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6, 10, 200, 192, 7 - A look back at my first foray into the world of e-sports
6 months, 10 rounds, 200 hours of laps, 192 points and 7th place. This was what the Project CARS 'NVidia Challenger Series' competition meant to me, in pure number form. There was, of course, far more to it than just a bunch of numbers.
When I first saw the news of the upcoming competition, back in February of this year (2016 for anybody reading this in the future!), I knew this was something I wanted to take part in. I am not a 'car setup guru', this much is a well documented fact amongst those that I race with. My ability to tune a car to a track consists of randomly dragging sliders around and seeing if I like the result - I dub it the Clucks-Random-Slide-o-Matic-Technique™ . Invariably, the results are horrible and so I revert to the default setup which, although flawed, I can at least hustle around the track, more out of spite than joy I guess. So, here we are, a competition that forces the players to use the cars' default setup, spread over 10 rounds and 6 months (April through to October), taking 9 different cars to 10 different circuits. I signed up, without hesitation, initially opting to drive as a "lone wolf". I didn't want to be part of a team, having things dictated to me, with the added pressure of not letting my teammates down. I like working alone on time trials, taking the car to the track and slowly whittling my time down, tenth by tenth, hundredth by hundredth, never stopping until I was satisfied that this lap was "the lap that I could not improve upon". And then going straight back into the game and setting an even faster lap! This is what time trial is about, the draw, the addiction, the personal desire to push yourself and the virtual car to their limits.
My life as a lone wolf participant lasted about 5 minutes. My friends in Steam chat said "Cluck, we should form a team". Oh, OK then, go on, it will be a bit of fun, nothing too serious. There it was, I was now part of a team, but one that was under no pressure to perform, just to do what we could. No sooner had I agreed to throw my celibate driving ways to the winds than my good friend Manu, the founder of the Revolution Sim Racing league asked me "Cluck, you wanna be a part of our team".
Well fuck.
The team he was putting together had some very quick and capable drivers in it. Torn between one group of friends and another, I agreed to race under the RSR banner. We could get the league a little more exposure and, who knows, maybe even win. We certainly had the talent at our disposal to do so. Yep, sorry Steam friends, it was time to get serious.
Ahead of the competition starting, I ran 2 or 3 laps (certainly no more than that) on each car/track combo that I was to face. I wanted to get a feel for what my times were like and what might lie in store. Some of the combos I fell in love with instantly, finding a nice rhythm with no bother. Others, well, let's just say that there's a reason I didn't really touch some of these cars before now! Right up until the competition started, those brief tester laps were still the fastest default setup times for each of the combinations. A slight nervousness ran through me. "Could this possibly be true, am I really that quick?"
Round 1, "Showtime". Bentley Continental GT GT3 at Monza GP. Nil point.
"Could this possibly be true, am I really that quick?" No, I really wasn't. I had come crashing back down to earth, struggling to find pace in a car I had barely driven since its release in the game. Despite my best efforts, I finished the round in 13th place, just under 1 second behind the victor. Well, I would have done, had my ghost not corrupted, leaving me with no proof of my time, meaning my time was removed from the results (along with more than 20 other drivers in the top 40, all of whom had cut the track in some form or another). Worse still, one of my teammates had posted a faster time. Not so cocky now, are we Cluck. The car itself, the Bentley, is a hulking beast of a car in default trim. Eager to swap ends and not so eager to stop, I really struggled to drive the car with any sense of consistency. Adjustments to the brake bias helped a little but nothing could shake off my lack of empathy for the car. Monza is also a track that, despite its rich heritage, I don't have a lot of love for. There are elements there of a circuit that I should adore - camber, elevation changes, fast flowing corners - but it all adds up to a track that I just don't enjoy driving. It's hard to shake this feeling off when you're trying to nail a fast lap.
As mentioned, I had adjusted the brake bias in-car to try and help. Although setups were fixed, it was still possible to adjust brake bias on the fly and also use a manual shifter to rapidly drop through the gears, using engine braking to reduce stopping distances. Brake bias I can live with, the use of manual shifter felt to me like people weren't driving within the spirit of the game. But, of course, like any competitive sport where money is involved, there are some who will look to exploit every possibility there is to their advantage. Cheating? No, but it was already leaving a sour taste in some mouths and saw the retirement, after just one round, of an entire team. This was only the start of things.
To rub salt into the wound, one of the guys who I had initially said I would partner up with - before choosing to race with RSR - scored 2 points in this round.
Round 2, "Sting in the tail". Corvette C7.R GTLM at Laguna Seca. 11th position. 14 points. 0.653s gap to P1.
An improvement on the last round, I scored points! No more was I the 'Royaume-Uni' of the Eurovision Song Contest, I was now a contender. Albeit a 'just outside the top 10 contender' but I was on the map.
