GRM - Gran Turismo 5 Racing League - Series 4

aircooled wrote: Make sure to leave some room in your gearing for drafting.

I'll set the over/under on top speed at 225...

Takers?

I hit 235(saloon) racing earlier.

Oh boy, this is going to be interesting! I was just on with Bael and Grea. Brad, you are way off, 235 is pretty easy in a draft in Saloon!

This course is a drafting extravaganza! LOTS of lead changes. NO way one cars stays in front for long. Bael and I did a buddy draft and made up a very large gap on Grea. Watch out for getting sucked into other cars! Tapping a car in the rear is not bad (speed them up) just make sure to do it in the center so you don't spin them.

I hope we get a decent crowd tonight, this will be fun with a lot of cars (or maybe a log jam).

This course breaks down to a few things:

• Make sure you have gearing. 235 for Saloon and something like 225 for GT (maybe more?). The gearing in the settings menu does seem to be off sometimes, so you need to set it a bit high.

• The turn arounds can be huge pain! The tight one almost needs to be drifted. Practice that turn!

• The kink in the course is tricky. Remembering where it is (before / after the tunnel) is very important, as is your entry speed (160 ish?)

P.S. Since I will be running these by default from now on, make sure to respond to or send me a friend request (if you are not one already), so you can get to the room through the Community link.

Most of the races we ran were finishes around .040 apart, the closest was Air edging past for a .009 finish gap, and the longest from first to second that didn't involve a crash was .158.

It could be anyones race tonight.

Also, a full pack going through the tunnels should sound awesome.

I don't know about 225 in GT, the cars seem to run out of breath around 220ish, saloon I hit the rev limiter at 235 in the XFR, but I'm not running it, as it handles like crap compared to the Commodore. I fiddled with the trans setting on the commie and should be able to hit close to the same amount of speed in a draft. I'm not sure about out of one.

Dunno how well I'm going to do tonight, just broke a back tooth more, and it hurts like crazy.

Grizz wrote: Dunno how well I'm going to do tonight, just broke a back tooth more, and it hurts like crazy.

Go to the drug store and get some of those deadening swabs. Not a cure but takes the edge off. I've also heard it helps to let an aspirin disolve on it. Tastes bad but it may help. Bears use a plant that has a similar effect.

Already did. Helped quite a bit.

wow, looks like this evening is a clusterberkeley of something going on lol There is no work to be done on the bagged Yota tonight so I was looking forward to this, i'll see how my internet feels with me tonight

just got in from stripping the interior of my challenge car... how did it go?

BradLTL wrote: just got in from stripping the interior of my challenge car... how did it go?

IIRC

GT: Air, Grizz, Celica, Grae, Nick

Sal.: Grae, Grizz, Celica, Air, RMD

These positions all represented very hard fought battles and I'll let everyone tell their own story. I think everyone had great fun with the possible exception of RMD who had trouble keeping the Avant close to the draft. in Sal. However, he was racing Air pretty hard at one point.

I got snaked in both of em!

In GT, I was all of .002 seconds behind Air when we finished. Close race between the RX8, DB9, and Supra, then Celica messed up somewhere and it was down to Air and I. I almost had him right at the end, but alas, my first win was not to be.

Saloon, three way battle between myself, Air and Graefin, right up until the Turdmaster muffed it going through the kink on lap one. It was back and forth between Grae and I, but I couldn't hold him off at the end and we finished with a .058 gap. I also got damn close to hitting 240 at one point.

Enjoyed it so much we ran three or four more 1 lappers.

High speed ring, what little testing I've done, I really don't like that course.

Graefin10 wrote:

BradLTL wrote: just got in from stripping the interior of my challenge car... how did it go?

I think everyone had great fun with the possible exception of RMD who had trouble keeping the Avant close to the draft. in Sal. However, he was racing Air pretty hard at one point.

