Monday Night Racing: Forza (7/160

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:26 am

Folks, it's Monday so that means it's time for another 25 lap race in Forza!

10:30 is the time to gather, and as usual we will do a 4-lap non-race warmup/ practice session and then jump in for the big event.

The first seven to sign up will be in with any others signing on as alternates. I will send out invites to the alternates at 10:40 and try to wait for a full room before starting the warmup.

I think we should stick with the A class cars this week, but I'm open to suggestions. I feel like the A class has a lot of options and room for creativity, and personally I have a number of decent A cars, but still can't seem to get a really good one. What's nice about A class, though, is that with many of these cars I have a lot of options to get it to that 850 p.i. number.

If anyone wants to do a lower class, speak up, and we'll see what the consensus is.

Tonight we will race at the fictional Maple Valley, the full one, with its 'this can't be legal' final corner/ thrill ride.

Who's in?

slimer · Post by **slimer** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:38 am

I'm in, ready for another last place.

Hopefully not.

GB_Simo · Post by **GB_Simo** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:40 am

I'm in if you'll have me. I'm not on the same level at Maple Valley as I am at Silverstone, because I only really know the short track, not the full one...

Re-edit: Tis fixed, nothing to see here.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:49 am

HA! Made it this time. I'm in-but I'm going to the midnight release thing for NCAA, so I may have to skip the 'Ring at the end...

mixdj1 · Post by **mixdj1** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:52 am

I'll be there. I'm ditching the wheel and trying the controller tonight so I'm probably going to be all over the track.

mixdj1 · Post by **mixdj1** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:06 pm

Just contacted Fshguy and he would like to sign up as well.

wpw721 · Post by **wpw721** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:52 pm

Fshguy · Post by **Fshguy** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:32 pm

mixdj1 wrote:Just contacted Fshguy and he would like to sign up as well.

Great, now we don't even have to talk to Mix, we can just shine a bright light at him... Let's see how many times he gets irritated when we mispronounce his new tag...

mixdj1 · Post by **mixdj1** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:37 pm

Fshguy wrote:Great, now we don't even have to talk to Mix, we can just shine a bright light at him... Let's see how many times he gets irritated when we mispronounce his new tag...

I've gone into the upgrade section and put special UV coating on all of the windows. (Luckily those guys at Turn 10 thought of everything)

Anyway, I just figured if I made my gamertag harder to pronounce then nobody would try to talk to me during the race and I could concentrate.

Kruza · Post by **Kruza** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:46 pm

Hahaha, I was wondering who the hell "Vamphyr" was when I saw that name pop up in my Friends list.

Kruza

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:09 pm

Is it 'Vamphyr, master of the Pan Flute's cousin?' Or, "Vamphyr, Master of the Zither?'

vader29 · Post by **vader29** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:44 pm

I'll give it a go if there's room tonight.

wpw721 · Post by **wpw721** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:08 pm

Sorry guys my connection was apparently on the fritz. I couldn’t hear anyone and just backed out instead of making everyone wait for me to reboot a second time.

See and hear you all next week hopefully.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:20 pm

Sorry, guys...had a prior that I was unsure of the length of. Obviously, it went longer than I'd expected. Oh, well...I'll try again next week...

slimer · Post by **slimer** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:34 pm

Got booted from live with 10 laps to go. I had just spun out so maybe I deserved it. I was running a pretty solid 4th for most of the race though.

Had fun.

GB_Simo · Post by **GB_Simo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:57 am

Fun. Crashy, but fun. At least I know how fast that Ferrari isn't able to go...great defensive driving from Zep in the early stages, kept me at bay and helped to set up the win. To clarify what I did - I lifted to let Fshguy by after I caught him unawares at the last corner, crashed trying to pass Zep on the outside of turn two the next lap, then stacked it once at the second-to-last corner before pitting and once coming off the last corner after pitting in the mistaken belief that I could still catch Zep somehow. By the finish my tyres were fine but the car attached to them had all sorts of warm colours on the damage indicator.

I've been thinking, fellas, about my lack of voice comms. I did clear my throat a couple of times last night but I can't really do more than that, because my house isn't big and everyone else in it is asleep (ah, yes - I'm from Hartlepool, on the north east coast of England, so I'm at least 5 hours ahead of you all). Last night I found myself unable to tell Zeppo when I was trying to pass, unable to tell Fshguy I needed to tap the brake into the last chicane (a fault of my line, not the car, as I later realised) and without any way of telling Slimer that I wasn't on the inside of him anymore at the last corner and so he didn't need to take that big ride across the grass that gave me the position. Are you able to race with me OK in spite of my not being able to self-spot? Let me know if you're having difficulty with it and I'll stop the racing until I can work out a fix.

GB_Simo · Post by **GB_Simo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:58 am

Double post - forum on a go-slow

slimer · Post by **slimer** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:40 am

I am not bothered in the least by your lack of voice. I'll take credit for the walk through the grass, but I m sure it was due to bad driving. I have to say the most distracting thing about you approaching in my rear view mirror (other than the fact that for some amazing reason you are behind me that late in the race), is that I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you are so fast in a car that is 50 points less than mine. I know it's not a tuning trick, it's just amazing driving.

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:49 am

mix's gamertag even confuses me since all of my screen names for AOL, Yahoo, etc, are "Vamphyyri".

mixdj1 · Post by **mixdj1** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:07 am

TCrouch wrote:mix's gamertag even confuses me since all of my screen names for AOL, Yahoo, etc, are "Vamphyyri".

A fellow Brian Lumley fan, I presume?

