Malaysian Grand Prix

Well... the race started well but i just could not keep the pace and stayed in 1:33 range. I was looking to keep 5th but my screen minimized for no reason whatsoever (there were no applications coming up) and it gave heinz 5th.. which should not have happened.

I did what i typically do and pushed my engine to try to catch him and it blew. Im an idiot .

I put in probably about 45 minutes of practice overall for this race. I am tired of finishing in the back or DNF'ing due to pushed engine. I am going to be on the podium next race i am in (wont be the next one). Thats all there is to it. Practice begins tonight.

After 40 laps my brakes were completely gone. Never had that problem before and I started with maximum disks. Was on a 2-stopper but now I'll never know how that would have worked out in the end. :-(

What was your brake duct setting George? In practise, with my brake duct at 5, the fronts were getting well over 1000 degrees C, so I went with a brake duct of 6 and the biggest brake discs available and they lasted no problem

That must be it Vik. I also used the biggest disks but the duct was at 5. Didn't notice the heat in practice. :-(

I don't think I'll ever understand how people wear their brakes down so much. I started with front discs at 1.181" and my rears were 1.102" with a brake duct of 3. At the end of the race my left front was worn the most, but still had .830" left while my least worn right front was at .857".

The .hdv file has the details on brake failure...look for this line:

BrakeFailure=(1.45e-002,7.00e-004) // average and variation in disc thickness at failure

Those numbers are in meters.

.0145 meters = .57087 inches

With the variation added brake failure will occur at:

.0138 to .0152 meters
or
.5433 to .5984 inches.

I always calculate my disk wear and adjust my disc size so that I will have at least .7" at the end of the race. Plus, I always recalculate an hour before the race...due to track temps and such (for lack of a better reason) the disc wear is not constant until the server is running the event...I suppose it calculates the random numbers at that time.

You might want to double check that your brake pedal is returning all the way to zero...something else that MoTeC is good for in addition to a brake temp graph.

Congrats Justin on the big win! Great run.

All week long on I had no problem at all running softs for 14 laps and every lap would be a mid to very low 31's. It was easy actually. I even pushed very hard on my first lap of a handful of stints in practice last night and came within a few thousands of a 30 each time.

What was so strange about today's race was that I thought I would run a few 32's (instead of trying for a 30!) to start the race (which would match Justin's early stint practice pace from last night) and that would ensure the tires would be great for the remainder of my first stint. Instead, the car felt sluggish and I didn't even get in the 31's (31.8) until lap 9. Around the start of lap 12 my tires started to die. They almost popped on lap 13, and I ran a 42 trying to get to the pits. Very bizarre, because they should of easily lasted 15.

After the race I said that I thought the reason the tires went bad was because Justin was fairly close behind me for most of the first stint, and there was more aero loss and more tire scrub than I was aware of. Looking at the replay though, he wasn't under my wing at all really, and was far enough back that it shouldn't have had hurt my tires. If anything, I'd expect him to understeer and suffer wiith tire wear while trailing me.

So anyway, I had to add another stop and serve a drive through (12 extra seconds) for speeding on pit lane (again!). Along with the 10 seconds lost on my in lap, I had no shot at all to catch Tim or Justin even though it was stil early. Even though I ran very hard and kind of ragged in each of the remaining stints, tire wear wasn't an issue, so I am really, really baffled by what happened today. Never experienced this before in all the races I've run.

Another really bad start to another season. 6 pointd in two races despite my pace in both.

Well, that was a great race. My mind and body are absolutely worn out from so much practice this weekend. I put a great deal into preparing for this race because my girlfriend was out of town camping and without her to supervise me, my sim racing intake can reach dangerous levels.

Qualifying went well as my first flyer ended up being a pole lap, beating David by a few hundredths or so. Sadly, he wouldn't have any of that and went out for one more flyer and took the pole (and the lap record) from me by .006! It was crushing, but I was really happy to be in the front row and best of all with my teammate right behind me so I didn't have to worry about getting bumped by anyone taking a risk.