I was never happy with the final lap I posted, I knew it was not the best I could do, but it wasn't far off. Within the time I had and with the pressure of the competition, I still think I did the best I could have done here. It's fair to say I love driving Laguna Seca. I have never hooked up a perfect lap, in any car, but it has never mattered to me as I always finish a lap with a huge smile on my face. That the round also included the most evil-sounding car in the Project CARS roster was icing on the cake. I actually enjoy driving the Corvette, where I know lots of people fail to get on with it. It's not just the noise, it's the easy way you can correct a line, mid-corner and, if the tail starts hanging out a little, you can hold it there or tuck it back in with no fuss.
Sadly, despite scoring points and despite loving the combo, it turned out that this round was as far from a level playing field as it was possible to get. I was, by now, a moderator on the public Project CARS forum and was also charged with being the main moderator of the competition threads. I received word, via PM, from one of the teams that some people had been cheating, using a large run-off area at the back of the S/F straight to get a faster entry into the start of the lap. Only 1 person was officially disqualified as there was insufficient evidence to remove any other times. The suspicion that almost everybody in the top teams was up to their necks in it, remains to this day. Until proof emerges (if it ever does), it will remain just that though, a suspicion.
Round 3, "Fly like a bird". Ford Falcon FG V8 Supercar at Ruapuana Park. 8th position. 20 points. 0.594s gap to P1.
Steady progress and in the top 10 for the first time in the competition. This was an extremely hard fought set of points with a car that just does not like being driven like any other car. Just like it's real-life counterpart, this car has no ABS, no traction control, skinny wheels and tyres, brakes the size of a tea saucer and a honking great 620hp, 5-litre V8 engine up front. The car is more than a handful on a track like Bathurst, let alone a tight, twisty circuit such as Ruapuana. Almost every corner seemed designed to throw you off your rhythm. Every corner eager to chew you up and spit you out onto the grass. The car has to be driven with a very simple philosophy - slow in, fast out. Attempt to take a corner a different way and you will be slow or off the track. The temptation to get on the power is the first thing you have to override, you need to bide your time and wait until you start to see the exit of the corner before you think about getting on the loud pedal.
It turned out, late into the event, that the car also has cockpit-adjustable front and rear anti-roll bar adjustment, which the top folks were using to their advantage. Apparently, their method was to set the car up to be deliberately highly unstable and use the throttle to balance the car out. I tried, I gave up, not finding anything that I felt comfortable with and restorted to the default settings.
Round 4, "Feeling rough". RUF CTR3 SMS-R at Oulton Park Island. 7th position. 24 points. 0.331s gap to P1.
One of the closest rounds in the competition, helped in no small part by the shortness of the circuit and the monstrous power of the car being used. The top 15 drivers finished the round separated by less than one second. Play that image in your head, of 15 cars racing past you in under 1 second, it's an exhillirating image! I chose to run this round with both ABS and traction control. Without traction control, the car is like an angry lion, backed up with a thousand pissed-off wasps. With traction control, it's just an angry lion. This is not a car you poke with a stick because, chances are, you will find the stick taken away from you and used to beat you senseless. OK, enough with the metaphors. A feather-light touch I do not possess, so traction control it was to be. I had to retrain my whole style of driving as the traction control saps power like it's going out of fashion. You have to keep the revs higher than normal, desperate not to fall out of the power band. As for the circuit, I love Oulton Park, though more the International layout, rather than the shorter Island circuit we were using. Of all the circuits I have driven in real life, it is the one I smile the most about. I wish I could say I love the RUF CTR3 but it's just "too much" of a car. The power is simply overwhelming and that, sadly, removes some of the joy of driving. There are times, such as this, where there is such a thing as "too much power". A little less power, and I reckon it's a car I could love, a lot.
Round 5, "Progress". Aston Martin Vantage GT3 at Watkins Glen. 5th position. 32 points. 0.458s gap to P1.
My strongest result of the championship and the one I was most happy with, especially as it was also the round I spent the least time on. There are some cars and circuits that I feel instantly comfortably with and this was one such combo. The car is not the quickest GT3 car around a track but it is a joy to drive. Lovely acceleration, lovely soundtrack, great brakes and compliant steering. Watkins Glen, likewise, is a track I love driving. Fast, flowing corners, with great elevation changes and some deceptively tricky corners into the mix. It all added up to the round that I enjoyed the most. I posted just about the absolute best lap time I was capable of in this round. I maybe had a tenth more in me, but no more than that. I could not tell you whether I adjusted the brake bias, but I suspect I did make a very slight tweak to it.
