Online racing

[Tomas Torasen]

I raced online a bit lately and had some good races. But.. although I managed to get my qualy times down decently, my starts makes me lose like 5-6 places.
Is there a special way for the starts in the Ferrari GT2 car? I thought I just had to floor it and hit first at the countdown.

Also I thought about preference of certain skins of the car.. it seems it chooses randomly.. Cant I choose myself somehow?

 

[Tomas Torasen]

I had turned off "pro mode", it starts alright now.

But still wondering about the car skins...

 

[Matheus Machado]

It requires some clutching to start, as the first gear is very long.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Ah you mean because of the first gear on the ferrari. I never thought of that. So you hold your clutch and just release after the countdown and then full throttle?

 

[xnorb]

In AC the start is faked as you can do nothing but ram in 1st gear once the lights go out.

But if you keep the pedal pressed to the floor wheelspin will kill all your acceleration,
so you'll have to control the wheelspin.
I do that by releasing throttle a little bit and i tend to do just fine at starts.

 

[Enagee]

I tend to to hold the revs just before it gets to the red to avoid wheelspin..

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Either there is something more to it. I'm used to controlling wheel spin in starts and are usually one of the fastest off the line. No matter what I do the ferrari bonks down and every car run past me.

I havent had a chance to try to use the clutch yet. But it would be wierd since the clutch is useless until the start actually has happened.

Some cars are just as fast as everyone for me, but the ferrari just bonks down in a wierd way. I'll try some starts in off line race tonight and see if I can come up with something.

I noticed a slight difference when turning on pro mode, but then later I had the slow starts again online.

Also.. perhaps related to this. I noticed timing problems in online races before latest versions. Like half the grid or more going before or after everyone else. Sometimes it was really messed up and some cars went like 5-10 sec's before everyone else. perhaps it's something to do with that.

 

[xnorb]

Never had anything like you described, maybe there's more to it than just a problem with the Ferrari.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Conclusion from last night, I tried both offline and then a couple of online races. It seems fastest for me to just floor it. Clutch have no point in the starts for me.

It seems a correct conclusion that the first gear is so long in the ferrari that. If I floor it then let go too early it grips and bonks down to very low revs (probably due to long gear). I need to hold it and spin the wheels so that the car even turns like 15-20 degrees before getting grip, then I gain most speed it seems. I will check if I can perhaps shorten the first gear just a bit. But -I think that will mess up my whole gearing.

Pro mode seems to let the wheels spin more also, that was probably the first issue I noticed that made me notice the other stuff.

 

[Stereo]

Well, TC only cuts in around 30km/h, so depending how you have that set, you'll get different launch results.

 

[Radu Oros]

If you press Ctrl+T you activate traction control level 1. This is a more active TC on the wheels than the factory TC from when you freshly join the track. I think there's a difference between default TC from when you join the track and the actual TC 1 after you cycle it with ctrl+t. Use electronics apps and you'll see the TC icon flash in more different situations, and is obviously felt in the driving too. This is mostly useful for race GT cars. If you find you're not consistent with the driving in a race, activate tc level 1 and tc will be more invasive on the car.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Oh I didnt think of that.. I did cycle through those modes once. And I noticed the TC got really invasive. But I didnt really get it so I restarted the session and it felt as if it was back to normal.

This is an interesting thing though. Which TC-setting would be fastest? Too invasive and you would probably get bonked down. A little wheel spin while controlling the car would probably be faster, I'm guessing.

But some TC must surely be faster than none at all right?

 

[demetri]

I also used to have start issues in the past and here's how I dealt with that.
My baseline setup has 1st gear topping out at 115 kmh, which is pretty long and it is tricky to make good starts with it. When starting on medium tyres I hold my throttle at about 80-85% until red lights go out and then on start hit the 1st and smoothly but quickly apply full throttle. No clutch needed.
This doesn't work with softs though as they stick better and will bog the car down (or will overspin if you apply too much throttle too early). With softs I use the clutch, holding 100% throttle and about 35-40% clutch before the start, then hit 1st and smoothly release the clutch.
The goal here is to have just a small wheelspin on the start, because spinning tyres too much will permanently damage them (graining) and even though tyre temp app wouldn't show anything bad you will have really poor rear grip for the rest of your race and a nasty oversteer as the result of that. As usual, practice makes perfect, I suggest to do that in offline quickrace, where you can easily restart it as many times as you want.
P.S. I don't use TC as it makes you slower