If you're not racing in leagues and organized events who generally likes pick-up racing at public servers, then i'd say no.
On the other side, if you're into the above mentioned i think a good team could add a lot more to your experience with lfs. It also gives you access to great leagues like MoE and BOTT, where you can drive against the best of the best out there..

Before i joined a team i was generally bored about lfs - it was the same thing all the time, just driving around with peaople i got to know through public racing. I enjoyed it but it was boring over a long term.. When i then finally was lucky enough to join up with a good team i was introduced to a whole new level of simracing. Suddenly you got to know heaps of fast guys through leagues and such, and i immediately felt like my interest and motivation went up a lot!

Also, lots of teams communicates through teamspeak while racing, which adds some more excitement into the race itself. Before events it's often useful to create special teamsetups for that little extra speed, making tactics and discuss the set with other teammembers.. A team will probably give you lots of new elements to handle, and much of it is probably just like a real life team would operate.

However, it depends on both the team's/your motivation and what you want to do

Quote from Bawbag :

Sorry noodles, wrote it in a hurry, I meant to say it was his Quali set.

;P I was kind of wondering if your super aggressive cambers was put so intentionally while speccing the race..

@ Kaynd - shame to hear, let's hope for a better day next time!

Quote from Bawbag :

Race 1, was pretty good, I had one of Hannus sets which I thought was for the race, but it was his race set....

Dude, whats funny about that?

Looked quite good to me, allthough a few really fast guys suffered from some damage in the second race. Reversing the whole gread might seem a bit much, but never the less it really offered some excitement for the overall win..

You gotta be smart and wait for the right moments, looked like there were a few who got especially nicely rewarded for this

Great race to watch anyhow, i guess fapex will put the replays here soon : )

Remember guys; the grid will be reversed for the 2nd race! If you've crashed, timed out or so you'll have a second chance!

:d

Been reading allmost the whole thread now, and it's really nice to see how the progress has been. V1 looks like a really serious and well organized thing which i think will find a good race driver in these three chaps

As for the discussion going on about dedication and interest towards racing, i think Alans version is a bit too simplified, allthough most people can afford for example a kart. Remember that just buying a kart often ain't even half the cost of a racing season and you have to be able to keep your machine at a resonably good condition at all times, as there are very few people who wins with a kart which is not kept up to date, or looks and is like a wreck to drive... All this together often requires a push and support from either family or other people.

However, it looks like most of the guys at this forum tends to only mention their parents when there is talks about economic problems, but ain't there any other people in the world who could help you out? I know myself it's not easy to ask relatives in your family or even people you don't know about support economically, but if you believe in yourself, and think you can get far, why not just do it? It'll never hurt anybody to ask

I'm not trying to be harsh or ignorant here, just trying to find solutions

I started racing karts in 2002, and bought a well used little racer for 1900 euros included racing gear at the midsummer. I gotta mention that i had support from my family back then, and i'm really forver thankful for that! Anyway, the engine we used could go 8-10 hours at maximum performance, the tyres could go half the summer with lots of practise, and luckily enough there were allways 30 - 50 karts on the starting grid in each event in this particular category. After a very good 2003 season, me and dad made a list of 30 - 40 companies we saw as possible sponsors for the next season. We wanted to move up in the categories, and to race in an international category we'd have no chance with a regular family budget of ours. We got 10 sponsors out of the 40, who allmost covered the whole 2004 season, and we'd built up a good network of contacts. You know... one head of a company knows other guys who we could possbly ask, or they even have tips on how to present ourselves differently or in better ways to the sponsors. Even the companies who said no had really valuable words to us, which we've used ever since..

Today i am 17 years old, and i'm racing at a top european level with a factory team from Italy. Our sponsors and the team covers up most of the season, while my family use money for 2 races up here in Norway. We arrange special karting days for our sponsors, letting the fastest of them try real racing karts, making homepages, doing sponsor work every, exericising every day and so on.. Also, i started to cooperate with another former LFS member who's also in the same team. That has really made things a lot easier for us, as one deal with press releases , another make graphics for homepages, pictures, sponsor calendars and so on.. That might as well be a tip for those who are willing to try to start up racing

Generally, be creative! Send in notes and pictures to your local newspaper on your results, motorsport magazines and more. There's allways things you can do in order to get attention on yourself. After all, you have to be a bit of an egoist to get the spotlights on yourself within motorsports.