*** Intermission Time ***
We were now into the mid-season break and a most curious event occurred during this time off from racing. In the middle of Round 5, I received a friend request from one of the members of the SDL racing team - who were leading the team standings at that point - but, deeply suspicious as to their motives, I ignored the request until the round had completed. Having accepted, I got a message from them, enquiring as to whether I would like to join SDL during the 'summer split'. I was flattered that one of the leading teams would want to recruit me but, I was quite clear with my response. The answer was a firm, but polite, "no, I had chosen to race for RSR and I would see that through to the end". Our beloved leader wasn't quite so polite! I was RSR through and through. Besides, the events of Round 2 were still fresh in my mind and I did not want to be associated with a team that I did not trust.
It transpired that other drivers had less qualms about joining the big boys. Three people left the teams they were in (although I wouldn't be surprised if they were the whole team!) and joined either the BAM or SDL teams for the remaining 5 rounds.
Round 6, "Dingly Dong". Caterham SP/300R at Brands Hatch GP. 10th position. 16 points. 0.453s gap to P1.
The autumn half started with a thump, crashing back down to 10th place, after the steady improvement I had made through the first half of the competition. What to say of the car and track? The car is an interesting drive. In default setup it is similar to the Ford Falcon in that you cannot get on the power too early or you will just 'wash out' wide and leave the track. Patience is the name of the game here. Once you are into this way of approaching corners, it can be a great little car to drive. The Brands GP circuit is one I have always failed to gel with, unlike the shorter, quicker (and, yes, easier!) Indy layout. The back half of the track contains corners designed specifically for you to hate them. 'Westfield', specifically, is a corner that took me hours to finally find the right way through. It's a corner that, every lap, would make me tense up as I approached it, knowing how much I hated it and how often I would get it wrong. Like some other circuits, I should adore the GP layout but I still, even after all the laps I ran for this round, do not like it.
Curiously, the event was won by a new addition to SDL's team, who had joined them during the 'summer split' break. Curious, I checked their Steam profile. It contained precisely one game (yes, Project CARS), with less than 20 hours of playtime showing (this was after the event, remember). I am still deeply suspicious that this person is not who they claim to be (nobody buys a game and within a couple of hours masters it to the point of winning a time trial competition outright - I have no doubt a quick driver would be quick but, winning pace, right out of the blocks? Nope, sorry, this was fishier than a busy day at a fish market). However, as with the Laguna Seca round, until proof emerges it will remain a deep-rooted suspicion. My mind, though, was now turning to thoughts of "this competition is starting to become a battle of skill not in the driving but in how to game the system".
Round 7, "Shake and Bake". Ford Fusion Nascar at Road America. 8th position. 20 points. 1.457s gap to P1.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I still regret stooping to their level, but it was the only way to stay within reach of the top. I had long-since forgotten having reported a particular foible of the Ford Fusion car, namely that its tyres would produce more grip as they wore low. With just a few hours of the round left, I was reminded of this and set about trying to reclaim some of my lost positions. The top guys were some 3s ahead of me, they'd learned of it 2 days previously and I was kicking myself for not realising sooner. Although it was expected behaviour for the tyres, it involved doing 10 laps at speed to wear them down, before being able to set a really good lap. We were firmly outside of the "spirit of the rules" with this exploit. It finally made sense to me how the ghosts I was chasing were getting such speed out of corners. As for the car, it's a NASCAR car, there's not a lot I can say about it except that I'm not a fan. The track, however, is a joy to drive. Technical, fast, flowing, glorious. I like Road America. I like it a lot and always have.
Round 8, "OMG". Mercedes-Benz AMG C-Coupe DTM at Nürburgring GP. 8th position. 20 points. 0.703s gap to P1.
I came into this round with zero confidence of doing well. I had struggled to get comfortable with the car during a few pre-event test laps, not even coming close to troubling some of the other times people had been setting. It also didn't help that I still cannot stand the Nürburgring circuit, in terms of driving it - the track always feels like a "start, stop, start, stop, start, stop" affair, with little real flow through a nice set of consecutive corners. As for the car, the skills lies in how early you dare to engage the DRS, always tip-toeing between safety and speed. It actually made for a nice challenge to be fair. I think I spent more hours on this round than at any other since the first and it was that sheer determination that saw me finish in 8th. I went into the round just hoping to score some points, even A point would do. To finish 8th was far more than I was expecting and I was more than happy to finish so far up.
Round 9, "Screw you guys, I'm going home". BMW 1M Stanceworks at Snetterton 300. 9th position. 18 points. 1.679s gap to P1.
