Each week I have featured an interview with one of the Regular Drivers in our Sunday Race Series - this week words of wisdom from Eran who came third in our previous championship.
1. What is the secret behind your speed?
Being a musician has probably helped me quite a lot. Each track has its unique rythm and each corner requires split-second timing. Racing around the Nordschleife is very similar to playing a symphony: you need to know what's coming next, prepare for it and execute it with precision. And just like playing a musical instrument requires muscle memory, so does racing a car. The hand needs to find its way to the shifter, the left foot needs to be able to operate independently from the right, your arms needs to interpret the force feedback and be able to recognize understeer, oversteer, traction, bumps, etc.
2. Do you use a wheel or controller?
I use a Logitech Driving Force GT wheel. It has served me well for about 5 years now! I'm sure there are better wheels out there, but a good wheel remains a good wheel until you've tried something better, so I'm going to avoid trying something better until I need a replacement
3. If you use a wheel, what sort of wheel and rig or stand?
Well, in GT5 I attached my wheel to a table, but now I've gone lazy and decided that the table isn't necessary anymore, so I simply hold the wheel with my knees! It requires some legwork when the force feedback kicks in, but that's alright, it just means that I can count my GT6 sessions as "workout".
4. How many hours per week do you practise?
Not nearly as much as I should! When I do practice it usually pays out in the end, but I don't really have the patience to practice a lot on my own. Instead I mostly drive my favourite cars on my favourite tracks, but I think that's also valuable to some degree.
5. How do you tune your cars - what do you start with first?
The fundaments are power, gearbox and weight. Power is often given by the regulations, so there's not much to fiddle around with, although sometimes you may work with the power limiter and different power options to tweak the power curve in your favour.
As for weight, if it's possible to adjust the weight balance I usually do that. In general, understeer is an archenemy of mine so I often try to move the ballast as far back as possible, to reduce the moment of inertia around the vertical axis (which means less force is required from the front wheels to rotate the car).
The gearbox settings depends on the power curve, the amount of gears and the expected speed. The goal is to have the engine operating as close to peak power as possible for as long as possible throughout the race. If the power curve is flat that's an easy thing to do and you can have quite a wide gap between each gear. For peaky power curves the gear ratios needs to be closer to each other, in order to not lose too much power when you shift gears, and in those cases it's a matter of having to sacrifice power where you think it's least useful. For high speed tracks it's often best to have a wider gap between the lower gears and tighter between the higher gears. For tracks with a lot of low speed sections it's often the opposite (although since torque = power/speed, this means that at low speeds the benefit of power is reduced, as you can only apply so much torque to the wheels before you start losing traction). For tracks that are somewhere in between, you'll have to find the best balance.
Also worth knowing, regarding the gearbox, is that the bigger the gap between the gears, the longer time the shift is going to take. That is because the shift sequence waits for the engine speed to drop to meet the new gear ratio before it engages the clutch, and the longer the speed will have to drop, the longer time it's going to take. It's a tiny difference, but it may have a big impact from standing starts, especially since the shift from 1st to 2nd is usually pretty long by default.
The next step is to take it to the track and find out how it behaves during acceleration, braking, cornering, etc. I'm no expert on suspension tuning, but I've got the basics of over-/understeer and I know the purpose of the limited slip differential so I do some guesstimations and then pretend it's good enough.
6. How long have you been playing GT?
Started with GT and GT2 in the end of the 1990's. I skipped the PlayStation 2 and then got GT5 Prologue in 2009 I think. So in total I've been playing for about 10 years.
7. How old are you or is that private?
I'm 29.
8. What does your family think of your hobby?
I'm single, so that's not really applicable. My brother is a Forza fan though, but we played a lot of Gran Turismo when we were younger. Split screen races at Tahiti, Seattle and Grindelwald in GT2!
9. What sort of car do you drive in real life?
A 400 bhp, 2000 Nm Volvo with 22 inch rims
But I don't actually drive it myself, I pay a chauffeur to drive me. And if you absolutely must know, it's actually a public bus...
Don't have a driving licence yet, too expensive.
10. Do you drive fast in real life?
I don't think I would. I'm not interested in speed
per se. I'd be Captain Slow on the roads and save my Stig superpowers for the track
11. What car would you drive if you won a lot of money?
A 1960's Alfa Romeo, perhaps a
Giulietta Sprint.
Car Change for Round 5
Don't forget that if you are racing in Classes GT3 or GT5 in the "1967 Three Ten Cup" that you will need to change cars for round 5. Note - this only applies to Gold and Platinum license drivers it does not apply to Silver drivers who will remain with the Ford GT40.
Next Round 5 from Zahara (Targa Florio Replica)