[Bird]

I had a good first race, good clean start, then people started dropping off, bit of battling here and there, but then I got into the rhythm and was just lapping as well as I could.   The result was good, though.

But the second!  Got into a bit of tap-tap due to the slightly lower gearing, people swamped me a bit and we were 3-wide.  Then I've mis-calculated the run to T3 while apologising to Wally and run into someone.  Terribly sorry about that.  Waited out my time on the side, and joined the end of the line. 

I had some good little battles while fighting my way up.  Great clean fun!

Got back to some decent position, where Phil was acting as a massive wall.  We've tussled for a few laps, then finally I got a run up, then gave it back on the back straight (those DTMs have power, dammit!) then took it back again as Phil run wide at the end, then effed it up on the last corner royally.  I'm still fuming about that, it was a rookie mistake, just kept the throttle on when I should have just backed off a bit... Oh well.

Still, it was a hugely enjoyable race! 

Thanks everyone you guys are all racing very nicely.

[Wally]

Race Results
Season Standings
Season Statistics

Congratulations to Marty on both race wins and the round win. Having a DTM helped
Marty has taken the season lead, while team Achilles Heels takes the team points lead, thanks to a strong showing, with the help of some DTM power after a poor first round.

Round Points
Marty   50
Mopz   46
Darren Marsh   40
Guybrush Threepwood   40
Rolz   40
Freezer   35
GWyar   35
Ysu   33
Wally   29
Rob   29
Jestronix   28
Glen73   27
Phil   25
BJSRacer   22
Bacchulum   22
Simone   20
cramjet   16
Flattop   16
Gratulin   15
Dave O   11
Imperious   11
Dick Forrest   3

[Freezer]

Not a bad night for me all things considered.  I was able to set a pb to grab 6th.
R1:  I managed to find myself tangled in 3 pile ups and dropped well down to 19th on first lap.  But from there I put the foot down and was able to claw my way back to 9th.
Q2: Managed to go a bit quicker again and grab 4th on the grid but this was to no avail as for some reason the game would only start me in the pits.  And to make matters worse the far end of the pits.  Therefore when the flag dropped I trundled down pit lane as everyone blasted away, but I jumped into 15th thanks to the initial congestion.  From there I again had to charge through and this time making it to 6th for what was a decent result given the two dud starts I got in each race.
Oh, and apparently having a DTM helped . . . they say they're faster!

On a side note re tyre talk: Mediums for 20 laps and I was able to hold consistent times to the end.

[marty]

Oh, and apparently having a DTM helped . . . they say they're faster!

Good work freezer sounds like you had to work hard for your points, thats what they say but its just that the better drivers get DTM drive offers where the average guys are lucky to get into a group A

In all honesty the DTM was just a fraction faster  once I ran a race simulation and found I could stay comfortably under the group A WR running hard DTM tyres for 20 laps I figured those guys would be struggling to match that pace and so was hoping theyd get into battles with the other DTMS for long enough to let me get a bit of a gap. Race 1 I just tried to drive smooth and avoid silly errors and so had a fairly lonely race up front. After my poor showing the week before I needed to pull my finger out to avoid getting dropped from Achilles heel racing so tried to earn my keep with some consistent driving.

Race 2 Mopz gave me a bit of a push on early and I made a couple early errors while being pressured. So after nearly blowing the lead getting into neutral breaking into t2 I decided to relax and take it much easier on entry knowing I could run a fairly good pace without needing to drive right on the limits and hope that was enough to keep me ahead. I know how hard it is to pass a car atm with similar pace with no slipstream so avoiding errors will make it tough for those behind.

Here are both replay files, I want to make a highlights video but first time I noticed the cars not in view seem to only get netcode updates once or twice a second so this makes other cars away from me look pretty strange. Maybe we need to wait til the server can capture a replay file if at all possible or get some files from guys in the better battles. The cars withing my cars view are updated much more regularly, I really never noticed this before but may be a common thing with most race sims.

