Hairpin turn in low hp kart

Driving, Data & Fitness.
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Hehe busy schedule going into the holidays for all students it seems.

Steam sales are pretty great. It’s awesome that this all coincided with Black Friday.

So, 6th already? Looks like your time spent thinking about how to hustle a rental kart might have taught you a thing or two. What’s the competition like? Any super fast drivers?

One small thing I discovered accidentally. If you do ever decide to try Iracing… don’t buy it via steam. Buy subscription direct and it’s less expensive. Also, they do promotions to try the game out.

I think you did very well btw. I think top 10 is a very good result, especially considering that this was your first year of taking it “serious”. Good job!

The time you spend racing in your league will undoubtedly give you experience that will translate on track. You get to practice close driving!

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Yeah, 6th position after 2 races during the weekend. I learnt quite a lot of things about racing from karting that helped me improve in sim and vice versa. Well I can´t say the drivers are bad or good, I think I just adapted nicely to a new class that we are driving (was driving M3 for the first time in sim that weekend) and managed to be 2nd M3 in standings and 2nd best placed driver from Serbia. I was driving a default setup with small changes in aero and also binned the 2nd race so yeah, could have been a bit better. Not much difference between competitors, everyone fits around 1s.

Yeah, I also found out that Raceroom costs somewhere around 100$ on steam but I got it for 50$ from their website, so yeah. I am interested in trying it out, although I don´t like the sound of 100$+ a year for a sim, that is half of the price of T150 I am looking to buy next year :confused:

Oh did I practice that last time out :smile: Drivers are phenomenal, no pushing, everyone is leaving space, it is very fair and respectable driving I must say, not used to it from the open lobbies hehe.

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Wel it sounds like with your league, you have the competition part covered for now. Good fun, too I bet.

Do you always do the m3 or is it a series where you switch cars?

I found road cars to be less interesting than Formula cars. But, road cars look cool. Conundrum.

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We select cars, M3, skyline, volvo 240 (I think) and bmw 635. We cant change, and the main thing is that each car is good at something, it is not equal car series. M3 is much more stable but Skyline and Volvo have top speed. The main part of the winter league is that the tracks go from extreme to extreme. First weekend was Bathrust, favouring top speed but the last one is Brands Hach, short (indy) circuit. All in all, bunch of different cars on bunch of different tracks. I guess organizers want a bit slower cars for maybe better racing and less incidents, considering we are amateurs at the end. So yeah.

How is your KK lap hunting going? I was not able to watch the videos and I just scrolled through the posts, really no time now. But all that aside, I am still very interested in your progress, how is it going? I see improvements all the time, any big breakthrough?

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I’m sort of in a wierd place with my sim currently.

As you can see I am stalled at 56.08 ish.

I have been thinking a lot about progression and what to expect. As I get faster, obviously, the gains get harder to realize.

That being said, what I am observing in myself is interesting to watch.

I suspect I am in final stages here of understanding the lap. I have two things that are hindering me from landing the lap I want.

But, despite not landing the lap I want, the overall mastery of the track increases. By that I mean that with each passing day, the “extremes” narrow. So, my bad laps are less bad and there are less of them. Also, my “good” laps become more frequent.

What needs to happen and likely will happen is that eventually, the two parts of the track that I am less confident in, will become more and more solid (in fact this has already begun).

When I get to the point that I can approach the back chicane and the bowl with the same level of confidence that I feel for all the other turns, game over.

So, there is and there isn’t a magic bullet. The magic bullet will be mastery. Just haven’t fully earned it yet. It drives me nuts that my optimals are so much lower than my completed times. It’s a matter of needing s3 to be reliably fast.

At some point I’ll get out of my own head and go race other people again. That’s what I liked about the rental leagues. It’s good to get out there in an imperfect world and drive imperfectly as best you can. TT is just brutally neurotic. I am fighting myself, basically, at this point.

Oh and I love Brands Hatch. The final turn into the start finish is such an oddball.

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Great to hear that you are on your way to put in one hell of a lap soon! I believe you are right, I feel similar in many situations. Not improving but my overall track knowledge is increasing and error rate is reduced, chance for perfect lap increases. Confidence will come, you will get the bowl and the back chicane right, if you already didn´t, considering my reply is a bit late, as per usual :upside_down_face: Yeah, I suggest you to do some races (Multiplayer if there is one for KK, I guess it must´ve got one?), you will do stuff under pressure rather than while fighting yourself. I think fighting yourself will get easier if you adapt to pressure of racing on the same track, TT will look pretty easy and relaxing once again I think. It can help I think.