Fshguy · Post by **Fshguy** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:50 pm

GB_Simo wrote:I've been thinking, fellas, about my lack of voice comms. I did clear my throat a couple of times last night but I can't really do more than that, because my house isn't big and everyone else in it is asleep (ah, yes - I'm from Hartlepool, on the north east coast of England, so I'm at least 5 hours ahead of you all). Last night I found myself unable to tell Zeppo when I was trying to pass, unable to tell Fshguy I needed to tap the brake into the last chicane (a fault of my line, not the car, as I later realised) and without any way of telling Slimer that I wasn't on the inside of him anymore at the last corner and so he didn't need to take that big ride across the grass that gave me the position. Are you able to race with me OK in spite of my not being able to self-spot? Let me know if you're having difficulty with it and I'll stop the racing until I can work out a fix.

I don't have any problems with it... As long as you don't have problems with us talking about you!

You made a good pass on me. I lost a little control going into that corner in any case as I was trying to get my position back. I thought you'd hit the wall after that, but I guess not. Really, in all, that's just racing, it's tough making that clean pass every time.

I still don't know what happened to me on the pits, I hit the entrance at over 100 the first time and I think it slowed me down, but I came out the other side pretty fast into the dirt.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:24 pm

Fshguy wrote: I still don't know what happened to me on the pits, I hit the entrance at over 100 the first time and I think it slowed me down, but I came out the other side pretty fast into the dirt.

That is so freaking weird. I swear I've gone into pits in this game, and that one in particular, like a jet onto a carrier, and had no problems. Very odd.

Adam, lack of voice is no problem at all. I'd much rather have people there and not able to talk than not there just because they can't talk. That goes for wpw, too!! Anyway, Adam, even if you could talk, we probably wouldn't understand you anyway!

Just kidding.

I figured you slowed down because you felt bad about brak-checking Fshguy, but I never think that's necessary. All it really would have done is forced you to pass us a second time, if you hadn't crashed. All in all, it's no big deal. What I can't believe is that while trying to keep you behind me, I went off on that little left hand flick and ever so slightly nudged the wall. What I almost can't believe more is that I didn't go off again the entire race. That is just unprecedented for me! I made mistakes, sure, but none that sent more than one tire into the dirt.

I really like that race track. I know I tend to diss the made-up tracks, but this one just works for me. It has a great sense of 'going somewhere' since it's pretty long, and that final corner is a real challenge. I could go through it a lot quicker than I did at any point last night, but the potential for disaster is just enormous. Even when taking it easy, it's a pretty thrilling corner, and since there's so much room to go quicker every time, I'm sure it adds a lot of room for difference among racers.

What's odd to me is that last week at Silverstone, I had great racing the entire race. The first 7 or 8 laps of that race, I was in a pack of four or five cars. Then, after getting punted off, I ended up racing with Mix for pretty much the whole second half of the race, even through the pit stops. Now, for some reason in this race at the Maple Valley, once I let Simo by, i really didn't have any racing after that. I could see Fsghuy up there, and he was making enough mistakes to let me stay in touch, but I was making enough mistakes to keep from catching up. Really weird. Sure, we only ended up with 5 racers once slimer got bounced out, but even so it was such a contrast with what happened at Silverstone, I'm scratching my head trying to understand it.

No matter what, it was fun. Those 25 laps seemed to fly by! Hope we can do it again next week.

GB_Simo · Post by **GB_Simo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:44 pm

Fshguy wrote:I thought you'd hit the wall after that, but I guess not.

Not when you and Zep thought I had, no. After that, though, it was open season, and did I bag me some barriers...

Edit: The racing was the same through the field, Zep. I had a similar crash to yours (which, I must say, was funny as hell from a second behind you...) except on a proper corner instead of a kink, and it cost me almost a pit stop's worth of time but I only saw one other car. I wonder if it's to do with the nature of the corners? I say that because at Silverstone the week before I noticed I gained far more time through the quick stuff, especially in the first sector, than in the twisty bits at the end, and so with Maple Valley being all medium-fast turns maybe there's a wider spread of performance? In those cars, the ultimate limit in the fast stuff is a bit trickier to find than in the slow stuff.

GB_Simo · Post by **GB_Simo** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:03 pm

Guh, that last post is rubbish. What I mean to say is something like this.

Silverstone is a former airfield and so quite flat. Most of the corners there are constant radius with clear visibility on entry and exit, so it's relatively easy to pick a line. I noticed that a few people were having a bag of trouble with the first sector, mainly with apex speed at Copse and then the entry to Maggotts, and they're about the only two corners on the track that have a difficult, partly blind entry. Everywhere else, you can see what you're doing and the track has no nasty surprises so it's possible to get to a reasonable pace fairly quickly. Some of those corners, like Vale and the end complex, are slow, and in the A-class cars your limit in a slow, uniform turn is the car, not the driver - you can only brake so late, accelerate so early and carry so much speed, and once you're at that point, that's it. The track basically breeds a situation where a group of similar ability will run at similar speeds.

Maple Valley doesn't do that. It has a whole bundle of fast corners with blind entries, unexpected camber or both. That, coupled with the length and radius of the corners, as well as the track width, allows for multiple lines through almost every turn - I run the entire first sector of the lap on a different line to Zep, for example. A couple of those corners - in fact, everything in the second half of the lap - will give you a slap if you make a mess of things on the way in, and with ones like the long uphill right-hander in the middle of the lap being very difficult to pick a turn in point and speed for, the layout creates a bigger performance gap than you'd have at Silverstone. I'd bet on a similar story at the 'Ring if we run that next week, in fact.

RandyM · Post by **RandyM** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:53 am

Room for one more?

I hadn't been joining in because I'm still unlocking stuff but I think I have enough unlocked and enough seat time I can drive semi-competently now.

Is there a good post with any 'rules' or guidelines I need to know of (which car to use, what our standard setup is?)

Thanks,
Randy