Exactly the same happened to us 3 or 4 times. Embarrrrrrrrasing, obviously not our fault or the fault of our computers I think next time you should take a look into how rejoin works because I think its not acceptable to loose 15 minutes every time the game crashes or having a driver with a 60 seconds stop and go because of unsafe rejoin in track while he was having a freeze followed by a black screen. That was game's fault, not driver's fault, so its unbeliable to give him the penalty. I also think its not acceptable to change the physics of a car making it 10-15 seconds slower per lap 3 days before the event, specially when you can see that some of the admins or members that did this change moved to Porsche. Just sharing my thoughts, so you can improve it for next events. We are not happy as you could see in this message, but we don't want to discuss with anyone as it won't fix what happened in the race.
Hm, to be honest, for me all you said is like: sometimes you´re the dog, sometimes you´re the tree! Yes, it´s a lot to lost two laps after rejoin, but in simulation we didn´t have technical issues like drive shaft, compression lost on engine, punsher of tires because of particles on track, where real racing teams lost lot of time, sometimes some hours in 24h races. So i think, an 2+ laps gap is really hard, but why shouldn´t it give this? Do you really want only clean races without drama??? Me not, i want all of that, even if it´s hard to take, but to catch up lot of gap is an aim too, and an good feeling to drove from 20+ up to 9 like our Ferrari. BOP is for me the same, we can circle endless around this theme. I understand your standing, but i can understand other side also. There is no 100% solution. Sometime you´re the dog..... That you don´t like it, that admins change the car after balancing i can comprehend in your argumentation. That might not be look good. Don´t know what you mean with "take a look into how rejoin works"? We did it this way last two years and i think it insn´t possible in other way, because you lost lap which you didn´t finish because of crash, and the lap you begin, because timing just count when you cross first time the line, that´s after you did an lap after leaving pits. It´s really hard on nords, but...see above. But that should have nothing to do with the rules, that you have to leave pits in safe way, no matter, if the crash was driver or server fault. After rejoin driver is responsible for his action! Would it be even fault of the server, if driver crashed car after unsafe rejoining???
Finally got time to relax after sleep etc. Drove around 12 hours of the race nearly flat out, had a few problems especially with us randomly being disconnected with roughly 2 hours to go! But thankfully we pushed hard all race long to build a gap. Thanks to @Michael Roellin and @Jan Studenski for the great battle all race long, gap may have looked big at times but it felt small to us. Big thanks to my team mates for all the work they done! Huge thanks to the organisers! Loved this event. I honestly not enjoyed an endurance race from home like this in a long time. Really hope we get a few 12 hour and 24 hour events like this next year with GT3 and TRG. Also thanks to a majority of the GT3s for lapping us safely.
I wasn't driving at all - @Michael Roellin did a solo drive. But I can tell you at least from someone supporting him most of the race, that we felt the same Great drive from you, congratulations to your win.
Sorry Mark Weiler for that crash at fuchsröhre around 3 hrs before the finish, i went too fast and lost the car.
Well, the Problem i see is that you Guys had game crashes that lead to this situation. So it's way more interesting to solve that. I guess you Guys use the "known specific Problem Video Cards" like GTX 970 (ti) / GTX 980 (ti) ? I have to say, since i went from my 980ti to a 1080 i didn't had a single crash on any circuit. This series looks to be broken in this term. I know it's a big call to buy a new video card or whatsoever but this should be looked at before you start blaming the Admins.
Was really good competition. Thanks to @Shane Burke and Sherwin especially and of course all other drivers Sadly I didn't have enough practice which showed in the setup which I took into the race. Had a really bad tire wear and was considerably slower in the rain through that. Had a bit of a bad start falling back after the first lap and even doing a barrel roll in the first one and a half hour of the race (https://clips.twitch.tv/BrainyResoluteBaguetteTheTarFu). After that I got my shit together and went at it again. When the rain came the gap grew bigger which I sadly couldn't do much about because I just didn't have your pace. In the night when it finally dried off for s ahort while I somehow was able to completely close the gap and take the lead for one singe lap before you went off on your own again after the rain came back. After that I focused on securing second place which I eventually got after a tiresome but awesome race.