There was some discussion on coasting during the week and if you watch my inputs driving at about 90-95 % these races I coasted quite a bit into most turns just to ensure I got better exits. Sacrificing a few tenths per lap to avoid any silly errors that are easy to make when going for the ultimate pace. The clutch pedal isnt shown but I clutch on up shifts and was heal toe down but into second gear I was also using the clutch down as practicing I did lock rears a bit and miss shifting a bit into those 3 second gear corners so braking earlier and clutching just avoided any errors for the most part.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/qg9929b7omhs8am/race_1_xgn.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/e3ca3ldncy94ngz/race_2_xgn.rar

[Rolz]

Was a top evening, stayed out of the way of everyone... except for some poor soul I bumped in qualifying, I hope it didn't put you off getting a good time next lap...
Pretty stoked with my effort... I think I put in close to 10 hours on that track in that car last week... got my PB in qualifying on the first race... should have seen me smiling from ear to ear there 

Thanks again, let me know the car I get allocated... I have fallen in love with that DTM (or maybe it's 6th gear). Being a first time sim person since AC has come out I have a lot of hours to put down on the tracks to come close to putting up a fight...

Lastly I have to remember to blink... gawd my eyes were dry when the night was over 

[Wally]

Sounds like you had a lot of fun Rolz
I had a pretty good night. I got a couple of side swipes in both races but no biggies. Like Bird, I had a good chase of Phil's DTM in race 2 after watching the Bird/Phil battle from behind, but couldn't get close enough to make the pass.

I had softs in race 1, but even at 95% at the end of the race, they were starting to lose bite in the corners, so I went for mediums in the longer race.

[Dick Forrest]

I had a fun race, at the back, getting lapped... and lapped.. 

I have to blame Marty for making mic noise which in turn would make my CPU choke at the end of pit straight and I'd get the dreaded CPU>95% when really it is at 45%    got huge lag. No one else had this?

I wish I had a big budget like you guys and could afford to burn tyres. I've got one set of softs to last the whole season. 

[DarrenM]

First race didn't go to plan. I was surprised to be 2nd on the grid but knew it wouldn't last long given how close a few DTM cars were behind. I lowered my pressures because it seemed to work out better in practice, but in the race it made me slow in the fast turns. I had a couple bingles with Guybrush then we ran nose to tail for the rest of the race. I couldn't do anything at the end because my rears had melted.

2nd race went better despite having my wheel off center at the start. Thanks for the warning whoever that was. I rotated my wheel but didn't find the stop so I just went with it. With the rift on I can't see my wheel well enough to sort that out quickly. I didn't get a clear run in qual but I had a good first couple laps getting me up to 3rd. Guybrush got held up by a DTM so I had a clear run to the finish.

[Dick Forrest]

Q2: Managed to go a bit quicker again and grab 4th on the grid but this was to no avail as for some reason the game would only start me in the pits.  And to make matters worse the far end of the pits....

In Q2 I didn't even leave the pits. I wanted to save my only set of tyres 
Yet I was on the start grid. There was a empty pit box in front of me as well.

[rooshooter]

Sorry for the sudden disappearance last night but I had
a server disconnect 5mins into the first race. I had a phone line problem
the last few days and Telstra had been looking at it. I was not willing to try again in
the second race. I have made a few casual observations in the few races I have
done in this league and I believe too much emphasis is being placed on speed rather
than handling in setups. I believe better handling setups would reduce the number of race "incidents"
in the first few laps. I always "try" to find a setup that if I go off the race line I can still recover without
completely looseing control. I have found this series much fun and a good bunch of people,congratulations
to the podium winners.
   

[cramjet]

As long as I've played AC I've never been able to make Silverstone work for me. I just couldn't get a decent lap down, having no pace and being in a Group A meant I qualified poorly and raced even worse!

In saying that I still had a lot of fun at the back. Wasn't quite as clean as my last race up in 8-12 position but I think that made it more fun :p. I must apologise though, when that large lag spike hit (during 2nd race?) I think I hit someone off the road. Although I was totally unaffected I saw them go flying off into the sand just before the last corner.

