I close my eyes, push the left pedal thingy, and turn the wheel. When I open my eyes and see track in front of me, I know I'm good. If I see a wall and remember hearing some terrible noise in my headphones, I know something happened.

Actually, I'm absolutely terrible at T1. I can never seem to brake right. You're not up to speed at most tracks, so normal braking points are useless. The guy in front of me always seems to brake early, while the guy behind me brakes late. I don't know , I don't get involved with many T1 crashes, but I loose alot of positions almost every time. I'm of the opinion I've read here, brake early but brake lightly. I'm not a threshold braker anyways even on subsequent laps.

my goal in turn one is to have nobody behind me to nail me. i brake gently and early. tires are cold, speeds aren't at full, why lock up and get a flat spot.

speedfreak227

A few weeks ago, we switched the grid starting position to reversed (last to finish gets pole) on our SO City Classic/FOX combo for a stint, just to see what would happen.

I was amazed that, rather than being completely catastrophic as I'd expected, in fact there were LESS T1 crashes as a result.

I think the reason is that the more experienced drivers were forced to the back, and being more experienced were able to see and anticipate problems, cater for them, and effectively prevent them.

The moral to MY little story, I think, is that more experienced drivers can probably do more than they are doing about this T1 problem that we're all hearing so much about. Simply knowing that there IS a risk of a T1 crash, they are prepared to turn around and say "frickn noobs" etc.

Blame it on the new guy? Why? The new guy's new.. so he does exactly what's expected of him.. he barrels into T1, completely oblivious of his car's braking capabilities. You know he'll do this. It's not like it's a surprise to you, is it? So why are you there, being a part of his mayhem? Hang back. Let him get in front. Let him write himself off in the barrier. You could likely take 10 extra seconds over T1, and be 45 seconds ahead of him at the end of a typical race. Maybe more.

Come on, guys.. nobody in particular.. all of us, me included.. we need to drop some of the "frickn noob" and pick up our own buckets of spatial awareness.

[EDIT] I always seem to be thinking of something extra to say JUST as I hit the Submit button. This time it's the thing that I thought of FIRST, before writing all my other guff....

Business 101: It is an error to repeat the same process and expect the result to be different.

samh: I guess the problem with _that_ is that it's a bit hard to drop places in a controlled fashion. i.e., it's hard to let Slow Noob #1 barrel past you without also letting Annoying Fast Driver #2 past you too, where he will assiduously block you for the rest of the race . I had a really annoying run the other day where I was in the middle of a three car line. The guy behind me runs almost exactly the same pace, so he was obviously really pushing me. The guy ahead is usually clearly faster than me, but he made a mistake in the final corner, so I was pushing him up the home straight. I didn't WANT to overtake him - even if I did he'd just get back past me on the back straight, most likely, and in any case I didn't really have _enough_ on him to be confident of making a clean move - but I also didn't want to lose my place to the guy behind me, because I knew I'd never get it back. As I tried to finesse the situation by backing off just enough to stay behind the guy in front without letting the guy behind past, I utterly missed the braking point for T1 and they both ended up miles ahead of me as I slewed around the outside rumble strip at 40mph. Sigh. T1 is a bit like this situation times ten - you're trying to stay out of trouble while at the same time not letting your close competitors from behind you on the grid get past you...

Adam, yep I totally take your point. It's a heck of a challenge to avoid the newbies and beat the pros. I'm just saying that that IS the challenge - newbies and all. We've all done lots of complaining about idiots into turn one, and making passing difficult elsewhere on the track, wiping us out with erratic driving.. you name it, we've complained about it recently. I'm no exception - far from it, in fact.

What I'm really trying to say is that a newbie is a challenge in its own right - like that wicked crash-on-a-stick chicane at Aston. Not the same kind of challenge as a comparable or better driver, but nevertheless a challenging aspect of LFS as I'm sure it always has been. By and large, it's us that have changed. We've become more experienced drivers over the last year or so, and most of us have recently become a lot better, post-U patch.

It feels a lot, to me, like we've been driving in wet conditions for the last year, and NOW the track suddenly dried up.. but we have all that experience of driving in slippery conditions.. we're kickass drivers because of it. The gap between US and the newbies is big because of that experience. We're a lot more capable of nose-to-tail driving without risking the other car. Newbies aren't.. but they see us do it, and they assume therefore that it can be done out of the box.

It's what you'd call "a bit of a situation". But it's here to stay, and we have to figure out what we do to work around it. I'm not personally in favour of separating the newbies from the experienced players. I'd rather meet that challenge on the track, and figure out a way to beat it. Then it'll feel like racing. That's not something I'd feel like we were doing, if we "fixed" the field (ref other recent threads on similar topics).

Well, not only has 'everyone' complained about it, I guess 'everyone's caused at least one T1 accident too, if we're being honest. I know I have (unintentionally, of course, but the effect's the same). I'm also pretty new myself and I'm still pretty nervous about screwing up and being yelled at for it.

I mean, F1 races get T1 pile-ups reasonably frequently, so I think it's pretty darn inevitable that any assortment of non-godlike drivers is going to have them too. It's pretty much impossible to stamp out really, I guess we should discuss containment strategies more than anything else!

