- 1,202
Heya all.
I see b-speccing the FGT series has been covered in a few threads, but I have just about done it now (two races to go) and have found my experiences to be sometimes different from the norm, so I thought it best I share them.
CAR: Formula GT (grey / black)
Setup: I did not change the setup from what Bob was used to after running the car through both De La Sarthe enduros, since I find setup changes seem to upset him. This setup is not optimal for anything really, but was good enough. Everything, I think, is standard except ride height (55/55) gearing (auto 21 or so... not an effective ratio) rear toe -1. Wing is max front and back.
Bob has 7600 b-spec points, has done about 25000 miles (five times my own total) and has specs of something like 98/77/72.
I had a philosophy I followed in nearly all races:
At start of race, I would check the starting order. If the opposition with the most points were starting close to the front of the grid, I would run a practise lap. Regardless of where I qualified, the rest of the grid would now practically be upside down, so I could, at the start of each race, potentially ensure that my strongest opposition started the race at the back of the grid. They would then rarely make their way through the field. This meant that there was no single car giving a strong championship challenge.
I ran pace setting 4 or 5 at nearly all events, and found that he rarely fell off any circuit on 5, which surprised me. He did then run much faster than the rest, but his stints were the same length as the rest as long as I didn't fill the tank above 40. Only his first stint, on a full tank, was sometimes a lap shorter, but after two stints his lead was enough to pay for an extra pitstop anyway. I paid careful attention to make sure he never lost time when pitting by waiting for the OK button to be pressed or by overfilling the tank.
Here are the exceptions:
Race 2, Super Speedway: I qualified first and ran the first 2 stints to give him a lead, because I had not found a b-spec philosophy to guarantee a win for him in this race (too much slipstreaming). I found the car with the settings I used very tricky around the slower corner, especially when following another car (cool! it has less grip in turbulent air) and perversely found it best to go around both corner flat out, make no steering corrections in the bend, and not to countersteer when I had oversteer. I found the AI would pit long before me. I made my second pitstop on the same lap that they made their third, and I was 1.5 to 2 seconds a lap faster, so when I handed over to Bob he had a 2 lap lead. I ran him at pace 4 to the end and he did fine.
Race 4, High Speed Ring / Bowl / whatever: I found that on this race everyone slipstreams eachother, so the lead changes twice a lap. May as well pick the winner out of a hat. If you try improve Bob's chances by getting him out of the pack, he is two seconds per lap slower because the rest then have a slipstream advantage. BUT.. it's an easy track to drive and to be faster and stay out longer than the AI, so I racedthe first two stints and handed Bob the wheel with a 2 lap lead. When the AI caught up with him on the track, he joined the slipstream battle, but of course had a 2 lap advantage, so he was unlikely to be caught.
Race, um, 6: De La Sarthe: Bob was way down in 6th because he kept crashing on Mulsanne Straight, and the first straight around the back of the track. I put him from pace setting 4 to 3 and he crashed just as often but now no longer caught up the deficit around the rest of the lap. The others were crashing too but Bob was coming off worse. By half way he was in last place and a minute down. I had nothing to lose so I put him on pace 5. He crashed less (
) and finished in 2nd place, 4 seconds behind the winner. I'll try the whole race on pace 5 and expect he will win it.
UPDATE: After finishing the championship I did De La Sarthe on pace setting 5, and Bob started from 6th place. He won comfortably.
Seoul. I raced the first stint myself by accident.... I pressed the steering wheel icon instead of the headphones one
Fortunately I didn't stuff it into the wall too often and gave Bob a 21 second lead. On pace 4 he struggled but on pace 5 he extended his lead and again it did not hurt his pit strategy. I suspect to win this one he needs to start on pole and run on pace 5.
Laguna Seca. On pace 4 he was fast but crashed a lot before the pits. On pace 3 he was slow and crashed a lot before the pits. Everyone else crashed too but he was moping around in 4th and not gaining so, thinking back to De La Sarthe, I put him on pace 5. He soon had a 20 second lead but his crashes,though less frequent, were steadily getting more and more spectacular. I left him to it but when I came back he had only two stints to go, was in last place, and was crashing before the pits every lap (still on setting 5). I ran him for the last 20 laps or so on pace 5, dropping him to pace 1 as he came off the corkscrew, and bumped him up to 5 again as he entered the straight before the final hairpin. I did this every single lap. He caught up and won the race.