The start went as expected and I came out through the first set of turns behind David. I was sure he was 3-stopping from his practice stint lengths, but I figured he was on mediums at least, maybe hards, since he wasn't like a whole second faster than me. Turned out he ran softs which ended up working to my advantage. I tailed David very closely for the first 10 or 11 laps without making any attempt to overtake, but I tried to make him think that I was considering it so that he'd drive hard and gobble up tires while I coasted in his draft. It worked perfectly and, as it turned out, being in his pocket for the first stint reduced my own tire wear a lot. His tires started to lose grip around lap 12 or so and mine were in perfect shape for driving still, so I made my move in the final turn and made it stick through the next complex. We had some really crazy side-to-side action for the first half lap but after I had the position sealed in the T5/6 left/right sweeping section, I knew he would back off to save tires and he did.

I can only recall one really scary moment which was later in the first stint when I was starting to decide to attack David, I came in through T15 (the last turn between the two straights) and had more speed than I expected to have on David and I bumped him ever so lightly in the rear end. It was really soft so I am hoping he didn't take anything from it. I, however, took right front suspension damage. It didn't change the handling in any way, but when I went for my first pit, I forgot about that and my stop took 12 seconds because of the damage which I didn't need fixed in the first place. If I had lost by less than 6 seconds, this would have been a dire oversight!

Skipping forward, the rest of the race was really solid for me and nearing my final pit stop, I had about 18 seconds on P2 Tim McArthur. I really didn't think I was going to make it out in front of him after my final pit and I was pretty sure that if I didn't, I'd have blown the win because he surely was fast enough to hold me off. Fortunately, I made it into T1 with about 1.5s on him and used a little boost to keep him off of me while my tires were still warming up. The gap started to grow as I lapped really hard on my 3-stop tank so that I could create some space.

With about 5 or so laps to go, my gap started shrinking from 6s into the 3s range and I was worried that he was boosting it up to try and make a last minute kamikaze run. I just put my nose down and concentrated and managed to maintain a 4-5s gap until he spun with around 3 laps to go and then I wound it down to boost 1 and rolled it home without any fancy business.

I was uber disappointed about not taking pole, but the win sure made up for it. APR is in position to challenge for the Team Championship now leading into Canada.

Sorry about the pole thing Justin. Had to be done. :-) Funny thing about that Q session was that my first timed lap was a 30.3, which actually surprised me. I knew I would be 4 gallons lighter on the main Q lap after pitting, and so I was thinking I might hit a 29, but that lap was not very good apparently and only matched the first timed lap. I then saw you had beat my 30.3 and so I cursed myself, :-) and then just kept going for one last lap. Didn't think I had any chance though because I expected the tires to fall off halfway through the lap. Somehow I improved by a few hundreds of a second and was just able to take pole back away from you.

I've probably lost 6 poles/lap records to Tim and Tristan by a combined 3-4 tenths, so don't feel too bad. You keep improving and you'll surely suffer through that experience again. :-)

Wins are 100x better than pole anyway, so forget about it. :-)

Well done to justin on picking up his first win and taking more scalps for the predators!

I didnt get time to put too much into the car for this race, and was never comfertable with my setup. I changed to a 3 stop last minute on meds, but like at silverstone, I was just tearing through the fronts badly and i couldnt find a way to stop it, just not enough time.

Got an ok lap in and suprised it was good enough for 4th, was hoping i could make it count and back justin up.

brandon got a better start off the line, and took me into T1, i was content at sticking around and seeing what happens, but at the hairpin i spun out.. put me virtually last... and the rest of my race was just trying to salvage some points while at the same timme making sure i didnt blow my tires from over agressive driving. I spun once every stint about and when it counted the most chasing darren for 5th that i really really wanted, i spun out.. Car was just helping me at all... had a good time while kept the car going straight, had some fun with david after his drive through, george while he still had breaks and darren defending 5th .. Well done to vikz raman who pulled a rabit out the hat today, good result! perhaps we'll see more of you in the coming races :)

Anyway, glad to come away with some points and win. Now its up to montreal where Apex, Vindex and GTNDC are fielding all primary drivers.. should be a hell of a race

Now thay I think about it, I really wish I hadn't won pole.