As I said, I raced the equivalent race with bots for testing. If I can't get a clean race with bots, there is no way I can do it with humans.
Could not figure why the car felt so totally different in race than in quali. Braking and traction were set up the same, had not been off in the grass, but the car was vague and sloppy. At one point, going up the hill after T1 and getting ready for the first hard left, I felt there was no connection between the steering inputs and the car. I put it down to what seems to be an extraordinarily strong drafting benefit on that race... It seems to me as though the car behind is getting a huge draft (much more so than previous Gr4 races I've done). If so, perhaps this was also making my steering unexpectedly light when I was behind other cars coming into corners... which obviously would not happen when qualifying.
So what I'm doing at the moment is arcading a Catalunya custom race - Gr3 style. All the same BOP settings, penalty settings etc. as if it were the daily race and practicing driving in traffic and working out how it feels compared to quali tts. It one respect its not a great comparison because in the daily races I end up in, everyone is all over the place, but in another there is a certain amount of consistency from the bots that help with reptition and learning the lines and where you can/can't overtake.
The growing aggressiveness in the races is a big problem. Many simply do not want to accept that in an online game, not everyone can win. So they try to force the desired success. That's also a question of motivation. I drive because I want to have fun in exciting races. It does not matter if I finish on 1 or 15 when the race is good and the battles fair. But other players only go for the victory.
I struggle with this to some extent. I said in my first post on here that I was wanting to drive for fun and see how I lined up against the world etc. But then the bug of competition got to me. The problem is that there's not a lot in the way of recognition for those of us who 'aren't that good'. I will not win that many races in my lifetime, pps, fastest laps and dare I say it in the current lobby environment consecutive clean races seems impossible unless I want to deliberately start and finish last and plod around keeping out of the way. The only 'achievement' I can really track and be proud of is races completed.
Which brings me on to DR. I had two good races at Gr3 Maggiore with a p3 and a p5 last week and pumped up my DR/D to around 1300. But I know all it will take is the first time I actually enter a race at Catalunya with As Bs and Cs I'm done and that bad boy is going flat back down to DR1.
I'm not consistent enough to finish top half every time I race and of course with the matchmaking it's nigh on impossible at the moment.
I'm quite proud of my SR. I will gladly drive clean and slow, but that is so stupid a scale that again you can't really set a lot of stock in that as a status - look at me I'm SR/S rated as a drive, a long with half the world who were SR/E 2 races ago but some how stayed clean for a couple of laps.
So what do we do? The game doesn't give nowt. So unless we find a regional/local league/where we can record stuff and reward manually we kinda end up having to settle for the fact that at least I know I finished 3rd once.
Or do we go sod it, I'm going to go for the win, even if it's a bit dirty and spoils someones day in the process - someone who is probably like me just trying to keep it on the tarmac and enjoy themselves in the process.
I don't know. Maybe PD just need to find a way to recognise and reward you good drivers, without taking away my hard earned DR just because I got dumped in a DR/A&B lobby or a Destruction Derby race I wasn't ever going to win.
</tantrum>
