dukestah’s gtr blog

we had a very funny motec session today. we tried to do some analyzing and we finished with wild interpretations of several diagrams without getting any helpfull informations out of this. after the decision that a speed diagram has no relation to mass murder statistics i came to the conclusion that my setup is a little bit overdamped. another idea was that my rear wing seems a little bit too tough because i have no oversteer in high speed curves. so i changed the front dampers and set the rear wing to 8 and went out for a test. i did 4 laps, warmup, 8:45.7, 8:45.5 and 8:43.6 and this was really surprising. the car was a little bit light under braking in curves, that was what i was expecting, but it performed well on the other sections. my two 8:45 laps were really cool, i had a very good feeling with the car and my 8:43 lap was a little bit overdriven but there is still some possibility for improvements. i think this is a great lap time since this is a race setup with 75 litre of fuel and a suspension which is forgiving for small mistakes or light contacts with opponents. i should be able to get very equal laps with this setup.

woho, this was a great evening. i did some more testing with my setup and went for a asymmetrical setup. now i have stronger springs on the left side since flugplatz and adenauer forst are very fast right bends and for aremberg it is good to leave the bend very fast. and especially for galgenkopf, i can gain some more speed for the long döttinger höhe. i was working on the camper settings as well because i had the feeling that my tires are not perfect for the section starting at karussel and ending at galgenkopf. so i drove this part several times and went back to garage to check my tire cross temperature. but i think this is more irritating than really helpfull. i got a camper of less than 2 degree negative on all tires and the car was very slippy. even with this settings i got more heat on the inside which is quite normal but i was expecting that the temps are more equal. so i went back to my previous 2.7 on the front and 3.7 on the rear, the car feels great and the inner temps are just 10 degree hotter when i am close to the edge due the wheelspin under acceleration. the high camper setting fits to my suspension setting as well since you have to go for more camper if you are using a softer suspension. to prove all this i started a 12 lap race with 25 elises again. the behaviour of the car was great and so i was pushing very hard. in my 3rd lap i was passing 5 opponents and finished my lap with a 8:53. unfortunately, one car was hitting my rear in aremburg under braking, not because of my unexpected early braking just for happiness or whatsoever. so i hit the wall and my car was quite deformed. now it was hard to follow the field and i dropped down to 9:10. after pitting in the middle of the race i was able to come close to the 9:00 again and one and a half hour later i finished at 2nd position. due my fastest lap and my overall performance, i will adjusted the opponent strength to 95% for the next race.

damn, i started a 12 lap test race with a 25 elise field on the nordschleife. since i was just keen on testing another setup i started on last place. after lap 6 i was on position 8 and went for my pit stop. while leaving the box and checking my rear view mirror for oncoming traffic i drove out on the track and surprise surprise, i got a big hit in the back. i don’t know why the car was not visible but it is really a pity that it is so dangerous to leave the box on the old nordschleife. i really beg that there will be a release of ‚mother 2‘ soon. good news, even in traffic i was constant within the 9:10 and my best lap was a 8:59.78. i think, some more practise with traffic and some finetuning on the setup will give me a chance against stronger opponents. since update 1.4 the ai is really fast (but now they make more mistakes, lots of yellow) so i had to go back to 90% opponent strength for longer races. i do not have a problem with faster opponents but they are not really cool at passing, especially on this thin track.

today, i want to drive a gt/ngt race on the nordschleife, just to check if the majority of the gt class will be a problem for the slowest car of the field due the passes on this track. what a surprise, i had in 1 and a half hour just 2 passes so it was kind of boring. unfortunately, half of the field dnf with technical problems and out of fuel and with my 1 stop strategy i was able to stay in front of the second elise. after a spin due locked wheels at the beginning of the race (i was struggeling a little with my brake balance and missed a brake point 😉 ) i was 12 seconds behind the elise. i started to decrease the gap and so i drove a 8:59.68 which was my first time ever i got a time below 9 minutes (even if it is just a part of a second).

good morning. due the fact that i am not really able to maintain a structured page about gtr i start to gather some stuff with the help of a kind of blog. last weekend, i was searching for some of my favourite tracks and i found a message about a ‚mother 2‘ project. this sounds really impressive. since i’m driving on the nordschleife most of the time i’m really happy to get a up-to-date version sometimes.

wow, after some minor changes on the setup of the elise i started a 1.5 hour race with a 25 elise field on the nordschleife. and for my surprise, i was able to drop my lap time to a 9:01.89. since this was not really a hot lap and i had some troubles with the rear suspension after a crash, the car was pushing a lot under turn in, i was really happy to get close to the 9 minutes with an endurance setup. unfortunately, in lap 2, there was an accident in front of me and while braking in a bend i had a spin and an opponent was hitting my rear wheel. this lead to a blown tire and i had to drive more than 5 kilometer with this bad wheel so i lost contact to the field.

after a long abstinence of gtr i grab my wheel and i put the elise on my favourite track, the nordschleife. surprisly, i was able to stay under 9:20 with my race setup and this after more than half a year of no driving. so i decided to keep my focus on this great (even with some flaws) sim for the next time again.