dukestah’s gtr blog

after a couple of months i found it quite laborious to put the content into a html page so i decided to start a real blog for my gtr stuff. let’s see if this will work better.

unfortunately, less work done than planned. but i was at least able to do some laps on the original elise tires. i found they have the same size like the m3gtr tires and so i was a little bit nervous to see if the result is comparable to the m3gtr tires. the handling feels quite similar and my lap time of 7:43 was close to the best i did on the michelin_gt set. after just 10 laps (not enough time to do more) a quick check in motec showed that they are similar to the m3gtr set. to test the wear i just started a 5 laps ai session and what the hell, the ai driver was 10 seconds faster than me. in gtr, the ai as well as the ai opponents were always slower if they were set to less than 115 percent strength. so i think i have to work on my driving, the car and the track conditions were the same, so there is no excuse anymore and it is proofen that my exige is able to do such laps on the elise tires. but back to the wear, after 5 laps the front tires were down to 7 and the rear to 14. this isn’t really nice, keeping in mind that the temperature of the tires is still below 80 degrees even under heavy pushing the car around the track. this wear will definitely kill the ‘change tire at every second stop’ strategy for 24 hour races. if i go for med or hard slicks, i will be back to the cold tire problem and so i can go back to the michelin_gt tires which are a little bit easier to drive.
but i found some minutes to start on my smart roadster gt project. the engine mapping is complete, the tire adaption about 50 percent, the gears are finnished and so i can go for the first performance tests to adjust the model to the real world, even if the roadster still looks like a elise 😉 the final goal will be to create a smart roadster cup with about 20 cars or so, depending on my spare time. my real world roadster is requesting its time until the winter, next week it will be equiped with a brand new tarox 6 calliper brake system on the front, so many work to do here as well.

very busy days again. i got a new clutch for my roadster (bonalume sport clutch with lighter flywheel and more grip) so i went out to test the new clutch. switching gears is improved by about 0.2 seconds (semi automatic sequentiell gearbox) which is quite impressive.
but i found some time to test GTR2 a little bit more. with my modified exige, i was able to drop the time from 7:44 to 7:40, which is an overall improvement of about 15 seconds, compared to GTR. i am still not sure if GTR2 is easier or just better to drive but i can say it is closer to my real world experience, even if i have never driven a gt car. the exige is compared to my roadster (equiped with a kw suspension, which is used in ngt/gt cars as well) kind of similar, the handling is more relaxed than in gtr and if i feel thru the steering wheel the car tends to slip there is still room to react on this. late braking, in bend braking, trailbraking is very close to my roadster, catching the rear under power oversteer is much easier than in gtr and finding the right compromise between braking and steering is more predictable, means, if i reduce steering, the car will brake better, if i reduce braking, the car will turn in more. in gtr i often faced the problem that neither braking nor steering was working and the car has just left the road.
i started to analyze the new tire sets coming with gtr2 and beside the new brand yokohama there are a second michelin gt tire set and tires for the porsches. since i am still not happy with the gt tires on my exige i decided to start a complete new tire test. thanks to the new channels, i can track the tire temperatur within motec and so it is much easier to compare the brand against temperatur, lateral force and speed. and the new gtr comes with non encrypted tire files, so i can easily compare the size of the tires (diameter, width) and the grip curves. lots of work ahead, stay tuned for the results.

another big gap of updates. i was really busy with my real life roadster. got some new updates on my car, new air intake pipe, modified pop-off valve and i went out to gather some data befor the cold season makes this impossible…
GTR2 finally has hit the stores so i went out for my copy. surprisely, it costs just 40 euros at saturn, i had prepared myself for a full price of 60 euros. not bad. installation was flawless, no troubles with copy protection or so. graphic setup recognized my external screen resolution as well, no problems.
feel free to check the review section for my frist impression of the final release of gtr2.

long time no comments, it’s summer time. so in summer i am always very busy with outdoor activities and especially for the last weeks, it was simply too hot for racing. with more than 30 degree celcius in my room, i am really not in the mood for hours of racing (even if this is closer to a real race car ;). but now it is a little bit colder in germany, i am back from holiday and everything is a little bit more calmy than the last weeks.
i have spent some more time on statistics, because it is my job now, and so i have started to dig deeper into this huge amount of motec data. i have found some very interesting things about analyzing logs so this will be a new section of this page soon (or later, it depends)
another major happening is the release of the demo of gtr 2. i really have to state that i was some kind of excided about this release because i am really looking forward to gtr 2. and i am not disappointed. so there is a short review of the demo in the review section.

