2012 | 100 Laps of Mid Ohio

[Marco Bijl]

100 Laps of Mid Ohio - INTRO & INFO

The RaceDepartment staff expects people who sign up to read this entire article!

Event: 100 laps of Mid Ohio
Date: Sunday - 22nd July 2012
Platform: rFactor2
Class: Nissan GTR, Nissan 370Z, Maserati Cup 2012, Renault Megane
Track: Mid Ohio Without chicane
Broadcast: If possible
Driver Swaps: None


INTRODUCTION
Welcome to first official Racedepartment World Endurance Series event.
The Racedepartment World Endurance Series, or RDWES for short, is a series of (semi)endurance races we will hold during the year.
For this first episode, we will visit the Mid Ohio track in the USA. Mid Ohio Sports Car Course is a road course auto racing facility, located in Troy Township, Ohio US, just outside the village of Lexington. Since it’s opening in 1962, it has been optimized a few times, which results in the current layout available for rfactor2. The track is perfectly suited to host multiple classes running at once, with its wide lanes and overtake opportunities all around.
There will be NO driver swaps allowed in this event. Total race length is 100 laps, which will equal about 2.5 hours of racing.


AVAILABLE CARS
The cars available will all be from the GT classes. In addition to the GT Endurance Series by ISI, we have decided to include the Renault Megane Trophy, and the Maserati GT 2012.
RaceDepartment will try to stay up to date with the latest patches and releases of these mod’s. This list will be updated according to the latest decisions of the staff concerning implemented patches and releases.
Available choices will be:

GT1
Nissan GT-R

GT4
Nissan 370Z
Maserati GT

One-Make Racing
Renault Megane

SKINS
For this round, a custom MOD will be created. This mod will contain a few skins for each car, in Racedepartment style. Everyone is free to pick a skin from the available options.

SCHEDULE/SESSION INFO - ALL TIMES IN GMT
Official Practice: 16:30 (90 minutes)
Qualification: 18:00 (30 minutes)
Warm-up: 18:30 (5 minutes)
Race: 18:35 100 Laps

All drivers must be in the server at least 15 minutes before qualifying, anyone who joins after the start of qualifying will start from the back of their specified class with the exception of people who experience last minute technical issues. The server will be open for unofficial practice before official starting time, and will be restarted at 16:30 GMT exactly. From that moment on, the server will stay up, so a nice rubber pavement can be made.

Signups.
To sign up for this event, you must have a valid license from Racedepartment. If you sign up, we do expect you to show up!. To sign up, please take a look in the Sign Up Thread.

For now, we have limited the signup list to 28 entrants. If needed, we can expand that number with an additional 20 drivers, so all can have a go at this.


Notes.
· Chatting of any kind during Qualifying and the Race is strictly prohibited in the chat. There is no need to say sorry/thanks/pitting/leaving pits/etc. Anything that needs to be said can wait until after the session.
· If you feel you were wronged in any way during an event and wish to report the incident, simply send the event organiser a private message. Please include a description of the incident along with a video. If you are unable to create a video, please include details such as who was involved and where the incident happened with a timestamp. Do not post reports/accusations in the thread itself - negativity and anger gets us nowhere.
· We encourage all our drivers to use Teamspeak 3, download here. Talking directly to your fellow drivers increases the fun and the ability to share information in an easy friendly way. It will improve your driving skills dramatically, Log in here
· Please take into account that rFactor 2 is still in beta stage and that technical problems might occur. If you spot a bug please post a (constructive) report in the dedicated bug forum here.

 

[Larry Thomas]

First off a big thanks to Marco for organising the event.
I was relatively happy with my evening.
After the technical problems I had had leading up to this event (rF crashing, discos) I was really happy that technically everything was excellent.
The only problem was me, I am my own worst enemy.
Hopefully I have learned a bit (even though at my age it takes longer for things to stick!).
Lesson n°1 - I look into my mirrors too much. And when you are looking behind you are not looking in front.
Lesson n°2 - rF2 is not rF1. When you come out on new tyres they need warming up.
Anyway I had fun until I couldn't go any further (I still had three out of four wheels but apparently that is not enough )
I hope I didn't cause too many problems.
Roll on the next event and thanks everyone.

