Gonna answer my own question I stiffened up the front and rear springs a lot and found 1.5 seconds, so if anyone needs to find some pace try that first. Running in the mid 1:41's now on a light fuel load and no ballast

Hmm, I tried that and it made me slower...

Both races today wound up rather disastrously for me, but there was some amazing racing in the middle of both. The wide track allowed for multiple lines and lots of battling.

The lack of grip on this track during a race session is an unfortunate track design. At the start of a typical feature race the track grip is high. Only when it has rained prior to the race does the rubber from practice and qualifying get washed away. It makes no sense that at the start of every race on this track, the grip level is low.

I wish I had been more aware of the lack of grip, because my setup was designed so that soft tires would not give up on me before 12 laps were done. With the lower grip levels during the race, I was eating up my left front tire in the 100R and it really killed my laptimes.

I did crank out a blindingly fast (for me) qualifying lap of 1:41.6x, which beat my previous PB by almost a full second. That was little consolation to my last-place result in the first race...

Here are the qualifying results:



This series was a blast, GTR2 is a great platform for sim racing, but not so much for the online server management and oversight. I do find it interesting that there was a great clamor from the SimHQ membership for short races, but that best attended race of this series was a one-hour event at the Daytona Road Course...

Thanks to Chunx for hosting a terrific series, and for all of you who participated.

Apologies I could not be there today (thanks to circumstances beyond my control).

Thanks to all for participating in the Super GT series. Your participation is what made it so great. And it was truly a fantastically competitive and enjoyable series. Some great close racing at every venue, especially the final two events. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

Congrats to DBR9 for Victory, and to JonC and AMK, who advanced 2 champoinship positions in the final race. Everyone deserves credit for making this such a fun and enjoyable series. Thank you all for supporting our common hobby.

Super GT Championship Final Result

1. DBR9--------124pts CHAMPION!!!
2. Chunx---------84pts (+1)
3. JonC----------74pts (+2)
4. Nimrud--------71pts (-2)
5. Vikz----------67pts
6. Bungle_uk------50pts (+1)
7. adlabs6-------47pts
8. Joe------------33pts
9. guod-----------21pts
10. Chipwich------13pts
11. AMK-----------11pts (+2)
12. LazyCrust------8 pts
13.Bodhammer------6pts
14. jml74----------5pts
15. goon-----------3pts
16. ktel-----------2pts
17. DJ Carney------1pt
18. Dave Kennard---0pts

I had a family thing this morning that I could not get out of. Thanks for everyone's patience and assistance, I will be practicing for the next one!

Bod

Interesting couple of races.

Best qualifying of the series for me considering I've been completely unable to make a qualy trim car go much faster than my race car. Same as Joe - a PB for me with ballast - actaully I think I beat my non-ballast time! Shame that my quick lap was 'spoilt' when I grabbed for 4th gear at the end of the lap and got 5th instead. Still, happy with 3rd place.

Race 1 was a great battle. Made a complete hash of a reasonable start - made up some places and got involved in a great race long struggle with Chunx and Joe.

Race 2 - disaster. Made a complete @rse of the start for everyone - sorry to everyone I hit. Not much else to say - tootled around and reluctantly gained a couple of places back by the end - tail still between my legs.

My car was so quick in race trim today but unfortunately I was incapable of doing anything with it :-(

Congrats Vikz on the wins!

Thanks Chunx and everyone for a crackin series. And further to your point Joe - Daytona was my favourite race. 1 hour with a pit stop was spot on for those cars although the 20 minute 'sprints' were fun.

Jon

Thx for hosting such a fine series with such an excellent organization here at SimHQ!

Sorry for not being able to attend the last event today, but the extremely poor weather (Snow and Ice) today here in my local area required me to leave early getting to work in time.
Looks like I missed another great race and lost a few positions in the championship as a consequence.

Congrats to Dan for a convincing victory and to Chunx and JonC rounding up the podium in the final standings!

Really enjoyed the racing with this mod in GTR2.
Though the short 20 min races with the reversed grid were good fun I liked the 1h event at Daytona the most as it involved some more strategy options!

Rfactor and the mods for it are lot more popular here and elsewhere on the net, but I prefer GTR2 and with some small limitations, GTR Evolution. The FF and physics are simply superior imo!
So if there ever is a new series here going with one of those sims, count me in!

Today really was fun. It reminded me of my early days in the hobby, before I discovered on-line racing. Back then the only sim I owned was GPL, and I would fiddle with the AI strength using a 3rd party mod so that the AI matched up with my skill level at a given track. Then I'd set the grid such that I was in the back third of the field, and just race for position with the AI the whole race. It was far more exciting to finish 5th or 6th in the pack, spending the whole race scrapping for position, than it would ever be to finish on the podium.

Today I got a glimpse of those 'old days' with this field of human drivers, the weight penalty system, the inverted starting grid on Heat #2, etc. The racing was close, there was some bumping and jostling for position, lots of passes and re-passing, and close competition all around. To put it simply, today's racing was a blast - tremendous fun and great entertainment! That was the going-in goal of this series, and we achieved our objective. Thank you all for making that a reality.

In the future, we may continue the weight penalty system and the inverted grid, but we'll have to figure out a better way to implement weight penalties since in our hobby, not all drivers can make every race. While it was great to have other drivers join us later in the series, having them start off with no weight penalty did cause a slight imbalance in competition. Perhaps we'll have to establish the post-qualifying weight penalties similar to the real Super GT series as well as the finishing order penalties we had for this series.

Like most of the above comments, I too enjoyed the Daytona race the most, as I am a big fan of pit stops and the strategy that it entails. But as Joe mentioned, the overwhelming input prior to the series was for short races of 20 min in duration - hence the format of this series. Yet when all was said and done, the Daytona race was most people's favorite. We may have to look at having 2 x 30 minute races with accelarated fuel and tire wear, so that pit stops are required. It would be useful to discuss this here, for consideration in future series.

Thanks again for some great entertainment these past few weeks. Great stuff!

I think short-format racing was undeniably successful at SimHQ two times prior to this GTR2 series. The first was when we ran the Vayline Venom cars in rFactor, and the second was the mini series. The Minis used 2x20-minute races and everyone loved it.

The SGT 300 cars are clearly quite a bit more powerful than either of the above vehicles, and we ran the SGT cars on some serious race tracks - tracks that would be entirely unsuitable for touring cars. Instead, the previous short-format series used much shorter tracks.

It is impossible to deny the very good racing we've had for all of these SGT events. That includes Daytona as well as the four other weekends of participation. Personally I feel that races with a pitstop add to the fun, but it seems rather contrived to force one into a 20-minute race simply for the sake of it. There would hardly be any rhythm to the race that way.

Did someone say short tracks, short races, and Bimmers with a pit stop?