why is everyone using the mx5 cup on lime rock, im getting top 3 results with the roadster hmm...

U.S. drivers are used to driving on the left side of the car, most probably don't even try the roadster because of right side drive. I like the gearing better in the roadster and can drive equally crappy from either side.

I know that's the case for me. I tried the roadster in order to compete in the advanced rookie mixed class, but couldn't get used to it. Felt so weird!

I did a long test just after they slapped the new tires on the car. I needed the practice and wanted to see if I could spot any differences.

It appears to me that one of the cars drives a bit tight at Okayama whereas the other is loose. That's about it. Oh wait, other than the gearing that is.

As it was, after I got used to both of them, the personal bests were within a tenth of each other. So much for ratio sets being of much benefit.

Quick question gentlemen.

IndyCar.

Oval / Road.

Does your participation merge? aka - 4 on oval, 4 on road = 8 races?

I'm fairly sure (although not totally sure) the points aren't merged?

Wondering if they will change the setup for season 2 - as new Indy is basically a road course series. I wouldn't mind seeing a merged series for iRacing. But there are many a stubborn driver on both disciplines' sides who will not enjoy that.

Maybe they could merge the fixed series.

I'm not a major fan of the fixed series - It favours me because I have no idea how to setup an IndyCar, but it doesn't feel right - I'd rather a 7th/20 in open than a win in fixed.

What a disaster in the Celtic/England Skip Barber race; Had to tow after hitting the wall trying to avoid the 1st Lap mayhem.

Rejoin, my connection fails (only the 2nd time in three years at iRacing), fail the credential check so have to leave iRacing and rejoin, only to find our Hosted Session no longer available in Hosted as the Race has started.

Nightmare!

http://members.iracing.com/membersit...1&custid=16579

On the plus side did my best time at Suzuka this week in practice 26.7xx

when "fail credential check" occurs (usually this happens when your service provider change your IP adress, daily IP reset of your router more likely) all you need to do is shut down browser and turn it on again

what you should not do (if you are in middle of racing session) is sign out of the race/session because there is no way back then

also usefull thing is to manually reset router before "important" race or even better reset it in time of day on which you never irace, this way IP will be changed in unimportant time of day ;-)

Good points, thank you.

Bruno Junqueira is using iRacing as a training tool as well:
http://www.iracing.com/inracingnews/...cing-addiction

In a moment of madness and curiosity I bought the SprintCar tonight, I'd always enjoyed the SprintCars in TOCA3 (?) so thought I'd give it a bash. So far I've only tested it at Oxford Plains (don't have the license to race it yet) but it's hilarious! 800hp, one gear, oversteer on command. All you have to do is go as fast as you can, pure racing.

So, it made me wonder if anyone else here races the SprintCar, the grids seem pretty poor but I don't mind, it's fun just testing!

Yeah I did the same thing last season! had some credits and thought....yeeeehhhh what the hell!

Really fun once you get into the rhythm - which is vital. But no races in a possible timezone for me - so a bit of a waste. But I like having all the cars and tracks anyway, so don't care! I'll dust off the cobwebs one day and maybe try to make some official races.

I can imagine them to be quite high SOF and very fast and furious.

Had my best Celtic/England race to round off a fun Season;

http://members.iracing.com/membersit...8&custid=37971

My credit came in, so thought I'd finally buy the Radical! Enjoying it so far, only a handful of laps though.

Any experiences or tips from the car/series? Anybody else race it?

I'm gonna have a tough old time figuring out what to run this season! So far I'm testing 8 cars! bahaha.

Changed up a lot of my paints as well!

Looking forward to next week!!

Got my credits too!

Radical is a great car with a very good community (intense serious racers) but I've not much spent time with it.

It would potentially be my choice if the HPD wasn't so good!

That's why I never bought it, because of the HPD - why not just drive the real thing!

But because I've moved to the Ford, and the proto/gt possibly not getting much love from now on, I'm going to see what trends emerge before I jump into the HPD again.

I figured the SR8 would have a stupidly good community in terms of pace, looking forward to getting involved.

I'm also testing different cars to figure out what to do next season. Seems I have lost my mojo, though, suddenly no car click (except Skippy, that seems ok still). Either that, or I like the car, but drive helplessly slow, with no understanding of why. Doesn't help to see drivers with iR 3000 below mine going faster either :D

In other news, while most people in the FW31 forum seem disappointed/confused with their new car, there is one awesomely cool detail that's worth mentioning: A Williams representative, that seems to be in charge of providing technical information to iRacing, has started posting! Including an explanation of the aero packages, and that contrary to popular belief, Spa is in fact not LDF.

You will have fun no doubt a lot of the "quick" Skippy guy's have ended up in that car like Simon Hulbert - claims he's not from another planet but his driving is!

Good being in that little Caddy session with you.

Yeah, aleins are generally found in those smaller series, hidden away!

