Magny Cours

Car: Freisinger Motorsport Porsche GT3 RSR (NGT)
Opponents: Full (24)
Length: Full (3 hr/114 laps)
Aggression: Real
Skill: 100%
Physics/Tcontrol/Stability/ABS: Simulation/off/off/off
Aids: Auto Clutch

3rd Round...Magny Cours

Magny Cours....Where do I start with this track. Well, a good place seemed to be the driving school run around the track, seeing as I had never actually made a serious attempt at the line before. Didn't turn out to be the case, as the Corvette C5-R that I got to drive wasn't set up right nor very kind in the turns.

Back in the league, the first session of practice began with rain. Must have come down from England or something. Either way, I decided that I did NOT want to learn the track in the wet, and since the forecast was for sun anyway, I skipped the entirety of P1 and am hoping that there will be enough time in P2 to get a hang of everything before the qualifying.

Anti-lock brakes are also off for this race, and I'm sure it will be a challenge, what with the last of my training wheels coming off a track with hairpins like this. The fact that the dark braking line starts LATE into Adelaide did nothing to help me learn that particular corner, and with the limited time I raced tonight (30 min maybe) I still haven't nailed a good landmark to brake for. That, in addition to the fact the track is DARK, sometimes finding the braking zone for any particular corner is a guessing game, especially in the heat of the action. (e.g. some Ferrari 550 snorting your exhaust fumes)

After trying for a while to set up the car by myself, using a very useful tool I found (Race Engineer), I decided that I wasn't approaching it properly at all. The way the default car was set up, I couldn't manage consistent laps (probably mostly due to my skill), and without that, you might as well just randomly guess at what would help. Instead, going on a tip from the description for the program, I pulled the setup that I used in Valencia out of the hat and started there.

Immediately things felt way way better. With the understeer problem 80% solved, I found it about 80% easier to learn at least a basic line around the track, enough to be consistent. Finally I could put the car through final tuning to eliminate the last of the understeer and start working on improving lap-times. And when I go with the next track, I'm going to just update it again for that one. Whoever made the original setup, I thank you very much! (and don't say I'm lazy or something....one day I'll get to making my own, probably with a car nobody uses anyway)
*Day1 End

So, after taking a day-long break after the tuning breakthrough, I went back to go finish the practice runs. Trouble was, the mild 20C weather had decided to surreptitiously cloud over or something, and after a mighty large crash I discovered upon returning to the garage that the track had suddenly become 'wet'. A big WTF was definitely in order here. Water simply doesn't materialize out of thin air, not when it's still sunny out and forecasted to be sunny. And it must have been quite a deluge, cause intermediates were NOT working. Switched to every tire choice under the sun and none of them could make me happy. I completely cooked a set of Soft Wets after merely a third of a lap! The track was still 20C out but that was obviously enough to send the temps past the boiling point of water.

After raging against what I suspect is a bug, I decided to skip the remaining 20 minutes of practice and jump straight into the qualifying, which, thankfully, was the next day. The track was back to normal, sitting nicely at 35C, and the car's setup could use what it was designed for, a set of Mediums. I love having a competitive car! (eh, but it can be boring...sometimes)

After a couple laps out on the track things began to shape up. I wasn't crashing or doing pirouettes anymore, thanks to the newfound footing, but I still do NOT like the track. The kind of corners it throws at me make me unhappy and stomp all over my driving rhythm. (Though, after 120 laps I'm probably going to know it preeety well -_-)
*Day2 end

Ok, slept in, ate brunch, and first order of the day was to finish the race! Jumped back into qualifying 1, decided that my previous time set me in a good spot for the race (2nd in class) and sped up time to qualifying two....where there was a complete downpour!

The track status was 'flooded' and as I strapped on some soft wets and eased out of the garage I was worried sick that it would persist into the race. I got a few practice laps in, testing out the grip and line in the conditions. I had never driven before when the track was 'flooded'....pretty slow going overall. After a while (read: I spun) I decided that this wasn't helping at all so I skipped the entirety of Qualifying 2 in the hopes that the warmup session would be back to normal.