I found a little protrusion of guardrail leading into the straight after the first U-turn. From there, I thought it was over, but air's mishap at the kink allowed me to catch him for a lap of trading the draft. Together, we we're able to gain a few seconds, but I was concerned about leading him into the wall, so I let him in front. Then, I was to gingerly about bump drafting because I didn't want to spin him, so I lost the draft. I could only hit 207 without a draft, so I was done.

In reply to RealMiniDriver:

The way you were running @ HSR last night you might be able to work on the handling and do quite well there. Check on line for 4WD handling setups. There are several places that are a nightmare for the BMW. Someone said that it looked like it was handling well. Well, it surely doesn't. Did you notice how many times I spun it? The SLIGHTEST bit of extra throttle in all but T1 will cause it to spin. I've got max. wing and front bar on it. Min. rear bar along with a lot of rear toe-in and neg. camber. All these things helped but didn't make it feel confidence inspiring.

I built an Avant and really liked it. The low top speed didn't bother me as much as the lack of rotation in tighter turns. One thing I didn't experiment fully with is taking away a lot of front drive and adding more rear drive. I did change it a little and it helped but as I did that I also began to get faster with the M5 and the Lexus ISF.

BTW, the ISF was by far the fastest car I had in a straight line @ SS7. That's why it was so tempting to pick it.

Anyway Mini, don't give up. The Avant will be more competitive on some of the courses coming up later. In the mean time, come on join us on Wed. nights and take what you can get. If the rest of us end up spending our time in the pits, which could definitely happen, you can take advantage of it.

When Air, Grizz, and I practiced yesterday I think we all realized the potential for these races to be loads of fun. Were they ever! I watched the replays last night and I really did laugh out loud a lot. I look forward to hearing the perspectives of the 3 front runners in GT.

GT: My worst fear came to fruition. If you recall I said I was having a huge problem keeping track of where I was. Short term memory loss? Probably. My head felt like it was in a vise last night but I wouldn't have missed those races. I sure am glad Nick was there to work with. I think we entertained each other fully, eh Nick? His Mustang is much faster than my 10 Camaro was. If he didn't "slingshot", as it used to be called, he'd often hit a wall when he pulled out to pass. However, the same thing happened to me. I was hoping we could team up to catch back up with the pack but when I saw it wasn't happening I just concentrated on trying to find ways to stay in front of him. Who would belive that a 71 Mach1 and a late model M3 would be dead even? He would rocket away from the turn exits but I could always draft back up. Anyway, Nick, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

Saloon: RMD AWAAAAY! I knew he'd jump off the line and get a big lead. I just hoped he hadn't found a way to make his Avant a lot faster than mine was. He didn't. I soon drafted by and Air and Grizz came too. If Air hadn't tried a three rail bank shot through the kink on L1 who knows how this one would have turned out. I got a glimpse of his car sideways in my mirror and saw his icon drop back so it was Grizz and I to the front. Again we were perfectly matched. We settled down into a teamwork run to gain some distance out front at first then there was lap 3. I wouldn't have put 2 cents on either of us to win it. It was truly a crap shoot. When I approached the last R hand turn I was in 2nd. and drafting up to him I saw one chance and I went to the inside and started steering full lock to the rt. hopefully not scrubbing off too much speed to let him retake the lead. IIRC 0.058 was the difference.

Sure am glad there was no pit @ this venue. The race wouldn't have been at all fun if there had been. All of the cars appeared to have been in multi-car accidents at the end of the race . . . well, come to think of it . . .

I'm so mad at myself for over-correcting that last drift corner in the GT race.

I'm pretty sure i had that one locked down, i was in 1st place going over the line the previous laps, and the supra seemed to not hit the "wall" as hard as the RX8 and Aston once i pulled out of the draft. I had some pretty epic slingshots previously in the race, and my ballsy entry speeds into the turnarounds was paying off. I drifted EVERYTHING.

Supra was hitting 211mph without draft, and i think i hit 234mph with a draft once or twice.

