Rapido Posted March 16, 2022 Report Share Posted March 16, 2022 (edited) Time to wrap up the first quarter of the season, and the first of a series of special events that have been introduced this season. Please note that this round features a few differences to the format that we've seen in the first 3 races, and these are summarised below. 2 Hour race - the race will start an hour earlier at 8:30pm ET and finish at the same time 8x Time progression - the race will start at 5pm in-sim time and cycle through the night to the next morning at an accelerated rate 2 Stops should be needed - cars will start with 10.3g and the fuel capacity limit is set at 80% (~12.3g) In addition to the above, there will also be a trial run in the practice round (23-March) of a slower class car (Mazda MX-5) being piloted by the iRacing AI. The purpose of this is to better simulate the pace disparities in traffic often experienced at a real-world ChampCar event, and to therefore introduce another element of unpredictability into the overall race. If this trial goes well and is positively received by the community then we will trial it in two more practice rounds in Q2 before potentially introducing it to a championship round in the second half of the season. For the practice round please only join the Mustang class when registering for the session. Anyone registered in the MX-5 class will be removed from the session before the race and will not be able to rejoin for the practice round. Please also note that iRacing has updated the baseline set-up for the Mustang in the latest release. Suspension settings are unchanged, but the anti-roll bars have adjusted to make the car a little more sideways than previously. It's fun! Any questions on this, or any other aspects of this round, please feel free to ask in the thread or on the Discord, and I look forward to seeing you all on the grid for an exciting race. Session Details Practice Round: Wednesday, 23-March-2022 Championship Round: Wednesday, 30-March-2022 Practice Start: 6:30pm ET Qualifying Start: 7:30pm ET Race Start: 8:30pm ET Car: Ford Mustang FR500S Track: Daytona International Speedway - Road Course In-Sim Practice Session Date: Saturday, 2-April-2022 In-Sim Practice Session Start Time: 7:00am In-Sim Qualifying Session Date: Saturday, 2-April-2022 In-Sim Qualifying Session Start Time: 10:00am In-Sim Race Session Date: Saturday, 2-April-2022 In-Sim Race Session Start Time: 5pm In-Sim Time Multiplier: 8x Weather: Auto-Generated Setup: iRacing Baseline Setup with 10.3g Fuel, Fuel Capacity limit at 80% Fast Repairs: 1 License Requirements: Practice Rounds (None), Championship Round (>D2.0) Useful Links ChampCar iRacing Series - League Application ChampCar iRacing Series - Discord Server 2022 ChampCar iRacing Series Schedule 2022 ChampCar iRacing Series Broadcast Information Form 2022 ChampCar iRacing Series Protest Form Guide to iRacing and Hardware How to create your own iRacing paints iRacing Tips and Resources Edited March 16, 2022 by Rapido 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Jass Posted March 23, 2022 Report Share Posted March 23, 2022 Reminder the race starts an hour early tonight and next week. Let's max out the grid at this great track. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dabneyd Posted March 23, 2022 Report Share Posted March 23, 2022 Also a reminder: For the practice round please only join the Mustang class when registering for the session. Anyone registered in the MX-5 class will be removed from the session before the race and will not be able to rejoin for the practice round. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jab31169 Posted March 24, 2022 Report Share Posted March 24, 2022 (edited) Feedback on Miatas: Meh, I know they took out a few people going down the straights. I generally gave them a wide berth whenever I encountered them. I don't know if they helped or hurt, was nice to use the draft sometimes. I had one or two try to go two wide with me into the bus stop. Mustang felt good tho, still ice skates on cold tires. Edited March 24, 2022 by Jab31169 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoachMK21 Posted March 24, 2022 Report Share Posted March 24, 2022 (edited) 37 minutes ago, Jab31169 said: Feedback on Miatas: Meh, I know they took out a few people going down the straights. I generally gave them a wide berth whenever I encountered them. I don't know if they helped or hurt, was nice to use the draft sometimes. I had one or two try to go two wide with me into the bus stop. Mustang felt good tho, still ice skates on cold tires. Modified for emphasis, lol. I didn't care for the AI in the race. I had 3 incidents with them, 1 that spun me, but little damage. The other 2 were decent damage, with the last of it after my 2nd pit stop when I had already used my fast repair. Knocked my wheels out, but still managed to finish the race. Overall, it was a good practice session. Edited March 24, 2022 by CoachMK21 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mostmint Posted March 24, 2022 Report Share Posted March 24, 2022 (edited) Did not qualify that well, and somehow in the last 4 minutes lost about 4 spots starting P12. Dodged the cold tire action on