And please, i'm really not trying to put my own career thing on the table here, it's just to give you an example (and maybe a few tips)on how we dealt with the economic problems that most usually have to face during their career. We're still only on a karting level though, and moving up to cars or formulas is the next step (Thought, that's way more expensive at a professional level). Via V1racer you guys have got an unique chance of really getting your careers going! Don't waste this on a 50% effort, eat the right food, exericise regurarly (The norwgian olympic centre says every 16 year old top artist should exericise a minimum of 20 hours a week), get a job which doesn't require too much time, and find ways to make yourself even better and professional as a racing driver. Remember that you are the object the sponsors want to support

Just to give some support on Alans recent posts, the kart is a very simple car to handle. After a couple of practises, you can easily handle the thing yourself... Most of the karts now even has electric start, so you won't even need help to push it to practise. Also, at most of the tracks there are a whole load of very friendly people at all ages who can help you out if you have problems!

Good luck guys, i'm looking forward to see how this goes further on!

Last edited by Chriskart, Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:11.

\ o /

Good luck both of you

Quote from Boris Lozac :

(...), you have to be agressive to be fast..

That might just be the problem. I usually found myself driving faster when trying to take it slightly easier around each corner, as aggressive driving often results in more unconsistant driving/more minor errors, thus higher tyre temps.. It's all a ballance of course, and the limit there is different for every driver

I haven't tested the XFR in the new patch, so i'd say try flotch's suggestions. It sounds like you're on some kind of a old hotlap set, which naturally would come with quite low tyrepressures : )

Quote from Rooble :

The FZR will slaughter the XRR @ ASGP with no added weight, feel free to disagree but without a weight penality the FZR will easily be 2 seconds a lap faster maybe even 3 with faster drivers.

For this track the 15kg penalty on the FZR seems very good! The XRR has a slight advantage with it being able to keep on racing for 28 - 29 laps (iirc), but the FZR was faster during the 25 laps it could be driven. Also, to make the XRR go (nearly) as fast as the other car, you really have to polish your driving to the limit, as it's nowhere near as rewarding as the FZR..

The MoE admins did lots of work with this, and in the end i think most teams were happy with the outcome

Last edited by Chriskart, Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:16.

I think the ballast added to the FZR was quite optimal, as this car really is more rewarding by good driving. If you check the other XRR times, you'll see that such a good driver as jonesy_ didn't have a single 38 during this whole race, pointing rather at a good performance by ray than unballanced classes

We'll see how this really works out on the following moe races though, but for now it looks good to me : )

Last edited by Chriskart, Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:52.

super one tweak

I'll do a testing session with the FZR @ around 10. Anyone up for some driving/setup discussions etc? Gonna be on "F1RST Racing" then

Quote from Bawbag :

At a push, we can do 29 laps, but it's so risky with the tyres being so cold that we only do 28, which is only 3 laps.

And Dave, mid 38s is fantastic pace if you ask me (Without weight) and when you consider that the wr was only 1.5 seconds faster with the 80Kg last patch, and that you guys now only use 1/4 of that, that's only about 4 tenths. Yes you guys do have to use the R3s though which will add a couple of tenths, but speed differnce in R2s to R3s in this patch will be much less as the tyres heat up far easier now.

I know this is pretty inconclusive evidence as to what is acheivable, but atm your trying to say that you lose a second with 20kg of weight? When only 1.5 was lost in the last patch qith quadruple that amount?

I would like to see you guys test the 10 or 15Kg tbh as I know the FZR should have an advantage on this track with it's shorter stints, but atm it doesn't seem like many of the top teams care. We've done our bit in the XRR and at the end of the day if you stay quiet on purpose you might end up with an unfair weight penalty which could have been avoided with a litte input.

I did a little test session last night over a 15 lap stint. The set wasn't optimized in any way though, and i'm a bit out of practise after a weeks brake. The car felt quite good, and actually slightly easier to drive than without the 20kg's. During the first laps i usually had 45.0 - 1 in the first split, 52.9 - 53.5 in the 2nd and 40 high/low 41 as my laptime. I had no better time than 39.7 something in the end, but that's because of the offtime lately (i hope :razz. Gonna drive a stint tonight as well, and i excpect my times to drop at least half a second.

As i said, i just put my old set on without altering anything, which needs to be done in order to get some more out of the weight penalty. It was quite weird to see how much the kg's affected the car speed - wise. I constantly lost around 1 - 1.5 km/h on the mainstraight, which i believe is quite much time on such a long track as this. On the other side, it looks like the added kg's makes it easier to keep the heat into the tyres, i did keep up the heat at least a lap longer now with some quite high tyre pressures.

