La Sarthe and Spa ,weather report and other " stuff "

[Sir Crashalot]

Had to try one of the new swaps:

Didn't do any permanent upgrades yet, just the usual racing ones. Stiffened the suspension a bit and adjusted the gearbox for a topspeed ~260.

Car is very well to drive and easy to handle on dry and on wet track. Very fast through corners. Good brakes. Great economy. 3 laps on FM2 full throttle and reving 'til it hits the limiter. Easy on tires, good sound. I can't say anything bad about this car!
Race was dry for 3 laps, then heavy rain on laps 4&5.

Small detail: Although the car has a digital speedometer it doesn't go above 180.

 

[jrbabbitt]

I picked this up on my last account, forgot that I didn't have this trophy..

This setup is basically straight up, just added the high RPM turbo and ballast for balance and got the PP on 700.
RH tyres will last entire race and you can get 5 laps easy at FM6

Enjoy....

 

[jrbabbitt]

..when you forget to buy wets or IM tyres....

Look at the penalties...

Edit: I paused and posted this mid-race and I did not win but on very next race there was not a drop if rain...

 

[bigmull]

Further to the handling issues post update, I picked 2 cars that I know exactly how they would behave under race conditions. They were the E Type and Ferrari 500 Mondial.Both have “lost” grip in the dry resulting in rear end and lateral slides in the dry whereas previously there was none.Looking at wet performance both RI and full wets were pants.As you can see in the following video I used both RI and full wets.On the first lap it had full wets and then RI.But there is a silver lining.


Check your “assist” settings in the options,for some reason mine had been deselected, so I reselected my option and lo and behold it appears to have solved the issue.(I only did 1 lap but it appeared that all had returned to normal.)

 

[jrbabbitt]

So, I am in serious grind time as I want to make up that 20 mil buy of the 330P4 and I'm going back over my known good cars. This Mark IV is good for 4 laps at FM6 and RH tyres will last long time. There are permanent mods for this car but chose not to. Did install supercharger and intercooler.

 

[bigmull]

..when you forget to buy wets or IM tyres....
View attachment 1323288
Look at the penalties...

Edit: I paused and posted this mid-race and I did not win but on very next race there was not a drop if rain...

Lol, I have had time penalties but not to that extent!

 

[jrbabbitt]

Lol, I have had time penalties but not to that extent!

it was that i had slicks and rain and they do not mix well and it was a slippery mess at the porsche curves...

Now on to a more interesting question directed to the usuals that "live" here at the track, In real life, could you, in a properly prepared car, pull a 5 minute or better lap at LeSarthe in a 30 minute session, no rain, no traffic, and if needed full pit facilities are available to use?

Question is not applicable, please do not answer...

 

[Katnomad]

it was that i had slicks and rain and they do not mix well and it was a slippery mess at the porsche curves...

Now on to a more interesting question directed to the usuals that "live" here at the track, In real life, could you, in a properly prepared car, pull a 5 minute or better lap at LeSarthe in a 30 minute session, no rain, no traffic, and if needed full pit facilities are available to use?

Porsche 918, in 2013 did fastest lap for a road car on the Bugatti 1.42.627 . Took only 2 lap for Christophe Tinseau to set it.
On other hand Max Hesse did a 3.55.88 with the M4 gt3 for the road to Le Mans qualification , and the Porsche did around 4 mn.
Just number to say , should but 24 h track is set only once per year.

More seriously i did not managed your penalty record , i had once 32 🤣🤣

 

[smoothbore12]

I also had one time 32 sec. as @Katnomad 😂 .

Yesterday i took advantage of an Aston invitation and bought a second venevo .
So i took my first one at la sarthe but wasn't pleased with her settings.
I face instability under braking at rear end.
Anyway , need short shift to pull 3 laps at FM6 so at FM1 probably you have way less than 2 laps.

Other than that i race online with turtle racing team so if any of you want to take part you can send a pm for details.
We're not fast drivers but we have plenty of respect to eachother and much fun especially at the comment section 🤣

Have a good day guys

 

[jrbabbitt]

...deleted...

 

[Sir Crashalot]

In real life, could you, in a properly prepared car, pull a 5 minute or better lap at LeSarthe in a 30 minute session, no rain, no traffic, and if needed full pit facilities are available to use?

I guess most of us here never tried to drive that fast around a track IRL. At least I haven't done any track day or something like that so far. So that's hard to answer. Depends on the car also.

 

[Everpure]

Wanted to test the Genesis VGT. But either I'm overlooking something or the only way to bring this to 700PP is using Heavy Wets? Anyway, horrible to drive, tires already about 25% worn after half a lap....no, thx, not my cup of tea.

