THE GRAND TOUR! MONDAY EVENINGS! 7:30ET/00:30GMTOpen 

  • Thread starter Benny44
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Thanks @BEllis7979 I appreciate that. I used to find it a nuisance to set up a room, but it's not too bad after a while. Going through the races and taking pictures on the other hand....ugh.

So, it's STILL storming here and my work is cancelled tomorrow. So if anyone's online and wants to race tomorrow morning, I'm up to it!
 
Sounds like fun! Although, if we make a public room it may be difficult to enforce. Either way, we can hit the track

Edit-it's 9:15pm here right now
 
I'll probably be up well before that, but I should be around for the morning at least. We'll have some fun running these little cars I think. Even if it's just a race or two. If three of us are in a room, we might be able to get more to join.
 
Room was open for about 4 hours. These short tracks are great for short testing short race action. Never drive Madrid Mini before and it was fantastic! Just needs the grippy line to be painted visibly on the bottom turn and I'd prefer it to the full Madrid.

Nissan 240RS Rally Car was a revelation. Even stock at 440pp with DS3. Bluebird Rally Car also much fun. Pajero 2003 was weirdly nimble on Eiger Nordwand Short Track.
 
Great morning/afternoon racing session! So, we'll be doing the same cars Monday. But I was thinking of a little twist-we could make one race a 'main event' this week. I was looking at that pit stop on Matterhorn Short, and thought if that came into play it would require bring a strategy element into the race.

So my thought is to do a short (maybe 2 lap race, as per @BenMillard suggestion) race there, then have a main event after we get our cars ready. We could do warm ups from 8:30-8:50, a 2 lap race at 8:50, then I'm thinking a 45 minute race with fuel and tire wear set to fast or very fast, depending on testing. Then we could carry on doing some more tracks after, depending on how long we want to stay. It would be a marathon and a test of concentration (and tough on our hands!). Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested
 
Quite a few other clubs do that sort of thing, even on GTP. You can join any of them outside of our Monday casual session to sample other formats. :)

Boost and tyre wear doesn't really work in terms of strategy. The first to pit gets boosted up to the rest by several seconds a lap. Without boost we will spread out a lot.

If you will do a longer race, maybe pick a longer Matterhorn layout? There are 4 I think but a couple have bad jumps. Reverse direction isn't available...or is it? Time change is used in the career mode series on these variants.
 
Hmmm....boost is something I didn't take into account. Here was my thought (if we didn't use boost)- even if there were only 4 or 5 of us, we would always have someone to race with on that short of track. I'm aware that some other clubs do this, but I like trying different things, and doing this on a short track would be something that has been done much less often. I've done 2-3 hour online endurance races. A lot of fun but it gets pretty serious and usually a lot of prep work needs done. Maybe we could do an 'in-between'.

What I mean is maybe a bit shorter(maybe 20 mins), no boost and tire/fuel wear set to fast. We'd still probably have to have some pit strategy - but I'd have to test tires on that track. I think it would keep things interesting doing something a little different every week. But, it's just an idea right now
 
A 10 minute race then a 20 minute race could be good. You can use the Endurance mode. Fuel gets used up. If it's fast enough a genuine pit stop would be needed, even with boost. Stopping too early would run out off gas or tyres.

It's a one off so we can try anything that fits in an hour. 👍

You can also write a pit window in the room name. "450pp Race/Rally Pit 8-12min Clean" for example.
 
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I appreciate the suggestions @BenMillard. I think that might be good then, because 20mins would still keep it casual. Forcing pit stops is possible, as long as people don't forget until the last lap and cross the line in pit row:tdown:.

I'm going to try and test a bit to see if I can make people pit out of necessity, rather than because they have to. It adds a whole new dimension when you have to baby your tires or watch your fuel. It adds intesnsity when you've got a good lead with a couple laps left and no tires and very little fuel:scared:.

The only problem I see with using endurance mode is that I don't believe you can change that option after, although that could be dealt with
 
Sorry for the double post, but I've been testing and I wanted to share my findings. I did races myself (online) around Matterhorn short and Fuji (full) to test how big of a race we would need to necessitate pit stops. I was disappointed, but it made sense.

Both tracks took about 11 mins to get down 1/4 tank - Fuji was about 11.30, and Matterhorn was about 10:40. On Matterhorn I tested several 450pp cars, only to come to the conclusion that they were all roughly the same. Comfort soft tires don't wear very quickly at all, so they weren't much of a factor. Just for comparison, I took the Toyota GT-One out on Fuji. Where the 450pp cars took 5 laps to burn 1/4 tank, the Toyota did it in less than 2 laps- and much faster lap times(I forgot to check the actual time). I didn't check tire wear because I don't think I'd be on track if I ran that thing with CS:ill:

So, doing a race where we'd NEED pit stops would have to be about an hour long unless we were driving high end vehicles, which would defeat the purpose of this club. That was a long-winded way of saying I'm going to force one pit stop. I'm going to keep testing on Sport tires and let everyone know what I find with regards to tire wear.
 