I will remain bitter about this round for many a month (and year) to come. I went into the round full of confidence, liking both the car and the circuit. My initial times were quick, very quick and, until the Sunday evening of the event, I was sitting tidily in 4th position, just a couple of hundredths of a second behind 3rd place. 5th place was a few tenths down and had not made many inroads towards improving for some hours. Then the player in P2 improved his time by a whopping 0.6s. This was followed by the driver in P1 improving his time by 0.7s. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that simply doesn't happen at this level without raising suspicion. I watched their ghosts and all I could note was that they were somehow getting an almost alien level of acceleration out of the slow corners. With just a few hours left of the competition, a post appeared on the forum detailing what was being exploited. The cat was now out of the bag, with every man and his dog taking advantage. I fell from 4th to 10th in a little under 3 hours, with the gap to P1 increasing from 0.4s to nearly 1.7s. The exploit? Similar to the Ford Fusion except that this was not expected behaviour and you had to drive a fairly sedate 20 laps (or more) to wear the tyres down. 20 sedate laps, just to then set 1 lap was not my idea of fun so I left my time as it was. I still maintain that mine was the only legitimately set time in the top 10, once the round ended.
For the event itself, it's a deceptively tricky combination. The 1M loves to eat tyres, lighting them up if you so much as think about looking at the loud pedal. As for the track, it's a far cry from the simple Snetterton of old, now having grown a tight, twisty section before the long back straight of 'Bentleys'. Then you come to the final corner. You're struggling for grip, on a very long, sweeping, 4th-gear right-hand bend which ends, abruptly, in a very tight left-hander. You're in a car that loves to swap ends and you're now tasked with scrubbing off almost all of your speed, whilst the car is already un-balanced. I have never sworn so much at a single corner of a track in my life. Get it right, though, and it is a deeply satisfying feeling as you hurtle up towards the start/finish line.
A few hours after I had learned of the exploit, I swore blind that I was retiring from the competition, even e-mailing the organisers to announce my resignation. I had decided to give up, with just one round to go, ironically the round I was looking forward to the most. You see, I love Bathurst, it is just about my favourite track in the Project CARS roster (Nordschleife might just run it a very close 2nd). I think this is what upset me the most about packing in, along with the feeling of failure and, of course, letting my team down.
Round 10, "Never give up, never surrender". Ford Falcon FG V8 Supercar at Bathurst. 6th position. 28 points. 0.677s gap to P1.
On the 3rd day of the round, I relented, I put aside my anger over the events of Round 9 and set about doing what I could to both secure my 7th place in the driver's table but also secure 3rd place for the team. The team in 5th place had a habit of getting 2 or 3 drivers in the points and that might have been enough to dislodge us from our potential podium finish.
As I mentioned earlier, Bathurst is just about my favourite track. I think that it must have made up at least 20% of my overall playtime of Project CARS. It's also an utter bastard of a track! It's similar to Snetterton 300 in that you have a couple of very long straights that are punctuated by an evil, twisty middle section. The difference, of course, with Bathurst is that the evil, twisty stuff, is high up in the hills. The car was a return of the Ford Falcon that was used in Round 3. A car that requires a real discipline if you are to be quick around Bathurst. Armed with the ARB adjustment knowledge, I tweaked both the front and the rear until I found something that I immediately felt comfortable with. It made for a sharper turn-in but with a slightly less-than-planted rear end, requiring some extra finesse with the throttle out of the corners in the tricky mountain section of the circuit. I had also adjusted the brake bias, moving it slightly rearward, again to provide a little extra turn-in. Talking of brakes, the ones fitted to the Falcon are woeful and, with no adjustment to the cooling ducts possible, they would cool dramatically during the long straights, requiring a breaking point far earlier than normal (especially for the opening lap). With a lively rear-end on throttle and near non-existent brakes, it all added up to a bag of dangerous fun. A bit like trying to tame a bag of angry snakes that, once tamed, turn into your best mates and go down the pub with you every Friday night. As it was, I finished just 0.003 seconds behind a driver named Masa, who went on to finish the competition in 3rd place. This was one of my best performances, possibly better even than the 5th place I earned at Watkins Glen.
I finished the round at 10pm on the Monday evening, even though there were 3 hours remaining. I had been glued to my seat for the last 6 hours and, though I knew I could go two tenths faster (which would have placed me 4th in the round), I was tired and desperately in need of food and drink. I sat out the remaining couple of hours, just watching the leaderboards, desperate to see that nobody improved their times, knocking me down the table. 1am arrived and I was safely in 6th place. I'd done it. I'd secured my spot in the driver's table and the podium finish for the team. The 200 hours (ish) of laps, the blood (literally), sweat and tears had all been worth it.
I set out to achieve one thing in the competition, namely to see how I fared against the best Project CARS players in the world. You can never know how fast you really are until you take part in something like this. I had always known I was quick, on a single-lap pace but I never knew how quick. I do now. And despite all the deep-rooted suspicions of cheating and exploiting, I still finished the competition in 7th place and put the league I race with in 3rd place in the team table. I proved not only to myself, but to my peers that I am, indeed, one very quick chicken.
