Porto58 - 8th of February - Round 2

[tagomago]

By the way ... if I don't make a mistake .... remember finishing with

LF 8 RF 8
LR 38 RR 37

LF - left front
RR - right rear

I suppose this is important for you Olaf

[Olaf Lehmann]

Up until two days before the race, I had great difficulties with this track. On many tracks, I automatically (unconsciously) brake in the right place and automatically hit the right turn-in point. Not so in Porto. Another problem was the rails after the longest straight. Due to various uncontrollable spins, I had actually decided to always stay to the left of the rails. At some point I was back on the rails and there were no more spins for many, many laps in preQuali. Unfortunately, it happened again in the official race on lap 12. I was right on the track with the left-hand tyres... Unfortunately, I got stuck with the left tyre on a piece of iron, which never happened in the PreQuali.

Until then, my race was going very well. Surprisingly, I was only a few seconds behind first place after 10 laps. That was balm for my selle after being uncompetitive in Kyalami.

By the way, I was also on a 1 stop strategy.

@John: I've also had computer sickness without end this year. My computer is driving me crazy.
It started with the failure of my SSD hard drive on New Year's Day. It took a lot of time to reinstall Windows and all the necessary programmes.
And every time Windows 10 updates, my Logitech software stops working. I can no longer use the buttons I need for refuelling and adjusting the brake balance. That's why I've already had to uninstall an update twice, which is not desirable.
Oh yes, and in practice last night the throttle stuck at full throttle. Fortunately, there were no problems with it in the race.

Congratulations to Andrè, Rainer and John...and Tago, who finished fourth again after his third place in the last race!

[Bjørn Finnestad]

Grats André for win, Rainer and John for podium and Tago for pos. 4, well done!

This is a popular track, but it proved to be brutal for the race. Good experiences during training, qualifying and the laps of the race. It may be tempting to continue when I see that time can still be gained here and there. From the start I had John in front, and I was able to keep up and could see cars further ahead there as well. Good fight also with Olaf who was in the mirrors for most of these rounds.

At the end of lap 6, John’s Brabham became invisible for several seconds, so I was afraid that I might run into him. Fortunately, he appeared, but was then on the right outside of the track before the pit. Good to see afterwards that he could continue. In the next lap I missed the first corner and got stuck in the hay bales from such a small collision. With that, my place is under the chair and with a shared destiny, it may be good to stay there until the next race with new opportunities.

[André Jahren]

Qual
A good first qualifying run, but messed up the rest trying too hard to set a new PB.

Race
Not a good start from me, as my revs dropped just after takeaway.
Still managed to hold off Dag in to the first corner.

Blocked Dag a bit down the next lang straight, and he was also not that aggressive.
Then as we approached the third corner a got a bit stressed that he was so close behind during breaking, that I lost count of my downshifts.
So in the middle of the corner I shifted in to neutral and Dag passed me easily on the exit.

Some nice first laps fighting Dag and Tim.

Then Dag suddenly disappeared and Tim started to pull away.

After that I was just trying to find a rhythm as I was going to the end with no pitstops.

As we started to get closer to the first pitstop I realized that something had happened to Tim, as I found myself in the lead.

From there on in it was all about not doing any mistakes and just keep a steady rhythm.

Congratulations to Rainer and John for joining me at the podium.

[snafu]

I have to say watching the replay, that was some great racing between Tim, Dag and André. The trust you all displayed in each others abilities was a joy to behold. it was a shame it ended with Dag's freeze. I can only dream of such car control.

I've stripped my shifter down (Again). I think the problem isn't as I thought the potentiometer (Is that right)? Which handles the forward/backward movement of the stick it's the one which handles the left/right (So difference between 1st/3rd/5th or 2nd/4th/6th). I found rocking it from side to side while in 2nd jumps from 2nd to neutral to 4th. Another clean so we will see how it goes. I'm still on W7 and guess I really need to upgrade. The system is decent (I7-4790@4ghz). I didn't go for a high level card as GPL is more CPU than GPU reliant and my GTX760 seems to handle anything GPL can throw at it. (I only run GTL and GTR2 apart from GPL).

