GM day I guess.
First up was a not-tuned-at-all Nova (adjusted ride height at 69/88, Accel Sens. 34 & Restrictor at 87), bolt-on’s only, no wing cause the only option looks terrible. Blinding acceleration from this drag queen, cornering and fuel economy are horrible, but very good braking make up for a lot. 4.33.83 (32:38.9 overall) Final Lap probably should’ve been under 4:20 at least, but the tires were so shredded by that point it was all I could do to keep her from spinning. I really had a lot of fun driving this car in the end…I just wish I knew how to extract my Replay photos, I took a couple that I thought were really cool, but once I exited, they were nowhere to be found.
One of our tuners really should get a hold of this car and see what they can come up with. I found it quite enjoyable to drive.
Next was the Trans Am using a tune from Pra. Making slight adjustments to certain elements (R-H, Torque/Accel. Sens. and ballast for instance) of his tune resulted in wild swings of PP, I’m talking like 70-80, weird stuff. I finally got it to something near realistic in terms of looks and fudged the power down for a bit more grip as I assumed this car would make for a smoother drive. Ummm, to a degree. First 2 laps went swimmingly, no pun intended, got some rainfall right before the pit at the end of L2 with a 30-40 sec lead, the 1 sec slower lap time is a reflection of my considering to stop at the last moment and change tires. The map showed a pretty slim band of light weather, so I decided to soldier on. MISTAKE 1. The band (I failed to recognize it as the master of disguise, driver D. Weather) was indeed slim, only 2 mins of rainfall, but was not at all light and it dumped 1.5 bars of weather on the track and added about 2:20 to L3, ouch! I needed fuel at the end of 3 and the track had mostly dried, so no tires and came out of the pits about 1:30 behind. Turned the FM up and nearly caught up when D. Weather showed up again at the end of 5. This time, I was not to be fooled and pitted for IM’s and enough fuel to finish. Entered back on a mildly wet track, maybe a bar and 15 secs behind. I whittled that down to the final chicane and had the opportunity to seize first at the finish (MISTAKE 2 ALERT!), but hit the throttle too hard, fishtailed and came up 3rd, ARGGGGG!
Also, I discovered that photos taken in the Replay can indeed to exported to your Media Library, but they do not show up in the app, annoying.
Finally, the Z28. Yes, this was more what I was looking for. A more balanced, refined drive, not near as fast though. This was a Pra up-tune and as such it capped at like 674 as I was trying to keep the base parts equal. I still managed an easy win and in spite of the poor fuel economy, plan to revisit this car. In fact, I enjoyed it enough to adjust the actual build and it worked out to a near perfect 697.XX, so I’m looking forward to racing it again. My gold standard for a car with poor fuel economy is me willing to accept only 2 laps at Sarthe for the enjoyment of driving the car.
I will say the braking was a highlight on all 3 cars. It’s like the bean-counters and the engineers at GM were sitting around the board room talking about profitability vs. raw power when the bean-counters convinced the engineers that repeat customers were better for business than dead customers, lol!
Then, I opened a beer, you’ll know I came back and ran the Veneno at Spa if this post is edited within a couple hours…I fully expect a win. In fact, I probably won’t update if I don’t get a win. What the hey, its Friday!
EDIT: I’m back and pulled off the win, I am literally a bit giddy right now. I have my first Grand Slam-winning Road Car with the same build. Managed to lap all but P2-4 and not by much and that equals a dominant victory on all 4 of the $$$ courses. Long live the Veneno.
edit: 200km more and have gold ;d very tough tt for me
. But was reaching 200mph-plus before the first chicane! Also, for some miracle it DID NOT rain but still had to coast the entire race because of fuel. Had to pit three times, and won by 20 seconds. But it was fun, and it was an adrenaline shot the whole race!