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Stefan, I can post my setup later today or tomorrow but it's almost the default one, I did only a few minor changes, nothing special. I'm not good in making setups
.

Thanx Tomasz! This might give you some extra competition in the future!!!

 

[Dan Coldrick]

What a great race, lost some places in the first few laps but I don't mind that in an enduro event. Then on lap 7 I had a big smash with someone who had already had a tangle with someone else, I think Marco was involved, not really a lot I could do about it. Made it back to the pits, and came out 4 laps down, no worries this is endurance I thought.

Slowly but surely started unlapping myself until I got blue flagged and a drive through for ignoring it (ahhhhhh!!!!), I set my target as Scott Webber as he was only a lap or so ahead with a long way to go, next thing I see I'm passed him (must havecrashed).

Next on the agenda is Neil Harvey, he was going to be a long shot but every pit stop I seemed to gain loads of time until I was within 10secs of him with about 10 laps to go, unfortunately Claes was infront of me (a few laps ahead in the race) and I had a little tangle with him in my desperation to get passed and chase Neil down, I waited for Claes and that was the end of my chase. Sorry Claes for the accident, totally my fault, had a long shot dive down the inside.

Great race! I thoroughly enjoyed it!

 

[Jimi Hughes]

Stefan I was also on standard set up, only fuel adjusted. My quali time was poor but PB in quali mode was a 1.22.1, however it is tricky in the real session to match that pace when you get so few hotlaps in due to traffic (I say traffic, I mean me having to move out of everyone else's way!)

Tomasz it's a real shame what happened at the start, I think we would have had an epic battle as our times were very close throughout the session. Hope we get to try again sometime soon

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

A 1:22 on standard setup...... In race did a 1:25 flat as fastest time... 3 seconds.....that is huuuuge.

 

[Jimi Hughes]

I don't know if it's just me, but I found it took a fair few laps of working the tyres hard to get the best out of them in the 370z, but that could just be psychological. In official quali it is so hard to find the same sort of consistency partially due to the volume of traffic, and mainly due to me persistently binning it on cold tyres!

 

[Tomasz Matuszewski]

Yea, when you go out the tyres are too cold to be competetive and you need a few laps to warm them up and then you can push more. BTW here is my setup. As I said before, it's the default one with minor changes only.

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Yea, when you go out the tyres are too cold to be competetive and you need a few laps to warm them up and then you can push more. BTW here is my setup. As I said before, it's the default one with minor changes only.

Thanx Tomasz! If you post the SVM file in the rF2 setup section, than every one can find it and download it directly.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

It would be great if we could have like a 50 LAP NISSAN GTR MId-Ohio Event. The battle at the front was really great, but I think its impossible to drive this cars so competitve for 100 laps. After about 20 Laps in P1 I was totally exhausted, because you had to attack, defend and clear the traffic at the sametime and nearly hit all the traffic in sector 3, which is really bad
I wouldn't mind to share my setup and some advise so we can have more competetice GTR drivers, because the setup I think is really important when you are driving the GTR.

 

[Caramidaru Andrei Bogdan]

It would be great if we could have like a 50 LAP NISSAN GTR MId-Ohio Event. The battle at the front was really great, but I think its impossible to drive this cars so competitve for 100 laps. After about 20 Laps in P1 I was totally exhausted, because you had to attack, defend and clear the traffic at the sametime and nearly hit all the traffic in sector 3, which is really bad
I wouldn't mind to share my setup and some advise so we can have more competetice GTR drivers, because the setup I think is really important when you are driving the GTR.