Was the competition perfect? No. Could some things have been done better? Yes. But as with everything in life, nothing is perfect and I'm sure that the organisers will learn from what worked and, more importantly, what didn't work and use that to make the next competition even better. Talking of which, I have already signed up for the next event and I will sign up to any future "fixed setup" competitions that they choose to organise.
Hi, my name is Cluck and I am a time-trial addict.
(c) Clucksworld, 2016
6 months, 10 rounds, 200 hours of laps, 192 points and 7th place. This was what the Project CARS 'NVidia Challenger Series' competition meant to me, in pure number form. There was, of course, far more to it than just a bunch of numbers.
When I first saw the news of the upcoming competition, back in February of this year (2016 for anybody reading this in the future!), I knew this was something I wanted to take part in. I am not a 'car setup guru', this much is a well documented fact amongst those that I race with. My ability to tune a car to a track consists of randomly dragging sliders around and seeing if I like the result - I dub it the Clucks-Random-Slide-o-Matic-Technique™ . Invariably, the results are horrible and so I revert to the default setup which, although flawed, I can at least hustle around the track, more out of spite than joy I guess. So, here we are, a competition that forces the players to use the cars' default setup, spread over 10 rounds and 6 months (April through to October), taking 9 different cars to 10 different circuits. I signed up, without hesitation, initially opting to drive as a "lone wolf". I didn't want to be part of a team, having things dictated to me, with the added pressure of not letting my teammates down. I like working alone on time trials, taking the car to the track and slowly whittling my time down, tenth by tenth, hundredth by hundredth, never stopping until I was satisfied that this lap was "the lap that I could not improve upon". And then going straight back into the game and setting an even faster lap! This is what time trial is about, the draw, the addiction, the personal desire to push yourself and the virtual car to their limits.
My life as a lone wolf participant lasted about 5 minutes. My friends in Steam chat said "Cluck, we should form a team". Oh, OK then, go on, it will be a bit of fun, nothing too serious. There it was, I was now part of a team, but one that was under no pressure to perform, just to do what we could. No sooner had I agreed to throw my celibate driving ways to the winds than my good friend Manu, the founder of the Revolution Sim Racing league asked me "Cluck, you wanna be a part of our team".
Well fuck.
The team he was putting together had some very quick and capable drivers in it. Torn between one group of friends and another, I agreed to race under the RSR banner. We could get the league a little more exposure and, who knows, maybe even win. We certainly had the talent at our disposal to do so. Yep, sorry Steam friends, it was time to get serious.
Ahead of the competition starting, I ran 2 or 3 laps (certainly no more than that) on each car/track combo that I was to face. I wanted to get a feel for what my times were like and what might lie in store. Some of the combos I fell in love with instantly, finding a nice rhythm with no bother. Others, well, let's just say that there's a reason I didn't really touch some of these cars before now! Right up until the competition started, those brief tester laps were still the fastest default setup times for each of the combinations. A slight nervousness ran through me. "Could this possibly be true, am I really that quick?"
Round 1, "Showtime". Bentley Continental GT GT3 at Monza GP. Nil point.
"Could this possibly be true, am I really that quick?" No, I really wasn't. I had come crashing back down to earth, struggling to find pace in a car I had barely driven since its release in the game. Despite my best efforts, I finished the round in 13th place, just under 1 second behind the victor. Well, I would have done, had my ghost not corrupted, leaving me with no proof of my time, meaning my time was removed from the results (along with more than 20 other drivers in the top 40, all of whom had cut the track in some form or another). Worse still, one of my teammates had posted a faster time. Not so cocky now, are we Cluck. The car itself, the Bentley, is a hulking beast of a car in default trim. Eager to swap ends and not so eager to stop, I really struggled to drive the car with any sense of consistency. Adjustments to the brake bias helped a little but nothing could shake off my lack of empathy for the car. Monza is also a track that, despite its rich heritage, I don't have a lot of love for. There are elements there of a circuit that I should adore - camber, elevation changes, fast flowing corners - but it all adds up to a track that I just don't enjoy driving. It's hard to shake this feeling off when you're trying to nail a fast lap.
As mentioned, I had adjusted the brake bias in-car to try and help. Although setups were fixed, it was still possible to adjust brake bias on the fly and also use a manual shifter to rapidly drop through the gears, using engine braking to reduce stopping distances. Brake bias I can live with, the use of manual shifter felt to me like people weren't driving within the spirit of the game. But, of course, like any competitive sport where money is involved, there are some who will look to exploit every possibility there is to their advantage. Cheating? No, but it was already leaving a sour taste in some mouths and saw the retirement, after just one round, of an entire team. This was only the start of things.