Yup, interesting track it is, very challenging. And yeah, one more thing. I have a big problem in RR. Game got updated and physics for my Touring Classics series got reworked (better said completely changed, comlpetely different car) and I don´t know where to begin at. Old setups don´t work and game actually developed in a way that forces me to mess around the setup a bit more than I did in past, if I want to get a better result. I also struggle getting the same track (that I nailed and had -0.5s to everyone) right, can´t connect a lap. What would you suggest me to do? Should I try messing with the setup first or master the car at default setup and then try minimal changes to parameters? Feels like I need to reset somehow… I remember there were some physics changes in KK not so long ago as well.

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Aha! Welcome to sim, where setups and everything else is a moving target!

The first track I put big effort into climbing the leaderboard was this same one (PFI). I got stuck after they changed the tire model a few patches back. I went and drove the KZ up the AMP leaderboard instead.

Then, they did a patch where they adjusted chassis stiffness and messed up the KZ! So, I went back to x30 and was curious to see if I could pick up where I left off.
Clearly, no problemo as I got stuck, originally, at 56.1. I am now clean 56.00 (every session at least once) and have dirtied 55 each session in the past two days.

Option 1: step away and go do a different car/track combo. Or maybe just try different track you haven’t done yet at all. Get familiar and load back up your series stuff.

Option 2: Be thoughtful. From what I’ve seen so far, you have a good head on your shoulders and probably can intuit your way to success. And, we are here to (try) to help if and when you get stuck. Just go drive and assume you will be crap. I’d probably go neutral on setup to get a feel and adjust as I go. (I tend to adjust driving rather than setup since I am not good at setup).

Basically, go grind it out.

Edit: or did I completely misunderstand and they didn’t patch the dynamics at all but you are just in a new car?

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:grinning: the very next day I started to truly figure out s3. So weird. I have now dirtied 55.x a couple times and am likely to stick it soon. Everything got better after s3 started to come together. And the new confidence means that I am running, on average, much faster laps. Grinding works.

Edit: Grinding really works. Big improvements last night. I’ll post the details in the throwdown thread.

Happy holidays btw.

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You were right, new update was released 4-5 days ago and it included re-worked physics for some series. And it happened to be the one we are driving for the winter league, so all cars now handle very differently.

Thanks for refreshing my memory about your experience with changes in KK. Everything you mentioned helped. Although I did not change the track I was driving, I was just grinding it out and started to get more and more comfortable with the car. I was not only driving fast laps, I also tested the car behavior in various situations that helped me a lot to understand how it behaves. Now I am very close to my Italian rival (that is just few points behind me as a second placed M3 behind me), around .5s on one lap pace. I got more comfortable with the car and I started to add throttle earlier and I am not afraid to initiate oversteer for a better turn in as I learnt how to catch it.

Yup! I confirm! Great to hear you are happy with your performance and that you are constantly improving. I will take a look at your entire progress for upcoming holidays, I am really interested to see the way you found your speed and how you got to that level. 13 days left and I am free for a week :zipper_mouth_face:

Happy holidays to you as well! :snowflake:

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Now were talking! Whats this rivalry all about? Deets (Details) please, when you get a chance.

I literally just got back from picking up my son from school for xmas break as well! Have a restful (and race-filled) holiday.

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Well, he is the other M3 that is on my level, but usually better. He was much better at Bathurst, outpacing me for well above the second per lap, got a better result. We went to Norisring where I decided to give it all I got and in both races he was on my tail after few laps and in both races, I outpaced him by around .5s a lap and pulled away successfully both times, finishing P3 and P5 on bad track for M3. I also had an edge on Suzuka (west), somewehere around .5s as well. But. That was before the update. The moment update came, I struggled very badly and he had around 1s on me. Yesterday, he won a race (R1) and finished like 6th (R2) even after spin. While I finished P5 (R1) as I conceded place back to a guy accidentaly punted at the start, R2 I got wrecked in T1, gained back to P7, spun off, and later on got stop&go for overtaking under yellows that was just made from gaining a place while someone was lawn moving at the side of the track, practically a bug. So, before this race, it was 3 points for me, now he is 15 ahead. It is getting interesting now, Sonoma and Brands Hatch coming up. It is getting serious, we had a livestream with commentary yesterday :smirk:

Edit: Thank you, hopefully you and Nick can go and drive over the winter as well! You mentioned some indoor track, didn´t you? Maybe time to practice overtaking? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Links? I am guessing your league is recorded?
That sounds like fun. Anything particularly different you notice playing with cars?

