LeMONS to LeMANS Race Series -- Season Ended

  • Thread starter chuyler1
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I had a fun face. Thanks guys for letting me in 1/2 way. Because I joined in progress, I had an advantage of upgrading my car with a lot of power.

As for the race, I really enjoyed having a faster car while keeping a faster driver behind. At the beginning of the race, I was worried about wiifreak and diabolic so I was trying to build a gap to break the draft. I think a 2-second gap was sufficient to break the draft. I was also concentrating on not crashing after last week's race where I pitted almost every lap.

About 2nd or 3rd lap, wiifreak ran into me after Mulsanne because i was braking super early for that tight right hander. I was braking on the straight at about the 100m mark, coasting through the 1st right hander, and then braking again for the tight right hander. I got a little damage left rear, but it did not affect my car at all. So luckily, I was able to build a small gap to wii/diabolic.

At end of lap 10, I pitted and wii as well. I had used up about 75% fuel so my pit took a lot longer. I got out at 4th, behind diabolic, chulyer, and wii. Wii and I ran some fast lap at night. After diabolic and chulyer pitted, I was closing a little on wii, until he ran slightly wide after Mulsannne and got into the sand. i passed him accelerating to Indianapolis. I think that was lap 12.

After that, Wii stayed glued to my bumper for the entire race. I was a little stressed, especially in the dark. No matter what my time was, he was right behind, usually about 0.3 gap. I wanted to break the draft, but at the same time had to conserve tires. After about 2 laps, I guess that his strategy was to keep close until the last lap.

At the next to last lap, I got a little loose after Indianapolis, and I figured it was going to be real fun with worn tires. Wii passed me at the first chicane. I stayed behind going into the 2nd chicane (so did he, as he slowed to about 150 mph). I drafted and passed him after Mulsanne. Then he pulled off an amazing pass on the outside at the exit of Indianapolis. I drafted and passed him going into Porsche, and managed to slide my way to the finish.

Too bad diabolic was not with us the last 1/2 of the race. That would have been real fun.

Looking forward to next season. Endurance races are fun, especially with heavy damage.
 
Great race report. I spent the entire race alone. My car didn't have enough speed to keep up. Grenade and I talked about gear ratios afterward but that wasn't the issue. I never came close to redline, even on the first lap in the draft. I think his lower weight and few extra hp made the difference...plus that first lap I didn't want to hit anyone so I took it slow the first few turns and was probably a little too far back to get a good draft anyway.

--

Here are the final results for the season:
89 chuyler1/chuyler1 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI GSR T.M. '00
79 WiiFreak/WiiFreak Nissan Spec-R Aero (S15) '02
77 grenadeshark/grenadeshark Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI GSR '99
66 diabolicwyvern/diabolicwyvern Subaru IMPREZA Sedan WRX STi Version VI '99
50 Vol Jbolaz/a_garris Subaru Impreza Coupe WRX TypeR STI Version VI '99
49 gjbaldwin60/gjbaldwin60 Subaru Impreza WRX STI '02
47 Snoopykuan Nissan 350Z (Z33, EU) '03
37 sl3ight/sl3ight Nissan Silvia Spec-R Aero S15
24 SohnVonStig Toyota MR-2 Spyder (6MT) '02
16 redreevos/redreevos Nissan 350Z (Z33, EU) '03
14 fatrab/Fatrabbitbrain Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI RS '99
5 xonant/xonant Mazda RX-8 Type S '07
5 polizei/Booch16 Mazda RX-7 Type R (FD, J) '93

Although I ended up being the winner, it wasn't because of my mad skills or part selections.

GVE-R: I spent too much on the initial cost of my car compared to grenade and didn't really install the appropriate parts to make it fast. I could barely keep up in the draft and after 4 or 5 laps i was racing alone. Diablo may have caught me but his frequent altercations with the outskirts of the track gave me an uncontested 3rd place finish.

Cape Ring South: For this race, lots of other drivers had faster cars but consistency paid off. I had the win in sight but I wasted too much tire trying to keep pace with grenade on the final stretch of the race. When he wiped out, I couldn't pull ahead enough and protect my position because I simply had no tires left to turn. My car was a little quicker accelerating but his wing resulted in faster speeds through some of the turns. It was a fun battle and I really enjoyed the track.

Laguna Seca: Poor choice in mods again had me losing time when the tires wore down. I ran tests with the wing but I wasn't seeing faster times so I opted to leave it off thinking i would have more power for a draft pass. Grenade eventually pulled away and I raced alone the remainder of the race for another 2nd place finish.

Daytona: The only thing I had going for me was consistency. I was the only fast car not to have an incident. Even after I misjudged fuel consumption and had to make a late race stop for gas I still had a big enough gap to win by over a minute. Had grenade been racing with a wheel, this would have been a totally different race. My only win occurred on a night where my competitor was fumbling with a controller.