To rub salt into the wound, one of the guys who I had initially said I would partner up with - before choosing to race with RSR - scored 2 points in this round.
Round 2, "Sting in the tail". Corvette C7.R GTLM at Laguna Seca. 11th position. 14 points. 0.653s gap to P1.
An improvement on the last round, I scored points! No more was I the 'Royaume-Uni' of the Eurovision Song Contest, I was now a contender. Albeit a 'just outside the top 10 contender' but I was on the map.
I was never happy with the final lap I posted, I knew it was not the best I could do, but it wasn't far off. Within the time I had and with the pressure of the competition, I still think I did the best I could have done here. It's fair to say I love driving Laguna Seca. I have never hooked up a perfect lap, in any car, but it has never mattered to me as I always finish a lap with a huge smile on my face. That the round also included the most evil-sounding car in the Project CARS roster was icing on the cake. I actually enjoy driving the Corvette, where I know lots of people fail to get on with it. It's not just the noise, it's the easy way you can correct a line, mid-corner and, if the tail starts hanging out a little, you can hold it there or tuck it back in with no fuss.
Sadly, despite scoring points and despite loving the combo, it turned out that this round was as far from a level playing field as it was possible to get. I was, by now, a moderator on the public Project CARS forum and was also charged with being the main moderator of the competition threads. I received word, via PM, from one of the teams that some people had been cheating, using a large run-off area at the back of the S/F straight to get a faster entry into the start of the lap. Only 1 person was officially disqualified as there was insufficient evidence to remove any other times. The suspicion that almost everybody in the top teams was up to their necks in it, remains to this day. Until proof emerges (if it ever does), it will remain just that though, a suspicion.
Round 3, "Fly like a bird". Ford Falcon FG V8 Supercar at Ruapuana Park. 8th position. 20 points. 0.594s gap to P1.
Steady progress and in the top 10 for the first time in the competition. This was an extremely hard fought set of points with a car that just does not like being driven like any other car. Just like it's real-life counterpart, this car has no ABS, no traction control, skinny wheels and tyres, brakes the size of a tea saucer and a honking great 620hp, 5-litre V8 engine up front. The car is more than a handful on a track like Bathurst, let alone a tight, twisty circuit such as Ruapuana. Almost every corner seemed designed to throw you off your rhythm. Every corner eager to chew you up and spit you out onto the grass. The car has to be driven with a very simple philosophy - slow in, fast out. Attempt to take a corner a different way and you will be slow or off the track. The temptation to get on the power is the first thing you have to override, you need to bide your time and wait until you start to see the exit of the corner before you think about getting on the loud pedal.
It turned out, late into the event, that the car also has cockpit-adjustable front and rear anti-roll bar adjustment, which the top folks were using to their advantage. Apparently, their method was to set the car up to be deliberately highly unstable and use the throttle to balance the car out. I tried, I gave up, not finding anything that I felt comfortable with and restorted to the default settings.
Round 4, "Feeling rough". RUF CTR3 SMS-R at Oulton Park Island. 7th position. 24 points. 0.331s gap to P1.
One of the closest rounds in the competition, helped in no small part by the shortness of the circuit and the monstrous power of the car being used. The top 15 drivers finished the round separated by less than one second. Play that image in your head, of 15 cars racing past you in under 1 second, it's an exhillirating image! I chose to run this round with both ABS and traction control. Without traction control, the car is like an angry lion, backed up with a thousand pissed-off wasps. With traction control, it's just an angry lion. This is not a car you poke with a stick because, chances are, you will find the stick taken away from you and used to beat you senseless. OK, enough with the metaphors. A feather-light touch I do not possess, so traction control it was to be. I had to retrain my whole style of driving as the traction control saps power like it's going out of fashion. You have to keep the revs higher than normal, desperate not to fall out of the power band. As for the circuit, I love Oulton Park, though more the International layout, rather than the shorter Island circuit we were using. Of all the circuits I have driven in real life, it is the one I smile the most about. I wish I could say I love the RUF CTR3 but it's just "too much" of a car. The power is simply overwhelming and that, sadly, removes some of the joy of driving. There are times, such as this, where there is such a thing as "too much power". A little less power, and I reckon it's a car I could love, a lot.
Round 5, "Progress". Aston Martin Vantage GT3 at Watkins Glen. 5th position. 32 points. 0.458s gap to P1.
