My first track day

[Iron]

It's been a while since I was last around here (or LFS at all), but I though you guys wouldn't mind if I shared my excitement with you. I've been to my first track day in my life last Sunday, with my recently bought '93 Camaro Z28 (5.7L V8 baby :flirty:). It was a really fun and great experience. It was on a little track here in Hungary, not really fast, plenty of turns.

Here are some pictures and two videos if anyone wants to check it out:

External camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khiHzXNIs4Q
Onboard camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_CzSNackcY
A few pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/118123252484037445252/6282417241511526273

[Seany]

Hey Iron mate!

Very cool, love a V8 rumble .  Nice driving there, getting quicker and quicker each lap...not even a spin! (at least not in the version we saw! ) Track looks fun!

How do you think your sim racing career helped with preparing you for driving on the limit?  what was the under-steer/over steer like?   I guess it was not enough laps to feel any change in the tyres good or bad (where they normal road tyres?)

Thanks posting Iron and congrats on the new wheels, great to hear from ya!

[Iron]

Hey Seany!

Thanks for the kind words, I always feel welcomed here.

I think my sim experience definitely helped, but of course as this was my first real life driving close to the limit  (or rather, trying to drive closer and closer to the limit, because I don't think I managed to get very close in that some 26 laps I did ; I always had to do way more laps than that in the sim to really get in the groove on a particular track/car combo), I started out very cautiously. I didn't even get any noise from the tires for the first number of laps. Then I noticed that I can give it some more lock, and it can turn more. It's weird how you have a preconception of how much you can turn the wheel. Or it maybe just plain inexperience. And I'm pretty sure there are many more seconds left in the lap even after the end of the day.

What was really surprising for me, is that how much traction I had at the racetrack. This camaro is of course rwd, on 245 wide tires (yes, normal road tires), with 275HP. On public roads it means that even a good amount of gas (but not full) in 2nd or even 3rd gear will have the rear move at least a bit, even when driving in a straight line, not cornering. When you are cornering, it's even more pronounced of course. Granted, the surface of our public roads are not really high quality I'm afraid.
But on the racetrack, I couldn't get the rear move, not even when flooring the gas pedal in 2nd gear during a hard corner. I was baffled. I hardly experienced any oversteer on the track, just a tiny bit here and there. Okay, sure, maybe I was not close enough to the limit of the traction on the race track. But this difference was very surprising, which I think comes from the difference of the surface, the quality of the asphalt.
As for understeer, I definitely felt that the car turned more under braking, when I lifted my foot off the brake, it became a bit more understeery. That's when the gas pedal would have come in handy, but as I said, I didn't really managed to get the car into oversteer.

When I DID experience the rear move, was under hard braking for T1. It's a bit tricky, for me anyway, because you don't brake in a straight line, or at least it curves a bit first, then you can brake, or something like that. And the track surface is tricky there too, because there's a change in the angle of the surface there. Anyway, when that happened first, I got really scared for moment. You get to the braking point for T1 at about 140km/h, it doesn't sound much, but it is, when the car's rear end starts to move. But then I got used to it, and maybe it did it even less later, because I learned how to brake there. All in all, the car was well behaving, it did nothing I couldn't correct, no spins, no leaving the track, nothing. Of course, again, I probably didn't even get close to the car's limit in those first 26 laps of my life on a real race track.

Another surprise, this time good surprise, was that I didn't feel any loss of braking force during the 3-4 lap stints I did. They always say how a road car's brake system is not up to the task of driving on a race track, that they heat up after a few corners, and become useless. I didn't feel any of it, even though the brake system is all stock (as everything else on the car), as far as I know.

[Seany]

Nice, thanks for the extra detail, I always love to hear about that stuff.  Sounds like a lot of fun!

No doubt you will be back for more? Pretty addictive I'll bet

[Iron]

Yeah, I don't know how soon and how often, but I'll be back.

What's up with you guys? Do you still play LFS? I guess not much, not seeing too much activity in the forum. Do you play other racing sims?

[Seany]

There is still a few of us around racing.  Mostly on Assetto Corsa.  LFS just became too stale for me, nothing ever seems to get done with it, same thing for the past 10 years! The racing community for LFS has shrunken too. A great shame as it has some serious potential.

I have a lot of fun with Assetto, I like the FFB, physics, gfx, sound - all great.  It is the only sim I would really considered taking seriously after LFS.  It has a decent number of people on racing in the evening too.

 For sure (as with any game) there are rough edges.  The interface and MP arnt as good as what we had in LFS, but even still, Assetto is perfectly race-able. Some of the probs with MP  (such as no built in setup sending, weak MP chat system etc)  are fixed via mods.  Our own Neys is a very talented programmer who has created an impressive app that adds all that stuff back in (especially the stuff us LFS'ers where used to) called PTracker.   Assetto's Net code is not as good as LFS's but I think it is a good any other sim out there (LFS was exceptional in this area).  But again, Assetto is still perfectly race-able.

Another thing that I am happy with about Assetto is the commitment from the Developers.  They are constantly improving the game, it has come along way since release.  They have good communication with the end users and are interested in adding things to the game that is requested and improving existing features like the tire model, net code, gfx etc.

Another great aspect of Assetto that I like is the modding community.  There are some seriously talented people making cars and tracks that are not far off developer quality, nearly too much content to try it all!

If you look back through this thread : http://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?39864-Assetto-Corsa-Server-Track-And-Car-Combos/page43  you can see the combos we have been running each week.

We try to get together twice a week for some racing on the DMR server,  Mondays and Wednesdays.

What about you, you still interested in the sim racing scene?

[Iron]

Ah yes, I have heard about AC, one of my friends have it, but I don't really know anything about it. It's good that you guys are still racing out there, keeping DMR alive, I have very fond memories racing with you all.

To be honest, sim racing just doesn't float my boat at the moment, but I'm not saying I will never be back, who knows. I play Team Fortress 2 nowadays (for quite a few years now) pretty much exclusively, spicing it up with some other games just here and there.

I wish you all the best, keep rocking, and driving.

[Seany]

Ah yes, I have heard about AC, one of my friends have it, but I don't really know anything about it. It's good that you guys are still racing out there, keeping DMR alive, I have very fond memories racing with you all.

To be honest, sim racing just doesn't float my boat at the moment, but I'm not saying I will never be back, who knows. I play Team Fortress 2 nowadays (for quite a few years now) pretty much exclusively, spicing it up with some other games just here and there.

I wish you all the best, keep rocking, and driving.

Yeah, you too man, cheers for stopping by again.  I'll keep an eye on your youtube to see if ya upload any more track day vids :racing: !