ACC ACC Easter Monday non official Spa 60 min Sprint race

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This week will be a non championship round at Spa, with this I will experiment a bit more with some more changeable weather and the hotlap server will also be a wet session this time round.

The weather will be the same settings for all the Spa non static servers so anyone that runs these can see how its going. It shouldn't be stupid wet and also wont be guaranteed to be wet but I will have a higher time scale and fairly high percentage chance of rain meaning it will be very likely to get some rain but probably wont be constant and very likely to be changeable conditions. You can think of it as Melbourne weather the only certainty is whatever you have atm you wont have in a few moments.

I will jump on and test a few weather settings tonight then set the hotlap server and other servers once I find some settings that are about where I would like them to be.

This week car choice will be open, season entries wont be locked to their season cars though you can still use it if you want. Its good practice for the future Spa Endurance round after all.

Session times will be
Open Practice 45min 8pm AEST (Saturday 9am in game)
Qualifying 15min 8:45pm AEST (Sunday 9am in game)
Race 9pm 60min AEST (Sunday 4PM in game) 10 minute mid race pit window, mandatory tyre change no fuel allowed.

Wednesday Sprint season will be as usual 3x 15 minute races with 6 minutes qualy for each race.

I'll be sitting this race out.. Have a cracker guys

look forward to the race highlights..

Apologies guys but I won't be making this one. Have fun!

Any chance to join you for your fun evening ? Noted the server is Pwd protected

Fast and Furious, Blanchimont Drift

Sorry again to Mael, I braked as soon as I saw Wally spinning on your outside but couldn't slow down enough to not make contact. Had my PC freeze during Qualifying so it was starting at the back for me, luckily it didn't happen during the race.

The race was.... weird, my car was more setup for rainy conditions so I suffered early on but once it rained I just kept gaining on people. Felt like a bit of an undeserved podium but i'll take it, but it wasn't really from overtaking many people as it was from just not going off track or spinning as well as pitting at the right time.

The weather did make for an interesting race, this was the first time I ran a very compromised setup in the race as I expected rain at some point and ran my wet setup with slicks to start. My full dry setup was horrible in the wet and I didnt make anythig in the middle of these.

I did lose a bit too much dry pace and was at risk in the early part of the race, luckily for me all those around me had some incidents and it left me clear track. I was nearly 2 seconds per lap off pace in the dry and @tezpez85 made a pretty big gap of around 20 seconds before the rain started.

It came at a pretty good time pretty much the start of the pit window but I wasnt sure of start pressures as that heavy storm needed much more pressure then the hotlap server.

I could see the gap dropping in the rain but its still very trocly to know how much to push and where with constantly changing conditions. Terry had had a small off and lost maybe 10 seconds and this allowed me to catch him. My car was clearly better everywhere but the higher aero drag meant I couldnt pass on straights.

Inspent a few laps looking for somewhere and it looked like my best chance was into the final chicane as he was much slower at Blonchimont then I was. It was also very dark and with spray very hard to see anything sonit wasnt going to be easy.

Last lap I had a good run out of puhon and got inside at the first part of the long chicane after that. Was ahead on the forst apex but then had to slow more to leave room oj the inside of the left hander. On the exit Terry gave me a tiny nudge pushing me onto the wet astro and made my car spin. It was a very minor contact but without it I would have stayed on track and likely gained that position so a tough call.

Terry dod slow a little then missed the final chicane maybe as a redress for thebfirst contact or because of the missed chicane let me past before the line.

Was good tonsee the weather in action and I think this will allow a bit more agressive weather setup for a few rounds during the season. Not every race will be like this but possibility of rain will be a little higher overall.

Time scale this race was 8x which is the main factor of allowing more changeable conditions. At 1x or 2x I think the weather overall is too stable at least compared to the weather I am used to in Melbourne.

A better race weather forecast would be usefull, such as expected min and max temps plus percentage of rain. Also if its expected to be light medium or storm.

That's a fair description of the incident. From my point of view, I lost sight of you headed into the left hander part of the chicane, but could hear you were somewhere behind me to the right. I straightened up a tad to not spin on the wetness while accelerating and felt a slight tap on the rear right of the car. I would like to see the highlights to see if I left enough room though.

I will upload the highlights but for some reason the auto highlights dont show the final laps or finish so its not there. In the regular replay can see the contact and race room would be borderline as your trajectory likely would have run me off track a bit more but aftet the contact it straightened your car a little, it pushed mine off track into the greazy stuff. Point of contact was still on track though, it would be unlikely to give any penalty on such an incident and Id call it a racing incident most likely even if a car is forced off the road. In the dry it wouldnt have caused a spin and in the wet such contact is more likely due to less control.

Fair enough, I'll load up the replay later and have a peek.

As for the rest of the race, I got off to a cracking start. Shane had an incident with Andy early on, which took both out of podium contention, which was a shame because I always look forward to a good dice. Judging by fastest lap, Andy would have easily had the pace to catch. The race was really a tale of two halves though, I was pulling a decent lead from Marty in the dry and when the rain began to fall I was a good 20 seconds up. After the stops the gap stabilised, then began to come down a little, then faster and faster.

I was driving as well as I could but Marty was taking 2+ seconds out of me on a few laps there, so I need to find some more wet pace somewhere. Marty was on me in the last few laps after I span and stalled it on Pouhon. I thought he would make it through easy, but he left it until the last lap at Fagnes chicane to make a move where he dove on the inside of the right hander. I ran a deeper line to make room and I had the inside for the left, so I knew he had to run the outside line and I gassed it as early as possible but that's where the incident happened.

I wish Bathurst would have been after Spa, because I learnt a lot about the Lambo in making the setup for it and possibly may have mitigated that disastrous result. Onwards to the go-kart track.

I had an early spin into a wall when I got too close to the car in front of me, and from there pitted for repairs as the back end was all over the place, which saw me way out of sequence with everyone else. Then in the rain I was just spinning everywhere, trying to drive in the dark and rain with damage and a massively cracked windscreen, so with the poor visibility I just called it a night.

No problem, it was a fun run after-all. At that time I was messing about of dry's testing if it would become quicker than the wets. I can confirm it did not I saw @Wally spin quite early, but chose the wrong side and with dry's the brakes were pretty ineffectual.

I've watched the replay of the incident about a dozen times from both perspectives and it looks like I took a longer but more natural line on the inside and you made a shorter apex (but probably more unnatural line) on the outside then got on the gas. I feel like you maybe had a bit more room on the right, but once you had straightened up on that shorter apex I was inevitably going to make contact just by accelerating.

This is all with the benefit of hindsight though. We were battling for the lead on the final lap in dark, wet and very slippery conditions, so yeah, I'd say racing incident.