ARMS iRacing League: Week 03 - Cadillac Cup @ Mid-Ohio

League Members Top 4 (official lap times)
1. Brian Weatherbee 1:23.937
2. Scott McIntyre 1:24.379
3. Brian Gay 1:24.865
4. Paul Machan 1:25.359


World Records
Prac: Dylan Sharman 1:20.728
Qual: Dylan Sharman 1:20.852
Race: Dylan Sharman 1:21.583



Track Guide (by Dylan Sharman)

Turn 1 - a third gear corner, you want to get as close to the yellow curbing as possible, it can unsettle your car if you give it a big hit though so just be careful if your planning to hit it.

Turn 2 - i come from fifth gear and drop it back into second gear. try and double apex it, the best place to make a move down the inside for sure. make sure to not lock a break aswell because its really easy to overshoot this corner and give the person behind a chance to make a move.

Turn 3 - Just flat out along the back straight, its really just a kink so not sure why its actually a turn but ah well

Turn 4 - Big breaking zone here, you want to break around the 350m mark i believe and youll drop from 5th gear to 3rd. really keep the momentum up here and it will allow you to roll through it good and continue onto the next corner.

Turn 5 - 2nd gear corner keep it tight on entry and exit.

Turn 6 - up shift to 3rd out of turn 5 before turn 6.

Turn 7 - 8 and 9 all third gear corners and its all about keeping the momentum up.

Turn 10 - keep to the right and then almost glance the wall and once your off the wall downshift to 3rd for what is turn 11

Turn 11 - 3rd gear corner try to click the curbing on the inside and keep up speed for the run into the final 2 corners

Turn 12 - 2nd gear corner, hold a close tight line before the last turn

Turn 13 - you want to up shift just before the apex, can be flat on a hot lap if you get it right but if not a slight lift and then your onto the main straight to start your next lap.

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

In A lot of areas Mid-ohio is harder than Laguna Seca. Corners over blind crests off camber. Have to be very very careful with the pedals. Don't get on the gas too early or too hard . Don't try to brake too late or too hard and lock up the tires. Or off you go. Must be very patient. The Caddy is a hand full here but a lot of fun if you can keep it on the track.
For those of you who think the Caddy feels bad , try the Ford Falcon V8. Under tired, and no brakes, won't turn or stop and too much power. Goes from not tuning to backwards in a flash. Makes the Caddy feel like its on rails. I think it is why so many Aussies are so fast, they drive that Ford all the time. Drive that you can drive anything in iracing.
Anyway I see we picked up some new drivers, the more the better. I think there a few local Iracers around who might like to join. There is Robin Clarke ,very fast in the radical. I think he might even marshall at AMP a little. Mike Rhyno and Cyril Roberts are some I know of. There are a few around.
Anyway good luck to everyone Friday night , should be fun.

I personally find driving the Cadillac @ Mid-Ohio easier than Laguna Seca. Not sure why.

But yeah, you have to drive the car very delicately, constantly in a slow controlled drift. Just brush the brake pedal and never full throttle until you're pointing straight.

Last night I jumped in the Caddy for a half dozen laps around Mid-Ohio. Using the baseline setup I was hovering around my personal best lap time. Then I switched over to my Mosport setup (which I had spent a fair bit of time developing) and immediately smashed my previous personal best. Got a 1:23.179. I'll share my setup during practice tonight.


Yes, a couple new people joined our league since last week. I don't know them personally, but they've got real-life track experience by the look of their profiles.

I have not been actively recruiting outside of this forum, but if you (or anyone) know of other local iRacers, feel free to invite them to join our league!

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

I just bought the track and haven't done any significant laps yet (should make for fun tonight, I'l ltry and stay out of everybodies way ), but it does feel much better than Laguna Seca to me already...

Does Laguna Seca have sand on the pavement or something?

Stacy

_________________
The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

In real life the infield section of Laguna is typically low grip and dirty. Even worse in the last 5 years since Moto GP and the redesigned curbs. More cars driving over and dragging sand back onto the track.

