arco: Disregarding the paper comment, IF your suspension is damaged, do you think that can be repaired in pits while racing?

And the rookie servers are generally pretty good. If someone mess up, well.. it could be their first race online. I know I was intimidated like hell the first few races and often messed up trying to get out of the way. If someone mess up in the rookie servers I'd send them a PM after the race explaining what they should have done and hope they learn.

The new split system seems to be working great, too! Last few races have been very close and there's always a battle to be had. Much less spread out field and you still have a shot for some points even if you're back a bit. I even got my first win last night, after a GREAT battle. About 8 or 9 laps of proper RACING at Laguna Seca, and none of os made any mistakes. Was SO satisfying outbraking him into T11, then getting the white flag and knowing I had an advantage. I knew after so many laps where his strengts and weaknesses were and knew where I had to be careful and where I could pull away. Won by 2,3 seconds. I was pumped for hours after the race!

I've been racing the Spec Racer alot lately, and even there the racing is clean. Quite a few errors from some, but wheel to wheel racing is the norm. And the thing about the lower classes, most guys buckle real easy under pressure..

Bad luck on your first race, dude. I've had ALOT of clean races lately, and it just keeps getting better.

Downloading now, it's pretty slow already....

Anyone else excited?

Do those numbers include some arbitrary drivetrain loss or is that at the wheels?

Yep, died, just about the time LFS died.

Quote from Dajmin :

I was quite pleased that there was a decent selection of Mazda 323s on there, but now I'm disappointed. Still crossing my fingers that the list had to come from somewhere. Especially with the way Sony's stuff was leaked in advance of this year's E3.

I was SO happy to see my '92 323GTR in the list! If they take it out I'm smashing my PS3!

No, not really, but it'd be cool to have my car in there!

I got a spare promo if anyone want it... $25 for 3 months... Pm me if you're interested.

Quote from Gabkicks :

I realized the guy was not a good driver and I just decided not to back down at that moment, even though i knew he'd be dumb and smash into me.

Yatzee! If everybody drive like all the other guys on track don't know squat about driving we'd be seeing alot less incidents.

Keep your eyes on the road and mirrors, and you'll avoid alot of the carnage, midfield or not. I have quite a few incidents, and I believe only one or two of them are not caused by me in some form. Realizing that can be tough for some. Also, having been hit, I realize it could just as easily been me causing grief for some other guy.

Quote from anttt69 :

I think your missing some good racing Richard. Just because its open to rookies does not mean you have to race against them. As long as you put a half decent quali lap in you will always be near the front of the grid, racing guys that know how to & avoiding the mid pack carnage.

I am always near the back of the pack, and somehow always avoid the 'carnage' you guys talk about... I wonder how some guys get all the bad luck and always get taken out by others by no fault of their own...

Takes two to tango, and it takes two to have a collision...

Last weekend I took my car to trackday, and drove really badly..

First time out, and I overdrove the car so bad it was embarassing. Most corners entered way too fast, and alot of sliding. I have awd, so there wasn't alot of drifting as such, but alot of sliding around and locking up tires.
After a few laps I noticed my tire grip degrading noticeably, especially in the last corner which is a sharp hairpin where you whip the car around. The pit entry is on the outside of this corner, and the pit exit itself is around 20m onto a staging area. On one of my runs where the tires were really bad I exited onto this staging area and immediately felt the tire temps with my hand, expecting to burn my hand. To my surprise the tires felt definetly hot, but not burning hot. I would estimate around 50deg C. This is performance street tires. With the amount of degradation to grip I was expecting REALLY hot tires. I can't imagine what it would be like driving on tires 150 or even 100degrees, but I assume it would feel pretty greasy.

Now, it COULD be that my tires just cooled down really fast, but I was off the pace for a maximum of 15-20 seconds before the car was stopped and I was out and touching the rubber. I felt the tires after about a minute and they still felt pretty hot.

Now I know this is in no way scientific, but a subjective observation, but still I think I can tell a difference between 50 and 150 degrees.

Vid was very good, but the driving really blew me away! Truly mad skills right there!

Zen: I'd rather just go a little slower and last a few more laps. The 'one the ragged edge' techniques is fine for the short LFS races, but for longer races I'd rather be safe and live to fight another lap.

In plain english that means I can't H&T worth S**t, so I'd rather be slow...

Driving with a clutch vs left foot braking makes the bigger difference for me. The ability to have a foot on the brakes to balance the car mid corner is something that gain some time for me. But I like the immersion and realism of three pedals and a shifter.

No weak crank. The early GTX and GT did have a weak crank pulley assembly, but they fixed it. The gearbox will see some abuse and they break realtively easy. Not from the forces per se, but the oil overheat, making thehousing expand too much, shearing the bearing mounts, which in turn shear the gears. But it's a matter of driving style really. Some can drive 100.000km without even an oil change, others break 5 boxes per year...

I love it, and I'm taking it to the track tomorrow! Cant't wait!

The grooves sent the dust differently, apparently. I dunno...

Got a pic of the rest of the car? What year is it? Mods?

Agree about the insurance.

The car itself is a blast, the engine is awesome. I really like how they look too, but that is a matter of opinion anyway. Take a good look at it, but at that price it should be a steal no matter what.

Get some grooved disks. Great fro removing dust. I have almost no brakedust on my rims even after a week of not cleaning them. That's with stock pads too.

Is that a Miata? Nice rims, but they need a good scrub...

Quote from Jakg :

Damn that looks AWESOME!


Do you have any specs of the car stock? I can't seem to find any high-power models on Parkers, but i'd like to know stuff like MPG, insurance group etc if you have a link?

Thank you!

Here you go! A nice site about the 323GTR.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~kevmo/

Those two cars are like, totally the same car! Only the colors differs, right?

It's the GTR, factory built for Group N racing. Mada 323 for the ones that don't know the car. AWD, 1,8l turbocharged inline four-banger. LSD rear and center diffs, 1200kg with me in it. Stock it's 185hp, but I've done a few mods to it, and it's currently giving me around 240hp at all four wheels. Close ratio gearbox and GREAT handling, as a few higher end cars have found out the hard way..

You'd think Mazda had plans with the car, though. Like the engine. The stock boost is 0,65Bar, but the ECU is mapped to 2bar, the injectors, pistons and rods will take almost all of that, the turbo will gove even more than 2bar. The car has factory mounts for 4point harnesses (which I use). The brakes are great, as for group N you're not allowed to change disks, just pads. The weak spot is the gearbos and transfer on these cars. Stock boost is fine, but higher power require some though while driving hard. Not much of an issue, but some drivers go through gearboxes like they were free.

Quote from asbjoern :

cool, whats the dimension on those?

Not very big. 215/45-16. Plenty big for the car, though. The car rides even better on stock dimension of 195/55-15. Better steerign response and better traction. Love the car, though!

Mine...