GT Spec Endurance Challenge - Rob wins the title by only 8 points!

[iamsupernasty]

GT Spec Endurance Challenge 2012
www.GTendurancechallenge.com

Welcome! The inaugural Gran Turismo Spec Endurance Challenge has begun!

This is an expert level endurance challenge series for Spec GT cars. The series highlights five very different but extremely evenly matched cars; each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Combine that with a varied track schedule that will challenge each car and driver in a unique way, and the resulting season should provide some very exciting racing throughout the grid.

All rules, regulations, drivers lists and current standings are available on the league website.


Season one will have eight points scoring rounds, plus one mandatory practice race.

All r​aces will be approximately one hour in length, and will be held Saturday evenings, with open practice beginning at 4:50 PM Eastern, and the first qualifying sessions starting promptly at 5:30 PM Eastern.

​Room Restrictions:
​
* Standing Start w/ False Starts​
​​* Heavy Damage
* Tires: Sports Hard ​
* Draft: Weak
* Penalties: Off
* Boost: Off
* Collisions: On
* Grip Reduction: Real ​
* Aids & Assists Allowed: ABS Only​
* Tire Wear & Fuel Consumption: Fast

Cars Allowed:

2002 Honda NSX Type R -
2009 Lotus Evora - ​
2004 BMW M3 -​
2002 Mazda RX7 -
2008 Nissan 370Z -

Schedule:

Fuji GT (Practice Race) - November 17th 2012 Pre-Season Race Video
Nurburging GP/F - November 24th 2012
Autodromo Nazionale Monza - December 1st ​ 2012
Suzuka Circuit - December 8th​ 2012
Cote D'Azur - December 15th 2012
Circuit De La Sarthe 24/hr - January 5th 2013
Autumn Ring - January 12th 2013
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps - January 19th 2013
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca - January 26th 2013

Current Standings * include lowest score being dropped from total

1st - Rob / Red_Leader (Nissan Fairlady Z)​​ - 207 Pts
2nd - Jason / fbmautopilot (Lotus Evora) - 199 Pts
3nd - Bill / iamsupernasty (Mazda RX-7) - 189 Pts
4th - Derrick / RayzaBlayz (Lotus Evora) - 189 Pts
5th - Chris / Wanderlust2000 (BMW M3) - 173 pts
6th - Tim / MrJones_80 (Honda NSX-R) - 149 Pts
7th - Alec / Isuzuguy02 (Honda NSX-R) - 135 Pts




----

Congratulations to Rob for winning the championship of the Spec Endurance Challenge 2012!

The season seemed to be a tale of two halfs, and the last four races was a mad dash by the Lotus Evora of Jason to reign in the lead of Rob. With only an eight point deficit, it's hard to argue that with different fuel strategy at Sarthe and Autumn ring, the title might be a lot closer!

Only ten points farther behind, Bill and Derrick have tied at 189 Points! Fortunately for yours truly, the first tie-breaker is race wins and my win (by 3 seconds over Derrick) at Autumn Ring was all that I needed to snag the final podium spot.

What an absolutely epic opening season! It literally came down to the wire, and I think we can all second guess a few decisions that might have left us somewhere higher up on the charts.

Stay tuned for season two!

 

[Worst_Driver]

I didn't know you were a fellow GTP member. Great seeing you here.
We have some nice racing coming in the 2 months or so. 👍

 

[iamsupernasty]

Surprise

Yea man, I am excited! It's going to be a dog fight to the finish I'm sure. The drivers list is a little intimidating actually; it's going to take a serious effort to make a podium. The new 2.09 tire/fuel model is going to make things extra interesting.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Also a giant thanks to our guest steward, fellow GTPlanet member LVRacerGT who was nice enough to volunteer some time to help us review footage throughout the season. Thanks a bunch man!

 

[Worst_Driver]

Do we have someone with a video converter or something so that we could record highlights from the races thoughout the season and do a little montage at the end of the season ?

I don't own such a thing but I'll take some pictures every race and post them in this thread.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Do we have someone with a video converter or something so that we could record highlights from the races thoughout the season and do a little montage at the end of the season ?

I don't own such a thing but I'll take some pictures every race and post them in this thread.

I'm not sure if anybody does have one, but I can ask. I looked into buying one, but my computer doesn't have an HDMI input. I'll check to see what our options are; I agree it would be great to have some video footage.

 

[fcyaa]

Sup guys!
I use my cell phone some times haha


This is from this week.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Cool videos! Looks decent for sure, but definitely a capture device would be sweet. I found a few online that might work that I'll probably buy. My damn G27 Pedals are sticking though, so I might need to buy a new wheel before the season starts instead.

--

Maybe I could try wearing my racing helmet and GoPro camera during the races? We could record some live POV action...

 

[iamsupernasty]

So the new tire/fuel rule is VERY interesting! We did some testing today with the RX7 and NSX at Autumn Ring.