Also, i guess most of us is at work again.. Could be a reason for why the tests ain't going as frequently as it did in the christmas vacation? I do want ballanced classes, but it ain't easy to combine lfs with work/other things atm, at least for me.

Quote from Bawbag :

Ok so, the XRR was quite weak here but we seemed to have fixed the problem of our crappy pace and can get quite close to the FZR except for the fastest lap I think.

39.1 was my best in a stint I just done, still think that the FZR is quite alot faster as I saw Bas doing a 51.5 split earlier (I think) which is good for mid 38s, but whatever, it's not as bad as it was atleast.

Don't think that the FZR is quite fast enough for a weight penalty, although I bet when we see Chris hauling past us in the race i'll wish I didn't say that.

If anyone needs to compare the times for any blaancing questions I done my stint online so the laps are on there.

I think it's just a matter of time really, as it seems like the X patch setups don't quite work in the current patch we're on. I am going to test a few more days with the XRR, i'm quite sure it's good for a 2.38.5~ on a qualifying lap with r3 tyres, also with the set i'm on now.

I also bet that the Mercs could do better than that, considering all their experience with the XRR. Guess they just needed a push to get it going

All in all, i want to test a few more days before the discussions of weight penalties starts - if there will be any though. It looks better now, but i still think this car has got some more potential than we see atm, though it's just a guess

EDIT: Just checked your stint Ray, very nicely driven! It's reminding me a bit of the old characteristics of the XRR now, as i've never seen any FZR do a 39 on the 6th lap.

Both car seems quite equal the first 15 laps, but after that it's definately possible for the fzr to do a 38. Remember that the XRR is starting with 95% now, allmost equal with the FZR. In patch X the XRR usually started off with 20 - 25% less than the FZR on most tracks, which is quite a difference in weight. Therefore the XRR had a advantage the first 10 - 12 laps on tracks like this.

When 15 laps have passed now the XRR has around 50% fuel left, while the FZR has 39%, so it's no wonder that this car hos an advantage after this. Therefore, seeing Bawbag setting his best laptime with allmost half a tank left of fuel is not bad at all

The r3 tyres gets quite cold in the end however, but there should be some room for improvement here?

Last edited by Chriskart, Sun, 6 Jan 2008 12:27.

Here is a replay, in single player so you can see that the fuel pin is on max. I used an old escc racesetup for this, only changed it to r3 tyres and modded som air pressures. They heat up to around 118-119 before they start to cool down. I attached the set as well further down the post

I'm a bit busy tonight, i should have done more than only 2 laps, but thats the only thing i could pull off now. Also, none of these are perfect laps so i believe people could get down to low 40's with more practise.

I think the fzr speed with full tank will be around 40 mid/low, but it depends a bit on the setup for me at least. I can build one which easily goes 40 low at the start, but won't get that nice progression during the race, usually ended up with 39.2 - 4 with this one.. Right now i'm using a set which is more likely to start on 40 mid/high, though there's still some weeks left of prac.

However, i had some goes with the xrr today which was rather surprising. On my first laps i had 40.6 - 40.8 and 40.7 with full tank and quite hot r3 tyres, gonna see if i have some more progress on it later. Might try the xrr tonight as well

Quote from some pm's i've had with csimpok the latest days:

Quote :

Hi!

Well, actually we had an As Hist XRR race in the Hungarian championship so I had a good set and was already familiar with the part of the track thats common with Historic. All in all I spent about 90 mins hotlapping that combo and my expectation is that the time could be improved by about 0,5 sec with a "close to perfect" lap.

Rgds,
Ákos

Last edited by Chriskart, Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:27.

Quote from Bawbag :

I think it's brakes, I can hold good corner speed in the XRR in comparison to the FZR and still only get 39.4 or 6 on a decent lap, I had some goes in the FZR and the brakes are just so much better, and it seems to be something that was completely overlooked for the balencing by the devs.

The FZR wasted the XRR under braking even with its 80kg ballast (All beit the XRR had 30) but now that it's lost that 80Kg it's back to being 100x better rather than just quite alot better.

I don't know what could be done really to fix it, because before the patch the 80Kg helped it's awesom braking, but you can't add 80kg now as it's being slowed down by other things like the gearbox.

The only way I would see it being done properly was variable handicaps for each round but I wouldn't be comfortable with it and i'm sure that the FZR teams wouldn't either.

