First time real racing

[Romus]

Hi folks

Last Friday I had an opportunity to try my skills in real racing. Cars are Volvo 343s. Nice experience but I was not very successful. In the first quali the car did not output much power so I had the worst time out of 15 racers. In the second attempt the car worked fine and I was 3rd quickest. In the race I failed to get the 2nd gear in in the start so I trailed some 50m to 100m at the first corner. However I managed to take over two racers and finished 2nd. It would be a long story to tell everything, but it was great!

[OldBloke]

Now that looks great fun :thumb:

[smilodon]

Those are quite possibly the best graphics I've seen in a  racing game ever! Who are these Real Racing guys

Seriously though, that looks like a blast.

[Seany]

Brilliant Romus, that looks great fun!

Thanks for the pics too, love the custom mud flaps , I guess it can get pretty dusty!

[Lameduck]

I cant see No  74, so it cant be you :no2:
Looks like great fun.
Jamin, dont listen to him if he asks for RallyeX as he's had too much practice

[suicidal_monkey]

Looks like great fun, closest I've gotten is outdoor karting. Where was the race?

[Jamin]

Nice one :thumb: I'd love to do something like that.

[Romus]

The track is here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Paratiisintie/@64.1865288,24.8324179,966m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x46811909631295a3:0xdd7855e428031d09

It's about 750m long track and our lap times were from 36 to 47 seconds. It was a team building day with my colleagues, organized by a colleague who has owned a car like that himself and have been driving a few seasons in the 90's.

I was surprised how the actual racing was so similar to what we do with LFS. When I was chasing the car in front of me the mindset was exactly the same as with LFS: trying to get good break points to achieve higher speed to the next straight, being very close behind to make the driver in front nervous, being careful not to collide.. All that came automatically. Only the noise, heat, vibrations and probably the danger factors were something new. Still then main thing about racing I thing is what we already have in place in simracing. Perhaps because of my simracing experience I was the only driver to overtake others in the race.

So we had 15 drivers and 10 best after the qualifiers progressed to finals. We had two qualifying sessions with one lap practise and two timed laps. After the first quali we changed cars so that no one would drive the same car in the second quali. The qualifying result was calculated by combining the timed laps from both qualis, so it was not about driving one fast lap, but to be consistent over the four timed laps. The fastest three drivers got a place in the A final, positions from 4 to 6 secured a place in B final and positions 7 to 10 went into C final. The winner of the C final progressed to B final and the winner of the B final progressed to A final. We had a podium after the A final with medals and champange that was shaked well by the event organizers. Great fun!