Dude?
I met the previous milestones just as predicted. It took me about 5 or 6 races for each of them though. I was wondering if my Miata needing a Rigidity Refresher could've been the problem (haven't purchased it yet to check). But it wouldn't make sense unless it was Machine points that I was missing. Anyhow, I'll try those alternate tunings. That's probably what I need to do.
Here are my experiences on the first 7051 points.
I used the JP cars also; Lupo, Miata 1800, RSC Rally Raid, and Nissan 350Z (Fairlady Z). I purchased my Miata new, however; I didn't go with the used one.
I started by doing five B-spec practice laps on the 'ring. I know now that wasn't at all necessary however it may have saved me a race. My rather naive thinking at the time was to give the B-spec driver a look at the track so to speak before jumping into the racing. Anyway, this netted me 370/11/5/0 points.
From there it took four family cup races with the Lupo to reach 598/12/6/5. I used difficulties of -3, -3, -2 and -1 and the margins of victory were 2.310, 2.555, 13.817 and 0.977 seconds.
Three races with Miata-A got me to 1335/25/14/13, all at difficulty -2, and margins of victory of 2.099, 1.488 and 1.159.
Three races with Miata B got me to 2249/37/23/22, all at difficulty -2, unfortunately I didn't record the margins of victory but they were all close.
Miata-C took nine races to reach 3326/50/35/33, the first three at -3 and the last six at -2 difficulty. Again, no times.
RSC-A, four races to 4416/62/46/44, all difficulty -2, no times.
RSC-B, six races to 5399/75/55/53, difficulties of -6, -6, -2, -2, -4, -4, no times.
350Z-A, four races to 6290/87/63/62, all at -6, no times.
350Z-B, two races to 7051/100/70/70, both at -6, no times.
And that adds up to 35 races, not the 34 I thought I'd run. Hmm, that (finally!) accounts for the extra game day I'd been wondering about. But I've digressed.
The strategy I evolved over the course of the races was to always start at pace 1 and overtake off, leaving it strictly alone until the second split, just after the first hairpin at Aremberg. I would then increase the pace, usually to 3, to close on the fifth place car. If there was a big gap between the leaders and the fifth place car I'd toggle overtake on until I passed, otherwise I just hung back trying to stay in its tail.
Often there would be two cars, a big gap, then one or two cars, perhaps another gap, then the backmarkers. If there was a gap between second and third I'd use the pace and overtake to move into third just at the start of the second lap or shortly thereafter. I'd use the pace to close on the leaders, getting right on their tail by somewhere just past the Caracciola Karussel. I'd then move into second place and get on the leader's tail somewhere around Schwalbenschwanz (or "kleiner Karussel"). With the Lupo and Miatas I'd hold off until near the end of the long straight to overtake, with the RSC and 350Z I'd turn overtake on at the beginning of the straight and sometimes even coming around Galgenkopf. The idea is to hold off as long as possible while still having enough time to successfully overtake so that you win the race by as little as possible. I was usually able to win by one or two seconds.
This is not a hard and fast procedure, rather a general guideline on how to conduct a race. After a few races you develop an intuition for when to change the pace, when and when not to overtake, and how to recover from an accidental or uncommanded overtake. Generally I found myself constantly adjusting the pace to try to control the position of the car.
Incidentally if you're unsure of the names of the various sections of the track and can't find a map with them marked, take a leisurely drive around the track in your favorite just-plain-drive-it car; the '68 Camaro and Jaguar E-type work for me. When you see one of those green signs with yellow lettering slow down or stop and read it. They all have the names of that particular section on them.
If I had to hazard a guess as to why it's taking you longer than you'd expected to collect the points, I'd say you're winning (or losing) by too much.
Good luck, hope this helps in some way.
) is confusing me... and I don't get confused easily. )D
and did get lucky that the point I missed as fairly easy to find.