Good job to iracing on picking up on that detail.

Weatherbee, while easily the fastest of the group, struggled with consistancy after having been awake for 24 hours straight. That left the door open for a new group of race winners. Click on the thumbnails below to view the race #1 & #2 results:

After deductions were applied for incidents, here's what the series Points Standings look like:

Paul jumped up two spots displacing Ken from 3rd, while Gay made great progress by moving up three positions!

Next week it's off to Sonoma (formerly know as Infineon Raceway).

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

Here's a brief race recap from my driver's seat. Feel free to add your own. It's always interesting to read other people's experiences from the same race.

Race 1:

Set a new personal best in practice, but could not back it up in qualifying. So I started in P2 next to Brian Gay on pole. The next 20 laps I spend right on Brian's tail, usually within 0.5 seconds, just waiting for him to make a mistake. But Brian handled the pressure, and it was I who made the mistake... On lap 21 with under 1 minute left of the race, I got sideways accelerating out of T11 and hit the wall. From there I limped to the pits for a fast repair and reentered in forth place, which is where I finished. Brian went on to clinch his first victory of the series!


Race 2:

This time around I smashed my previous personal best and qualified on pole. While I was sitting on the grid waiting for the countdown, I swapped out of the sim briefly to confirm my fuel calculation, and when I swapped back in I heard my spotter say "Green... Go Go Go!", followed by a big punt from behind. Eeek! Brian Gay was behind me on the grid, and he managed to stop just short of my rear bumper once he realized I was not moving, but then Stacy slammed into the rear of Brian and sent us both flying forward. Luckily I experienced no noticeable damage, so I was able to resume driving, having lost 1st place to Paul (who rocketed up from 4th to 1st).

Over the next few laps I slowly reeled Paul in and was glued to his tail pipe, running lap after lap within 0.5 seconds of one another. On lap 12 I got a little too close and tapped his rear while braking into the keyhole, spinning him off the track. Clearly it was my fault, so I pulled over and let him retake the lead. We had enough gap on the rest of the field that no one could take advantage.

Then on lap 13, Paul made a mistake in the carousel and went off on his own, allowing me to take the lead. From there I spent the next 10 laps maintaining a small gap to secure my first series win! Woo hoo!

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

The first race was much cleaner than was expecting. Followed Brian W and Paul for a while until first Brian and then Paul had a moment. Paul caught back up and I found it was much easier to follow than lead. He made a nice pass into T4 after I went a bit too deep into T2 and then seemed to get faster once he got the treads worn down on those winter tires as couldn't quite stay with him. Unfortunately couldn't make the second race to try it again. Good fun but it would be nice to have a few more drivers.

BTW there seems to be a lot of sand on the track at Sonoma as well.

That reminds me, I wanted to ask you guys how you felt about the series so far...

• Would you like to open up the league to the iRacing public, or stick to ARMS members & friends?

• How about the time schedule... Is 8:30pm working? Is the break between races too long?

• Are the races themselves too long / short at 30 minutes each?

• Do you want to cycle the four tracks again after Sonoma (like the official series), or introduce a few new "base content" tracks like Lime Rock, Okayama, Summit Point, etc?

• Are the reminder emails helpful? Would it be better to send them late-afternoon as opposed to early morning?

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

So far so good. A few more drivers would be a plus, but its a good start. It would be nice to grow it into something, but that is up to you guys. Everything else is ok with me. Well might drop Mid-ohio, I am still dizzy from all the spinning. The Caddy and the tracks are a challenge for sure. But should make us all better drivers, at least second time through the tracks. Lets hope anyway.
And thank you Scott for all your time and work ,you are doing a great job.

I like the series as it is now, kinda sad I missed Mid-Ohio, but I had to get the new turbo into my poor car. I wouldn't mind taking a tear around Okayama and Lime Rock. Best part about being in a league is you can move the schedule around if you want.

However, we should make another stop at Mosport so Stacy can put all his practice to use!

