Totally and completely impromptu based on the activity and interest I'm seeing in the forum.

The F2 Series cars will practice from 12 PM to 1:30, then we'll start the race with the trucks. 5 minutes of qualifying followed by a 1 hour race. Fixed setups and Pocono. Just show up if you want to run. Unique Vehicle Check is off so just grab any truck. V6 of the mod will be used.

Server: SimHQ Motorsports 4
Password: truckZ

Server now available!

Sounds good to me, Looking forward to using those 40 acres to turn my truck around.

I will be there if I don't have to work and I won't know that until Thursday.

Need to chase down a fixed setup. These babies push big time and are wall magnets.

Just for giggles I threw a decent cup set I had on to the truck and it felt pretty much ok. Turn two definitely has very large magnets in the walls.

im in, any tips with the trucks as I have not raced them before

Awesome, I'm sitting out the F2 series for time (and sanity!) reasons so a pickup race will be just the ticket! Thanks Doug.

I've only ran them once but that was with the 2010 version and it was at Bristol. So now its 2011 and at a superspeedway. Slow early for entry, ease back into the throttle. Also check your steering lock if you have issues over steering.

I'm going to have to pass on this one...

I'll be there!

Birdski has contributed his truck setup and it is now the fixed setup default. Give it a try and please comment how it is working for you.

Thanks JayBird!

I have family coming by on Saturday and likely won't make this one - so best of luck to the rest of you.

+1

I'll be giving that a try soon. I hope we get a few drivers because this is a seriously fun combo!

I just gave 'er a try. I've never raced trucks or Pocono before but I seem to have to brake and shift between 3rd and 4th around at least two of the three corners. Is that how it's supposed to be?

It's been pretty common for the real drivers to shift at Pocono in the past.

I know I was getting my best laptimes by shifting the other night when I tried it out, so yeah.

Just spent about an hour on the server and these things are a little more tricky than the cars. Like DD, I had to brake and/or downshift a few times through a couple of corners. Downshifting every corner made me over heat...heh. Seems to be a very fine line on when to let off, when to turn in, and when to gas it. Go in a little too hot and I slide to the wall, usually brushing it. Let off too early and it seems the truck bogs down in 4th and takes awhile to get back up to speed (so I downshift). After an hour I was running between 53-54. 53.373 was my best.

More practice tomorrow evening!

Yeah, I gave it another run. Definitely better than the previous setup.

But I concur with Weasel - if you downshift too often you're going to be keeping the revs too high, and the engine will overheat. It's nearly as quick keeping it in 4th anyway so you shouldn't have to do much in the way of shifting.

I'm convinced that Birdski's setup didn't make it onto the server. I don't know what I'm doing but I set 4th gear from 1.04 (3.75) to 1.11 (3.98) and it made it a lot more agressive with less chance of having to switch gears. Setting it to 1.14, I was turning 52's with ease but I was getting overheat warnings

I connected and tried it out. Pretty sure its the right one. Whether it is good or not is probably open to debate but I had roughly the same pace as WK. BTW, I never leave 4th unless I'm way out of shape.

I like the setup except that 4th gear doesn't seem to be aggressive enough at 1.04 (3.75). My debate is this ... 1.13 (4.05). If you don't like that debate then 1.11 (3.98) was going to be my next debate

I was running with WK online tonight and ran a 52.? while momentarily in his draft but I was braking and switching gears like I was running a rally race LOL.

Shifting at Pocono was a thing in the past but with mandated ratios in the top 3 by NASCAR, they no longer shift. Of course that doesn't mean anything in VHR.

I will admit, it's harder than I remember when I drove the trucks last year. Not to mention the various issues I have with settings. Too much FFB or none at all, annoying issue where my truck will rev to max once I enter from the garage, graphic settings not being enforced, so I'm writing off VHR.

Panther, Hate to see you never join us again. To avoid max rev, move all axis to full deflection once before you hit race. I have also got weird FFB behavior on rare occasions, I found that if I jump out of car and back in again, all is well. No insight into your graphics issue, would have to troll your posts for more info.

Dirt, I just jumped on to do a couple test laps and turned a 52.3 by my lonesome. Don't think we'd want to shorten that ratio since drafting at Pocono is huge and you're going to want those long legs when that comes into play.

Panther, I found out the hard way that rFactor sometimes looses it’s marbles where control axis’ are concerned. One time my gas pedal was acting so weird that I just reassigned it in the control setup menu and all was good (I actually do that regularly now).

