- 10,904
- Sweden
- eran0004
Car
Lexus SC430 Tom's Petronas.
Tuning
Turbo stage 3
Gearbox - Max speed 320 km/h
Downforce set to max
Performance points after tuning and oil change: 622
Driving aids
Automatic transmission
Traction control: 2
ABS: 1
Skid recovery: On (Well, they have LMP's, technically speaking they started the cheating...)
Number of laps completed
170
Fastest lap
8:02.9xx (lap 169)
Race result
1st (-2 laps)
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Chapter 1 - The First Hour
Tyre: Racing Soft
The first hour of the race was extremely close. I could run two laps on my Racing soft tyres so I had a lot of grip through the corners. On the long straights though I had no chance against the LMP cars. For the first 30 minutes I lost 2-3 seconds per lap to the leader, but as I entered the pits for the 2nd pit stop I decided to not fill up the fuel tank completely - I left 8 liters so that I would get a faster pit stop and close the gap to the two cars in front of me. It turned out to be the perfect move because I came out of the pit in between the two cars. "Inspired" by having one fast car right in front of me and another fast car right behind I stepped up my driving and managed to pass the car in front. Through the curved sections of the track I then managed to pull away and get a lead by 3-4 seconds. By the end of the lap they closed the gap but for the second lap they lost even more time and as I came for the third pit stop the gap was 8 seconds. This gave me time to take on extra fuel to compensate for the fuel I lost at the previous pit stop. During the following two laps I was able to extend the gap to second place so that after one hour of racing, the gap was 11 seconds between me and 2nd place.
So far it's a really close race, and I can only hope that it will remain that way. Now it just started raining, so we'll see if that continues and if I have to start thinking about changing tyres.
Chapter 2 - "Quid si nunc cœlum ruat?"
(What If The Sky Were To Fall?)
Tyre: Racing Soft.
The rain that begun by the end of the first hour continued for the entire second hour. It was a great relief for my tyres, because after one lap with 10% water on track they had worn very little. I decided to stay out on the track for as long as the tyres lasted, unless the rain would make it too slippery. The tyres would prove to last very long. After six laps, when I had to pit because I was almost out of fuel, the front tyres were about 50% worn out, and the rear tyres just slightly more. By this time, though, the water on track was 100% and the car was dancing quite a lot. With careful driving, however, I still produced good times. In fact, by the end of the second hour, the distance to the second car had grown to 2 minutes and 15 seconds! I had one less pit stop than they though, so this pit stop by the end of the stint will probably be about 40 seconds longer for me.
As the track is now 100% wet and as the water keeps pouring down, I will start the third hour on wet tyres. It will be interesting to see if I can produce faster laps than with the half worn out racing softs...
Chapter 3 - "Mistakes are the portals of discovery"
- James Joyce
Tyre: Racing Wet (3 laps); Racing Soft
As I said in the end of chapter two, I started the third our by switching to racing wet tyres. It was not the brightest idea ever, for two reasons:
1. The grip is actually worse than racing soft, even on 100% wet track.
2. They wear out a lot faster than racing soft, quickly making the grip even worse.
To sum it up, I was roughly 1 minute slower per lap in racing wets than on racing softs. The gap I had to the second position, which was 3 minutes and 40 seconds at most, dropped to 1 minute and 25 seconds after three laps on racing wet tyres. So I took an early pit stop and switched back to racing softs. Now I'm faster again and the gap is comfortably increasing by roughly fifteen seconds per lap.
It's still raining. It was down to 91% for a short while, but now it's back at 100%.
Chapter 4 - Business As Usual
Tyre: Racing Soft
Still raining, still 100% wet track. The car still performs well, the rain is not much of a problem. Doing six lap stints on my racing soft tyres and the tyre wear is next to nothing. Nothing really exciting happened during the fourth hour. It's slowly getting darker, looking forward to some night driving but I hope the sky will clear up so I can enjoy the sunset. Distance to 2nd place is now 4 minutes and 50 seconds.
Chapter 5 - Long Day's Journey Into Night
"Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!"