And it was! The track temperature was back up to a nice 40C and dry as a bone. Getting on mediums again I did some practice laps, trying to get back a good line, especially around the first corner, Grande Courbe, where there are so few reference points on where and how much to turn in. Actually, the whole area around the pits was just terrible...

Race start! Things didn't go so great off the line as I struggled with Grande Courbe right at the start, falling back two places by the time the mess of cars had got around Estoril and onto the long straight. It was on the braking zone to Adelaide where I really made up time, taking a large (FREAKING HUGE) risk and diving down the inside at close to race pace. Almost had a very big shunt with a Ferrari as it moved to the outside while I dove inside...a foot to the right and my race would have been over before it started.

From then on until the first pitstop, the name of the game was 'stay on the road'. During practice/qualifying/warmup I was experimenting with the asymmetric tire setup again, mediums on front and hards on the rear, to help even out tire wear. However, that setup proved itself TERRIBLE with the car. It didn't appear so bad during the short runs in practice, but as the tires wore, the car became so much harder to drive. The front retained the grip pretty well but the rear was probably not up to proper temperature and was wearing much faster than expected, and since there was no temp there was no grip, and the back end was being as squirrely as hell around the corners. Usually, I can cope with a bit of a tail-happy car but not on slicks, and definitely not when the front refuses to slide as well. There were so many skids and snap-arounds near Complexe du Lycee that by lap 25 I was begging for the pitstop at lap 38 to come, so I could end the suffering.

After the first pitstop I put mediums on all corners without a second thought and got away cleanly...my first proper pitstop! Yay! No penalty either, which made me happy, but my grid position certainly didn't. I slotted out in 22nd right in front of the class leaders, so I could see right away the hill to climb. However...now the car was competitive again. After the tires warmed up the difference was immediate...this setup is definitely designed for symmetric tire choices. From then on things went very smoothly. Sometime around lap 60-70 I had learned the track to the point where mistakes were rarely happening because of lack of track or balance smarts, but rather because the fatigue was starting to set in.

Soon after the second pitstop at lap 78, which was also clean, I figured that I had to reach P16 in order to win in my class. Starting at P18 from the pits, the gap between me and the car in front was nearly 50 seconds, which shrunk with every consecutive lap to where I was right on his tail. Had a spin as I closed on him but got back on track and passed him sometime around lap 85 or so. I realized at this point, as he pulled off into the pits, that the car in front was the Ferrari 360GTC that I hadn't seen for a good while, as the P17 car was a Viper. Feeling very pleased with the AI tweaks I had made, I set off to close the 11 second gap and bring it to the finish.

By this time I was getting pretty tired, and on the second half of Nurburging I cut the corner by a lot, prompting a warning from the race director. One lap later I repeated exactly the same thing and got...tada, a stop-go penalty. A drive through would have been sufficient, damn it. Either way, my first GTR2 hat-trick has been with stop-go penalties. Go me!

Pitting on the end of the lap, I came out 40 seconds behind him, and began the final charge. 10 laps from the end of the race, lap 98, I manged to pass, and from there went on to earn the second win of the season so far. Another trophy for the room between my ears! :)

Looking back on the race, I was actually quite happy with it. I learned a bit more about the car and the setup I am using with it, and was VERY pleased to see how the AI tweaks had turned out. The 'grandma effect' which had occured in Valencia halfway through the race had been very noticeably reduced, and the cars were still running quite a generous pace by the end. However, more tweaking will still need to be done, I think, to make them a bit more human.

I still don't like the track, but I learned it good enough to do a very good 3rd stint, with almost no errors and plenty of speed. However, it irks me that the AI still isn't presenting a good proper challenge. The only NGT cars which can compete with the RSR is other RSRs and the 360GTC....At the end of this season, I'll jump into something else for sure. (As I better...8 more races to do in that damn porsche, I'll be so sick of it :)

But, we'll see if I change my tune as I crank up the AI skill meter and head on to...Hockenheim!

PS: They better give 110% :)
PPS: Thank you VonDutch for your AI tweaks!