On "very fast" wear, the car burns 4.7 Liters of fuel per lap which equates to 164.5 liters in the full length race. That means you could stop once if you executed it perfectly, but more likely two stops would be best. We decided this was a little too arcadey.

We're using "Fast" wear in the series. This is still not realistic, but should provide interesting strategy. My calculations say that with the same car, on the same track, the car burns 2.6 liters of fuel per lap with these settings. That equates to around 93 liters (the car have a 100liter tank) used in the course of a race. That means that you COULD do the race without stopping, but you'd be loosing 2-3 seconds per lap because of worn tires. Which is faster overall? That will depend on consistency, and what kind of traffic you hit. On a clear track, pitting is faster. On some tracks though (Sarthe, Spa), there is no way it could be done without stopping.

Can you tell I'm excited to kick this off?

 

[Mrjones]

You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRpzRZE4OqQ

How do you guys get the youtube video to come up in post?

 

[Worst_Driver]

You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRpzRZE4OqQ

How do you guys get the youtube video to come up in post?

You need to copy the part after the ''watch?v=''
which in this case is :yRpzRZE4OqQ and put it between youtube tags.



Did you guys make your choice yet ? I'm still testing and I'm hesitating between two of them. I'll decide this week probably.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Haven't totally decided which car I want yet. I have a few ideas also, and I'm pretty convinced. I'll wait until after the practice race to make my decision though.

--

That project cars video is sweet! If only Nurb GP/F looked like that in GT5....

 

[Whitey093]

I can not wait for this!!!! I have been having the worst luck lately finding qualified people to race with online. This is the medicine i need to remain interested in gt5 going forward. Thanks again to you and jones for setting this up. With the drivers we have signed up, i think a goal of trying to score top tens is about as optimistic as i can be going in. I'm also sure that battling hard for 14th will be more fulfilling than winning most other races out there.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Hey Whitey! Didn't know you were from Aurora. Small world.

Anyway yea you're right. Even scoring a top ten will require running a pretty perfect race. Crash even once and it's doubtful.

There is a website that lists GT Academy ranking from 8-5 and I looked at it today.

There are 7 drivers in the league listed within the top 2000 players worldwide and 9 within the top 3000. Just for fun, and without attaching names to these, here are the GTAcademy 8-5 times for the top 9 drivers. (I think we all know who the top time is though...)

01:31.1
01:31.8
01:31.9
01:31.9
01:32.0
01:32.2
01:32.2
01:32.2
01:32.3

---

Only three days till we kick this off. Good luck everyone!

 

[Worst_Driver]

Racing against the clock on a hot lap and racing 25 laps with other people is two totally different worlds.

I'll need to work on my consistency because I'm doing too many errors on a long race. Well that's what the practice race is for isn't it ?

 

[iamsupernasty]

Racing against the clock on a hot lap and racing 25 laps with other people is two totally different worlds.

lol, I'm counting on that fact! Heavy damage and tire wear will certainly reward consistency as much as pure speed.

 

[Whitey093]

Dang! I thought I did well with a 1.33.4. Good enough for 1213th in the u.s. Seems like everyone I race with anymore is 1-2 seconds a lap faster than me though. Thank god for gran turismo's super alien draft. It's all that'll keep me from being lapped. Lol

 

[iamsupernasty]

Dang! I thought I did well with a 1.33.4. Good enough for 1213th in the u.s. Seems like everyone I race with anymore is 1-2 seconds a lap faster than me though. Thank god for gran turismo's super alien draft. It's all that'll keep me from being lapped. Lol

Lol yep. Draft is a savior lol.

I think it is time for you to upgrade to a g27 though. Lmk if you wanna come by to try mine sometime. Ask Jones and farristi how much faster they got when switching from a controller.

 

[Worst_Driver]

I confirm. Once you get used to a wheel you're waaaaaaay faster than with a controller and be careful because you won't want to play with a controller anymore. It's a great purchase if you play GT enough. Bought mine 2 years ago and it's been used for countless hours.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Had a practice room open, but it's closed now.

 

[Worst_Driver]

Practice race went well. Great racing everybody, photos of the qualifying race and the race will be coming tomorrow in this thread.

 

[ROB 256R]

Yeah, a hard fought race for sure. Looking forward to watching some of the replay.

Just a shame it wasn't a full grid

 

[iamsupernasty]

Yea, it was a fun race! Congrats to Worst_Driver for the win in the Honda NSX-R.

I watched most of the replay already. Incredible how we had 6 cars literally trying to share 1 piece of pavement for a solid 25 minutes, and I don't think a single person even got the slightest damage. I've never seen so much two and three wide everywhere. It's a shame we let the leaders slip away so easily with all the battling though. Really stellar driving by everybody though!

It's a shame I didn't realize that the Honda could do it without a fuel stop though. That certainly makes it hard for the other cars to win. I'll sort that out before the season starts. We'll either need to extend the race length, or change tire wear rates, or take some speed from the NSX....

