Yah. I thougt I was golden since I gave him space on outside. I misjudged IRS and experience. This was an unforced error on his part. Which, makes it my error, since it was on me to get by this guy. To be fair, I thought I had.
Still finished 5th and gained a bit of IRS so all good.
I appear to be mainly in the top split, now. All but two of my races this week were against the big boys. We frequently had 3 splits, which was a bit of a change, for the positive.
The top split is interesting. For one, you get less leeway with mistakes/crashes. Here, when you get sent to the back, it is much harder to make back up spots. But, it is less crashy, overall.
I had a challenging start to the racing. My first day saw my IRS plummet from 1600 to 1200 as I kept having back luck, getting punted. But, I’d follow up the punt with a mistake of my own, making things even worse. Long story short, finished most Saturday races towards back of the pack.
I got sent down to the middle split for two races. Dropping down resulted in much easier races and podium and a 4th. Back to top I get sent. But this time, I was less aggressive. Things went much better. I managed to generally come in 5-10th. I feel like I belong here now, I am no longer struggling to make pace and am having fun fighting my way to the front. IRS back up to 1600. Yo-yo racing.
The top split in USF 2000 seems to come in 1500-2000 generally. I have nothing to compare it to but generally the top 3-5 are going to be very fast. I have only pulled off a few top 5 so far, and some luck is involved. But, I have reason to be optimistic. I am getting faster and faster. Spending time practicing by chasing the VRS ghost is helping me get to pace.
What an interesting week. I decided to practice by chasing the VRS alien mon-thurs. I started racing friday. My logic is that when I jump into the races too quickly, I lose a bunch of IRS since I don’t know the track. So, now I get a ballpark of what folks are running, range wise, and jump in once I get there. So, in the case of Oulton this week, I needed to run minimally 1:38 and to be placing OK I’d need to run in 1:37. The quick guys were doing 1:36 and 1:35’s. The alien was 1:33.8.
The weekend of racing went much better. My first few races weren’t great but I got better and better. I did see a drop in IRS as I worked out the line, but kept it from being too disastrous. I got sent down to middle spilt and landed a 3rd so they sent me back up. I never went back down as I was consistently placing top ten in top split and improving each race.
I started getting up into the top 5s and got faster still. In a race just now, I took 3rd and in the replay noticed that in one section, the guy I battled the entire race would erase the major gap i would build up in one sector. Watching his entry into those two turns, he was throwing it in faster but it looked a little squirrelly. He never was able to convert it into a pass.
So I loaded up a practice session and instead did an earlier brake release. Bingo! This opened the door to the 1:35’s and the kind of pace that will allow me to win in a manageable field. As it stands, I am typically up against folks a 2K-4k ish. From what I am seeing, in races, 1:35’s represent the fastest race laptimes. Occasionally we will get someone alienish who can drop a 1:33-4. Ironically the week is ending and I won’t get to use this new pace much, if at all, tonight. But, that’s not the point.
Tj and Warren told me I should start doing this to see if I actually learned anything real in KK. The idea with iracing is that I was uncomfortable with it, apprehensive. I was not sure wether I would be able to distinguish myself in a much more populated game? Could I succeed (relatively speaking)?
I think the experiment has been a useful one.I am wrapping up my first full season and my results were quite good. It’s hard to judge but I am 3 in my division and like 135 overall. That’s not bad for an old guy! It certainly exceeds my expectations. But, I want more and think I am capable of it. We shall see. Final thought: progress on IRS. I hit 1800 for the first time. I am officially above average at going round in circles, quickly.
Next weekend I will take part in the Open wheeler French Cup using the F3. People unfortunately voted for Road Atlanta, and it might be the worst combo I had to train. The car is not suited for this track very high kerbs. I have the pace but the first two laps are pure RNG, and the car will spin for nothing.
Lovey lap. Plus vite, s’il vous plait. Good luck and bring honor to La Belle France.
Silly Week iRacing new stuff:
New Content and Features Series
13th Week Shiny New Shakedown – Formula Vee
13th Week iRacing SRF Challenge – Spec Racer Ford
13th Week Silly Send It – 1987 and Next-Gen Cup Series Cars
13th Week GT3 Challenge - Fixed
13th Week Music City Mayhem – Super Late Model
In which I defend against a faster driver and we move through the field
This was a lot of fun. This is the top of 3 splits and me and #13 here have qualified poorly. I am starting 12 and he is 13. What follows is several laps of him chasing me as we work our way up the field (it basically disintegrates around us).