Yeh it was good! Pity I ran around in fixed, spinning everywhere looking the fool, then discovered a shared setup in the folder and was up by .4 halfway around the outlap, then the flag came out! Nice lap you put down there.

Tough track for the car - fun though!

(ps. I've fallen in love with Oulton!)

I should have shared the set I had, the guy who was in 1st position sometimes posts here and he gave me the tip to move Coast to 50%, that's when I got my good time (well actually I moved it up a notch to 55% for me). Made quite a difference at that track to help you rotate the car.

The shared set you got was his and I forgot to pick it up!

Glad you like Oulton magic track.

Well had a fun UKI Skip Barber Race;

http://members.iracing.com/membersit...1&custid=37971

Started 12th, had a stupid spin on lap 2, dropped to 20th but then had a nice recovery drive to 12th.

54 secs behind the winner and lost 49 secs on two slow laps. I might have got 6th without the spin................... but we've all got stories of what could have been.

Got my time into the 40.7's in Practice too.

At least it was a nice way to end the week after two poor HPD races.

Steve Myers has revealed that NTM for the V8 is scheduled for Monday evening. This should be interesting :)

Also, aero tweaks to the Indy car.

Good news.

In the low 7's at Oulton Fosters, I see the quick guy's are in low 6's, work to do!

Could anyone copy Shane's post if he does one about this update? Here is Steve's quote:

I assume the V8 is getting a newer NTM build then the one currently released for the other cars. So I wonder if on Monday we'll get an updated NTM for all the cars, or if they'll keep the current older version, in which case it will be the first time iRacing runs with 3 different tire models: OTM, NTM 2.x and NTM 2.y (for the V8).

Isn't the point about the model is it can be used to create specific tyre characteristics, so what it might be is a new tyre type within the existing model?

It will certainly be interesting to see what reaction it gets within the service.

For some reason I never gave the Grand Touring Cup a thought.

That is until 6 hours ago I hopped in the Solstice - hooked.
Bought the Jetta, which I've been meaning to do for a while - thats good fun too, but not as much as the Solstice!

I'll eagerly await the quality of racing - I hear it's great! And the laptimes of the cars are everywhere so seems like fun!

Anyone else run the GT Cup?

Wow I think I have a future in this car.

Ran close 2nd to a 6000+IR guy and got the 2nd World Record for the Solstice at Infineon Cup! Only missing by 0.1

Great stuff, well done.

Indeed, nice going. I've never got on with the Solstice, might have to give it a re-try! Well done. :thumbup:

I'm feeling a lot of love right now for the Star Mazda. :mrgreen:

Not run it this Season I take it that it is back to being good?

My first season running the car - only done two races but loved them both a huge amount!

The only car that I've driven where the steering and grip continues on from your preset thought range - when you think it's on the limit, you turn it more and it keeps going!

Was at the local racetrack today and someone was killed in a bad crash.

I plan on racing in real life very soon, and then forever after - but it made me realize that sim racing has one huge advantage. The tragic side of racing is non-existent. The worst that can happen is an SR loss!
I lost .4 SR last night at Spa - But after today I'm a little bit more at ease with that!

That's really bad. It makes you think doesn't it.

I was in the last race the day Paul Warwick was killed at Oulton, didn't have much enthusiasm for going out to race that day.

Oh right, yeah it is quite a disturbing experience. Can't help but think of the family who will be told, would be such a shock.

I was actually there with friends who were racing, they used to race in the class in which the driver participated in, and also knew him - So I was in amongst the paddock scuttlebutt, everyone was sort of standing in groups chatting, because it was quite a long red flag and extraction. It's quite a tight nit and competitive class so it's a sad loss.

Something like that is always a shock and it will take sometime to get over it, that's for sure. As you say what must the family be feeling like, an awful event when your doing something you love so much.

This info from the announced maintenance tomorrow:

"Deploy new track and sim updates"

So, this means Langley (short oval), at least. Wonder what hides behind "sim updates"?

Let's hope for some other track graphic updates but my main hope is the delayed League functionality.

The biggest surprise is that there is no thread on it in the General Forum with the usual speculation.

Well nothing much actually, from Grant Reeve;

Langley Speedway

Now available for purchase!

Also, we have updated some cars with setups for Langley, and the sim itself needed an update to support the new track.

Yeah, that was somewhat disappointing. Ooh well, can't have cool feature updates all season long...

Wonder what on Earth was necessary to support Langley?

Anyhow, this one was for the ovallers (will probably buy it too, to keep my 100%), but the roadies have lots of cool stuff coming up soon. Good times ahead! :)

You know you keep your 100% achievement once you've hit 100 at any point - you don't lose it!

Oh, yes, but I focus on maintaining the new items discount. For that you need to buy up to 100% every time :)

Also, I like the feeling of freedom it gives me to know that no matter what kind of event I get drawn to, or whatever kind of idea for combo I get, I have all content available.