My strongest result of the championship and the one I was most happy with, especially as it was also the round I spent the least time on. There are some cars and circuits that I feel instantly comfortably with and this was one such combo. The car is not the quickest GT3 car around a track but it is a joy to drive. Lovely acceleration, lovely soundtrack, great brakes and compliant steering. Watkins Glen, likewise, is a track I love driving. Fast, flowing corners, with great elevation changes and some deceptively tricky corners into the mix. It all added up to the round that I enjoyed the most. I posted just about the absolute best lap time I was capable of in this round. I maybe had a tenth more in me, but no more than that. I could not tell you whether I adjusted the brake bias, but I suspect I did make a very slight tweak to it.
*** Intermission Time ***
We were now into the mid-season break and a most curious event occurred during this time off from racing. In the middle of Round 5, I received a friend request from one of the members of the SDL racing team - who were leading the team standings at that point - but, deeply suspicious as to their motives, I ignored the request until the round had completed. Having accepted, I got a message from them, enquiring as to whether I would like to join SDL during the 'summer split'. I was flattered that one of the leading teams would want to recruit me but, I was quite clear with my response. The answer was a firm, but polite, "no, I had chosen to race for RSR and I would see that through to the end". Our beloved leader wasn't quite so polite! I was RSR through and through. Besides, the events of Round 2 were still fresh in my mind and I did not want to be associated with a team that I did not trust.
It transpired that other drivers had less qualms about joining the big boys. Three people left the teams they were in (although I wouldn't be surprised if they were the whole team!) and joined either the BAM or SDL teams for the remaining 5 rounds.
Round 6, "Dingly Dong". Caterham SP/300R at Brands Hatch GP. 10th position. 16 points. 0.453s gap to P1.
The autumn half started with a thump, crashing back down to 10th place, after the steady improvement I had made through the first half of the competition. What to say of the car and track? The car is an interesting drive. In default setup it is similar to the Ford Falcon in that you cannot get on the power too early or you will just 'wash out' wide and leave the track. Patience is the name of the game here. Once you are into this way of approaching corners, it can be a great little car to drive. The Brands GP circuit is one I have always failed to gel with, unlike the shorter, quicker (and, yes, easier!) Indy layout. The back half of the track contains corners designed specifically for you to hate them. 'Westfield', specifically, is a corner that took me hours to finally find the right way through. It's a corner that, every lap, would make me tense up as I approached it, knowing how much I hated it and how often I would get it wrong. Like some other circuits, I should adore the GP layout but I still, even after all the laps I ran for this round, do not like it.
Curiously, the event was won by a new addition to SDL's team, who had joined them during the 'summer split' break. Curious, I checked their Steam profile. It contained precisely one game (yes, Project CARS), with less than 20 hours of playtime showing (this was after the event, remember). I am still deeply suspicious that this person is not who they claim to be (nobody buys a game and within a couple of hours masters it to the point of winning a time trial competition outright - I have no doubt a quick driver would be quick but, winning pace, right out of the blocks? Nope, sorry, this was fishier than a busy day at a fish market). However, as with the Laguna Seca round, until proof emerges it will remain a deep-rooted suspicion. My mind, though, was now turning to thoughts of "this competition is starting to become a battle of skill not in the driving but in how to game the system".
Round 7, "Shake and Bake". Ford Fusion Nascar at Road America. 8th position. 20 points. 1.457s gap to P1.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I still regret stooping to their level, but it was the only way to stay within reach of the top. I had long-since forgotten having reported a particular foible of the Ford Fusion car, namely that its tyres would produce more grip as they wore low. With just a few hours of the round left, I was reminded of this and set about trying to reclaim some of my lost positions. The top guys were some 3s ahead of me, they'd learned of it 2 days previously and I was kicking myself for not realising sooner. Although it was expected behaviour for the tyres, it involved doing 10 laps at speed to wear them down, before being able to set a really good lap. We were firmly outside of the "spirit of the rules" with this exploit. It finally made sense to me how the ghosts I was chasing were getting such speed out of corners. As for the car, it's a NASCAR car, there's not a lot I can say about it except that I'm not a fan. The track, however, is a joy to drive. Technical, fast, flowing, glorious. I like Road America. I like it a lot and always have.
Round 8, "OMG". Mercedes-Benz AMG C-Coupe DTM at Nürburgring GP. 8th position. 20 points. 0.703s gap to P1.
I came into this round with zero confidence of doing well. I had struggled to get comfortable with the car during a few pre-event test laps, not even coming close to troubling some of the other times people had been setting. It also didn't help that I still cannot stand the Nürburgring circuit, in terms of driving it - the track always feels like a "start, stop, start, stop, start, stop" affair, with little real flow through a nice set of consecutive corners. As for the car, the skills lies in how early you dare to engage the DRS, always tip-toeing between safety and speed. It actually made for a nice challenge to be fair. I think I spent more hours on this round than at any other since the first and it was that sheer determination that saw me finish in 8th. I went into the round just hoping to score some points, even A point would do. To finish 8th was far more than I was expecting and I was more than happy to finish so far up.