All in all a good way to celebrate my last exam for my under-grad (how lame am I!) Now I have some time to install all these parts I've accumulated for my own e30................325i

[Wally]

I saw that lag spike cramjet. Your car was a bit jittery and warpy, and I saw it just jump sideways into the car beside you. It was quite a big jump.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

It's good reading everyone's account of their race as obviously you don't see get to see what happens when it isn't around you.

First race I had a bad start and got swamped off the line but saw Darren up ahead being held up so eventually made my way up to him.  I was fairly close behind Darren coming into T1 and accidentally gave him a tap as I misjudged our relative pace through that corner and by the time I braked it wasn't quite enough to completely avoid him - so apologies to Darren.  Then again we continued our battle with me behind and coming out of Stowe into the sharp left-hander I had a slight run on and put it up the inside but probably didn't have my nose far enough up beside Darren as we ended up going for the same piece of tarmac and collided.  I waited for Darren to re-pass before resuming our battle and then after a few laps got a good run out of Stowe and managed to get him on the inside of the next corner.  After that I just managed to hold him off until the end, although Darren was clearly faster overall.

So a poor first race from me.  One thing I'm finding with a single screen and decent FOV is that it's difficult to know where people are around you.  Even with mirrors there are some large blind spots.

The second race was a little smoother.  I looked behind me at the start and noticed Darren's wheels were pointing toward the outside of the track and tried to tell him to straighten his wheel.  Anyway, we had a good but brief tussel and Darren ended up passing me around the outside of Stowe and into the left hander - without me bumping him this time!   So a great pass from Darren.  I also had a good little battle with Rolz who drove very well and I only ended up getting by a few laps from the end.  I decided to go with the hard tyres for the second race which probably wasn't a good idea as they took 4 or 5 laps to heat up and didn't have the grip of the mediums which may have lasted the distance.

Anyway, a fun couple of races for me and thanks for the evening.  Congratulations to Marty who had a clean streak this round getting maximum points and well done to the other podium finishers.  Good to see Ysu/Bird bagging the highest place for the Grp A's in the first race and Darren taking the honours in the second.

[Glen73]

Qualifying for both races I was happy to be in the 12's but that put me mid pack.

Race one basically was running side by side of Simone and bang not even sure what happened as his car was out of my view but mess everywhere...... and then 20 seconds later T-boned a stranded Flattop sitting like a bunny in headlights on the very fast right hander. I could almost see his pilot ingame frantically bashing his keyboard. After all that I was back in 20th,  made 5 places up to finish 15th.

Race two, saw a few incidents and drove through them luckily, held up a fast approaching Freezer for a lap but the Dtm just way too powerful especially in Freezers hands. Finished 8th, race two I think top 9 cars placed, 6 of them were Dtm powered.

So Monza, team projekt rennesport sees the special delivery of 2 brand new Dtm's to the garage.

Here is an observation...... people having the ability to drop there worst round doesnt work well with the dtm step up option. What I think could have worked better is everyone keeping all round points and the Dtm step up based off the season results not each round. I think season results reflect a drivers ability more accurately unless you have hardware or alpha influence. I dont think it is fair that Wally finished two points ahead of me this round, but I find my self 2 points ahead of him in season championship after dropping our worst round and I find myself in a Dtm while Wally is in a Grpa at Monza.

[marty]

I agree Glen I think DTM's probably better for the season points then last race, I got lucky as had pretty big PC issues race 1 so luckily the DTM helped me get back some points but either way I would have been in a DTM for race 2. Quite likely after Monza most of the GRPa cars will be in DTM's the next week though some may still be up fairly high in points for the season. Still its early days and first season so more of a learning experience, quite a good way of mixing things up with the multi car season and it will be some interesting battles if I find a dtm car around my pace at Monza.

Rennesport will be racking up the points this week, the DTM is quite fun to drive will be hard giving up the extra grunt and gear this week but trading that for some more position battles should be fun.