GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 4: Ugly Ducklings

I remember Sauc's spin in t2.  I was following him and I remember specifically deciding to take the low line to see if I could gain ground on him instead of just following him.  I just missed him as he did a nice lazy slide across the track.  that was a bit exciting.   

I think Sauce and I would have had a great battle at the end if the AI car had not got me.  Sauce would have surly got to me but passing would have been interesting.  I am not sure I could have held him off but on the other hand at the end of the race I gained a bunch of time in the last couple of laps.  I can only assume that his tires were giving up while mine were still ok as I had not been hamming the car where as I bet he was to get back to the front after his early race issues.  

Was a great win Sauce!!!  Congrats!!!

In reply to BradLTL :

Might be in the lead for now, but I will need to battle really hard to stay anywhere near there. I have not run a race yet where I have not made a catastrophic mistake somewhere. I either mess up a pass and go off track or outright lose focus mid race and miss braking points. My medication very clearly wore off about mid race last night. There were 3 instances where I spaced out and missed braking points by like miles. One lap I completely forgot I had to brake for turn 1, thankfully an induced slide and some luck kept me pointing the right direction with little lost time. 

Can You record the race from the PS4 as a screen grab and not rely on the gams replay.  It would I think only be from teh point of view of who ever records it but that would be better than nothing.  There are a couple thing I would have liked to save and post vid of.  Air and I in turn three,  The sauce slide, The AI stopping on the track,  I crazy bit of AI jousting on the front strait in front of me.  

BatsonWorkshop said:

In reply to BradLTL :

My replay shows that it is 32 minutes long. I have not watched the whole thing or flipped through different cars. Controls on my wheel are mapped funny and do not like PC2s menu controls. I'll take a look at it tonight. How do I send you the file? 

I think you can get it if you go to application save data in settings. 

In reply to BatsonWorkshop :

I'll send you mine, but we have to be in the same lobby to send it.

The jag may be a ringer at Fuji. I did a few test laps and was about 3 seconds faster than the top AI 911 and about 3 seconds slower than fastest Jag. Top 5 spots were the 5 AI Jags. 

Well.... the Jags could have an "accident" in T1.......

In reply to T.J. :

I actually hope that is the case. The AI throwing wrenches into our results could really make for some interesting points battles at the end of the series. Instead of getting 1st and a 5 point gap, the first human driver may only earn 1 point. 

My race went a bit sideways (or nowhere) right from the start.  I managed to fail to put the car in gear and neutral dropped into neutral and was surprisingly slow to realize what the problem was.  After screwing both myself and TJ on the start it was time to play catch up.  Avoiding the T4/5 incident with Cligedy and Headshot left me with a several second gap to the front, but Dean and Air taking it a bit easy on the overly hot/pressurized tires let me back up pretty quickly.  The problem: their strategy was the correct one, and my tires were way too hot by the time I was close enough to try to make a move.  I had a couple attempts where Dean was super polite and didn't put up a fight, but my tires were struggling on the different lines and he would get the position back at exit.  Eventually I got by and proceeded to have my overworked tires start sliding out in T2 and I couldn't get it back, dropped a wheel, and ended up facing the wrong direction.  Fortunately no one hit me, but now I was back to square one and 10+ seconds back.

Second verse, same as the first.  Air ended up having a minor incident (maybe AI related?) which let my by without issue, and from there it was trying to reel Dean in.  I was definitely running faster laps, but not by much.  Initially it looked like it would be enough to catch him with 2-3 laps left and we were going to have a tough battle to the finish, but it didn't play out that way.  He seemed to be catching the AI cars at worse parts of the track than I was which would give me chunks of time here and there.  The culmination of that was him being punted by an AI car when the gap was about 3 seconds.  From there the gap was pretty steady until I ran wide yet again in T2 but managed to keep it going roughly in the right direction and only gave up 5 seconds or so, which IIRC was roughly where we finished.

Overall a fun race, definitely a bit up and down I think for everyone, but that keeps it interesting.