Birdski ... I see that your setup is probably NOT open to debate

As a sidenote, while checking out this whole Camping World trucks at Pocono thing I searched for Pocono truck footage on Youtube and found the following ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fzUeLn4W8

!!! I’m not giving up on rFactor, but holy crap! iRacing makes rFactor look like a student film! Fingers crossed for rFactor 2

Ah the old tire model, the pace now is slower by 5 seconds. And no more drift racing... Thank goodness for the NTM.

Fun race. Congrats to VBA_Rhino for winning the race over DaBirdski by .3xx

Congrats to Stewart for third place! No podiums in NASCAR, but we saw you up there spraying champagne!

Tough luck award goes to Darren. Disco right off rFactor and Teamspeak with 10 laps to go.

Thanks to all that participated, including that new "flight sim guy".

that was fun, but i really need a truckload of practice to be competitive in ovals. i'm amazed of how you guys are so fast even with a shared setup.

doug, maybe we can do something like this monthly? a fun, almost unprogrammed race with alternative mods?
i'm thinking right now of dirt ovals, or the legends mod.

Great race folks, I had a great time. Rhino was fast and consistent. A little wide with 2 to go and he slips by me. Tough break DB, We shall meet again I'm sure.

Thanks Guys, With 10 laps to go I lost connection and dropped out of teamspeak At first i thought It was the server as my internet was still working perfectly but i couldn't connect to the SimHQ teamspeak server (others working fine), and the website and forum just timed out. In fact i didn't get access to anything SimHQ until about an hour after the race! Genuine disco's (ie. not ctd's or other issues) are almost unheard of for me - in fact the only time it happened before was also with the VHR2011 mod in very similar circumstances. Very bizzare indeed. Like Panther it seems the 2011 version of this mod brings me a fair share of issues for negligible benefit.

I hadn't done a whole lot of practice but Birdski's setup was sweet and i was up to speed fairly quickly. I was just about managing to hang onto Birdski and Rhino's tail going into the final stint and it was shaping up to be a nice close finish. Unfortunately i never got to see things play out but that's the way it goes sometimes. Up until that point I was having a ball. These trucks are waaaay more fun than the sprint cars!

Congrats to Rhino and Birdski for the 1-2, and thanks to everyone for an enjoyable evening. Nice to see Einstein jumping in there for a short while too. Hope to see you again soon.

Really fun race for me but not the way i would want to gain my first top three by virtue of darren's disco. I wonder if we should maybe revert to VHR2010 for stabilities sake?

Or the built in stock car racing that comes with rFactor?

Oh good lord no, are you crazy? :P

Yes! But what does that have to do with it.

Actually i think 2010 was better in quite a lot of respects. I've also been impressed with the StockcarSimSeries mod. Not quite as snazzy as VHR but the game mechanics are great and in someways the gameplay is a little more refined. Feels a lot like NASCAR 2003 - possibly cos i think that's where they nicked the physics from!

http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Stockcar%20Sim%20Series

Man, that last second setup change was great! The original setup wasn't bad, but it was way too tight and I was always plowing through the corners. Loosened up a bit and I was able to keep it off the walls A LOT more! I did have a couple runs through the grass when my tires were toast and I brushed a wall, but I was able to hang on better than I could before.

STUPID of me to stay out during the first caution...but I did lead 3 laps...lol! After the last Nascar event I assumed there would be more cautions and I banked on that. There weren't, so my pit and fuel strategy went out the window. I forget who said it, but sure enough after we went green I ran about three more laps and had to pit under green. My old tires vs everyone's new tires and I was a sitting duck. Made up the lap I was down when everyone else pitted later, but then lost it for good when I had to pit again. That's racing, and you see the same thing almost every weekend in the real races.

Great clean racing! I had a blast anyway!

Your dead right weasel. Getting out of sync with pitsops can be fatal. I almost always treat a yellow flag as a free pitstop now. Note I say almost lol. There are still times when it pays to stay out, just not usually in the early stages.

Cool racing with you again guys. Bird and I had a great battle. I had turns 1 and 3 figured out, but the "tunnel turn" (turn 2) I had problems with almost every lap - very tricky! No question on the last caution I was going to come in and get fresh tires. Even though we had only done 2-3 laps, my tires were toast even before I spun out. Again, good race, I'd like to suggest the Aero88 series at either Daytona or Talledega next. Those things are absolute rocketships!