Intro to F1 '79

Wow, this was a hard race. in qualifying i ran a 1:36.8 which was a hair slower than i was hoping for, but it got me pole, by over a second.

After seeing my advantage in qualifying i wasn't too worried about the race. i got a ok start i guess, but peter made a moving going into turn 1 i wasn't expecting and out braked himself. from there on i just ran my pace and managed to pull out 6 seconds over second and 3rd. i thought i would pull lots more, but near the end they got a lot faster and started reeling me back in. it turns out i had just enough speed left that my lead was more than enough and took the win by nearly 3 seconds. this race makes up for my bad race last night. :-)

Well....my day sucked. I love these cars and don't remember having so much trouble trying to drive them. I'm not really a fan of this version of the track and maybe that combined with the torque curve of these cars lead to my troubles. In any case I spent about 3 hours, on and off, tonight trying to get a setup that would put me anywhere near a respectable pace. I tried 3 of the 4 cars, only leaving out the Williams, and ended up "using" the Renault (it was the most stable car for me). From there it was down hill. I never got fast, but I surely did get more frustrated. Come qualifying time I decided not to even bother putting in a lap. About halfway through I decided I'd give it a single shot and see how I did. I promptly spun exiting turn one on my timed lap. So with my qualifying rubber now useless I aborted that and conceded to starting shotgun on the field.

That is the highlight of my race, starting dead last...I need to get back to praticing with these cars, I'm completely embarrased by my showing tonight and WILL NOT let it happen again....but if it does...I'll....I'll.....try again I suppose.

R2P is trying to tell me to stick to tin tops, I swear I can drive open wheel cars but every time I hope on a R2P server with one I look like a noob or a wrecker. Maybe I'll just go drive my PCC some more ;)

Jason

Phew! I've driven all sorts of cars in sim racing, and these '79 cars are the only ones that still make me genuinely nervous. I was a bit quicker in qualifying than I expected, but still only good for 4th.

I got a really good start and zinged past Sam up the middle. The move was probably a little bit nuts. It might have been smarter to hold back, but it worked out OK. :) I just barely missed Peter when he slid, maybe even grazed him a little. Wasn't long before Sam caught up. He kept the gap well within 2 seconds and got right on my gearbox several times. As the fuel burned off my car got super twitchy and Sam eventually got a good look down tthe inside at the first hairpin, and I almost turned down on him, but saw him at the last instant just as he was backing off.

Congrats to David for a very consistent drive, and everyone who finished. :)

This ended up being exactly the same as the prior PRC race.
4 hours of practice and the car is perfect, but in the race it is an ice-skate!
I only run 84% brake pressure and can NEVER lock them up, but into Turn 1 the rears locked up of course, and it was all I could do to try to save taking out David as I skated into the apex!
I had practiced starts. And the run into Turn 1 so I would know the exact speeds and braking points for a race start. And even coming out of the pits I can run full speed flying laps fine immediately.
But not in a race!

The car verged on un-driveable. It may as well have had 4 steps of wing removed front and rear (or more!?). Yet had been perfect for all practice and Qual sessions once again.
I ran a full race test which had lots of 38's and 39's in amongst the laps, but in this race I could not even get under 40 for most laps. So I just pitted and quit.
It is beginning to make it all a waste of time.

I think it is rFactor (net coding) and server related, as it occassionally happens in other league events. Generally linked to the total cars in the race. Though never with as few as 12 cars - it usually is assured to show up with anything over 16 or so.

But they are great fun cars.....

I have never had that feeling to the extent you do Peter. Maybe on race day, advance the server to race session and take a few laps with your setup to get a feel for it? I really dont know what to say on that.

I do recall mentioning to Rob about your practicing of the starts and braking point in T1. "Now he is doing the smart thing" was my response... sorry it went south from there.

i know exactly what Peter means, i notice the same thing. but i think it is more fuel related. these F1 cars hate having lots of fuel on, and it really hurts the total performance big time. braking, turning, accelerating, everything even down to the funny ways the car acts is right down to the fuel load. with the Porcshes, since the tank is up front, i Know the car will go to push as the full load lightens. in the 79's, the car just stops acting so funny as the load gets lighter.

I believe these are the hairiest cars of any mod I've raced ... Crazy torque in the high end of the revs. You really have to have that wheel unwound before the revs get up there or you're toast.

Oh, and did I mention the swishy-swashy handling? :-) Really easy to slide the front end with even a touch too much speed, and watch out for the back end under throttle, baby!

But you know what? That just makes it a helluva challenge. You really are searching for and riding that edge the whole race.

Jason Quinn got all Fernando Alonso on me on the launch and got my position. I followed in line, and a couple laps later Jason got squirrely enough for me to get under him and back by.

My only off-track mishap came with a couple laps to go. Running down into Turn 1 I upshifted instead of downshifted, and in that moment of "Huh?" I missed my turn-in. I slowed up in the gravel without touching anything and went on to the finish.

Fun race. Challenging cars. Congrats to David on the win.

Well I will persevere and see what I can come up with. I am starting to think it is the long distance net effects. Probably something in the net coding and how the game does its physics 'cycles' according to data flow. There is no way to test that unless in a race situation. Everything is fine until the race and all cars are there. And with good servers at that end and high end cable at this end, it can ony be latency related. (U.S. to Aust)
"Easier" mods mean it is less apparent or important. eg touring cars - slower requirements. But it is still a pain that you may as well not bother creating a setup as in the race it is going to 'remove the wings' and be a pig anyway. And you can't 'guess' "Oh I will make a setup with 4 extra wing front and rear" as it doesn't really work as simple and reliably as that anyway.

And if I had driven extra slow into Turn 1 (not that I ever expected to need to) I would have likely caused a big nose to tail pile up of all the cars coming behind! So you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I knew exactly what the car could do off the line and into Turn 1 from testing, so that should have been fine.

That was very astute driving if you saw me coming in deep down the right David!! lol Those weeny mirrors, and distorted distances verge on useless to me. (maybe there is a better mirror file for these?). Oh...or the virtual side mirrors!

Peter, I'm in Portland, OR and I haven't experienced anything like that, so I don't think its a latency issue. Could be some rFactor bug that only pops up with certain hardware configurations.

Well, lucky we have all the fun runs to find things out!

I get it in all sims and I am sure it is linked to the way net coding is done versus how the physics cycles run based on that data flow. Whereas offline is a pure time-based cycle system.
Nascar Heat used to do it...but being a somewhat simplistic sim the detriment was far less important.
N2K3...more notable, but after long enough you knew what to do to offset it reasonably well. (probably at cost of my true lap time abilities).

My setups are highly tuned for optimal mechanical grip. Not 'alien' type mega low downforce basis, relying highly on super motor skill abilities to handle any difficult extremes. I can't handle such 'excessive' demands of motor skils. But via my setups I can go very fast with my lesser skills!
My cars run on rails, but right near that edge of on/off tire grip. I can run it all day within that limit, but there is no more leeway to run it with "less grip". So whilst it all runs perfectly as designed, and driven, it will not cope if things change. I am driving to limits within known guaranteed responses and if they are suddenly altered (and notably so) then there is going to be trouble!
To aim to cope with some 'random unknown' and make the car grippier to cover all possibilities just in case, would mean way slower results! Maybe not even possible in a uesful manner.

These cars highlight it big time. Seeing they are extremely demanding.
It was interesting to note that PRC and F1_79 both suffered from the same severe rear end grip loss because they both began locking rear brakes big time, and then also far more difficult to put power down.