lap 1 and was minding my own business til one our our experimental AI decided to turn right on the front and run me into the wall. I'll review the video I thought I was leaving plenty of space. I nursed the car until the pit window opened and repairs were under 1 minute. I decided not to spend the time and was saving the fast repair for the last stop. I was probably losing a half a second a lap due to extra drag but the car behaved OK. I spent a little time racing with Patrick Pursley - even when not nose to tail I was watching the relative - but the best race came at in the last 1/3 of the race. @CoachMK21 had been ahead of me but not completely driving away. After the last stop I came out with my car repaired and fresh tires - and he was nursing a bit of damage from our AI experiment. I whittled down a 10+ second gap slowly and he and I did some racing the last 3-4 laps. We were far enough ahead of P8 we could lose a little time and race for P6. I got ahead and started to open up a gap but traffic made it interesting the last couple laps - at the end I managed to hold him off by less than a tenth of a second. It was good clean racing I thought. Last three practice races I've been P6. I felt pretty good about being less than 90 seconds behind the leader until I figured out he had (edit) made it on 2 stops with the first being lap 2. More work to do. Edited March 25, 2022 by mostmint 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Jass Posted March 30, 2022 Report Share Posted March 30, 2022 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rapido Posted March 30, 2022 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2022 Big race at Daytona tonight. A reminder that the race start time is one hour earlier than usual tonight, at 8:30pm ET. Thanks for all the feedback I've received regarding the AI field in the practice round. We'll continue to tweak the process and trial it in another practice round soon until we get it to a point that it will be ready for use in a championship round. I'll post more detailed feedback on this process on the forum soon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Haines Posted March 30, 2022 Report Share Posted March 30, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mostmint Posted March 31, 2022 Report Share Posted March 31, 2022 (edited) The weather was much nicer than our last race – with temps in 60s for most of the event. Had a decent qualifying effort to start P8 – about .7 faster than practice race. Avoided any issues or mistakes in the opening laps. Before too long got settled in at P10 with a pack of four cars ahead of me. These guys were racing each other quite a bit swapping spots. I really wanted nothing to do with that so I decided to just hang in their draft, save fuel and enjoy the show. This saved me about two laps of fuel and I used all of it coming in the pits with .1 gallon left. I decided to add less fuel at this stop and fill it full the second stop. This had me coming out way further ahead of the pack I was drafting. On pit exit I saw what I think was P4 coming by and I lost track of my spot in the lane and accelerated too early. Only made it to 59 mph and lifted but still got tagged for speeding. I was so mad! I had little choice though but to come in and serve the penalty and stick to my strategy. Coming out of the pits I was well into the 20’s position wise. I quickly caught a group of three cars and went to make a pass in turn 3. I got by two of them but the leader of this pack (Patrick) went quite wide and while he didn’t go off the pavement on exit I misjudged his exit speed and I had to lift and correct to the right to not hit @pmpursley. This worked fine except David Warden was working on a crossover and we made contact -totally my fault - apologies to David! After this the steering wheel was a bit crooked so but the lap times were still pretty close so I kept moving until planned final stop. After all the melee I came out P25 and in the middle of the top 5 drivers on track. Alex was steadily catching me and when he got in range I let him go. My race was wrecked and with no position at stake this was not the time to get racy. Due to wide range of pit strategies I was able to gain back some spots. Eventually @cowboys647 caught me and I was ready to provide him the same courtesy but I noticed he was backing off once he got close. As memory serves I had seen him saving fuel in prior races so I pretty quickly figured out that was the strategy. He has been catching me slowly so I could be a viable drafting partner, particularly since he had a decent gap to P4. This continued for quite a while, and at some point he made his fuel number and rather than go by he chose to do some bump drafting. At the end I finished P18. Hopefully this ends up as a drop week. I’ve never been a Ford guy. It’s funny the digital car does not have a working 3rd brake light, which I blame directly on it being a Ford lol. Anyway after what happened at Road Atlanta and this event Ford is doing nothing to endear itself to me. I hope this is not a long term jinx. Edited March 31, 2022 by mostmint 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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