So I used one of my favorite Porsches, the Cayman, maxed out engine, WR1:

View attachment 1322716
View attachment 1322717

Great car! Fun to drive, great sound and it revs up so nicely! Good brakes, easy on tires, good economy. FM6 all the way, 3 laps without any management. Easy 4 laps if you shift at 7.5k-8k.
Race was dry except for light rain on lap 4 which made the track a bit slippery and gave me some penalties.

View attachment 1322718

The Cayman is wonderful to drive in any configuration! 😍

 

[Pesselles]

I asked those of us here "if YOU were in a properly prepared car could you do a 5-minute lap or better in a 30 minute session at Le Mans?" I don't care what the record is for professional drivers or other, I was asking about us, the ones here who know this track only by playing GT7 so bloody much. I think I could do a 5 minute lap in a good car but I don't think I could do sub 5 minute. I picked the 30 minute time limit because it is the limit of the race we all do here.

On the World Touring Car 700 (30 mns), I usually lap in 4:15 with the Nissan GT-R with FM6.

On the World Touring Car 800 (5 laps), I use the Toyota TS030 and I lap around 4:00 with FM2 or 3.

 

[smoothbore12]

Yesterday i was so tired that i did only one race for daily marathon purpose.
At least i took a car that never ride before, a swapped supra.

The car feels slow and is slow .
At FM6 need a bit of short shift to get 3 laps , i use FM6 and in one lap FM2 and that's where faster lap is and i was manual all the way except first lap.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

Yesterday i was so tired that i did only one race for daily marathon purpose.
At least i took a car that never ride before, a swapped supra.
View attachment 1323800

The car feels slow and is slow .
At FM6 need a bit of short shift to get 3 laps , i use FM6 and in one lap FM2 and that's where faster lap is and i was manual all the way except first lap.

Drove this one also a few days ago and I like it! Looks incredible in Verde Mantis, sounds much better than the original engine and doesn't have the annoying rpm warning beep the LFA has. Didn't feel exceptionally slow for me either but I guess that's all very subjective.

 

[smoothbore12]

Drove this one also a few days ago and I like it! Looks incredible in Verde Mantis, sounds much better than the original engine and doesn't have the annoying rpm warning beep the LFA has. Didn't feel exceptionally slow for me either but I guess that's all very subjective.

At FM6 is terrible slow and that 8 gearbox is useless somehow.
Perhaps i didn't have proper settings but the feeling you get is that things are going slow .

 

[Sir Crashalot]

At FM6 is terrible slow and that 8 gearbox is useless somehow.
Perhaps i didn't have proper settings but the feeling you get is that things are going slow .

If I find time I will try again tonight. But you're definitely right about 8speed gearboxes, they're mostly overkill. Drove the NSX17 yesterday, 7speed, and the 7th gear felt almost exactly like the 6th.... rather pointless also.

 

[smoothbore12]

Today it happens the same as @jrbabbitt 😂
Pick a 458 gr4 dead stock but forgot purchase rain tyres 🤐
Realise that at 4th lap pit stop and at 5th a heavy rain full up the meter till blue mark.
The track was drying very very fast at 6th lap( new stage of weather ) and thought if i overcome the 9 sec. penalty i could win.
Portillia have different opinion and at the final straight i spun and take the 2nd place.

Ill try it again on FM1 since i suspect can do 3 laps while at FM6 was 5 plus.
I use RM tyres since was very low pp but i think ill choose RH for the next run.
And of course am talking about easy level cause i don't think you can win dead stock on the other two.
Perhaps in normal but i don't know.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

Yesterday I wanted to know how efficient a Diesel is in game. So I bought an Atenza, fitted it with a low rev turbo and shifted just before redline (was either 5 or 6k, can't remember). Now that car is really slow😄 but at least it has a nice sound!
Thought I could maybe do 6 laps without stopping but nope, just 5 laps possible. But would have needed to pit anyway since there was sudden and heavy rain on lap 5.

 

[jrbabbitt]

Yesterday I wanted to know how efficient a Diesel is in game. So I bought an Atenza

the Atenza is a diesel?

 

[Sir Crashalot]

the Atenza is a diesel?

Yes it is:

Mazda Atenza Sedan XD L Package '15

The Mazda Atenza Sedan XD L Package '15 is a road car produced by Mazda. It appears in Gran Turismo Sport and Gran Turismo 7. Eight colors are available for this car:   Soul Red Premium Metallic Blue Reflex Mica Deep Crystal Blue Mica Titanium Flash Mica Snow Flake White Pearl Mica Sonic Silver...

gran-turismo.fandom.com

 

[Sir Crashalot]

So I did another race with the swapped Supra and I'm sticking to my opinion. I like this car a lot!

First, for me it's an incredibly beautiful car!

Just from an visual standpoint, I take this over the LFA any day!

