Patience. That's the word which comes to mind regarding the CTS.
I'm enjoying the CTS is an "I'm an Australian so of course I like big V8 sedans" way. However, I'm not sure if my iRacing career is going to be based around this ridiculous monster.
Patience. That's the word which comes to mind regarding the CTS.
I'm enjoying the CTS is an "I'm an Australian so of course I like big V8 sedans" way. However, I'm not sure if my iRacing career is going to be based around this ridiculous monster.
I only had a little amount of driving time in the SRF before the latest update, those initial laps got me excited for the car in general but I didn't really get a good feel for it. The SRF's first stop in 2014 Season 3 will be Laguna Seca, so I've put in a few laps around there. I'm still very excited about running the whole season in this car, but I definitely need to tweak the setup to counter the off throttle over steer which I've found is the norm now with the baseline setup.
The difference in racing line compared with the MX5 is very noticeable. The huge amount of front end grip as you enter a corner but lower top speed makes me think that good lap times will come down to maintaining momentum. At Laguna Seca that means that T6 and the run up the hill will be crucial.
Anyway, here's what each of the tabs look currently:
My purchases also give me 11 of the 12 tracks in used in the MX-5 Advanced series. I'm very keen to take part on that too. The track I'm missing is Road Atlanta which is the last race on the schedule, so I can grab it if I decide I want to do every single race.
I have 9 of the 12 tracks for both the Spec Racer Ford and the Global Challenge series. I figure I'll be popping my head into these races if I have a week with enough spare time. The SRF really interests me, so maybe I'll fall in love with it yet.
Update: Well, after a bit of thinking and trying out a few car and track combos I decided that I was going to buy some more content. I now have all the tracks required to run every single week of the following series:
I also have 11 of the 12 tracks for the Corvette Challenge, so I went ahead and bought the C6R too. I have 8 out of the 12 tracks for the Skip Barber series.
So here's the big list of what I've picked up:
Tracks:
Cars:
Update 2: So I figured what the hell, I may as well just get all the C license cars since I now have enough tracks to do an 8 week season in any of them. Added these bad boys to the list:
Over the next week or so I'll be giving each of them a thorough bashing around the first track in each series and will be posting my thoughts about each car.
I'll now be focusing on creating an overview display which contains all the info which I currently have on the overview page on my spreadsheet.
Next up is to actually begin work on generating and displaying interesting stats based on the data.
I'm currently actively updating my knowledge of the python programming language and figured that it would be a great language to create a more automated system with. I've made some good early progress; automated collection of iRacing event results and inserting these into a database.
With all this info sitting in a local database, I'm now learning about various graphing systems available in python and will be working on replicating the same sort of "overview" page that the current spreadsheet system displays.
I'll be updating here as I make more progress.
Here's a teaser image:
I did have hopes of fast tracking to C this week, but running races with people who were unable to keep their cars on the track around Lime Rock kind of destroyed that dream.
I got word that the Logitech G27 force feedback wheel was one sale at Amazon for $209 and I jumped on the chance to get myself one. It took a little while messing around with the setup, and a fair few laps to get used to driving with it, but I'm extremely impressed with it and very happy with the purchase. Initially I found that I couldn't lap as quickly as I was with my old cheap non-FFB wheel, I was losing a lot of time in slow corners. However I found that I had a WAY better feel for the car balance in high speed corners so I was back on pace pretty quickly. The force feedback definitely helps me feel where the edge of the grip level is and in general makes the whole driving experience more intense.
I've been looking over the planned schedules for the 2014 S4 and it looks like my main focus will be on the Spec Racer Ford and the new MX5 Advanced series. I will of course still be grinding the Mazda MX5 Cup series. The SRF series has selected a good range of non-free tracks and purchasing 6 of them will allow me to get a taste of some of the other series I'm interested in; Star Mazda, RUF, Radical and Skip Barber.
Yesterday I posted back to back wins.
Feels good man.
I'm looking forward to checking out Okayama as it is a track that is brand new to me. I might start some practice sessions today and tomorrow so I can get up to speed as quickly as possible.
Combine those difficulties with learning a whole new car, the Skip Barber F2000, and once again rushing into races too early the SR graph on my new stats system has steadily been moving downwards.
I'm now down to an SR of 2.25. Yuck.
With all this in mind, next week I'm going to force myself into a strict progression:
I have a few more additions on my todo list, once I have them nailed down I'll share the template for others to use.
My iRacing obsession has now entered the "create a spreadsheet to track it" phase.
This is still a work in progress. It is all generated from the CSV files of your races which you can download from your iRacing profile. I will post up the blank sheet and instructions if anyone else is interested.
I'd read that if you don't click the "go to grid" button after warm up you can start at the back of the pack from the pits. Since my qualy time normally put me on pole or 2nd on the grid this was the option I was looking for.
I've done this in the last 3 races and it has paid off massively. Protecting my safety rating and making my races way more enjoyable. Since I have no real thought of racing to win I take my time getting by all the crazy rookies, which generally means just following them around until they fall off the track on their own, and have made my way through to 2nd or 3rd ever time.
Because of this I've easily made up the safety rating points needed to be promoted into a D class license!
'Huzzah!