GTPLMS Season 5: PreSeason Event ***RESULTS***

[ABud]

GTMSA Presents
GTPLMS Season 5 PreSeason
Twin Ring Motegi Road Course; 15 Lap Race (70km)
Deadline 11.59pm GMT Sunday 4th April​

Welcome to the PreSeason Event of the 5th season of GTPLMS here at Motegi! This event is designed as a final shakedown for all drivers to check their cars and also a first look at how the field is set. We're running a half distance event to help all you guys with multiple T cars, so let's get those engines started!

Feel free to discuss sector times, and for this round only you can also discuss lap times. As this event runs over Easter and i'm away the results will not be online until tuesday 6th April; the deadline remains as Sunday so as not to confuse people. Don't forget to get your final car choice in to me as soon as possible, but obviously by the round 1 qualifying deadline (11th April).

Results

​

General Information and Regulations

All rules, regulations, car specifications, and races are controlled by GTPLMS sanctioning body, GTMSA. Any and all questions should be directed to GTMSA officials (ABud or oldmodelt) and officials will do their best to answer in a timely and accurate manner.

All drivers must run at the specified weights and horsepower settings provided by GTMSA for each round. Horsepower and/or weight settings are adjusted for competitive reasons each round based on finishing positions from previous rounds.

IMPORTANT
For this season the track is defined as the area between the parallel white/yellow lines (see image below). This means that rumble strips no longer count as track.

• Standard Online Racing Rules Apply.
• No Cheating, hybrids, etc. You must run the car specifications I give you
• Try keeping at least 2 wheels on course. Long races = small mishaps, but absolutely NO shortcuts
• No wall-riding as well. Combined with penalties, this will slow you down considerably, so don't do it.
• All decisions by GTMSA officials are final

Race

• Arcade Mode>>>Single Race>>>World Circuits>>>Twin Ring Motegi Road Course
• 15 lap race (70km)
• Weight penalties in place
• RS, RM, RH tyres or any combination thereof
• Strong Tyre Wear
• AI at +8
• AI tyres RS
• Forced Pit Entry penalty system
• ASM is prohibited TCS is optional
• Points for race: 10-8-6-4-2-1
• 2 points for finishing within 103% of race winning time
• 1 points for finishing outside 103% of race winning time

Time sending format

PM me with the following data. Please make sure all details are correctly filled in and DONT MISS THE DEADLINE

User Name:
Class:
Car:
Number:
HP:
Weight:
Total Time:
Fastest Lap:
No. of Pits:


Good luck all 👍

Andy

 

[fogbound]

Whoa, I am waaay off the pace so far... gulp.

 

[ABud]

Both east and Austin343 are seriously quick drivers so don't be too put off! Also those times were done under qualifying conditions, so RS tyres and no fuel.


Important Change To GT1

The HP values for all the GT1 cars have been increased as I felt there was not enough between the GTS and GT1 lap times. Many appologies to those who spent time on the previous setups.

Bud



After running a few laps I've got lap times of (time trial mode, RS tyres):

Audi R8: 1'28.508
AMG Mercedes CLK-GTR: 1'33.631

 

[fogbound]

ya, it is a bit quicker in TT mode, 1'29.2 for me. I did some 1'31.1 's in race mode. That ghost drives me nuts. After using TT mode I crash into the car in front of me when I get back to sharing the track with other cars.

 

[SuperShouden]

LOVING the Pagani. of the three cars I chose it's definitely the best to drive. Even with hard tires, it handles well. Almost won the first race with it, but the McLaren in front of me was just a little bit faster and beat me by sheer luck actually, as the CLK-GTR almost collected it twice.

I think I'll have to try some different tire combinations before I submit final results. I would actually suggest doing RH tires first and then switch to RM tires last. But I WOULD urge people to stay away from the RS tires unless you're simply looking for a quick time, although, you're total time will suffer as you'll spend more time in the pits.

 

[oldmodelt]

Bud
[/COLOR]


After running a few laps I've got lap times of (time trial mode, RS tyres):

Audi R8: 1'28.508
AMG Mercedes CLK-GTR: 1'33.631

Can't even beat the AMG in my Judd.