Alejandro, I am sorry that your race was not exactly as you would have liked it. I am going to discuss some stuff despite you not wanting to, because if you raise it then you make it discuss-able. To make points and say you won't discuss it is a bit like shouting and then slamming a door. I am just a driver not an admin by the way. BOP The BMW was way too fast b4 BOP adjustment. Even after the BOP you managed to put it on the second row in Quali. P4 of 24 cars! So if it was slow it was only slightly too slow. If it was a massive issue change cars. Time loss on rejoin. In real life if a team damages a car in such a race as this 24 hrs of the Nords it has to be physically recovered to the pits, get repaired and continue with residual damage. Such an event would cost anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours. In the RF2 environment a team who rejoins gets to do so with a brand new perfect car, like magic, like a "flashback" in a codies game. In order to create a true "endurance mentality" around this race, teams and drivers need to know that breaking the car has significant costs to their race. They need to feel they only get one car. Otherwise it becomes a 24 hour hot-lapping contest. a massive part of this test is to be able to keep the car safe. So rejoining and losing only one lap is in my view a nice balance between making it costly but not so much that people just give up. I am not speaking theoretically, 3 races ago here we had a driver who always needed to be the fastest guy on the track. We damaged the car badly and paid the price. We then had 2 disconnects. Our last 4 hours was a race to beat the leading Touring car. Technical Issues. We had about 3-4 screen freezes. No disconnects. The start Lars had qualified P3. He had the pace to be in the lead by the first stops. He was very concerned about the start, that certain people may not show any patience. People who had been a real hazard on track in the test race. Sure enough, at Turn 1 of lap one of the race he was tapped and spun by a certain driver. He rejoined in P17 and with a stop-go for leaving the track. It was about 6 hours of battling before we were back where we started. 6 Hours that might have been used to build a lead. Now that wasn't a BOP issue, not a tech issue nor an admin decision. It was poor judgement and impatience by a driver who looked like he thought it was a 1 lap event. It could easily have cost us the win after about 800 laps of testing and practice. We still haven't heard a word from that driver. Like you said, talking about it now won't change it , but then we might all understand better going forwards. Stewarding As mentioned by others, IMO this was the best event of the year in this endurance series in part because stewards took decisive action and so drivers knew that they had to behave. They cant tell if you had a screen freeze, and if that counted it would become a stock excuse. "drop my penalty I had a screen freeze". So I will be bold enough to suggest that before pointing the finger at others, that you work on the stuff that you can work on to have a good race and allow others to have a good race. I don't want to offend but this is my opinion and I have been as diplomatic as possible.
Sorry, I did warn you I would do this...... 24 Hours of the Nordschliefe “Full Report” Part 1 Thanks! To start a massive thanks to the P1-Gaming team that put on this incredible event for the third year running. Administrators, BOP Testers, Website managers, Broadcasters. It’s a lot of work and its usual to get more complaints than thanks. The series keeps evolving and the level of the admin and stewarding support was excellent. It helped to make it the best one yet. As I sit to write this I have the stream playing here to keep me “in the moment”. I will probably write too much! Sorry. Building the team: Hageman Racing answered my post in the middle of the year looking for a drive and welcomed me to the team for Suzuka. From the start the collaboration felt good. Despite huge pace Lars and Bjoern were very approachable, modest and open to ideas on the setup. We had issues in Suzuka and Spa with contact from faster classes (LMP2s), but we still enjoyed the racing and looked forwards to “The Big One”. They let me tinker with setup and that was fun. We needed a 4th driver for a 24-hour event. I asked around at Avid Chronic Racing and American Cody Blanton who has a pretty strong AOR/Youtube profile as ACR Raven in the Codies F1 game, as well as some Formula SimRacing experience was interested. He had never done an endurance race before. We agreed to test and after one evening on the sever Cody was at my pace. After two evenings I had to push to stay with him. My only concern was that Cody could trade some lap time for keeping the car safe. I had shared a potential race winning drive with a “hot lapper” before. We talked about it a lot. The deal was done! Between then and the test race Blazej Myszk was in discussion with Lars and we agreed he would test too. He was clearly a good driver, a nice bloke and at the needed level but we felt 4 drivers was the best number. We didn’t want him to miss a drive, so we spoke to Horizon and put them in contact and Blazej drove for them in Car #65 doing a great