Second, it doesn't feel slow for me. Not even on FM6. I tried to "replicate" @smoothbore12 's race by saving fuel on the first lap so I could do the second one on FM2. On 3rd lap rain caught me and the rest of the race was one to forget about. Too much rain for racing tires but too little to not wear the IMs down. The kind of weather where you don't know if you should drive fast to gain enough lead for a 6 lap race or save fuel for a 7th lap. In the end I was missing 20 seconds to end the race after 6th so I had to do a 7th.

BTW: Because of the rather low ratios on the lower gears on this transmission I treat this one like a 6-speed. What I mean is that I'm always one gear higher than I'm usually on other cars. So third for the dunlop curves, fourth through the esses, third through the chikanes on Mulsanne and so on.

 

[jrbabbitt]

I've been testing my group C cars at Le Mans both with and without Turbo to see which version of each car has the better fuel mileage I'll give details later on

 

[jrbabbitt]

as posted above during one of my tests with the Nisssan R92CP I happen to get lucky that I did not have to put in for tyres on my first run with the medium turbo installed and I wound up doing eight laps with no pitstop.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

I have tried this a few times in the past and it never worked out. But yesterday I finally succeeded🙂

 

[smoothbore12]

Had few months to ride it but since @jrbabbitt bring it up i give a shot with the Sauber C9.
I use FM6 all the way and got a dry race .
Using AT gears and fully racing gearbox did 7 laps .
I think is performing about the same with 962 and is definitely a non stop weather permitted.

 

[Erg0]

One car I definitely wouldn't recommend is the engine swapped Alphard Lounge, which barely makes 1 lap on FM1 and requires coasting to get to 2 laps on FM6. I had to stop four times in a six lap race yesterday, but was lucky to win because it rained heavily about 30 seconds into lap 3 and I was the only car on wet tyres.

I did have the uniquely frustrating experience of running out of fuel in the esses on lap 6, then accidentally crossing the line at 29:58 with a 10 second lead and having to drive lap 7 very slowly on an empty tank with no competition.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

W201 is back at LCD!
Bought one and gave it my usual treatment. Full engine upgrade with a mid rev turbo, all racing parts, WR stage 1. Lowered the car a bit and stiffened the suspension a bit.
It's a decent car. For a RWD with a 600hp turbo engine it's surprisingly tame and easy to drive, even on the wet. At least until there is a lot of water on the track (over 2/3, darkblue) then the car has serious problems with traction but still is mostly controllable.
FM5 gives you 3 laps, tire wear is ok.
But somehow the car feels a bit boring. There's nothing exciting about it. Even the sound is underwhelming and muffled.

With the AMG swap, things are different. It has a few hp more but also a bit more weight. But it has a lot more torque and you clearly feel this. Feels more powerful, more alive, but it's also harder to drive. Fuel economy is better (almost 3 laps at FM3), sound is better. And it's a bit faster overall.

So you have the choice here. A rather boring car that is very relaxed and easy to drive or a more exciting and bit faster one that needs a little more caution and concentration. I think I prefer the swapped one but it's still not among my favorite cars for this race. Not by far.

@smoothbore12 Nice livery! Haven't smoked this brand for at least 20 years. Not sure if it even exist anymore.

 

[Everpure]

W201 is back at LCD!
Bought one and gave it my usual treatment. Full engine upgrade with a mid rev turbo, all racing parts, WR stage 1. Lowered the car a bit and stiffened the suspension a bit.
It's a decent car. For a RWD with a 600hp turbo engine it's surprisingly tame and easy to drive, even on the wet. At least until there is a lot of water on the track (over 2/3, darkblue) then the car has serious problems with traction but still is mostly controllable.
FM5 gives you 3 laps, tire wear is ok.
But somehow the car feels a bit boring. There's nothing exciting about it. Even the sound is underwhelming and muffled.

View attachment 1324353

With the AMG swap, things are different. It has a few hp more but also a bit more weight. But it has a lot more torque and you clearly feel this. Feels more powerful, more alive, but it's also harder to drive. Fuel economy is better (almost 3 laps at FM3), sound is better. And it's a bit faster overall.

View attachment 1324354

So you have the choice here. A rather boring car that is very relaxed and easy to drive or a more exciting and bit faster one that needs a little more caution and concentration. I think I prefer the swapped one but it's still not among my favorite cars for this race. Not by far.

@smoothbore12 Nice livery! Haven't smoked this brand for at least 20 years. Not sure if it even exist anymore.

We’d have to ask our French friends here, but according to the internet, both Gitanes and Gauloises are still around. I was more into the latter, back in my heyday… 🙃

 

[smoothbore12]

We’d have to ask our French friends here, but according to the internet, both Gitanes and Gauloises are still around. I was more into the latter, back in my heyday… 🙃

They still exist but not in the package we use to know according to European law they had to change the packet to something more " neutral" with all that stuff that write smoke can cause this, that and whatever.
And of course must be hard to find them.