Twin Ring Motegi: He started in last place, ran on setting 5, and lapped everyone 👍
Nurburgring: I ran him on pace 3. He won because he fell off the circuit less than the rest and his tyre wear was less of a liablility on his pit in lap. On setting 4 he made lots of mistakes and had no advantage over the rest.
Two races to go, will report on them when done.
UPDATE:
Finished the last two races, with no surprises.
Fujji 2005: Did not qualify. Ran pace setting 5 at start, and Bob got up to 2nd place but could not get any closer than about 2.5 seconds to the leader - their laptimes were similar. I watched Bob circulating for a while and he was not showing any problem corners, so I reasoned that he was going to be fastest at setting 5. All cars pitted on lap 9, I did not fuel Bob. He ran 10 laps in the second stint, because of the lighter fuel load. This immedately meant he was going to have a pitstop in hand at the end, so if he kept the gap to the leader to 3 seconds, the race was in the bag... but then, all of a sudden Bobby picked up the pace. Not sure why, but he found an extra 2 seconds a lap, picked up the lead, and walked away from the others. He hasn't raced much at this circuit so perhaps there's a learning curve involved. I would suspect that if this is so his circuit knowledge rating improved, but I can't remember what it was before the race
Anyway once he had a half minute lead I put him on pace 4 to be on the safe side. He was still faster, and won easily.
Suzuka: Did not qualify. Put Bob on pace setting 5 and he picked up the lead on lap 3, then started building a small gap, but was showing a tendency to fall off the track at the chicane before the start / finish straight and this was preventing him from building the lead to a safe margin. I put him on pace setting 4 and his off track excursions vanished. As a bonus, his lap times improved. Won by about a lap.
End result was 14 wins and 1 second, giving 146 points, 4500000 credits and a car. The grid shuffling trick seemed to be effective too. Second place had 57 points, 6th place had 46 points, and if I had shuffled the grid by practicing for the last two races, it would have been an even smaller gap. As it was, the championship was won at race 10, where I had 96 points and second place had 45.
I see b-speccing the FGT series has been covered in a few threads, but I have just about done it now (two races to go) and have found my experiences to be sometimes different from the norm, so I thought it best I share them.
CAR: Formula GT (grey / black)
Setup: I did not change the setup from what Bob was used to after running the car through both De La Sarthe enduros, since I find setup changes seem to upset him. This setup is not optimal for anything really, but was good enough. Everything, I think, is standard except ride height (55/55) gearing (auto 21 or so... not an effective ratio) rear toe -1. Wing is max front and back.
Bob has 7600 b-spec points, has done about 25000 miles (five times my own total) and has specs of something like 98/77/72.
I had a philosophy I followed in nearly all races:
At start of race, I would check the starting order. If the opposition with the most points were starting close to the front of the grid, I would run a practise lap. Regardless of where I qualified, the rest of the grid would now practically be upside down, so I could, at the start of each race, potentially ensure that my strongest opposition started the race at the back of the grid. They would then rarely make their way through the field. This meant that there was no single car giving a strong championship challenge.
I ran pace setting 4 or 5 at nearly all events, and found that he rarely fell off any circuit on 5, which surprised me. He did then run much faster than the rest, but his stints were the same length as the rest as long as I didn't fill the tank above 40. Only his first stint, on a full tank, was sometimes a lap shorter, but after two stints his lead was enough to pay for an extra pitstop anyway. I paid careful attention to make sure he never lost time when pitting by waiting for the OK button to be pressed or by overfilling the tank.
Here are the exceptions:
Race 2, Super Speedway: I qualified first and ran the first 2 stints to give him a lead, because I had not found a b-spec philosophy to guarantee a win for him in this race (too much slipstreaming). I found the car with the settings I used very tricky around the slower corner, especially when following another car (cool! it has less grip in turbulent air) and perversely found it best to go around both corner flat out, make no steering corrections in the bend, and not to countersteer when I had oversteer. I found the AI would pit long before me. I made my second pitstop on the same lap that they made their third, and I was 1.5 to 2 seconds a lap faster, so when I handed over to Bob he had a 2 lap lead. I ran him at pace 4 to the end and he did fine.