job. It seemed we had a team with good depth and good standards across all drivers. Setup In an endurance event this process is always interesting and can be tricky finding the compromises to suit the majority of drivers but also work for the weaker drivers in terms of ease of driving. We had a good base but managed to continue to find evolutions. Lars and myself were going very quick on the server and trading top lap times. The time came for more full stint length testing and we had a rear tyre wear issue. The last 2 laps were tricky. We made a change and it was solved but the car was under-steery for me but perfect for everyone else and good in the wet! Lars and Cody were flying with the set and I felt good with it but had lost about 2 sec / lap. It was compromise time and it was my turn to compromise in the cockpit and pit menu. I found enough in rear tyre pressures increase and a brake bias move rearwards to get a balance for me but still not the same pace. Still it was stable and safe over a full 8 laps so that’s all I needed. Fuel Endurance: With a change to 6th gear Lars was able to easily get 12.5 lit/lap on mix 2 (8 lap stints vs 7). My consumption was more like 13.1. I had to short shift to hit the fuel numbers. Losing more than 1 sec/lap nullified the stint length saving which was 3 stops or about 3m 30sec over 24 hours. Cody started to hit the fuel numbers too which was just as annoying as his pace! Who found that guy anyway? We decided to go for 8 lap stints if possible but to monitor pace and hope that some traffic and slipstream would help me. Other testing; We did 2-hour events against AI in changeable conditions to learn the crossover point in both directions with the drying line and the off-line wetness. We did a rota to “follow the sun” and work Cody in the USA harder when it was unsociable hours in GMT time! Race Start Lars had P3 which was perfect, out of the traffic and danger? Maybe not! The Safety Car spun in the formation lap and braking to avoid it caused a car to hit Lars from behind. He suffered damage. It could have caused bigger issues with long term damage or re-joins and impact the outcome. As it happened a quick resolution was agreed with Race Direction to simply run another formation lap and allow damage to be repaired and start racing next time around. Lars and 2-3 other cars had to pit and work his way back to P3 in that second lap. We are aware that not all teams liked the idea but in our view 8 litres and a set of tyres that had maybe 1-2% less wear but were colder would not swing the result of the race. Lars was concerned about T1, his concerns were well founded. He was tapped and spun and started the first lap 17th instead of 3rd. So much for qualifying in the second row. That unfortunate event created a situation for Lars to shine. He showed his judgement as well as his pace and the first 2 hours of the race were a master class in endurance racing. He had the added pressure Pizzo on his gearbox who had great pace. I was with Cody in another channel while Bjoern supported Lars in German. We were tingling with excitement and pride and chatting away about pace and traffic. At 22hrs 13 mins to go he was fighting Blazej for P6. Horn and Fernandez were fighting like mad for P1 and that suited us just fine. When Lars pitted for the second time he had passed 10 cars in the same class, saved fuel and run two 8 laps stints, even led for one lap. Lars doesn’t talk much in the car, we would hear the occasional “got him!” when he made a pass. His only words on exiting the car “That was fun!”. We were working our way back into this race! 2 hrs 41 elapsed; Bjoern took the car; He exits the pitlane in P7. He looks after the car, settles for a few laps and starts to deliver consistent, solid laps. I comment to Cody that where it now gets interesting is as driver changes occur, our depth should help, we felt we had no #2 drivers. Lars first pit stop sees him leave pit lane in P3! Around 5-hour mark I get the wheel. I did 2 laps on the practice server and was hitting 8m:24. I was very stiff and nervous on lap 1, it was a few laps before I loosened up and started to feel the car. I was following the fuel strategy, but the pace was not quite there. Best clean lap was 8:28. I had to fuel save and had 0.4 litres in pit lane. On my second tank of fuel and frustrated by my pace, I increased the fuel mix and dropped to a 7-lap stint. After a while I was chasing and catching the BMW Z4 in P2. After a spicy lap we passed him for P2 on the road. The leader had an unscheduled stop and that again put us once again briefly into the lead. 7h15min I hand over to Cody. It rains, and Cody drives a monster wet stint for 16 laps to catch and compete with the leaders Black Hawk Racing. Black Hawk are fast in the wet too. The track is drying and there is a chance that the pit stop might coincide with the crossover to slicks-just! We start discussing tyres. It’s not 100% clear slicks are do-able. We look at the lap times and see that they have now dropped to 9min with the occasional 8:57 from Black Hawk. We feel that we can do a 9-min lap safely on slicks by keeping carefully to the drying line and it will only get faster. We leave it to Lars to make the final decision. He agrees to slicks.