 

[Austin343]

Andy, I see your reasoning for increasing the power of the GT1 cars. But IMO, in doing so, you've inadvertently compromised their enjoyability. The BMW loses its wonderful ability to slide around the track safely on an R3/R2 or R4/R3 tire combination, and it also becomes way too fast for the AI, which just means that they get in the way even more infuriatingly than before. The increase in sense of speed is palpable, but it is not pleasant for me. At the new power levels, I believe that I will politely withdraw from the series, because what made it interesting to me (the ability to drive safely and quickly on the tire-life-maximizing mixed combinations) has now vanished. I'm sure that others will welcome the power increase, but it isn't to my taste. 👍

 

[SuperShouden]

I just did a 1'35.468 in the BMW with RM tires...I'll have to see how fast I can go with RS tires later.

 

[ABud]

Andy, I see your reasoning for increasing the power of the GT1 cars. But IMO, in doing so, you've inadvertently compromised their enjoyability. The BMW loses its wonderful ability to slide around the track safely on an R3/R2 or R4/R3 tire combination, and it also becomes way too fast for the AI, which just means that they get in the way even more infuriatingly than before. The increase in sense of speed is palpable, but it is not pleasant for me. At the new power levels, I believe that I will politely withdraw from the series, because what made it interesting to me (the ability to drive safely and quickly on the tire-life-maximizing mixed combinations) has now vanished. I'm sure that others will welcome the power increase, but it isn't to my taste. 👍

I'm sorry that's the case Austin , what actually prompted the change was that I was unable to beat your GTS time from last year! You could always run a different car/class though, the Judd C60 is fun with mixed tyres benefiting from nice lift off oversteer?

 

[SuperShouden]

The Zonda has very even tire ware which is great because you don't have to mix the tire compounds.

The Panoz, for some stupid reason, ware it's front tires much faster and It made little difference whether I used Medium or Hard, as Hard lasted about a lap longer. However, I think, from now on, I'll be using Hard Tires for the Panoz as it'll keep me out of the pits more.

The BMW V12 has rear tire ware, but the hard tires give a couple more laps. I think in all, I've figured out the best combination of tires to use for each car.

 

[Austin343]

Thank you for the suggestion, ABud, but as I've mentioned, I don't find most race cars very fun these days (they're too "arcadey;" I mostly drive road cars on N tires instead). The BMW was basically the only car that interested me, and only under those very specific conditions. I do like to drive a few Group C cars (which, of course, aren't available here; the "feel" of the LMPs isn't enjoyable for me), and I could imagine the Nissan and Panoz in GT1 as being interesting to drive, so I'll test them later and will switch to them if I find them fun. 👍

By the way, I went into this subforum's archives to see what the reason was for your inability to beat my old lap time; after looking at Round 1, which used this track, I found that I had set a 1'36.396 in qualifying. So I jumped to the perfectly valid conclusion that I had set a faster time during the race after swapping for soft tires with low fuel. But that thread informed me that I had driven a 1'39.000 lap, evidently since I had used hard tires exclusively. And yet the 1'35.478 looked familiar, so I tracked it down, and it turned out to be my qualifying lap for the preseason race at Grand Valley. That probably explains some of the speed difference.

 

[ABud]

Head, meet hand...

Well thats that sorted, and brings up the dilema of whether to go back to the old settings or not? My concerns are this could get a bit confusing, and also the gap between GT1 and GTS will be down to about 1 second.

This is preseason and ironing out any problems is the point of it, thoughts?

 

[fogbound]

Though it isn't my decision to make, in my opinion Austin343 being one of the faster guys who races these events could be considered a "draw" and some concessions might be made to insure his participation in the class. I would rather get beat by him than not race against him at all. Just my humble opinion.

 

[Austin343]

While I'm honored (I suppose ) to be considered in that way, I don't think that precisely who participates has much impact on the number of competitors who are drawn to the series. If anything, fast times at the top of the standings probably discourage participation from more casual racers.

 

[fogbound]

While I'm honored (I suppose ) to be considered in that way, I don't think that precisely who participates has much impact on the number of competitors who are drawn to the series. If anything, fast times at the top of the standings probably discourage participation from more casual racers.

I find nothing casual about racing,
regards.