Nurburgring: The changes to the update had me messing with the tune 5 minutes before the race started. I ran a few laps with WiiFreak up front, not bothering to challenge his position, then my rear tire slipped out in a very unlikely place and I slammed the brakes to avoid hitting anything. That incident put be back about 15 seconds. Several mistakes while trying to catch up didn't help...then chatting late in the race I drove off the track. Whoops. 3rd place for me.

le Sarthe: As mentioned above. Money invested in the custom suspension earlier in the season should have been spent elsewhere and I was down on hp and up on weight compared to the front runners. I wasn't expecting to be competitive at this track when I chose the evo but I was disappointed that i didn't see any action the entire race. The closest thing to excitement was trying to chase diablo on the last lap when he ran out of gas.

In the end, consistency and accident avoidance is what it took to win. There was never a race where I had the fastest car on the track.


PRIZES
For participating, I will gift premium cars to the top performers. Please select a car at or below the credit limit based on your final series standing.

WiiFreak - 250,000cr limit
Grenade - 100,000cr limit
Diabolic - 50,000cr limit
Garris - 25,000cr limit
Baldwin - 25,000cr limit
 
Wow, I've won something!

There is a Fiat 500 seasonal challenge, right? I don't think I have one of those. If not, I do have loads of Civics, but they are fun. I can always use another one of those.
 
Survey Results

How would you like initial vehicle selection to be regulated?
50% voted for a PP based system to start the season so that is what we will do.

If a performance point based selection were used, what should the initial limit be?
We got 6 votes for 350, 5 votes for 400, and 4 votes for 450. Looking at the car selections, I think 375pp should appease everyone. There is a good mix of old and new vehicles between 325-375.

Should there be an age requirement to vehicle selection (true lemons won't be new cars after all)?
The results were split down the middle. 6 said "no". 3 said "pre-2k" and 3 said "pre-90". I am going to make an executive decision and go with pre-2000. It doesn't rule out that many cars anyway but it could eliminate some late model sleepers.

Should a vehicle trade-in policy be allowed?
6 responded with "no", while 5 responded with "yes, but only after the first race". Part of the challenge with lemons racing is trying out cars before you pick one to run. MyGranTurismo.com lists typical PP values for almost all the cars in the game. I am going to stick with no car changes for the next season. Otherwise, we could end up with drivers all attempting to pick the fastest car after their initial selection ends up being horrible.

Please select your preffered points system for placing 1st through 10th.
Points system will go unchanged from last season based on 8/12 votes.

Please select your preferred rewards breakout for placing 1st through 10th.
New reward system will be: 0,1000,2500,5000,7500,10000,15000,20000,25000,30000
based on 7/12 votes. Top drivers will have very little to spend on improving there cars and the field should flip-flop at a faster pace provided drivers pick appropriate mods to make their cars faster and handle better.

Would you like races to take part with time change?
Only 3 voted for "no" so time change will stay. 5 voted for yes on any supported track while 4 voted for only one track. Racing in the dark will stay.

Would you be interested having one race take part with weather change enabled?
This question was split down the middle. We can discuss further. Rain obviously changes pit strategy which could really mix things up. However, drivers may feel cheated if they were set to win a race with a fast car but rain put them at a pitting disadvantage. We can discuss further since I haven't made a decision yet.

Please select the tracks you would like to race.
Tracks from the previous season had high vote counts. One comment made was that the tracks be similar in difficulty rather than getting progressively harder. I personally like the shorter tracks which promote lap traffic and supply a shorter distance to pit road. Nurburgring was fun, but an early incident had you spending upwards of 10-12 minutes working your way back to the pits.

Top voted tracks...
Suzuka Circuit (8 votes)
Autodromo Nazionale Monza (7 votes)
Tsukuba Circuit (6 votes)
Laguna Seca Raceway (6 votes)
Grand Valley East Section / Reverse (6 votes)
Trial Mountain Circuit (6 votes)
Côte d’Azur (Monaco) (6 votes)
Nürburgring Nordschleife (5 votes) or GP/F (4 votes)
Road Course – Daytona (5 votes)
Autumn Ring Mini (5 votes)

Suzuka and Monza will definitely be on the schedule since they were the top votes. GVE-R will likely be used as well, perhaps as the season opener again. As much as I enjoy Monaco, I'm not sure it fits if we want to have the tracks be similar difficulty. it might make for a good season closer though, pitting man against machine.

Also, do we need a pre-season race? It helped last season to get a feel for tire wear and race length but I'm not sure how necessary it is this season. There was lots of controversy about changing cars and what not afterward so it might be better to just jump in and run what you brung as the saying goes.

I'm thinking we could do grid starts as long as the grid is setup correctly. A 3 lap pre-race qualifying with damage off might work better. However if the grid start quickly becomes a turn 1 pile-up we may want to reconsider.
 
I would like to have a pre season race, due too me being new to the series, and I think we will have a large amount of new racers. I think we'll be at a disadvantage if the first race is our test race.
 
Wouldn't La Sarthe have to be the last race, given the title of the series?

For initial car, does that mean that we have to pick a pre-2000 car in the UCD that is 375 PP or lower? The 375PP is stock, right?