....that and give me time to figure out how to change fuel load. I heard you guys talking about how much fuel you had left over so I checked mine and it was 64L left


BTW they really need to brighten up those brake lights on the Caddy. Sorry Brian, I almost got around you (...and to make matters worse the only crash I had all night long had me ricocheting off the wall into Brian yet again ...in the same race )



+1 for Lime Rock ...that is by far my favorite track in the Miata (not sure how the CTSV will behave though)

+1 squared for all of Scott's hard work!

Stacy

_________________
The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

Should be able to find it under Garage -> Chassis tab. Should be near the bottom of that tab.

You can change fuel added and what tires that are change in pit stops with I click of the mouse while on track with the new build. Or by touch if you have a touch screen. In a 30 min race I always turn off tire changes and click the fuel added to zero when on the grid. If you have to come for repairs it saves a lot of time. If you don't they change the tires and fill the fuel before starting repairs. Maybe that is what's happening to you Stacy. Everytime you come in they add more feul.

I only had to come in for that one off (unlike Laguna Seca ) so probably that's when it added the extra as I never checked the amount left in the first race where I never pitted...

BTW I heard somebody mention that they hate cold tires. I thought I read on the iRacing forums that tires stay consistant or apparantly I can't tell difference?




oh, and one more thing

How do we get stills or video from the saved replays?

Stacy

_________________
The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

Generally, with the current tire model the tires offer more grip when they're cold. I'll often set purple sectors in my outlap, and not be able to repeat it in subsequent laps. It seems more pronounced in the Caddy than other cars I've driven.

But yes, after the tires are up to temp they seem to stay fairly consistent unless you overheat them.


This is one aspect of iRacing which is lacking. You can save replays, but they can only be played back within the iRacing service. There's no function to export the video (or still images) externally. So your only option is to use a third-party screen capturing utility to grab video for processing / uploading. FRAPS seems to be the tool of choice.

I saved the replay of our second Mid-Ohio race. I thought about trying to capture some short clips to throw up on YouTube, but my machine is just barely capable of running the sim alone with all the graphic options turned off. Adding a CPU-intensive capturing tool into the mix would likely result in very poor, choppy video, with none of the nice shadows / textures / trackside objects available. In other words, a poor representation of the sim.

I may try my hand at capturing still photos though. At least that's something.

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

I am a +1 for other tracks as well. In the CASC-OR league 2 weeks ago we ran the Caddy at Summit Point, that was fun. Fast car, small track, made for some good racing.
+1 for Lime Rock, +1 for Okayama, +1 for any track other than cycling through the normal schedule!

A BIG +1 for Scott's efforts in getting this league together and keeping it running.

As for the "who should race with us" I would like to see it kept at us + friends even if the friends are not ARMS members.

_________________
Brian
VP, AMP
#51 Vantage Motorsports

Another vote for more tracks (and a round a Mosport). Would be good to invite friends and others from the region.

Find we get a bit spread out by the end of 30 minutes. More drivers might help solve that. Though I've gained a few spots from Scott crashing or running out of fuel in the final laps so maybe it's not all that bad.

Ditto on effort by Scott to keep this running. The reminder emails and track previews are a nice touch.

Perhaps we'll have a few more drivers for Sonoma... I just sent out an open invitation to the Regulars league members. Most are Eastern Canadians / New Englanders anyway, and can certainly be classified as friends.

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

I gave that Fraps program a try ...it works pretty good except that my replay is saved for three screens that I use so it is distorted.

For example here is a picture of where I hit Brian at the start:

Paul's in the black car, Scott in the Burgandy, Brian in the dark blue, and me in the Gulf coloured car

Stacy

_________________
The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

When recording, you could disable the peripheral screens temporarily. should give you a perfect video.

Yes, as Ryan suggested you could temporarily set the graphics to single screen when playing back the replay.

Just found this article... might be helpful (although quite dated): http://www.iracing.com/inracingnews/ira ... ing-primer

_________________

1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR