Round 4: Spa-Francorchamps 2003

[Christopher Aponte]

btw results is now on gpcos.....and oh my...it will be a tight race to the finish for the top 8/9 positions

[Simon Trendell]

Had a rather lonely race, I started last because I wasn't comfortable in the wet.

In the race the car felt good suddenly, and quite a few people were really struggling with the conditions, maybe using hard tyres. I was on softs, I made it to 3 minutes to go before the tank had nothing left and had to pit, a small mistake in my calculations cost me a 9th place, instead I got 11th.

Also, thanks to Hansi for waiting after giving me a nudge exiting Les Combes. Much appreciated I wasn't expecting you to try and come back up the inside so stayed on the inside trying to get a run at the next corner.

[Luis Nieto]

Originally Posted by Ramon van Rijn

I expected Luis to take of and fly home with those fast laptimes, but after a long time I was still within the 10 sec of him.

Till at one point Luis was in the middle of eau rouge with a wrecked car. With some coolness I could slow down a bit and avoid a heavy crash. I guess he was searching for the Esc button lol.

Congrats Ramon

My race was just trying not to risk too much, I just took it easy all the way, my normal race laps would have been 0.5 secs faster, but why take the risk. I wasn't gonna stop so I was trying to same my tires. it was on lap 17 or 19 when all of the sudden going through eau rouge I get disconnected, this is the second time this has happened to me, and I have to say its getting really frustrating. Could this be because I was one of the last guys to enter the server?

but anyway congrats to the podium, but also to all the guys that managed to finish the race.

[Ramon van Rijn]

Originally Posted by Luis Nieto

Congrats Ramon

My race was just trying not to risk too much, I just took it easy all the way, my normal race laps would have been 0.5 secs faster, but why take the risk. I wasn't gonna stop so I was trying to same my tires. it was on lap 17 or 19 when all of the sudden going through eau rouge I get disconnected, this is the second time this has happened to me, and I have to say its getting really frustrating. Could this be because I was one of the last guys to enter the server?

but anyway congrats to the podium, but also to all the guys that managed to finish the race.

Damn, sad to hear mate. I don't think the order of connecting has to do with disconnection problems. But who knows.
I have had some disconnects also in GTR2, still not yet during a race (only a total PC freeze).
Shame producers like 10tacle just abandon support (don't invest money to let SimBin/Blimey to solve more bugs) so soon after releasing a game. Lots of bugs which will never be solved.

[Rickard Norgren]

Congratulations Ramon and podium

Had a good Qually with 6th spot on the grid
Race started well and I was going for a non stopper, so my strategie was to avoid close driving with much spray and not fight for positions. Atleast until I knew if the tyres would last whole distance.
Was early on 5th, then I decided to let Ian pass me, a few laps later he made an mistace and I could pass him back, then I hade an big mistake at Les combes where I missed the brake mark, So Ian could go for 5th again, After a few more laps, Roy made a mistace and Ian passed him, I decided to let Roy stay in front, as he had higher pace then me.
Then following him at some distance, until beginning at lap 17, where I can see something happens in front of me, at Eu Rouge, Looks like Roy slides and an other FO car is planted right in the line, so I tried to go on the inside, but the speed and the less of grip made me hit the wall, and engine was down to 0 %, so I DNF

3 FOs in one strike

[Neil Gault]

Congrats to the top 3.
I made my first mistake when i had no set up for qualifying, intended using my race setup with just less fuel and more revs and it was crap, car felt very bad without the weight of the fuel, so i did my qualifying with 50L of fuel and started the race with 100L and i think i still had 20+ Litres in the tank at the end.
Made an ok start, gained 2 places very quickly only to get tagged at the busstop, this spun me and i sat there facing the wrong way waiting for the traffic to clear before i could turn and be off again, so from 17th or 18th to 24th within 6 seconds.
I really enjoyed the next 10 or 12 laps as i fought my way back up to 14th, but i did have some contact with Tobias Röhner after he went wide at Blanchimont and i left him very little room going into the chicane (sorry).
Had a good fight with Patrick Speleman & Gregory Degreef for a few laps until i collected a spinning Patrick Speleman going into Fagnes, got going again back up to Gregory only to loose it in his spray going down the hill into Pouhon and i lost 6 or 7 seconds in the sand :o but crawled out and some 2 laps later the gap was down to a couple of seconds when he pitted giving me 9th again, grabbed 8th when Simon Trendell payed a visit to the sand at Pouhon , then tried a bit too hard to close the 6 or 7 second gap to chris in front of me and outbraked myself going into the busstop :o so that virtually ended my challenge for 7th.
But very happy to finish 8th, score some points and keep another FO team up at the top of the team league.:party0024:

[Mark Jarvis]

WOW, what a race :drunk:

I absolutley love Spa as a circuit and having it a wet race was not surprising at all. I have also done Spa in another league and also it was wet the too

I came into the race with an open mind, and as this is the 1st Vertigo race (apart from Watkins Glen, which I blew my car up in) that I was going to take part in.

Ok here goes nothing.

Practice:

I just wanted to try out this car in the wet as I did no wet practice before the night commenced. I found it was ok and with all the fuel on board I knew it was quite ok handling wise. I just did a long stint in practice to get used to the track in these cars in these conditions.

Quali:

At the beggining I had the same problem as ramon and did not realise the setups had changed to default so I could not even keep the car in a straight line on acceleration. I thought there must be something wrong here and went back to pits to find the setup was not loaded lol. I qualified OK but I had lost 4 tenths in the middle sector, but I just could not hook a complete lap up to get the most out of my speed, I was very impressed with Ramons time in quali as we were running the same setups, he must have driven a very very nice lap, well done mate.

Race:

Well where do I start ;)

The start of the race, the 1st 2 laps or so are a bit of a blur and some of the distances, times, gaps and positions may be a little different than what happened but i will try my best to remember as accuratly as I can.

At the beginning I hounded Ramon (maybe a little too eager to get passed lol) but had an absolutly immense battle with him which lasted about 5 laps We went side by side round that fast corner before the Bus stop, banging doors and this is when I think he thought it was best to stop this madness and just keep a steady pace.

Looking back if I was on a NO stop strategy I would have done the same but at the point I thought we were all on the same strategy, for some bizzare reason I thought we all had to pit looool :bike:

So in fact if I had not gone for the pass on Ramon and one other guy infront for 2nd place I may not have got the result that I ened up with.

Ok so I will explain my dissapointment after the pitstop. The pitstop itself went smoothly without any hick-ups and I was pleased to find my speed was back. One guy pitted 2 laps after me so I thought, "any moment now and everyone else will be pitting too..." yer right, I was just kidding myself lool

I almost just quit the race after dropping frm 1st (?? or 2nd ??) before the pitstop all the way down too 15th (?) well over a minute behind the race leader and after getting back up to 6th (?) with 40 mins left of the race I had a gap of 50 secs (?) to the guy in 5th place (?) this is the moment when I thought my podium finish was waaaaay out the window and all I wanted to do was press the ESC button and go to the pub and drown my sorrows with a few pints of 1664 lol

But I just kept pushing, and I could see I was 2 or 3 seconds a lap faster than the guy infront, just watching as that gap decreased rapidly, I needed to keep up the pace whilst not making any mistakes and managed to do low 2 min 30 secs lap after lap when I could see the race leader was doing 2 min 33 secs.

Finally after 30 mins (?) of pushing as hard as i could without a care in the world for the state of my tires lol. I had got the gap down to 10 secs with 12 mins left of the race, so now I was the correct side of the time, instead of needing to catch over a secong a lap to get passed, I now needed less than a secong per lap to get passed.

One guy went off at the double left corner which gave me 4th place, then I had 5 secs (?) to get the guy in 3rd.

This is where my only complaint has to come about the back markers, and it is no biggy. I had about 2 or 3 secs to 3rd place and only 3 laps to get passed yet I found my self in a battle with 2 or 3 backmarkers who just would not let me through. I even flashed my lights vigorously to show them I was coming but still nothing In the end the gap to 3rd incresed to over 5 secs (?) and still I was not through, and to make it worse all through this I was not sure who I was fighting for postion and who I was fighting for no apparent reason.

Eventually I got a good run out of a corner and had to late brake down the inside to gain the non position of fighting with a back marker

Anyway once all this was done I had 2 laps to catch and get passed 3rd place (Tom Ilsbroux i think it was) and I caught the gap on the 2nd to last lap and over took going into the Busstop for the penultimate time.

Then I had Toni Talvitie (?) infront of me by about 3 or 4 secs (?) and I just pushed on what was by this time a very very knackered set of wets (maybe not as knackered as the guys infront of me lol) and caught the gap by the final few turns.

So going into the BusStop for the final time I made my move to get 2nd place, Toni defended very very hard pushing right to the inside of the track (very cleanly and fairly I just want to add) I broke OOOOOOOHHH sooooo late and almost shot over the Busstop completly But managed to just find the curbs lol.

Then it was just braking for the hairpin mand it was all over.

this has to be the best race i have ever driven in my short time driving on sim racing games, and to get back 2nd place was just fantastic.

A HUUUUUGE well done to ramon for the race win, well driven there mate, you kept it cool all race long

See you all next time,

Mark.

[Danny Pattiwael]

Congrats for a good race Mark, and off course Ramon for his win
Too bad I couldn't make it for this one, but I hope I'll be back at Dubai.
Good points for Team DMR

[James Johnson]

my Engine blew up in Rain how common is that

[Tom Ilsbroux]

Originally Posted by Toni Talvitie

drove like a maniac from start to finish. no easing up on anypoint cause
Tom was there racing with me from lap 3-4 or sometin to hte finish.
started race 12-13 spot? didnt get quali done at all. mainly cause dont really
have setups on these thingies, nor time to test out so its hard everytime.
anyhow, ty Tom very much, was a pleasure. on few spots i was faster,
on few you were, specially couple of braking points in wich someone else
would have probably bombed in and got both of us out.
respects earned.

First of all, grats for the podium finishers, very nice drive ramon. very consistent drive.

Wow that about summons it up Toni . I was sweating like a *** at the end of the race, not a second rest with you around all the time. Very nice drive mate, respects earned to, close driving like this without contact imakes racing so good. Hope we can repeat this soon. (in reverse order )

Qual : Not pleased at all, had major problems finding a lap where i didn't end up blocked by someone else near the end of the lap. I didn't do one good lap, or i messed up myself or i was blocked.
Sry ramon during qual there, i was on a second qual lap, normally my fastest one which i planned to abort if i got close to you, but then i noticed i had very good drive up eau rouge and think i would have passed you on the straight clean without messing up your lap when you blocked me on the straight moving over right when i was passing you. sry if it was a bad call.

Race, only done 10laps or so before the race in the rain since the announcement came late in the evening. I planned to take it easy, could pass James easy but then messed up in eau rouge, missed braking point completely with the spray. lucky there was enough runoff area so i lost only 3 places. Did loose loads of time in traffic as it is very hard passing with the spray, this made me loose connection with the top group. But i did have the nice company of Toni. I think the biggest gap between us was 4 sec or so. Then i was faster and then he was, very close the whole race.
Was very lucky to avoid Luis his car as i noticed it being frozen at the top of eau rouge. Very sad two other FO driver couldn't avoid it and crashed you. Top drive guys :alla:, very proud, amazing race, shit happens guys.
Near the end of the race my car was understeering badly and Toni was gaining on me. Funny enough once he passed me i regained confidence in the car and could attack him again. Couldn't defend at all against Mark Jarvis though, he could brake with his fresher tyres so much later then me at the busstop. Ended the race right very close to Toni, like we where the whole race ;D

[Tom Ilsbroux]

Originally Posted by Ramon van Rijn

Damn, sad to hear mate. I don't think the order of connecting has to do with disconnection problems. But who knows.
I have had some disconnects also in GTR2, still not yet during a race (only a total PC freeze).
Shame producers like 10tacle just abandon support (don't invest money to let SimBin/Blimey to solve more bugs) so soon after releasing a game. Lots of bugs which will never be solved.

I was last to connect when i changed some graphic settings. no problems, altough i did have a hairy moment, Toni's car dissapeared. Not sure if it was my connection or his, he noticed the same. This happening isn't good for confidence

[Christopher Aponte]

yep it happened to me to...the cars disappearing.....
i was already cursing at the moment at my internet connection thinking i lost connection....only 3 sec later see the car back in front of me lol

[Tom Ilsbroux]

Originally Posted by Christopher Aponte

yep it happened to me to...the cars disappearing.....
i was already cursing at the moment at my internet connection thinking i lost connection....only 3 sec later see the car back in front of me lol

Sounds exactly the same as me, maybee it was a server hickup then. I can't remember having connection problems since a looong time myself, thats why i was wondering if it was my connection. The only thing that happens here is game crashing now and then if i don't restart my pc before i start the game.

[Rickard Norgren]

I also had a moment in the race when Ramon dissappeared in front of me for 3-5 secunds, was never worried as I had good distance between us

[Ramon van Rijn]

Hmmm, I have not seen anyone disappearing this race.
Although connections troubles are always a risk in online gaming, especially in racing games.

Currently our servers are running on quad cores connected to a 1gigabit ethernet backbone. Of course no insurance to have it lag free, because it depends how many hops it needs to take and how reliable the hops are.

PS. For GTR2 its an advice for everyone to set the connection speed ingame (lobby) to ISDN and not higher.

[Hansi Josefsson]

Originally Posted by James Johnson

my Engine blew up in Rain how common is that

Good question.. anyway the likeliness doubled as the exactly same thing happened to me..

[Ramon van Rijn]

Three words..... Made in Italy

[Iain Wilton]

Originally Posted by Hansi Josefsson

Good question.. anyway the likeliness doubled as the exactly same thing happened to me..

You have to be soo careful with the downshifts in this car, as that is the most common cause of engine blowups. I took care, and ran 2 on the rad. Although still ran max revs.

[Tom Ilsbroux]

Originally Posted by Ramon van Rijn

Three words..... Made in Italy

LOOL, yeah They should have stayed with ford.