Thats a important point indeed, though thats just an advantage the fzr allways has had with all the weight it has on the rear, even with 80kg added Cornering speeds seems quite ok with xrr, it's even easier through some corners to hold higher speed than with the fzr, still it's difficult to get those good splits for some reason : P

However, these two cars are so different in all fields now (turbolag, brakes, downforce values, tyre profiles etc etc, totally different from each other in these two cars) and i think it's going to be quite difficult to even them out. We've still not tried them directly against each other in a real long race, thinking about the xrr's ability to go 8 more laps than a fzr on an endurance run (No idea how much of an advantage this is, i believe no one does yet). Based on pure speed, the fzr seems slightly quicker, but i don't know yet in a race over several hours.

Allright, i attached some replays. All marked respectively with their added mass value. THese were far from perfect laps, but i think it displays the differences in time quite nicely anyway..

Also, i did all these with r3's, as it was no possibility to have enough tyres at the end with any mass added with r2's. I guess i could improve most of these laps with 0.2-4 secs somewhere (especially the one with only 20kg added), didn't have too much time to test it properly today.. Might try some more tomorrow

Looks great Mika, really thanks for the effort you are putting in here

I will try these settings later tonight, though there is something i just can't understand with the xrr.. I believe both hotlaps in the hl charts are quite ok, for both cars, maybe there's possibillities to catch 0,3-0,4 secs for both of them. Therefore we have a 4-5 tenths difference between the two cars which can be more ballanced with additional weight penalties.

However, on a endurance run the xrr seems over a second slower than the fzr for some reason. I know Joona Laurila from mercury has been testing the latest days, and he's been around 1.3 seconds slower than what i know is possible with the fzr. Thats some quite huge difference, allmost 1 second in the change from r2's to the r3's. Say if we put 40 kg to the fzr to make it competitive with the times that the xrr (atm) have in an endurun, it will have no chance in a qualifying run. With 10 - 20 kg's added it will be the other way around.

It might of course be the fzr which handles r3's better, but come on, it can't be a second?

I've seen people in xrr doing good times as well with r3, around 39.0, though on a qualifying lap. I'd like to hear the other xrr teams point of view on this. I'm very open for equally ballancing the classes, so the more said here, the better

Last edited by Chriskart, Fri, 4 Jan 2008 21:57.

Hey Viper, to directly answer your question i don't think it'll make you a worse karter at all. 900 or 90 degrees, when yoo sit down in a kart you should be quite familiar with it by the first meter

To answer the other people here about what i've experienced, i won't say it gave me much advantage speed wise, though there might be things that i don't know of.. : ) Being an active driver for 7 years now, i think karting is so different as it has no suspension, and i feel much more comfortable when i can feel g-forces and so on... I think i've got more benefits from this game from a mental point of view, as you're put in racing situations just like in real life. Your opponents are thinking strategies, just as you, and i see lots of the same patterns on real life karting tracks and races as in lfs

congrats ducky, saw this coming ages ago though

Thanks Bas!

Hey guys, results are posted further down this post ; )



First of all i got to say thanks to all attending! Allthough this didn't turn out excactly how we wanted, i really think all of you did a great job under the circumstances we had : )

I admit i did a big mistake with just coming into the server and totally change the quali format, allthough i thought i did the procedure we were supposed to use. With one lap qual, i thought we were all going to join the track at once, doing a qualifying lap each.
Fapex had obiously the other format in mind, which i now realise would have been better and more tidy. I came straight in from 5 hours straight work and wanted to just start the whole thing up at once, so sorry for that

However, i hope some of you had fun though, as that was the intention with this race
I think the reversed grid worked quite well for the second race, allthough i heard others had different opinions.. This requires really strict and fair driving from everyone, which is quite hard in a race situation i guess. Everyone wants to win of course, and it looked to me that most drivers generally respected each others very well in the fighting situations we had today.

I'm already looking forward to do this next year as well, as i honestly think it's a good thing to gather some good racers for a "end of year contest" like this. I've learnt lots today, and i will most likely put up a thing like this next year as well if there are any interest for it. With clear rules and good preorganising, it should be a good race for everyone?

Anyone got any ideas/critism to come with? I'd like to know everything you have in mind, as things can only be turned out to the better next year

Results:

Time to honour the winners of todays event!

Overall:


Race 1 Results
Race 2 Results

Superfast and consistantly driven by Bawbag again, congrats!
Also congratulations to [FM]troy for winning the second race, after a really unlucky first race. Great comeback!

I'll see if i can put up some stats tomorrow : )

Thanks for today guys,
Chris

Last edited by Chriskart, Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:46.