 

[Austin343]

ABud, I'd say that you should stick with your current power settings. 👍 The controllability of the BMW was the only reason to use the original setup, and that was only with an uneven tire combination, which I suspect most wouldn't care to use anyway. I've settled into the Panoz, which should be interesting, if not necessarily "good" in terms of pace. It's worse in almost every respect than the R390 - its wheelspin is omnipresent and completely kills momentum, it understeers profusely, it defeats attempts at consistency, and it eats tires at an alarming rate - but it's faster over a qualifying lap and makes the Nissan feel lifeless (granted, the latter is more "alive" at its stock power than with the reduction that it has even now). Its sound is also intoxicating, which I always appreciate, although it will make my wrists hurt as a result of jamming them into the side of the controller in an effort to persuade the car to turn.

I drove it for a few laps in Time Trial mode on RM tires and set a 1'35.0, but with more ability to hit braking points and to control that nasty wheelspin, a low 1'34 wouldn't be too difficult. In the race, though, I'll be much slower! Pushing hard every lap will take you straight into the sand (and the sand is vicious here, much as it is at Suzuka).

 

[oldmodelt]

If anything, fast times at the top of the standings probably discourage participation from more casual racers.

Unfortunately you are probably correct. But at my age I'm just glad to be able to enjoy a game that I would have killed for when I was just a Yute. You guys have never had to play the Intellivision Racing game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWaUCaRAioQ
Cutting edge 30+ years ago.

 

[Austin343]

I've had a chance to do two full races in the Panoz, and while I have no chance whatsoever of winning this preseason event, I'm still happy with my effort. The first time, I drove with medium tires, but the AI held me up quite a bit and I had to drive every fifth lap with dark orange tires, losing 10-15 seconds in total (it could have been a little less, but I was unable to adapt sufficiently to the large loss of stopping power). My best lap was a 1'34.8.

Thinking that a strategy that required such an extreme loss of time from bad tires was less than ideal, I retried with hard tires, in spite of the reason for which I had chosen the mediums in the first place: they are much slower (2.5 seconds) per lap. This time, I lost an enormous amount of time on the eighth lap as I tried to force the car around the corners on dark orange tires, and the seventh and fifteenth laps saw a small loss of time, too. The net result was that I finished only three seconds faster, with no chance at all at the fastest lap time, and likely only because three (!) AI cars went into the sand to allow me to pass them without trouble. But the race was completely clean with the possible exception of one instance when I might have had two tires on a rumble strip and the other two on the grass when exiting a corner, in contrast with the other race, in which I went once into the grass and once into the sand. I was also pretty consistent in lap times and got a nice draft from the 787B from laps three through five. I wish that a better pit strategy existed, but none does.

I'm enjoying myself enormously in this car. It understeers, but somehow it isn't frustrating, and there is a definite ability to be consistent that I did not expect. It's the most fun car that I've ever driven in a long race series, and I can't wait for the round at La Sarthe. 👍

 

[SuperShouden]

yeah, it's really cheap that it drops in the 787 into the race with the Panoz. The races with the other two cars, I easily beat everyone. But, there was no chance of coming close to the Mazda with the Panoz...oh well.

 

[Austin343]

I did beat it by a substantial, albeit hardly enormous, margin (saying exactly what it was would probably be giving too much away). But it's a much harder opponent than the game normally gives you; because there are few cars between the Panoz and the LMP-type cars in terms of speed, the game uses as many as it can that are not much better than the Panoz, and then has to insert a Group C car, which is in fifth precisely because it's fast.

I forgot to mention that my fastest lap my submitted race on hard tires was 1'37.241. I had the Mazda's draft for that lap, but I could have beaten it on later laps if I hadn't made mistakes in the final few corners each time.

 

[ABud]

Excellent, we'll stick with the new settings then. Must say I can't stand the Panoz, so much understeer it drives me mad! This is the only car that was making turns 3 & 4 difficult to do in one brake one accelerate around here! Good luck with it in the series, perhaps me and my AMG will have a chance

 

[TheBook]

I'm not much of a fan of the Panoz either; it showed up in my race and unnecessarily blocked me a couple times. Sent me to the pits once, and I got lucky the other ones. Still, that penalty kinda killed this race.

Guess I'll just have to try again...

