dukestah’s gtr blog

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.

i did 2 stints yesterday. the car performance and handling is great even when it started to understeer a little bit and the last 2 laps per stint are quite demanding due the light rear. surprisely, i was able to catch position 1. it seems that the gt pack is struggeling with overlapping as well and with lap times around 8 minutes i was able to put 2 minutes between me and position 2. at the end of stint 3 i changed to new tires all around, some battles with the porsches shaved my front tires to 22 and the rears to 17/19. to get a shorter stop after stint 4 i found it would be good to swap all tires because this would hold position 1 after the 3rd stop. at lap 31, the dusk started and it seems that the track is cooling down because the elise started to become more pushy. due some struggling with the porsches (there are only porsches left here?) while overlapping i lost a lot of time on the track and number 2 is coming closer faster than i can handle. unfortunately, the other ngt elise wasn’t really cooperating and blocked me at the exit of galgenkopf and after i drove hard into the back i had a spin and lost more time once again. in lap 9 of stint 4, at exmuehle, i was too hard on the throttle and with a spectacular burn out i accelerated up the hill into an impressive spin. number 2, a ferrari 550, passed me with a condescending smile on his face about this newbie like mistake. i am a little bit afraid of the night because i am not sure if the tires will handle a colder track. that’s the major downside of driving gt-tires on a 800 kg car.

i bought a new wheel last weekend since my old one started to be very shaky and noisy. so i went for the logitech momo racing wheel. my old one is the logitech wingman force and i love the non-tooth-wheel-feeling so the change to the new is some kind of difficult. especially for high speed steering (correction of oversteer …) the old one is much better than the new stuff and i am really afraid of breaking something sometimes. but the precision and the pedals are really great. the feedback is much better (more effect channels) and stronger. unfortunately, i got this swaying and rattling on straights which is mentioned in lot of racing boards. every hint to fix this was without success so this is a little bit disappointing. after a couple of laps to get familar with the new wheel i was able to drive a 7:54 again but i had troubles with the pedals which were working as combined axis. uninstalling, deleting of all logitech wingman software and a fresh new reinstall fixed this problem. so i went for a short test race to check if the setup and the wheel will work but it was quite a mess. the feedback was so strong and the rattling on the straights rendered the car very unstable. i decreased the force to 80% within gtr (150% at the control panel) and i added a small deadzone (2%) for the steering (which i really dislike usually) to get a stable car on the straights.
i did some small adaption of the setup, symmetrical springs on the front, a lifted rear (5 mm) and a stronger sway bar on the front. i thought i am quite used to the new wheel so i started a new 24 h race (the 4th if i remember correct). i started at position 30 to get rid of the pressure from behind for the first laps. but the porsches were acting very strange. the track was quite hot, 37 degrees, and everybody was pushing very hard. but the porsches were sliding and powersteering in each bend so it was quite dangerous to follow, not to think about passing. after 7 laps, i had 4 or 5 spins and 2 crashes with unexpected spinned cars. more then 10 cars were out and my elise was damaged so that i wasn’t able to reach 240 km/h on the straights. due the fact that it was impossible to drive a constant line and the loosy car i was so angry that i cancelled the race.
i went back to the garage to perform another short test session. i set the rear wing to 7 instead of 6 to get more grip on the rear so that it will be easier to break in bends. a short run gave me a 7:54 on a 27 degree track which is quite ok and the car felt much more better. let’s go for race number 5. i started on position 30 again, track temp was above 30 degree, forecast dry (unfortunately), opponents at 105% and wild. the first lap was except a spin of a porsche (what else) in turn one without any troubles. so i started to increase the speed to get close to my 8 minutes laps. the car behavior is great, much more predictable, superior grip and handling. after passing 3 or 4 cars i had the chance to drive 3 laps without passings on difficult parts and i got a 7:59, 7:58, 8:03 (two passes) in a row. then a couple of passings (overlapping the elise and a porsche), the gt’s went for their stops, stopped my furious trip to 8:10-8:15 for 2 or 3 laps. then the track was free again, just a g2-viper in front of me. lap 8 and 9 was really fast, the empty tank, the free track and the returned confidence in me, the car and the wheel leaded to a 7:56 (one pass) and a 8:03 (inside pits). i was able to get closer to the g2 viper in section 3! (karussel-galgenkopf). now on position 11, it was time for the pits, fuel and small repair (touch with a porsche while passing him) took 38 seconds. the tire wear was 5,5 on the front and 4,5 on the rear which is really great for soft tires and this speed. (i now, that are gt-tires and i feel quite bad driving those wheels on my ngt car…) i saved the race because it was late but i learned that i drove the 7th fastest lap with just 4 seconds slower than the fastest lap overall. i think i should switch to gt class with my car to be fair.

well done. after spenting some more time thinking about my setup and the tire issue i made some changes on my setup to improve handling and cornering speed on cold tires. on the gt3 tires i got very small improvements and disappointed by that, i decided to switch to the michelin gt tires. i went back to my former 24 h setup but i kept some of the gt3 setup parameters. for the first test laps i startet on med front and hard rear tires for track temperatures of about 27 degree celcius. surprisly, the car was quite fast, i got close to the 8 minutes with 8:03. adapting the tire pressure to the cold environment (compared to med/hard tires) and decreasing the camper settings once more gave a really good handling. to check the ability to do some fast laps i went for soft tires all around, decreased the fuel to 55 litres and off for the track. first two laps were to head up the tires to about 70 degrees and to get an impression of the turn in behavior. lap 3 was my flying lap and i finnished this lap with a 7:54 and a very spectacular style 😉 due the unexpected good turn in behavior and the great grip i took a couple of bends too close and the first left hand corner (t13) kicked my car on two wheels and my line for metzges feld and kallenhard were far away from being perfect. so avoiding such mistakes, finding a better line for the improved speed and a little bit hotter track will easily lead to a lap time below 7:50. i have to do some more tests because driving on soft tires will lead to the problem that the tires won’t last for 2 or 3 stints but adapting the setup more to medium tires will fix this. next step will be to raise up the rear by another 5 mm and to strengthen the springs on the rear a little bit because of all the sparks in compressions and the banked curves 😉 a complete stint distance (9 laps) will show if i go for less pressure to get at least some sort of heat on the tires or if i go for a pressure which will provide more eval grip over the whole tire surface.