Race 4, High Speed Ring / Bowl / whatever: I found that on this race everyone slipstreams eachother, so the lead changes twice a lap. May as well pick the winner out of a hat. If you try improve Bob's chances by getting him out of the pack, he is two seconds per lap slower because the rest then have a slipstream advantage. BUT.. it's an easy track to drive and to be faster and stay out longer than the AI, so I racedthe first two stints and handed Bob the wheel with a 2 lap lead. When the AI caught up with him on the track, he joined the slipstream battle, but of course had a 2 lap advantage, so he was unlikely to be caught.
Race, um, 6: De La Sarthe: Bob was way down in 6th because he kept crashing on Mulsanne Straight, and the first straight around the back of the track. I put him from pace setting 4 to 3 and he crashed just as often but now no longer caught up the deficit around the rest of the lap. The others were crashing too but Bob was coming off worse. By half way he was in last place and a minute down. I had nothing to lose so I put him on pace 5. He crashed less (
) and finished in 2nd place, 4 seconds behind the winner. I'll try the whole race on pace 5 and expect he will win it.UPDATE: After finishing the championship I did De La Sarthe on pace setting 5, and Bob started from 6th place. He won comfortably.
Seoul. I raced the first stint myself by accident.... I pressed the steering wheel icon instead of the headphones one
Fortunately I didn't stuff it into the wall too often and gave Bob a 21 second lead. On pace 4 he struggled but on pace 5 he extended his lead and again it did not hurt his pit strategy. I suspect to win this one he needs to start on pole and run on pace 5.Laguna Seca. On pace 4 he was fast but crashed a lot before the pits. On pace 3 he was slow and crashed a lot before the pits. Everyone else crashed too but he was moping around in 4th and not gaining so, thinking back to De La Sarthe, I put him on pace 5. He soon had a 20 second lead but his crashes,though less frequent, were steadily getting more and more spectacular. I left him to it but when I came back he had only two stints to go, was in last place, and was crashing before the pits every lap (still on setting 5). I ran him for the last 20 laps or so on pace 5, dropping him to pace 1 as he came off the corkscrew, and bumped him up to 5 again as he entered the straight before the final hairpin. I did this every single lap. He caught up and won the race.
Twin Ring Motegi: He started in last place, ran on setting 5, and lapped everyone 👍
Nurburgring: I ran him on pace 3. He won because he fell off the circuit less than the rest and his tyre wear was less of a liablility on his pit in lap. On setting 4 he made lots of mistakes and had no advantage over the rest.
Two races to go, will report on them when done.
UPDATE:
Finished the last two races, with no surprises.
Fujji 2005: Did not qualify. Ran pace setting 5 at start, and Bob got up to 2nd place but could not get any closer than about 2.5 seconds to the leader - their laptimes were similar. I watched Bob circulating for a while and he was not showing any problem corners, so I reasoned that he was going to be fastest at setting 5. All cars pitted on lap 9, I did not fuel Bob. He ran 10 laps in the second stint, because of the lighter fuel load. This immedately meant he was going to have a pitstop in hand at the end, so if he kept the gap to the leader to 3 seconds, the race was in the bag... but then, all of a sudden Bobby picked up the pace. Not sure why, but he found an extra 2 seconds a lap, picked up the lead, and walked away from the others. He hasn't raced much at this circuit so perhaps there's a learning curve involved. I would suspect that if this is so his circuit knowledge rating improved, but I can't remember what it was before the race
Anyway once he had a half minute lead I put him on pace 4 to be on the safe side. He was still faster, and won easily.
Suzuka: Did not qualify. Put Bob on pace setting 5 and he picked up the lead on lap 3, then started building a small gap, but was showing a tendency to fall off the track at the chicane before the start / finish straight and this was preventing him from building the lead to a safe margin. I put him on pace setting 4 and his off track excursions vanished. As a bonus, his lap times improved. Won by about a lap.
End result was 14 wins and 1 second, giving 146 points, 4500000 credits and a car. The grid shuffling trick seemed to be effective too. Second place had 57 points, 6th place had 46 points, and if I had shuffled the grid by practicing for the last two races, it would have been an even smaller gap. As it was, the championship was won at race 10, where I had 96 points and second place had 45.
proud member of the sauber c9 club!! 