If I do upgrade the OS to W10 or W11 will I need to move to a different wheel/pedals/shifter or is G27 support for the later OS stable? (I don't want to buy another G27 if it won't work with a later OS)

Thanks in advance

TTFN
John.

[tim]

..W10 sure no prob for wheels. I didn´t test on W11.

BUT (attention, here comes my opinion):
Never change a running system, and of course not if only a component fails.
W10 is hungry on resources (RAM, CPU and all the "new" backgroundservices you don´t need) -only reason to go for it would be safety-reasons, as Win7 is no more security-supported by MS)
W11 same problems, even more resources needed. Plus another OS-version away of our GPL-world with all its tiny softwareutilities & features. Maybe an even worse idea to move into this universe. But everything is possible, why not - I´m quite sure you´ll get everything to run on W11 if you wanna. But remember, for Win10/11 you need 8/16 GB RAM. At last, to run GPL in Win7 without any problem (Spa´67/race/19cars/60fps) you need 4GB RAM and a Videocard with dedicated VRAM (4GB?). I would just change the shifter (ebay if necessary).

Some notes about last race. Thank you John for the nice expressions about Dags, Andrés and my racing. The first few laps were indeed a great pleasure! When I was in my cockpit, fighting for being compeditive, but making no mistake to endanger the others, I felt the others as extremely experienced and cool! And after 5 years of GPL now, I slowly learn to oversee 3 aspects while in a fight: front view, mirrors and pribluda -or, to be honest, I always try to ..

Very awaiting the next race, it´s a great pleassure to race with you all, gentlemen!

[André Jahren]

I have to say watching the replay, that was some great racing between Tim, Dag and André. The trust you all displayed in each others abilities was a joy to behold. it was a shame it ended with Dag's freeze. I can only dream of such car control.

I've stripped my shifter down (Again). I think the problem isn't as I thought the potentiometer (Is that right)? Which handles the forward/backward movement of the stick it's the one which handles the left/right (So difference between 1st/3rd/5th or 2nd/4th/6th). I found rocking it from side to side while in 2nd jumps from 2nd to neutral to 3rd. Another clean so we will see how it goes. I'm still on W7 and guess I really need to upgrade. The system is decent (I7-4790@4ghz). I didn't go for a high level card as GPL is more CPU than GPU reliant and my GTX760 seems to handle anything GPL can throw at it. (I only run GTL and GTR2 apart from GPL).

If I do upgrade the OS to W10 or W11 will I need to move to a different wheel/pedals/shifter or is G27 support for the later OS stable? (I don't want to buy another G27 if it won't work with a later OS)

Thanks in advance

TTFN
John.

Hi John,
I have multiple G27 shifters laying around. So if you want I can ship one of them to you

[snafu]

Thanks for the generous offer André and your valuable advice about operating systems Tim.

I've set up a search with email notification on Ebay for all things G27, so I'll see what appears. But I may still get back to you on the shifter.

After Tim's comments about W10/11 I'm seriously considering a "Plan B" and pushing the boat out for a decent laptop with a modern OS for general usage. (If it would also run GPL that would be a bonus). I could then keep my desktop for GPL etc and only connect to the internet for access to race servers and trusted sites. I would have to rethink when Antivirus support becomes a problem though.

I dropped onto the server a few hours ago for a few exploratory laps but still don't see any times posted on the HIES front page. (Perhaps I was too slow). Is it exporting the lap times?

TTFN
John.

[André Jahren]

Thanks for the generous offer André and your valuable advice about operating systems Tim.

I've set up a search with email notification on Ebay for all things G27, so I'll see what appears. But I may still get back to you on the shifter.

Just let me know, and I will send it to you

[André Jahren]

I dropped onto the server a few hours ago for a few exploratory laps but still don't see any times posted on the HIES front page. (Perhaps I was too slow). Is it exporting the lap times?

TTFN
John.

Fixed now