I ran a few laps at Fuji but for some reason couldn't create a server so I had to do private testing with no AI.  With the same settings as last night the car definitely behaves differently on this track, but I'm undecided on whether it's better or worse.  Without AI I don't know what kinds of times the Jag is running and it doesn't appear anyone has tried too hard with this class of car/track combo on the leaderboards.  I'll be curious as to what ends up constituting a good lap once people start getting dialed in and how it stacks up to the Jags.

In reply to e30Matt :

PSN is apparently having problems tonight. 

I’m curious to see if we are actually significantly slower than the jags. I think gear ratios and drafting could be a factor. 

BradLTL said:

In reply to e30Matt :

PSN is apparently having problems tonight. 

I’m curious to see if we are actually significantly slower than the jags. I think gear ratios and drafting could be a factor. 

I'm not sure we will be overall, but if Willow is any indication the Jags will pull a gap on us even in the draft.  It'll really depend on how slow they are through the second half of the lap.

I did a practice race this morning. The only AI cars I saw were the Z cars when I caught up to the backmarkers for the last few laps. P2 thru P5 were all the AI jags. I had a decent gap coming out of T1 on lap 1 and P2 stayed mostly 7-13 seconds behind. (Same settings per page 1 except I had 31 AI's.)

My best lap so far has been in the 1:53's. There is more time as I have yet to figure out the last turn. 

In reply to T.J. :

The last few turns seem more blind than in other games and the line is a bit different. For me it's a matter of getting the car slowed down and start turning way earlier than my habits from the GT series would have me do. You essentially end up aiming for something you can't see and have no good visual cues to guide you to. 

In reply to e30Matt :

Yeah. For some reason, I think I've figured out lines through the rest of the cart track section other than the last turn.

I don't think the AI's will play as much of a role at Fuji as they did at Willow. They are not as slow in general. The long right hand sweeper at this track is very similar to Willow's T3.

I noticed that my grip was way less near the end of the race. So much that I had to start adjusting some braking points. I need to do some more testing to try to figure out if it a tire temperature, pressure or just degradation issue. I figure the track temp goes up once the fog lifts and the sun comes out, so that may play a part as well.

I wouldn't be too surprised if 1:49 was possible. Doubt I can do it, just think it may be possible. 

T.J. said:

I wouldn't be too surprised if 1:49 was possible. Doubt I can do it, just think it may be possible. 

Definitely possible, I ran a 1:50.3 with my Willow setup. I don't feel that the car needs much in the way of changes so I don't expect to pick up too much time over that, but 49's are on the table. 

I changed my gearing and made a few tweaks to my dampers that seem to make the car easier to drive. I also lowered my brake pressure down because I was locking up in some of the braking zones and it seemed easier to lower the brake pressure than to train my foot to push on the pedal less.

I need to get some practice in or I am going to be a back marker. 

I ran some laps with TJ this evening and tried his setup.  It was waaaay different than mine but definitely did some things better.  TJ, I made those changes as discussed and got down to a 1:50.5.  It feels a lot better but I was still struggling a bit in the last sector.  With a couple more tweaks I think it could be a very fast setup.

In reply to e30Matt :

I got into the 1:51's, but not yet into the 1:50's or 1:49's. It will mostly come down to how much practice I put in from here I think. Your setup seems like it may let me be more consistent, so I think any tweaks I do now will be with that as the goal and I'll spot you a couple of seconds on raw pace. 

Best is a 1:53.  In race trim. Bots set to 95/25. Was not bad. Still was faster than the bots but not by much. 

I saw sauce run a 49 before he had to bail. The brakes also seemed to go away 25 mini in to the race however looking at temps they we’re actually on the cold side so I probably need less brake cooling. 

In reply to dean1484 :

I've run a few 49's but race pace is a couple seconds slower.  Though, as always with these cars, keeping it pointing in the right direction is more important than pace.

Sorry I missed you yesterday Dean. Was out on the jetski having fun. Looking forward to this race.

Long Beach will be a different beast, but could also be fun. I suspect the AI's will take the twisty bit around the fountain and the last really tight corner at glacial speed. Parts of the Fuji track must be 5 times wider than parts of Long Beach.