left him plenty of room so thought I'd be safe anyway. Guess you learn something new every time. :P

Sound like your race kind of sucked though. Not fun waiting out all that damage. I did it two times on saturday and then I got fed up after the third crash...

We drove as two teams with the Ruf in the Sunday endurance. Neither team fared very well but maybe we were a bit wrong talking so bad about the Ruf? One team did manage a top 10 in our split with a Merc on Saturday. It was also a Miku paint but I forgot to get a screenshot.

@datarez said:

We drove as two teams with the Ruf in the Sunday endurance. Neither team fared very well but maybe we were a bit wrong talking so bad about the Ruf? One team did manage a top 10 in our split with a Merc on Saturday. It was also a Miku paint but I forgot to get a screenshot.

I started the saturday morning endurance with absolutely no practice on the track, in a Merc. Started from the pits but forgot to put fuel in it at first so had to go back in settings and fix that. Lost 20 seconds on the other pit starters on that and at first I actually had the worst pace in the whole field. Fun part of not practicing is you only get faster and at the end of the race I kept up with top 10 runners. Was a fun race and I reached as high as 18th (without cutting the pit entrance I could have had 2 or 3 more positions though...).

@datarez said:

Wait a damn minute. All this time you guys dump all over the only good GT3 car, laughing at my fondness for it, forcing me to drive trash vehicles, killing my disire to run this series, and NOW YOU DECIDE TO DRIVE THE RUF?!

Fuck you guys.

:P

@mouse: Haha. Well @slowbird said he's going to keep driving the Ruf until he stops wrecking it if you want to join him.

@datarez: I could probably do a race or two this season. Haven't done any driving since January; time to start up again.

Yeah @mouse woo! :D

Just wanted to show how well our weekend went. We had two bad entries in the race at Interlagos on Saturday and Sunday was the worst. This was coming to the green in 40 something car field and we had qualified in the 20s. After the horror that was our Saturday we called it before even trying to go back out there with another damaged car. Probably the worst crash at a start we've seen in an endurance race.

https://gfycat.com/FrigidAlarmedChinesecrocodilelizard

On a better note in Nascarland I had this great luck at Talladega in a B class fixed race.

https://gfycat.com/YellowishGoodnaturedChicken