I would have drove the gtr but i hate the sound,for me is very unrealistic(not that i heard one in real life )but i just do not get along with that sound,also the crash physics are a bit hectic at the nissan

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

That's why it's called an endurance race Frederic! It's long and demanding on the concentration. Staying focussed and consistent are key. I would never do hotlap after hotlap as it drains the concentration quickly and too much risk.
I choose the 370z as it's driving nicely and easier to catch than the GTR. I love the Megane too, but almost everyone choose that one and that was too boring for me.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Yeah I am not really talking about an endurance race there. I thought more of a Nissan GTR Grand Prix or something like that. The Concentration was my real problem. I had no problem to do a complete stint just hotlaps, but in the race it is very diffrent.
The pace was really high and I always tried not to push to hard, so I was about 8 tenth slower than I could, but then you have your mirrors full of GTRs and then other cars battleig in front of you. It was really great but in such a competetive way I cant stand that for 100 LAPS. So just an idea to maybe host a GTR Grand Prix.

There is also now an 1988 Senna mod, which does work really well on MId-Ohio:
Here
So there would be a possibility. To do mixed class Racing with the F1 car and the GTR, that would be a real blast I think and in the slow corners you shouldn't have the big diffrence in speed like between the GTR and the 370z.

EDIT: changed link

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Mix the GTR and F1..... hmmmmm.... I think that has written accidents all over it.
Not only the cornering, but also the braking are way different and that is where incidents could happen.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

That was also my first thought, but with the F1 you can really easily overtake on the brakes and on acceleration, because they have much more power and you have the possibility to go off line in a corner, which is really risky in an GTR. I think I will try this combination with some A1 drivers, but for example in LeMans this sort of combination works really well

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Yes ofcourse in the LMS series you have different classes mixed up, but mix tin cups with open wheelers is a total different story.
Try it with AI and tell us how it went. We might organise a fun event for it.

 

[Tim McIver]

Been a bit slow posting after the race. Took me a few days to recover from all the missed sleep...

Thanks to all that organised this event. I enjoyed my first ever non open wheeler race with race department.

I took the GTR and was using the default setup. I put in a few hours practice and felt confident I could survive the time but I was a bit worried about my pace. I managed to to qualify last of the GTRs, but that still put me in 5th where I thought I should be able to keep out of trouble for the first 10 laps or so.

That was exactly how it worked out. I drove very causiously for the first 5 laps or so just making sure I stayed clear of the other classes, but sadly watching the other GTRs build a healthy gap.

Before too long however I found myself in 2nd position. Whoever was in 3rd was hovering not too far behind me as we went in and out of the pits but I managed to increase my pace a little and pull away.

I didn't find the GTR too difficult to drive over the 100 laps (okay 99). I made my 2 scheduled stops and managed to have no contacts or offs. Pretty happy to finish 2nd (okay last in class...) Next time I plan to increase the pace and fight for a win.

I'd be interested to try a setup if any of the GTR guys had a good one? I know it's normally in peoples heads, but it is hard not to wonder how much a good setup was worth?

Thanks again all.

Tim.

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

I'd be interested to try a setup if any of the GTR guys had a good one? I know it's normally in peoples heads, but it is hard not to wonder how much a good setup was worth?

Tim, did you ever checked the setup section of the forum? There is a pretty good setup there, check HERE.

 

[Dan Marr]

Hi guys, I would be more than happy to run my team for people who can race, and seeing as i am probably the worlds slowest driver, i shall be running my team where they are wanted! PM me for any information you want, or if you want to drive!

 

[David Gronvalls]

Are any more of these endurance races happening? I missed the last (this) one =(

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Are any more of these endurance races happening? I missed the last (this) one =(

Yes David.

We are planning something for the coming period. We haven't really picked a date and how the exact format will be, but we are defenitly will have loads more of endurance races.

We also hope that the driver swap option will be available than we can think of 3+ hours races .