BenMillard
Did you set the wear to Very High in room settings? That also makes fuel use faster.
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Yep, it was set to very high. Quite a difference - about 10 mins/tank for the GT-One, and about 50mins for the 450pp cars. Having said that, the pit stop for Matterhorn short is opposite side of Finish line, so enforcing a pit stop will be great for this track
 
I love endurance races! I hate the fact that it looks like we will have a forced pit stop though, it just takes away a bit of the realism of it. In a different situation we can give realistic pit stops a go (like the next time there's a blizzard in Canada that actually shuts things down...I'm guessing around GT8...)
 
Again Ben,

Thanks for all the effort that you put in to making a fun club every week. Let me know if there is a way that I can shoulder some of the burden/ effort.
 
I'm game for a realistic pit stop. I'm toying with the idea of, during a different week, doing a 500pp endurance race. I'm thinking the higher pp might use fuel a bit quicker. If you're on there looking for something to do @BEllis7979, you could always set up a room(do it through the club and set it to 'club only'), and put on a 80 lap race or something crazy, and see how long it takes to burn fuel using 500pp vehicles. Only if you want to, of course
 
Well @Lilium that's certainly good news for us racers but maybe bad news for you. But I look forward to you being able to join more often. The theme this week is 450pp race/rally cars around some short tracks. We're going to be having a bit longer race at Matterhorn short with a pit stop. So any non-road car will work. It can be a historic race car, a rally car or a more modern lower pp race car. Whatever you can get down to 450pp:)
 
All gud. Got time to search a new one

On the matter of fuel, with fuel and tires on very fast, 7-13 laps and you got to pit
 
Per @Benny44's request:

Apricot Hill Forward in a Celica GT4 Rally car (517pp) with CS tires I got 15 laps before a forced pit for gas. Time was just about 26 minutes. I traded in the CS for RH tires and made it another 15 laps before I needed both tires and gas.

[edit] Tire and Fuel consumption set to Very Fast

@Lilium @BenMillard
 
@BEllis7979 thank you! It's not the most exciting thing to run laps yourself, so I appreciate the effort. So, with that info, we could do a 40min race at 500pp and there would be no escaping a pit stop(unless you're @BenMillard and drive an electric vehicle:lol:)That sounds like a great race, not crazy long either. The 400/450pp need quite a bit longer before pitting, which makes sense.

The good thing is 500pp still fits into the club. We could probably do 2 of these in one evening and stay at a reasonable time, provided we don't spend a half hour messing around beforehand. I'll be on tomorrow morning, so I might do a 40 minute run. And if anyone wants to join me, feel free to. Maybe we can use different car types for testing purposes.

I think the key here will be keeping it casual while still giving it a realistic feeling. I want to come up with a fun, maybe a little silly, car selection, so I'll have to do some thinking on it. Thanks again Bellis, that was something I wasn't particularly excited about.

@Lilium it all depends on the PP and tire type as well. When I did 400/450 it was close to 40/50 minutes before a pit was necessary. But what you said seems similar to Bellis' results for 500PP.
 
We used muscle cars at 500pp a few,weeks back and it was ace. So if that's the PP level, that's the class I'd suggest. They might eat tyres and drink fuel faster, too.
 
BenMillard
We used muscle cars at 500pp a few,weeks back and it was ace. So if that's the PP level, that's the class I'd suggest. They might eat tyres and drink fuel faster, too.
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That's something I thought about - they are good fun being heavy, powerful and slippery. But before we decide, I want to test one or two things first. Muscle cars and your personal car are two things we're definitely coming back to, and I want a small selection of cars to choose from, instead of about 100. I'll try some out in the coming days to see what I can come up with. But keep the ideas coming!
 
Those are some good ideas @Lilium. It's interesting though, if I put kei cars or even city econo cars 99% of people on this side of the pond would have no idea what you're talking about. City econo cars would be difficult too, since they'd be best described as sub-compact here, and that's not a very accurate description really. I'd have to put small cars in the title or restrict vehicle length - which could be done.

It's difficult for people who just drop into races to decipher exactly what they should drive - and it can be a nuisance to try and explain it to everyone who drops in. The key is to make it simple, or, better yet, something I can restrict via the race set up.

4 door seems the easiest, or maybe a hot hatch race. But I have another idea I want to test first so I don't sound foolish suggesting it. I very much enjoy getting people to drive cars they wouldn't normally drive :boggled:
 
Warbeast101
this looks fun, i'd like to join if that's ok :D
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Of course! Always happy to have new people! This week's theme is race and rally cars, 450pp, CS tires. It should be a fun night. The club is called 'The Grand Tour', and my PSN ID is Bic44 if you want to send me an FR:gtpflag:
 
Benny44
Of course! Always happy to have new people! This week's theme is race and rally cars, 450pp, CS tires. It should be a fun night. The club is called 'The Grand Tour', and my PSN ID is Bic44 if you want to send me an FR:gtpflag:
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Great i'll send the FR tonight and if i can get a race schedule because i am already in a few other race i'd really appreciate it :D
 

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