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Chapter 6 - Twilight Time
The rain is still falling. My lead is now one lap and six minutes. The race is now heading into the night and I wonder if the rain will continue to fall until the morning? I quickly checked my Endurance Race Calculator for different scenarios. If the rain continues all through the race, this is what comes out:
Not very exciting, 53,4 seconds is an eternity. I could stop for a smoke on every lap (if I were smoking, which I'm not) and still win... If, however, the rain would stop, the result would be this, calculated on an average lap time of 8:25.000:
So if the rain stops, it could be a pretty exciting race, if I do worse than 8:27.300 per lap, I run the risk of losing...
If you want to check out the race calculator yourself, it's an Excel file that you can download here: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=258071
Chapter 7 - Speaking of the devil
The rain stopped during the 7th hour and the track dried up completely within three or four laps. I took the opportunity to set a new best lap: 8:05.532. However, I'm back at two lap stints now, and as I'm driving more aggressive now than at the start of the race, I'm having a bit of a problem with making the tyres last all the way around the second lap. None the less I'm still making lap times between 8:10 and 8:25 so there's no panic.
Chapter 8 - Rush Hour
It seems like the competition picked up the pace quite a bit. I had 1 lap and six minutes at most, but now it's down at 1 lap and three minutes. Seems like they are doin 8:0x laps, which I didn't really count on...
The race calculator says:
Which means I have to do laps of 8:12 or better. Not impossible, but I have to keep focus to be able to do that...
Chapter 9 - We drive through empty streets in the summer night
The 9th hour was all about killing time. It could have started better, I missed a few braking points and had some bad timing with the lines during the first stint so the lap times were not much to be happy about. In the second half though I got into the zen mode, everything worked perfect, the timing was spot on and the lines had a smooth flow. Like a piece of art. My favourite section right now is the part from Flügplatz to Schwedenkreuz. In the darkness and with perfect timing it's such a great sensation of speed, and then when braking hard for Aremberg you have to keep the car in balance. Great fun
Distance to second car is still 1 lap and 3 minutes. It changes quite a lot because he is doing three lap stints while I do two lap stints so it's a bit hard to estimate wether the distance is constant or if he is gaining on me, but I think the gap is slowly getting smaller. Not as fast as I feared last hour though.
Chapter 10 to 13 - Bovina Sancta
(Holy Cow)
Well, most of the night is done. The sky is beginning to lighten up, dawn will be within one or two hours. My lap times are pretty much the same, 8:35 - 8:40 on pit stop laps, 8:10 - 8:15 on the other laps. I'm currently 5 seconds slower per lap than the 2nd place car, but I'm also pitting every 2 laps while he can stay out for 3 or 4 laps (God I hope it's not 5!), so that adds another 10 seconds to the time I'm losing.
Race calculator says:
I doubt I can do that. Looks like my only hope is for more rain, but so far the sky looks clear.
Chapter 14 - Let the sun rise, let the birds sing, let there be light, let there be morning
I don't know how I've made it 'til now
Losing time to the 2nd car. Down to 6 minutes. The sun has come up, not a cloud on the sky.
Chapter 15 - In Love and War
Desperate times calls for desperate actions. To stop the extreme loss of time I've started to cut some corners on track. I'm cutting the chicane on the end of the GP circuit and the chicane at Adenauer Forst. It saves me 7-12 seconds per lap.
Episode XVI - A NEW HOPE
"Use the Skid Recovery Force, Luke"
Episode XX - THE LMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Episode XXIV - RETURN OF THE GT
Sorry, but can't be arsed to make another YouTube video, so I'm just gonna provide you with the link instead: http://www.starwars.com/play/online-activities/crawl-creator/index.jsp?cs=vc2vrfszdz
Spoiler alert: I won, 170 laps vs 168 for the runner up. On lap 169 I managed to do a 8:02.9xx lap (without cutting any corners!) and reached the finish line at 23'59:58.xxx, which gave me one extra free lap. The 2nd car was only 3-4 seconds behind (+1 lap) so he just missed the window
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