Edit: what does pre-2000 mean? Is a 2000 car ok or no?
 
I will post details in the OP soon...but yes, it will be any car NCD/UCD/OCD that is 1999 or earlier that has 375pp or lower after a full engine refresh. For the first race, parts which affect pp will be allowed on cars below 375 to get them to 375. Parts that do not affect pp (transmissions, suspensions, flywheels, clutches etc) will not be allowed until after the first race.

Tuner cars, rally cars, race cars, will not be allowed as they will provide an unfair advantage and they don't fit with the lemons theme. Not sure if there are any in this range but i'm just throwing that out there now in case you are shopping for sleepers.

When selecting a car, keep in mind most cars will only gain about 100pp so if you pick something that has 325 initial pp, you may max out by the end of the season. However the rewards will be less than last season so it is possible you won't even reach maximum pp.
 
I was going to use the same Silvia as wii so I will probably go with that. I

think a new thread would be good.
 
Oh. Have to hunt for an older Silvia then. Are we going to take a pic again or can I just use a car I already purchased but unmodified, since we are using pp not price?
 
Correct, I won't need a picture, i'll just need the make/model/year of the car and the parts you are installing to get it to 375pp. After the first race everyone needs to share their cars so we can make sure they are all kosher.

There are tons of good selections. A few MR cars, plenty of FR cars...and I'm wondering if i should experiment with at least one FF car to mix things up. Tire wear may be an issue but its worth a few minutes to try out one or two to see what kind of lap times they produce before the tires wear down.
 
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Correct, I won't need a picture, i'll just need the make/model/year of the car and the parts you are installing to get it to 450pp. After the first race everyone needs to share their cars so we can make sure they are all kosher.

There are tons of good selections. A few MR cars, plenty of FR cars...and I'm wondering if i should experiment with at least one FF car to mix things up. Tire wear may be an issue but its worth a few minutes to try out one or two to see what kind of lap times they produce before the tires wear down.

450pp? I am confused. We are starting with the car at 375 pp, without any changes, no?

FR is my favorite drivetrain combo. I lose the backend of MR and I kill the tires on FF. I have a Toyota 200GT too, but that should not qualify as a lemon.
 
Whoops, sorry i meant 375pp

The 2000GT qualifies. It's a little bit exotic, but if you watch the lemons races, there is a big mix of cheap commuters and classic cars...people find deals on the weirdest cars.
 
Wouldn't La Sarthe have to be the last race, given the title of the series?

I liked the time change at La Sarthe. That was quite fun. And it is a bit longer of a track, but not epically long like the ring.

Also, up to 375 without engine limiting or weight ballast, correct?

I don't think there are a lot of premium cars that are under 375 PP that are pre-2000. Which is a shame. I was looking for an FR with a front aerokit option.

I can live without that, though. I'm a rubbish driver and should stay FF or AWD. But I will have to find a tune, and for used cars, that is a bit harder. I'll have to see what I can find.
 
There are virtually no RR cars in the game. the '89 Miata (Eunos) is the only premium so people will likely be shopping the UCD. The Keicars, Capp and Autozam are available, but i don't think they would even be competitive on the first race. The PP system doesn't really work when the cars are super small.
 
There are virtually no RR cars in the game. the '89 Miata (Eunos) is the only premium so people will likely be shopping the UCD. The Keicars, Capp and Autozam are available, but i don't think they would even be competitive on the first race. The PP system doesn't really work when the cars are super small.

I meant FR. RR would usually be the Porsche/Ruf cars. I didn't mean those. I'm worse at those than the MRs.


p.s. Not sure if we can do a query at mygranturismo.net or gt5cars.net to show only < 2000 && < 375.

p.p.s. http://mygranturismo.net/carlist.php?max_year=1999

Then you can sort it.
 
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Yup. There is no way to get max_pp=375 so you just have to scroll down. Keep in mind that not all values are correct on that site. Occasionally they are lower or higher than actual. And remember to do a Engine Rebuild to get the true PP of the car. if you are shopping the UCD, you will likely have to try cars below 375 to see what they are after the refresh.

Given that you were quite loose in an AWD car, you might be more consistent in FF. However, FF cars require a very different line. Based on my horrible performance on Sedan night last week, the FF cars run out of front tire very quickly and you have to break much earlier than cars that have more tread. To race a FF properly in an enduro, you'll have to be very careful with tires. The MRs have the opposite problem. They putt too much stress on the rear tires and get tail happy after a few laps. I think I'll pick a few FRs, an MR, and one or two FFs and put 30 laps on them at GVE-R to see how each does on tires. I imagine if SohnVonStig takes part he'll want to use his MR-S again. That looks like a good choice and I have a quick one for 450 nights...but i'll try something different if someone else picks that car.
 
Check post 844 above. I think i will start an new thread with further details tomorrow when i have more time.
 
Ok, discussion should continue on the new thread. Start shopping for your weapon of choice for next week's pre-season warmup.
 

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