He pushed me hard and I kept him at bay as fairly as I could. I don’t think I squeezed him, ever. He never sent it, to his credit, and we went pretty deep several times. His pace was superior to mine, largely because I was overslowing into S2 like I discussed in last post. I knew this, but the race was stressful, so I had to find a quiet place and do what felt normal and calm. I was in no place to push hard. He was not giving me room to get comfy.
In any case, I filmed this in chase view, since that’s where the action is. Marek (#13) went on to finish 5th after passing me. He also passed Schmalz (#8) who I caught up to in the closing laps, but was not able to pass.
What day are you doing the GT3 challenge? I’ll join the one at Spa and maybe Long Beach also
If that’s directed at me, I hadn’t tried those yet but am willing to give it a go.
Lol you put it on your list 
Ah, I was posting the "week 13"stuff. I think I am gonna try the formula vee, assuming it comes out tonight.
Yeah that’s what I mean, I’ll have a pint at week 13 at Spa I think 10th? Maybe Long Beach also, I’m quite liking the Audi R8 aroubd Spa now
10th and 14th I’ll give it a punt
I was totally unaware that there is AI to drive against in USF 2000. I thought AI was limited to the porsche cup cars. I shall investigate and report back. Oh wait, that’s not USF. But, it looks like they added a variety of AI car types to race against.
Apparently they sent the ai to school to take some classes:
Got to drive the Formula Vee! They are doing a mixed-class fun race (no points) every hour at a different track. You can drive the very slow formula vee or you can race one of the formula cars.
These little cars are a hoot. While your first thought is that it seems awfully like a go-kart (it even has a mychron 2T), it’s really not similar at all. For one, it has gears. However, the vehicle is pretty slow and accelerates in a leisurely fashion. An x30 feels more savage, by way of comparison.
Despite the car being glacially slow, it grips very well and is very capable. It reminds me of a 4-stroke rental in how you want to keep it on boil. It is also an ideal size/shape/speed for fun racing. It’s tiny, so you can go 3 wide anywhere (and you will).
There’s a peculiarity or two… for one, the transmission requires a blip shift for dropping to 2nd. If you try to shift normally, the rear seizes up and you spin. So, activate blip-shift aid or actually blip. From the couple tracks that I have been on, shifting seems to be something you want to avoid. I was driving almost entirely in 3rd and 4th gear.
The other odd thing is the engine noise. It’s very hard to tell when to shift as there does not appear to be a limiter (that you can hear). The mychron has the 5 red dots but i have yet to find a shift point that feels solid. I suppose that this will get better with more seat time.
Strongly recommended!
Sooo I am going down the coaching route again with one of Tanguys buddies from alien-land who I think is sorta the main driver for Grosjean’s team. This should be interesting.
He sent me a walkthrough for Tsukuba and it is similar to the VRS lap description, only more detailed.
We will start working this coming week. I will keep you posted on how this looks and what we do/discuss. I’d like to see what having other eyes on my sim looks like for a race week. Maybe I can, in addition to the driving, pick up some discipline around thinking about it and how I practice.
Dirt oval Skippy. What could possibly go wrong 
Cool little detail: the formula Vee have gopros on them:
I just did a race and boy, was that interesting. The car is, unsurprisingly, hard to drive well on the dirt. At first, It seemed to not want to go fast down the straight, pulling left unless I feathered the throttle or mashed it and held through the buckling.
Slowing it all down showed that the car just wants you to accelerate really slowly. It is happy once you get it up to speed, mostly. I discovered that, for me, parking it in 5th was a good call. I also eventually figured out the high line and how it was faster than the shiny stuff below.
Good fun. I also ended up trying a 410 race, to compare what a car set up for dirt felt like, again. Much more suited to the task. They should consider a similar race for Formula Vee.
Tangible progress: Am now division 3 for new season!
Just checked series standings and noticed that I am now in div 3, up from 6. I think it is based on irating, maybe. I closed the season at 1800ish, coming in 3rd in Div 6. So far, so good. Just got a 5th in a race and am ranked 16, day 2. I have no idea how close to reality that will be in a few weeks.
It is based on irating, div 1 is 3500 irating