24 Hours of the Nordschliefe “Full Report” Part 2. Lap 65 Lars Takes the car again. It’s very tricky, leaving the drying line would mean a crash. Black Hawk pitted on the same lap but took rain tyres again. Lars was immediately 5 sec faster but it was not easy, really on edge.(EDIT; Actually for 2-3 laps it was slower as well as tricky then the crossover really occurred) Four laps later Black Hawk were forced to pit again for dry tyres. The lead! We had seized a moment and Lars had made it work. The tyre call bought us about 70-80 seconds gap. We could breathe a bit easier but not cruise. It got wet again around the next fuel stop and Lars just continued to deliver consistent laps in the wet. The pressure was now on our competitors. Lap 81 Cody was back in the car. He had a 3 min lead. It was mainly wet and Cody drove a perfect stint to catch and lap P2. We now had a clear lap lead. It was half way and 12 hours left for anything to happen. Lap 99 Lars took over again. He maintained the gap at around one lap and a minute or so with an error free stint. Lap 110 Bjoern was back in the car, it was wet. I returned from sleep from midnight to 4:30 am and joined Cody on the pit wall. Bjoern took a few laps to come up to speed which caused Cody some anxiety on “the pit wall”. We had a big lead, but Black Hawk were “on it” and some laps they stole 12 secs! Bjoern made a great save by avoiding a spun car in the mini carousel, I told Cody that save was worth probably 3 minutes! Cody went to bed. I promised him we would “fly the flag”. Lars went to bed at 6am. I supported Bjoern, he started to relax and lap time deficits to Black Hawk who were flying, started to come down. Bjoern had slight damage and needed to pit 1 lap early. The pit stop came at the perfect crossover time to slicks and Bjoerns eye was in. The gap to Black Hawk stabilised. Things started to look very good. Bjoern reported a top speed issue. We were down 12 kph on the Dottinger Hoe. Once in the sever I checked them and they had the same issue, slightly worse. I did some maths. 7 minutes lead with 41 laps left meant they needed 10 sec a lap. But Bjoern was holding them now and the laps were counting down. I did more maths before entering that car. They now needed 12 sec a lap unless we made an error. Lap 125 Bjoern handed me the car, he had done a great job! Kept the car safe, kept most of the lead and we were still 1 lap ahead. I was much more relaxed this stint. It was still a wet track with drying line and the feeling came quicker, but with 60% wetness offline it had to be treated with respect. As the track dried and grip evolved I was holding or slightly building the gap to P2 matching and beating their best lap times. I started to really enjoy myself! One press of a button! The first tank of fuel put us in a position to take back the full lap on Black Hawk. I passed them stationary in pit lane and the moment I did I thought “awesome that’s a lap” and released the limiter! Stop go penalty. On pit exit, Mike Horn was now in the car and any top speed issues seemed solved because he was monstering me to un-lap his team. I asked Bjoern to let them know that I was going to serve the penalty this time around so no need to take risks. It was a fun lap and I entered pit lane to serve my stop-go. Second Press of a button! On that second tank of fuel I foolishly started to think too much about maths. I looked at the remaining time and tried to figure pit stop strategy. How many times would we pit? Did I need to save fuel and run 8 laps? Can we maybe run 75 litres from here to optimise the needed 3 stops? In that moment I reached the Dottinger Hoe and looked on my rig for my fuel target card. It was just under the edge of my keyboard. I reached for it and bang! Suddenly I was sitting a BMW in a pit garage looking at pit lane! I had accidentally touched the + or – key and moved my view to another car while doing 250 kph! My heart rate was about 230 bpm as I tried