belongs to racers 😉
long time no drive due eastern and some other activities like real trips with my roadster. i continued my 24 h race, i’m already in dusk now, heading the night. the track temperature is still ok, tire temps between 50-70 degree celcius. this is not perfect but the best i can get on this tires. even if this is my 2nd stint on these tires the car starts to be a little bit too pushy and tends to understeer a lot in medium speed corners. especially if i want to pass someone i have to leave the best line and so it is very hard to stay on the track. in lap 43 the night darkened the track once again. unfortunately, this is not very fluid in gtr so it is like driving on a new track. i have set the night light level to 10% which is not really dark but dark enough so that it is a little bit harder to find the correct break distance. in this stint i passed just 2 porsches and the elise, so it is quite boring at the moment. still on position 2, i went for the pit after lap 45. my front tires were at 21 and the rears at 17. i decided to go for new tires all around to get best conditions for the night. after 54 seconds i left the box with number 3 just 10 seconds behind me. the next stint will be not as easy as i would prefer for the night.

long time no comments. i was very busy the last weeks so i got to stint 11, finished 99 laps, around 13 hours. some worst case stints, especially the last one, half lap after leaving the pit, a porsche spun in front of me and i was unable to avoid the crash, front right tire blown. half lap on low speed back to the pit for a new set of front tires and 10 litre of fuel. so this stint was effective 10 laps long. so i went to the box on lap 99 on position 6.
why position 6? some history of the last stints.
i found that the tire temps are so low because i wasn’t very fast. my lap times are about 8.05-8.10 which is indeed about 10 seconds slower than at the beginning of the race. so i started to increase the speed a little bit and was able to get the tire temps around 80 degree, which provides a good handling. but unfortunatelly, this is increasing the tire wear a lot. i have to swap the front tires at least every second pitstop and the rear tires last for 3 stints. on stint 10 i had to go for the box after 8 laps because my spotter told me that the tires are worn. (32 front) so i am losing more time due the tire changes and because of the worn tires the last laps of a stint are not really fast. after analyzing some replays and motec data i learned that my line is not really good at night due the limited visibility. so i started to work on the line to get back a smoother way of driving. since it is quite hard to continue a night race after 2 weeks of no driving i did a short test session at day and surprisly i was able to drive a 7-53.2 which is one second faster than my best lap ever. the replay and motec shows that there is still potential of improvement and i think with a more consequent line, less variations and at good weather conditions it should be possible to catch that 7-50. i really have to focus myself on this because i think this can lead to a more consistent race lap time of about 7-55 to below 8, depending on weather and wear. with this i should be able to get in touch with the top 3 again, maybe with some luck one or two of the leading cars will dnf within the next 10 hours.

i gave up the wheel tweaking crap, maybe i will invest some more time someday. to continue my former 24 h race i started the next stint. but surprisly, the car handling was strange. it felt like a rear tire is loosing air pressure. i had smoking tires in nearly every corner and my lap time was more than a half minute slower than the previous laps. i figured out that the car slows down drastically in fast bends when i turn the wheel more than 45 degree. so i thought it is maybe a damage on the suspension, maybe due a contact while passing. but the car was really undrivable and my front tires were heating up more and more due the heavy understeering. since i was so confused by this, i cancelled the stint. i went for a test session, with a brand new car ;), and, the very same behavior. my only idea was to check the controller and game settings and what a surprise, the brake assistant was activated. i am not sure if this happens by an accidental key press or by my manipulations of the player.plr. a short 3 lap test session was showing that this was the reason for the strange behavior of the car. but this was enough for the evening.

long time no driving. i did just some tests because the swaying and rattling of the new wheel is kind of disappointing and especially on the end of long straights the car is very unstable. tweaking the force feedback settings of the controller were without any result (enable center spring with a strength of 0, spring and damper effects set to 0). so i went for the player.plr to tweak certain force feedback settings. i set the motor vibration effect to the steering axle to zero. this gave me a sligthly calmer steering wheel but the spring effect keeps swaying the wheel on straights. disabling the spring effect will give a kind of death wheel so this isn’t a solution. i am really wondering why this spring effect is so strange in gtr. i tried viper racing and richard burns racing and there is not such an effect. you can check this simply by placing the car on a flat area (pit …) and if you take your hands of the wheel, the wheel will turn to one side after a couple of left-right movements. this is really not real, i never had such an effect in a real world car (except the suspension/steering was damaged) nor in any other simulation.

due my experience with the gt-tires i thought it could be usefull to test intermedians and rain tires befor i need to use them in a race. so i went on intermedians on a 20 degree track. the feeling was quite weird, no grip, some kind of snap under/oversteer and a very soft feeling. the temperature raised to just 40-50 degree which is really not driveable. on the same track and under very same conditions, the soft slicks will heat up to 60-70 degree and they provide much better handling. result: intermedians are really more than useless. what about rain? i started a test session on a wet track and on a track under rain conditions. if there is no line visible, the best thing is to go for soft or hard rain tires, depeding if it is still raining and there is a lot of water on the track. if the rain stops and the track starts to dry it could be usefull to go for hard rain tires but often it is better to stay out one lap longer (nordschleife) on soft rain tires and then to switch to soft slicks. if the track is very cold and still kind of slippy but the rain tires start to overheat (especially on long straights) it is usefull to go on the wet part of the track to cool down the tires. this can work for 2 or 3 laps but if the track keeps drying it is not possible to stay out any longer and the lap time will be much better on slicks.