Category: Report

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 7 Dragon Trail Seaside

Posted on October 23, 2020 by Doug

The penultimate round of the ESR Endurance League was held at the GTSport original track “Dragon Trail Seaside” – a fictional track based on the Croatian coast. It’s a popular track in the game with a nice hairpin at Turn 11, some sweeping esses and the famous “chicane of death” just before a short tunnel.

As it’s one of the launch tracks from 2017, Dragon Trail Seaside is a track I know fairly well so I didn’t do a lot of practice. The sessions I did were mainly based around strategy and working out how long I could make a set of RSS tires last before they went off. After some testing I decided they were at their best for up to 6 laps although I could get 8 if I needed to. After doing some maths and working out the race would be 36 laps I decided to run a 4 stop race using 4 sets of RSS tires for 6 or 7 laps and then run the last stint when the field would be more spread out on a set of RS tires.

Practice o’clock!

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Doug

One of the advantages of having couple of weeks in-between jobs is that I could get in a bit of practice in a Kart rather than on the PS4. While I was still working I booked a practice session at Lydd on what I hoped would be a dry day. While I was off, I booked a practice at Buckmore on the spur of the moment as it was such a nice day.

The session at Lydd unfortunately was wet and not as much fun.

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 6 Lago Maggiore

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Doug

After last weeks race I’d not done much driving on GTSport at all, preferring to try Assetto Corsa Competizione instead. I had done a lot of driving in traffic though and was hopeful I’d be able to avoid any silly mistakes.

Without a lot of practice I did several sessions on Monday and played around with the RM and RS tires, eventually deciding to do 10 laps on the RM tire and the remainder of the race on the faster RS tire. I reckoned the race would be 30 laps (I was right) and that I could do 20 laps on 3 sets of RS tires – either 6 or 7 per set or even stretch out the RM tires if they weren’t totally shot.

ESR Assetto Corsa Competizione League – Round 1 Hungaroring

Posted on October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by Doug

I’ve owned Asset Corsa Competizione since its release but other than getting all the track competency medals I’ve not spent much time with it. It’s a completely different beast than Gran Turismo and I really struggled with it as a casual game. With my racing time taken up by the Club73 league and GTSport the game stayed on the shelf until the opportunity to play it with some other races in the ESR group. Although I was already racing in the 1hr GTSport league I thought I would give this a go too, if only to get used to the game.

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 5 Laguna Seca

Posted on October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Doug

After having to skip round 4 of the championship at Yamagiwa I was keen to make up for it with a good result at one of my favourite tracks, even if my races here are usually poor and dominated my silly mistakes.

I decided on a strategy of 3 ten lap stints on RSS tires and spending whatever was left on the RS tyre. I worked out there’d be about 44 laps in the race based on my consistent speeds so thought I’d be doing about 14 laps on the final set of tires.

I started the race in P9 out of 14, between Mark_Palmer86 and stealth_racer196. Everyone had a fairly uneventful first lap with no incidents.

Bayford Meadows Summer Cup Rd 3

Posted on October 4, 2020October 4, 2020 by Doug

Saturday the 26th September saw the final round of the Bayford Meadows SuperPro Summer Cup take place in less than summery weather. It was cold and windy with a feeling of rain to come. On the day, 27 drivers competed in 3 of 7 heats with 15 in the lightweight class that I was entered in to. Coming in to the event I was 4th in the championship and hopeful that I could maintain that.

At the end of the meeting I was disappointed to have finished so badly in 2 races because of (I felt) bad Karts. The last one had been especially bad. I dropped from 4th place in the championship to 6th, beaten to 4th by Steve Best by 3pts. That fight we’d had at round 2 had cost me more than I thought at the time 🙁

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 3 Sardegna

Posted on October 4, 2020 by Doug

The race at Willow springs hadn’t been particularly kind to me even thought I’d done quite a bit of practice. I’d been let down my a poor tire choice and then by making to many mistakes. The Sardega track wasn’t one that I knew at all so I’d have to start off by learning it.
For reasons that I don’t recall I didn’t make any notes to prepare for the race. I did decide on a 3-stop strategy of using the Soft tire for most of the race and then switching to the Medium for the last stint.
My best lap in Time Trial was a 1:24.279 – I’ve no idea why I didn’t record anything. I know I didn’t get as many practice laps in as I would have liked but I can’t remember why.

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 2 Willow Springs

Posted on October 3, 2020October 3, 2020 by Doug

I’d really enjoyed the previous race at Fuji and this time was determined to make better use of strategy (i.e. actually have one) to keep me in the race and make better use of my tires. The fuel burn was a lot slower than I was used to and conversely the tire degradation was a lot harder.
Looking back at the race, there were 2 clear factors that influenced my performance – mistakes and tire choice.

Eldar Sim Racing 1hr Endurance League – Round 1 Fuji

Posted on September 27, 2020October 2, 2020 by Doug

After growing dissatisfied with the Club 73 league for a number of reasons I decided to to try another GTSport league. I found the Eldar Sim Racing page on Facebook and decided to give it a go – attracted firstly by the lack of livery restrictions (other than a number board). The league would run one hour races with drivers having to run at least 2 different tyre compounds. Tire and fuel degradation were slightly different from the Club 73 settings but not a lot.

Bayford Meadows Summer Cup Rd 2

Posted on September 26, 2020September 28, 2020 by Doug

Saturday the 22nd August saw competitive hire karting at Bayford Meadows continue with round 2 of the Summer Cup. It was the usual format with each driver competing in 3 10 lap races with a short practice before each race. There was a bumper entrance with a record 7 heats – and with lots of visiting drivers it was going to be interesting.