I'm enjoying Le Mans so much I just bought the HPD. lol.

I see the new schedule has been posted in the schedule thread, but wanted to add some comments in this thread not to derail the other one. Kind of more interesting than the track selections (that I haven't really had time to digest yet), Steve posted the following in the announcement forum:

******

Some highlights:

*Rookie and Class D drivers are the only eligible drivers in the Rookie Street Stock and Mazda Cup series.
*Spec Racer Ford series makes an appearance again at the D level. SRF is no longer in the inRacingNews series.
*The Grand Touring Series now has Sunday on the schedule as well.
*Street Stock now has a class C series with caution flags.
*The HPD now has a stand alone series in place of the open MC series. This series and the MC Fixed series have the same track schedule.
*The NASCAR Class B fixed setup series now will run every day of the week.
*A new NASCAR Class A fixed setup series has been created and runs every day of the week. This series is NOT part of the ladder to the Drivers World Championship Series. You must qualify for that series in the open setup series.

******

Rather interesting development. Not sure yet if it is good or bad, but interesting. From a selfish point of view, I like the introduction of a single class HPD series - not sure how many agrees with me, but I guess we will see the numbers soon. Also, still from the selfish point of view, I like the introduction of a Nascar A fixed series. Not that I have been active on the oval side for a while, but if I do choose to try it out again, fixed A or B could be a good option, since those series could be cleaner than some of the lower classes, and I suck at oval setups. (While I'm at it: All oval setup guides I have read so far focus on what to do if your car is loose/tight at different point of the track under different circumstances, but none of them say any word about setups that "feel rather balanced and good, but are slow". Then I look in the forums for better setups, a few suck, and then suddenly there's one that make me a second faster almost out of the box...)

It's a good thing, though, that only the open series qualify for DWC. I notice that there hasn't been introduced a similar class A road series. In fact, they seem to have removed the unused fun series with the Williams, so only the open A series remain.

Will also be interesting to see how the blocking of higher licences in the default rookie series will pan out. To my knowledge this is the first time it is possible to have "too high" a licence for a series? Not counting the special events where you have one for low licences and one for high licences, that is. They have been clever enough to give the Street Stock a C series as well, to avoid blocking it from people that like it, while at least one Mazda lives on in another series.

Blocking higher licenses? That kind of sucks. I tried higher classes a few times but got tired of being bunted off the track by the leaders as I'm not that fast and they're not exactly patient (A lot of them seem to have a "Darin Gangi DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM PART THE WAAAYYYY!!!!!" complex.). Something like that may cause me to give up iRacing altogether as I seldom bother with it as it is.

Den.

The Rookie series was realistically an HOURLY race that provided lots of members something to run conveniently. The idea that Rookies needed to be protected from upper license drivers shows very little understanding of what actually goes on. Splits based on iRating very cleanly moved skilled drivers into the top most splits. There were usually 3 or 4 splits that had almost no Rookies in them at all.

The split that rookies started in was usually the middle split. Their 1350 iRating put them in with drivers who had relatively equal skills that placed that mob above the maddening crowd in the lower splits. Rookies actually got a break in their first races by not having to deal with drivers who couldn't keep their cars under them the complete race and who usually hadn't learned to pass cleanly. That'll be history now.

What should happen now is the D license drivers who enjoy running every hour and like short races will be hitting the jackpot. Any with any talent will have all the real competition removed or cut down to zipp.

I'm guessing that 1350 ought to drop new rookies into a split that is pretty much 'professional rookie series winners', guys who have figured out that going for a C license gets them kicked off the gravy train.

It looks like the talented new members will have a whole lot easier time to rack up some iRating faster. They probably won't have as easy a time getting out of rookie since they're in a pool that has a lot higher percentage of spinners who've probably not even read the rules yet.

I'm not sure what iRacing thinks they're accomplishing. It seems they're simply following the noise they constantly hear about how unfair it is for the C+ license drivers to be allowed to win farm in Rookie. Those guys weren't really running rookie races at all. iRacing doesn't seem to understand what their iRating really did in practice.

It'll also be interesting to see if any other series are scheduled hourly. If not, they're screwing a significant percentage of the membership that logged a lot of races but won't have any other series to turn to now that they're barred from the only hourly series available.

Well I am not entirely sure about the new schedule but I have always had the view that as it is only 12 weeks it allows experimentation.

I see the plusses and minuses of the Rookie Series only allowing Upto D in.

Personally I think they have ****ed up the Proto/GT series starting last Season by introducing the separate GT only series. I am also disappointed all Fixed Proto/GT races are just 25 mins. Don't see why we could not have had a couple at 40 min to test what that does to participation.

Sunday night being added to Grand Touring Cup is GREAT for me!

Also, Street Stock, C with Yellows..... Might have to give that a shot!!!!!

--

I also think the segregation of HPD's and GT's was a bad thing - now it's in 3 chunks!!