 

[Austin343]

I've just driven the Panoz for a couple laps on each track, and I'm highly impressed by just how consistently it is fantastically enjoyable across a wide range of types of circuits. 👍👍 (Those are meant to be thumbs-up icons, not the April Fools Day smileys, by the way.) I'm not going to be grinning from ear to ear at Apricot Hill or at Suzuka, but I'm not much of a fan of either track, at least in race cars. And Cote d'Azur may get a little frustrating over a full race distance - the last chicane is evil in cars of this speed - but considering that it usually equals instant death for cars that have understeer and wheelspin, I'm going to like driving there quite a bit. I'm quite certain that I'm going to enjoy the Panoz much more than I would have enjoyed the F1 GTR, so perhaps it was actually better that the latter didn't work out as a result of the power bump. 👍

I have a somewhat off-topic question, too. At La Sarthe, are the white lines really going to be the boundary of the track? Of course, it's easy to figure out which of the lines are the relevant ones, but my question has more to do with their shape and placement. At most tracks, the white lines are immediately adjacent to rumble strips, grass, runoff areas, or things like pit lanes and access roads. But at La Sarthe, there's often a significant amount of what I perceive to be perfectly valid tarmac between the white lines and the rumble strips. Will the end of the tarmac count as the boundary where rumble strips exist, or will the white line still count as the edge of the track in those places? I feel that it's important to ask because the line is often irregularly shaped in key places; for example, entering the first chicane on the long straight, it bows out quite wide in the middle of the first right turn. This is a place where the cost of taking a slightly wider line is very high, so it pays large dividends to cut it closely, and I feel that we would "cut" the corner quite often under the white-line rule because the line's shape is hard to see and to predict.

 

[ABud]

It's a difficult call, the other place I would naturally go wider than the lines is the approach to the Mulssane kicker. The white line rule is meant to be there to simplify the race track definition, tricky.

 

[raz_10]

Just bought my controller today ....will give this a go as soon as I get home...

 

[Austin343]

It's a difficult call, the other place I would naturally go wider than the lines is the approach to the Mulssane kicker. The white line rule is meant to be there to simplify the race track definition, tricky.

That's what I assumed, which is why I asked; I thought that either way was perfectly valid. I know it's a difficult decision, and you certainly don't have to make it now, considering that it's a while until the La Sarthe round.

 

[oldmodelt]

I've just driven the Panoz for a couple laps on each track, and I'm highly impressed by just how consistently it is fantastically enjoyable across a wide range of types of circuits. 👍👍 (Those are meant to be thumbs-up icons, not the April Fools Day smileys, by the way.) I'm not going to be grinning from ear to ear at Apricot Hill or at Suzuka, but I'm not much of a fan of either track, at least in race cars. And Cote d'Azur may get a little frustrating over a full race distance - the last chicane is evil in cars of this speed - but considering that it usually equals instant death for cars that have understeer and wheelspin

I too enjoyed the Panoz a lot during the testing. Almost picked it solely on the engine sound alone. But had to go with one of the other's because of the tyre wear issue with my driving. I'm at enough of a disadvantage as it is. I do love AH. Enough so that I am extremely glad that this week is almost over. My driving skills (such as they are) are put to the test on Motegi. Somehow it reminds me of a yard of a trucking company that has all the trucks out on the road. Empty looking. I will enjoy Cote if only for the fact that I will get to admire the scenery before I hit it.

 

[LancerEvo7]

Bad news, I wrecked my bike good, my arms aren't in any condition for GT. I'll try to race but I won't be up to par if I can. Going with the McLaren in GT1. ~Lancer

 

[fogbound]

Bad news, I wrecked my bike good, my arms aren't in any condition for GT. I'll try to race but I won't be up to par if I can. Going with the McLaren in GT1. ~Lancer

Sorry to hear. If it's road rash, keep the scabs clean and soft, use vitamin E oil or flax seed oil after thorough cleaning . For or soft tissue or muscle trauma use aspirin for blood flow and an herb called Arnica Montania for swelling. See your doctor. Lots of sand on the roads this time of year.. good luck

I got my races done, I felt confident that I went as fast as I could with only two or so completed tire scenarios for each class. The LMP race in the Audi was rigid and nervous but pretty smooth, the BMW MCLaren GT1 race was awkward and clumsy (I think that car will be great to me on Sarth) but GTS Viper was perfect drifting arcs from brakes to WOT most of the laps with grip lasting nearly a perfect distance for my requirements. It was a blast! my BL's were:
LMP 1'31.211
GT1 1'39.159
GTS 1'41.358

 

[CAMikaze]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeessh... Sorry to hear about what happened to you Evo.

As for me, I got the runs done for GT1 and all my GTS entries. Getting the runs done for LMP done before the deadline is another story as I have dinner to go to tomorrow afternoon.