France and LeMans

Hi Guys
Hope all is well with you. I am still trying to get over the jet lag from my trip to France. It seems to take for ever. Had very little problem there but the return to this zone has been slow. I keep awakening in the middle of the night and fall asleep at 9 in the evening.

The holiday was great. We rented a Peugeot 200 and with the GPS we had a blast tripping around the back roads. One lane roads that are well paved are a rare thing here in Canada. Most roads are rough and full of holes from the severe winters.

I got to drive around the public roads at LeMans. The track from the Porsche curves to Tertre Rouge was closed for a Moto race and the place was full of bikes. I am not sure you can drive that section anyway. I did 2 laps and have to say visually it seemed shorter than it appears in the sim. I guess that has to do with the POV setting. We spent a few hours in the LeMans museum and that was just amazing seeing all those cars. Even Suzanne enjoyed the place and I think may have started to understand my crazy passion for the series.

I of course took lots of photos but have yet to process all of them, around 60 gigs worth for the whole trip so it will take me a while to sort out the worth while photos from the junk. I will post some when I am done.

By the way CMS is having a 2.4 hour race on Saturday November 10th at the Nordschleife using the Porsche Carrera Cup - Only Porsche Mobil1 Supercup 2007 cars. I have done a few laps and boy is there a difference between them and the Endurance mod but what the heck should be fun. Porsches only!

Here is the link if anyone is interested.

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Nice Michael. I must go there some time. Its a place with a magical history and the best race of the year to watch. I hope you went somewhere that Suzanne wanted to go as well to keep things even!

We had a good setup for the cms race last year, from race 2 play. i can post it if you want.

Hi Richard

Yes Suzanne did get to visit a couple of places she had on her must see list. I did try to get over to Magny Cour for the F1 testing, which was only a 150 km to the east but she could not fit it into our schedule.

Regarding the set up I sure would like to give it a try.

Wednesday when I saw the practice server was up I jump in and started doing a few laps. After 3 I had edged down from 9:30 to a 9:02. Not blazingly fast but having raced the RC event nearly every month this year I am at the least familiar with the track.

John Steen a familiar racer at CMS in the P1 and P2 cars came on line and we started to do laps together while conversing on team speak. He had not driven the track or the mod for a year or so. I shared a few of my insights in some of the trickier places. He was very fast through the slow corners but I had a better handle on the fast ones. We spent 3 hours chasing each other around until he finally found the groove and seriously set in to set a faster lap. Without the talking he soon did a 9:01 and riding on board I could see he was quite capable of bettering that time with a bit of concentration.

I finally called stop as my arms and shoulders were beginning to give out and we started exchanging a bit of info. He asked if I had ever raced and no I said just playing around in Karts. I of course reciprocated and yes he said, I started in karts and then Formula Ford, the Atlantic series, Porches of various models and a list I can’t remember. Seems he had spent 20 odd years racing on most of the tracks in the eastern USA.

I felt a bit foolish having given him a bit of my not so expert advice but he was very gracious and said many times it is only necessary to see what can be done by other to challenge yourself to try and match them. I still was faster through the high speed corners but was a monster in the slow ones chewing at my rear bumper like a big beastie. One of those good nights on track

I had to ask what he thought of the compared experience of driving in the real and virtual world. Without hesitation he said he much prefer the ease of a real car. Driving in the virtual world of racing was a real challenge he said. Not the same thing at all. I have to say it was one of my more fun evening racing just whizzing around bumping and grinding and having a laugh and loving all 170 corners.

We played about with various setups. There are only a few parameters to set in this mod but I would very much like to try your set please.

Regards

Ill upload it tonight. I was well under nine minutes.

You can meet some really interesting people. I was talking to someone from a french island in the middle of the atlantic in the southern hemisphere. I forget the name, revolution island or something. He was telling me its like paradise there but they are problems with shark attacks.

I also raced with a preist from denmark as a teammate in the L2R 24. He. had to fit his driving around a sermon in the morning. Its also interestung to hear the opinion of someone with real life experience. It takes me about 1000 laps of a track before I stop getting faster and faster, I wouldn't get that opportunity in real life.

Setup should be here.

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Full credit to Race2play.com and Tristan Bayless of course. Super Quick Driver Tristan