Saloon was my fault... the Carlton had the speed to do the job, but i messed up the first turn pretty badly, and really only got by RMD at the beginning, then air had some issues once, or twice, or three times.

The Carlton SUCKS at HSR, though. Not looking forward to it.

I'm calling Grae or Air winning HSR both races right now. Grae apparently nailed at 1:06, and despite my best efforts i can't get below 1:11 in the Carlton, but i can hit 1:09 in the Supra.

Grae-well put, my hands were actually shaking a bit, that was the most fun i'd had in awhile, I love that my Pro Touring 71 Mustang, like you said, keeps up with an E92 M3I tried to "push" you so we could catch up but after a little bit it didn't seem to work, those three were out! I did try and pull away on those corners as you saw me sideways usually on the last one and the first u turn I tried to slide but you always were close I did notice, out of draft, you were a TAD, and I mean a hair faster than me, you slightly would pull away but as far as i'm concerned we were dead even and even though we couldn't catch up, we had a hell of a race!

Saloon, I forgot the weight limits so my two contenders weren't allowed so I didn't participate, which really isn't a big deal lol I was going to run my RS6 Avant, but I tuned the engine too much, I guess I could start another but I love my color combo on this one! Thanks Baerl and Ben for gifting me those two, if you want them back I can do that. I may run the RS6 Avant, the RS4 Avant, but i'm pretty sure after tuning and driving it, i'll do the S Type Jaaaaaaag

The thing is, most cars that didn't do "well" here will do well at other places because this was just outright speed haha

The jaaaaaaaaaaaag handles surprisingly well, but ends up with just too much grunt for the Sport Softs to deal with, so beware. I ran through a set of tires in 2 laps of Moonshiner's Run in the Jaaaaaaaaaaag.

Sure is drifty, though!

Ben, your talking to me here LOL

yes it is drifty and yes it does handle, surprisingly and the sound is actually nice! I just want to see my car on the spreadsheet as Jaaaaaaaag I actually didn't have too much trouble with tires, you just have to play with the throttle I actually had more tire problems with the Avants!

NickF40 wrote: Ben, your talking to me here LOL yes it is drifty and yes it does handle, surprisingly and the sound is actually nice! I just want to see my car on the spreadsheet as Jaaaaaaaag hahaha

Lol i ran it in one of the 1 lap sprints last night, you should have heard that thing through the tunnels. It's EPIC.

The Jensen Interceptor is pretty epic through the tunnels as well.

yeah, I like the way it sounds through tunnels, the Jenson at least, didn't hear the S Type yet but my 71 Mustang sounded really good too running along with the M3 sound.

The Supra sounded BIZARRE mingled with everyone else in the tunnels.

haha I bet that was a weird noise, all of yous. I was gonna run my RX7, just for the colors and sound and my Supra was a thought too, but I thought i'd let you try it

NickF40 wrote: haha I bet that was a weird noise, all of yous. I was gonna run my RX7, just for the colors and sound and my Supra was a thought too, but I thought i'd let you try it

RX7 isn't legal, otherwise i would have run it.

oh yeeeaaahhhh, whoops. Well the Supra actually handled real nicely after I tuned and tweaked it and put those shelves as diffusers on, I love the look but I liked my Mustang better

NickF40 wrote: yeah, I like the way it sounds through tunnels, the Jenson at least, didn't hear the S Type yet but my 71 Mustang sounded really good too running along with the M3 sound.

Yeah, I think the game developers are gradually doing a better job in replicating the engine sounds. They made the OHV Stang have that unique old school V8 sound. The M3 sounds wimpy by comparison and sure is far from a torque monster but on the tighter tracks I hope the lack of torque will be an advantage. That's what I'm counting on. Less wheel spin, less tire wear, and easier to control. That's why my second choice was the RX8. I just had a little more trouble keeping the oversteer under control. Fortunately for Air, he doesn't "fear the oversteer".