to get back in my car by pressing + or – multiple times. I had started to word my apology to my team mate. Had I pressed ESC? Was it all over? Finally I was back in my car. It was stationary on the right side of the Dottinger Hoe, no damage at all in 5th gear. I started off again and wiped the sweat from my brow. It had so nearly been all over. All too soon Lars was back. He returned 3 hours after going off to bed. I suggested I could do another stint, but he was ready to bring it home. Third Press of a button! I felt a bit better about my button presses when Lars got a stop- go at his stop when he double tapped the limiter. We did some more fuel maths. We had 6 minutes or so gap so we could fuel save a lot but not do 10 laps. We did a quick splash and dash for 30 litres. Lars slowed on the Dottinger Hoe to hit the line just after 24 hrs elapsed and we had done it! In closing: Lars had done a mighty drive in the car that bears his name. Cody had adapted across to endurance racing like a pro and been a monster in the wet. If any of you wonder whether pace in Codies sims can be real, maybe you have part of the answer. Bjoern (who did his first endurance race in VR) and I had done our part by out-driving the teams that chased maintaining the gap, keeping our car safe and forcing the errors. The whole team came prepared, made good calls and left nothing to chance. It was awesome!!!! We can’t do this review without recognising the organisers which we did earlier. We also want to recognise the many talented drivers and teams that raced here. Several of them were or could have been major threats if they had a clean run. Black Hawk pushed us hard and we could never take our eyes off them. The TXL team was very fast and had they been on the same lap as us we would have sweated a lot. When I said to Cody after 2 hours that even from where they were they could podium I’m not sure he believed me. We could fight clean and fast with drivers like Mike Horn and in the opening laps Daniel Pizzo and have no fear of contact. That was quality racing. Touring cars and lapped cars did a great job and overall a lot of respect was shown. The stewards set the tone by showing that they would not tolerate any “crap” and the grid responded. Thanks also to Apex Modding for a great car set. They have worked for months and years to optimise their GT3s. (They know I love the 911). I hope that the P1 Gaming Endurance Series continues to grow in strength and prestige but keep its “spirit”. Please invite your fellow sim racers to make the next one even better. Please may we have a Bathurst 1000? Or 12 hours? I would love to host you as an Australian.
When you miss a little at the end of a 24 hour you are thinking of making no mistakes and bringing the car to the finish line, but when you have a 10-minute advantage over the adversary that follows you and two and a half minutes ahead of you try make it impossible to reach your opponent but here's what you do not want it to happen, a dubbed touches you and buum you and prints it to the wall. Everything to be done, lose position, blur third and what you call, which is sleeping, the strongest driver of your team that during the night under the water traveled like a train and you say Daniele we need you and him in five minutes and ready and gives you the two most spectacular hours I've ever seen on an infernal track like Nordschilife and rescues fourth place for us is the podium you can not say Thank you from the depths of the heart for the huge commitment that has put us as much as a thank goes to the other pilots Luca and Franco who with me they also shared the advent this year 24 hours worse than we've done in recent years. Of course next year we will be present because for the Sikania team this race is an event you can not give up and the podium is getting closer and more. Thanks goes to the organization of the portal P1 Gaming that every year makes a tremendous effort to make a spectacular race.