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Here is the link to Suzuka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foc54CB22Vs
Here is the link to other place they also put streams: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE0tOiOXVgD4MBspBEUgXBg
Well yeah, we usually have streams, but they had troubles with first race so sometimes yes, sometimes not.

It is very hard to control weight transfer, especially in these older cars. Also, it is very challenging to keep the engine in optimal RPM range, it works well only above 6,000RPM. Comeback doesn´t work for example, engine chokes just like in rentals or you get snap of oversteer on the exit if you add throttle eariler. So it is similar to rentals in a way that you need to maintain that balance through the corners. But all that aside, these things are very fun to race, as they are heavy and demanding to maintain on track, causing a lot of errors. By the way, this Italian guy is yet again 1.2s faster, like 5hrs since we started to practice a bit on a new track…crazy guy.

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The energy cycle is slower in the heavier (relatively) cars. I find that everything gets deliberate and careful.
I personally tend to gravitate towards higher downforce Formula cars, as that’s more similar to what I know.

These links will come in handy today as this work week is likely to be pretty quiet.

So, how does this work? New track/car weekly? Practice mon-fri, race on weekend? Rinse, repeat?

Edit: so far so good. Looks like a pretty good crew. Definitely a bit of tippy taps as no one wants to give up a spot. Bad break with the guy rejoining track and cutting you off.

I like that you are being careful here and staying controlled. It seems that under braking, you have some front end instability. Is that you working the wheel trying to figure out if you want to pass or are you hopping a bit?

Actual race: couldn’t see start but clearly you got punted. Nice job keeping your wits about you and working your way back. So far, back to 8th from last… Driving looks good and you guys are pushing oretty hard. Leaders pushing a bit too hard as cars are falling off track. Go get em! you managed to get 7th, nice job considering start.

Driving looked good. Very controlled. I saw you back out of a few peeks. Looks like you were trying hard to be patient and not send it stupidly.

It seems that rubbing is part of this series and that passes frequently involve a game of chicken. I think it’s safe to assume that your side panels will take a certain amount of abuse. That being said, it appears you are being more conservative than most. Part of me wants to say, give em Hell, but it does appear that you were able to stay in track better and didn’t have any big mistakes (that I could see). Stay the course and look for the passes.

Lots of battles. In these scenarios where the guy ahead is tangling with another guy ahead of him, that’s your go-time. They are gonna lose speed as they work out positions. Maybe take a little breather and set up the turns carefully to be able to capitalize on exit when the others start tangling.

I am having trouble wrapping my head around Volvo racecars. They just look so not racecar but yet…

You look like a racer, Pavle. Nice work. I think I’d be nervous if I was an Italian guy tying to mix it up with ya!

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Well, we have a small, monthly, race calendar for the current event. We pick cars, we have 4 races. No car switching. 2 races on Sunday, practice as much as you want throughout the week.

Solid people. Giving room, but sometimes they are too aggressive on defense, these are not formula cars, when they open up space, they tend to close it even if you are there, then there comes the contact and who is to blame then?.. They invite you but when it’s too late and you can’t turn these heavies no more, then they are cutting you off. But, they get what they offer to me usually, so it evens out at the end. Anyways, that front instability is just instability, I am fighting the car everywhere, especially considering my dumb wheel that decides to not respond as I would like from time to time so you see the front just tilting.

Generally, with these cars, it is very hard to go for a clean pass or to use the mistake someone made. There is just no room. Volvo, the moving brick, is using like half of the track every time you want to pass, it slides around plus it has better top speed. I could only ghost through him :upside_down_face:

Starting from 2020, this league will turn into a National Championship, supported by FIA and AMSS (national organization for road safety) so yeah, it is getting pretty interesting now. Very nice way to practice and maybe take a next step and learn something more from a sim, until real deal comes when it gets warmer :sunglasses:

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It did seem to me that there was a fairly liberal interpretation of giving room. Just barely, but no one was pushed off. That’s got to be frustrating with the wheel misbehaving. You can’t really see the steering wheel issue other than in braking and you are able to control it nicely.

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Yeah. I feel like I can do better but the wheel is like nope, you won´t. I am actually happy with that, it frustrates me to the point I want to go karting and leave the game alone, I feel that is good :stuck_out_tongue:

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Matthijs:

What’s the track? And where?

The opposite lock is beautiful - turning right while steering left.

His turn in looks quite abrupt. I do the same and have been wondering whether I’m (in TJ’s terms) ‘shocking’ the kart with a turn in like this. Maybe not?

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Lee you tagged me, is this for Matthjis?

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Yessir it is.
Thanks Dom.