Quote from Linsen :

now that's just about the safest way to cause a huge pilup in T1 illepall. how an experienced driver can actually say and probably do such a BS is really beyond me.

well m8, its safer than braking and getting rammed yourself. another example of this is in the chicane at classic, now i do try to avoid people there because if i push them theres no runoff (not that i put them offline at the start) but i usually end up getting rammed and a massive pile up ensues.

ask anyone with real life experience and they will tell you that its the ones who brake early that cause all the bottlenecking and problems.

Quote from ayrton senna 87 :

ask anyone with real life experience and they will tell you that its the ones who brake early that cause all the bottlenecking and problems.

And do the people with RL experience advocate pushing the car in front???? illepall

Serp.

It's all about acting in a way that others can anticipate your actions. Before T1 that means staying on your side of the road and most importantly braking in a manner that allows you to react on the one in front of you while allowing the one behind you to react on your actions. I often see people stabbing the brakes for a bit just before they begin to really brake, others brake just slightly and increase braking strenght later.
Just put yourself in the position of the one behind you: How is he going to react to you? Can he anticipate your actions with the information he has?

Vain

Quote from Serpentine :

And do the people with RL experience advocate pushing the car in front???? illepall

Serp.

No, but they would rather let their car nudge a slow moving car in front than jump on the brakes and risk someone else doing it to them.

Everyone knows that if you're following someone you have to brake earlier than you otherwise would, simply because both cars would be on the same piece of tarmac if your .1 second gap at 100mph is now a .1 second gap at 25mph. But when there are 10 rows of cars approaching t1 and a car in front brakes 25 metres too soon, it's their own fault when they get collected, and if the worst that happens is Senna boy here nudging them to safety, then everyone got off light that time

.

Quote :

But when there are 10 rows of cars approaching t1 and a car in front brakes 25 metres too soon, it's their own fault when they get collected

,


What does collected mean? what about observing the car in front of you and reacting accordingly,( who decides where the correct point to brake is. ?,
Were racing not hotlapping.

I have been nudged to saftey about 30 times today, I thank the kind drivers for trying to save me . but come on.

John


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IMO, slow drivers are as dangerous as quick drivers in RL... Speed cameras can cause accidents because:

1) Every single driver (apart from the ones who drive way under 30 (which i believe is the minimum speed limit for a camera)) is looking at their speedo (they then hit any car in front of them, especially if that car is the slow driver)

2) Apparently, the flash of the camera taking a picture is confusing drivers and can cause an accident too.

Overall, i believe that if you have to drive over the set speed limit, make it a max of 5-10 MPH over the speed limit!! Then nobody should have a problem!!

I'm a bit of an early braker :/ always get rammed by those late brakers. I hate when people try to draft me on T1 though. What's the point!?

Quote from nfsjunkie91 :

I'm a bit of an early braker :/ always get rammed by those late brakers. I hate when people try to draft me on T1 though. What's the point!?

So that they can put you under so much pressure that you literally black out and they gain a space and are now 19/20

the only time i ride really closely behind someone is when i know they are fast... most of the time i stay slightly to the inside or outside so i have space to maneuver/attack.

Quote from Gabkicks :

the only time i ride really closely behind someone is when i know they are fast... most of the time i stay slightly to the inside or outside so i have space to maneuver/attack.

You are probably one of the people who go in and take down the slow ones lol!!

I have nothing to add to this thread, but I would like to say what a well argued discussion this is. A pleasure to read a thread that hasn't degenerated into a slanging match.

Carry on.

Hehehe, typical essex guy, just like myself...

Maybe some ppl should think a little more about what the typical set of racing rules has to say about this and not who _they think_ causes what in which certain situation. And, besides, sometimes ppl do break early for certain reasons, you know. Like, avoiding incidents for example, especially in T1. And I like to repeat: Nothing justifies bumping someone from behind on purpose. You simply _can't_ know what that does to the guy in front of you, or how he will react and which further mayhem this might cause.

I can't believe we even have to argue about this. It's really a no-brainer

Quote from spsamsp :

You are probably one of the people who go in and take down the slow ones lol!!

when i say attack i mean attempt to pass or force an accelleration battle at corner exit.

I think the difference between LFS and real life is the fact that your race car costs money to maintain and fix, so some people would rather risk it given the stakes aren't all that high.

Shift+S = New Race Car!

watch this

u notice that everyone goes flying into turn 1 like lunatics, but there are no accidents because there isnt anyone braking early, in formula 1 u get the same. i remember seeing an interview where coulthard said that he just goes flying in so that he doesnt get hit from the rear.

(When i say turn 1 i mean the harpin where they brake hard)

Quote from ayrton senna 87 :

watch this

u notice that everyone goes flying into turn 1 like lunatics, but there are no accidents because there isnt anyone braking early, in formula 1 u get the same. i remember seeing an interview where coulthard said that he just goes flying in so that he doesnt get hit from the rear.

(When i say turn 1 i mean the harpin where they brake hard)

There's no accidents because no one wants to crash and hurt themselves/others. It's a little different when you can just go ahead and put 150 G's on your virtual driver after connecting with a wall head-on at 220mph and laugh it off.

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