I'm a little disappointing that a few people missed the race. I thought I made it pretty clear people were expected to participate. Well see what happens before race one next week.

I'm also a little disappointed that nobody picked the BMW or the Nissan. Maybe we need to re-evaluate some of the performance mods; unfortunately it's a little late for that call.

Also, how does everyone feel qualifying went? I know it was a little difficult to get clear track, and it will be tighter with a full grid. Should we consider splitting qualifying into two or three sessions maybe?

 

[iamsupernasty]

Posted the video from the practice race. Sorry to the two guys up front who don't get a ton of coverage. This is an epic fight though! Hard to beat this. Make sure you switch it to HD! (click the little gear and select 720p)

 

[ROB 256R]

If the Nissan had less weight maybe it wouldn't be such a dog? Then you'd have to reduce it's power too which would probably be ok as it's already the fastest in a straight line. And I felt the M3 weighed too much; 1438kg is heavy compared to 1295kg for the NSX & RX7. For my driving style the NSX just seemed the right choice.

I thought qualifying went ok. But even with only 10 cars on a track as big and wide as Fuji it did feel quite busy. It would certainly be testing at some of the shorter, narrower tracks. Maybe having two groups of 8 is the way to go?

I think the race went really well all things considered. I'm actually a bit gutted it was only a practice race The second group of 5 cars that we were in; to be racing that closely for that long and for no-one to pick up even a hint of damage; I'd say you chose a good bunch of racers Bill 👍

Love the video! Really captures the intensity

If it was say, a 30 lapper instead, that would have been long enough for everyone to need a pitstop. I thought the tyre/fuel wear rate was good set to fast.

I'm sure whatever you decide to adjust, it will be for the better. You seem to have it pretty well thought out.

 

[Worst_Driver]

Great video, it was fighting hard behind us. Nice footage Bill. Just like in formula one, when it's getting boring in front, mid-pack drivers are getting some coverage. 👍

The NSX while being slower in the straights is very grippy and has a neutral and predictable handling. I just don't think that it stands a chance at Monza and at La Sarthe. The 370Z is sliding all over the place and the M3 is just too heavy but it's really hard to find 5 different cars and tune them to be almost equal. So I think you did a good job because the RX7, NSX and the evora to an extend are near equal while having their own weaknesses and strengts.

And about the length of the races, I suggest that it extends to an hour so that everyone needs to pit (yeah even me in my NSX ) or obligating a mandatory pit stop. More than an hour would bit a tad long IMO.

For qualifying, I think that we should start from the pits driver by driver with like a 15-20 seconds gap between each one so then there would be no problem with slipstream advantage.

 

[Worst_Driver]

WARNING LONG POST AHEAD

Qualifying race.

Starting grid

First turn.

Pack racing.

Rayza, Red_Leader & Farristi fighting for third place.

Fbmautopilot and me at the finish line for first place.


Main race

Starting grid.

First turn.

First turn from the back.

Last turn of T2.

All of us on the first lap.

Rayza, Farristi and Nasty.

Very close racing between Nasty, Rayza, Farristi, Red_Leader & Mr_Jones.

Captainshame, whitey & Isuzuguy battling for 8th.

Fbmautopilot & me fighting for first place.

Farristi pitting on lap 13.

Nasty did the same just a lap later.

First turn, last lap. Battle for sixth place.

Time to celebrate for me

Fbm running out of gas on last lap and getting passed by Red_leader.

Close finish for 6th place...

..and a closer one for 8th.

And that's all for the photos.

Bill, if you want to use some of them to put on the website, feel free to do it. 👍

Edit: Is the pole sitter the winner of the qualifying race or the fastest time in qualifying session ?

 

[iamsupernasty]

Great pics! I may indeed use some

Pole sitter is the fastest qualifier and will receive 2 bonus points.
Winner of the qualifying race is the one who starts first in the feature. That is also worth 2 bonus points.

I didn't realize autopilot ran out of fuel on the last lap! I guess the RX7 was closer on fuel than I thought it was.

I'm gonna do some Liters per Mile calculations later and we'll figure out the best way to make pit stops fair.

I like your qualifying idea. Definitely something to consider.

 

[Worst_Driver]

I was just wondering because it was written Fbm as pole sitter.

For qualifying, you could just name a driver at every 15 seconds or so while we're all waiting in the pits and once you're done with your three hot laps, you wait off track until the rest of the pack finishes and then you start the race. Simple and it's working great in another racing series that I race in.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Made a few changes to the league today. Welcome GTP_Litchi to the drivers grid! He should make another great addition to the season.

We've upgraded the Nissan and BMW pretty dramatically to make them more competitive. We've also changed the laps a little bit so that the pits are more fair. The MRs now still have better mileage, but the FRs have some more pure speed.

Going to be very interesting next weekend! Remember that car choices are due Wednesday!