Round 9, "Screw you guys, I'm going home". BMW 1M Stanceworks at Snetterton 300. 9th position. 18 points. 1.679s gap to P1.
I will remain bitter about this round for many a month (and year) to come. I went into the round full of confidence, liking both the car and the circuit. My initial times were quick, very quick and, until the Sunday evening of the event, I was sitting tidily in 4th position, just a couple of hundredths of a second behind 3rd place. 5th place was a few tenths down and had not made many inroads towards improving for some hours. Then the player in P2 improved his time by a whopping 0.6s. This was followed by the driver in P1 improving his time by 0.7s. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that simply doesn't happen at this level without raising suspicion. I watched their ghosts and all I could note was that they were somehow getting an almost alien level of acceleration out of the slow corners. With just a few hours left of the competition, a post appeared on the forum detailing what was being exploited. The cat was now out of the bag, with every man and his dog taking advantage. I fell from 4th to 10th in a little under 3 hours, with the gap to P1 increasing from 0.4s to nearly 1.7s. The exploit? Similar to the Ford Fusion except that this was not expected behaviour and you had to drive a fairly sedate 20 laps (or more) to wear the tyres down. 20 sedate laps, just to then set 1 lap was not my idea of fun so I left my time as it was. I still maintain that mine was the only legitimately set time in the top 10, once the round ended.
For the event itself, it's a deceptively tricky combination. The 1M loves to eat tyres, lighting them up if you so much as think about looking at the loud pedal. As for the track, it's a far cry from the simple Snetterton of old, now having grown a tight, twisty section before the long back straight of 'Bentleys'. Then you come to the final corner. You're struggling for grip, on a very long, sweeping, 4th-gear right-hand bend which ends, abruptly, in a very tight left-hander. You're in a car that loves to swap ends and you're now tasked with scrubbing off almost all of your speed, whilst the car is already un-balanced. I have never sworn so much at a single corner of a track in my life. Get it right, though, and it is a deeply satisfying feeling as you hurtle up towards the start/finish line.
A few hours after I had learned of the exploit, I swore blind that I was retiring from the competition, even e-mailing the organisers to announce my resignation. I had decided to give up, with just one round to go, ironically the round I was looking forward to the most. You see, I love Bathurst, it is just about my favourite track in the Project CARS roster (Nordschleife might just run it a very close 2nd). I think this is what upset me the most about packing in, along with the feeling of failure and, of course, letting my team down.
Round 10, "Never give up, never surrender". Ford Falcon FG V8 Supercar at Bathurst. 6th position. 28 points. 0.677s gap to P1.
On the 3rd day of the round, I relented, I put aside my anger over the events of Round 9 and set about doing what I could to both secure my 7th place in the driver's table but also secure 3rd place for the team. The team in 5th place had a habit of getting 2 or 3 drivers in the points and that might have been enough to dislodge us from our potential podium finish.
As I mentioned earlier, Bathurst is just about my favourite track. I think that it must have made up at least 20% of my overall playtime of Project CARS. It's also an utter bastard of a track! It's similar to Snetterton 300 in that you have a couple of very long straights that are punctuated by an evil, twisty middle section. The difference, of course, with Bathurst is that the evil, twisty stuff, is high up in the hills. The car was a return of the Ford Falcon that was used in Round 3. A car that requires a real discipline if you are to be quick around Bathurst. Armed with the ARB adjustment knowledge, I tweaked both the front and the rear until I found something that I immediately felt comfortable with. It made for a sharper turn-in but with a slightly less-than-planted rear end, requiring some extra finesse with the throttle out of the corners in the tricky mountain section of the circuit. I had also adjusted the brake bias, moving it slightly rearward, again to provide a little extra turn-in. Talking of brakes, the ones fitted to the Falcon are woeful and, with no adjustment to the cooling ducts possible, they would cool dramatically during the long straights, requiring a breaking point far earlier than normal (especially for the opening lap). With a lively rear-end on throttle and near non-existent brakes, it all added up to a bag of dangerous fun. A bit like trying to tame a bag of angry snakes that, once tamed, turn into your best mates and go down the pub with you every Friday night. As it was, I finished just 0.003 seconds behind a driver named Masa, who went on to finish the competition in 3rd place. This was one of my best performances, possibly better even than the 5th place I earned at Watkins Glen.
I finished the round at 10pm on the Monday evening, even though there were 3 hours remaining. I had been glued to my seat for the last 6 hours and, though I knew I could go two tenths faster (which would have placed me 4th in the round), I was tired and desperately in need of food and drink. I sat out the remaining couple of hours, just watching the leaderboards, desperate to see that nobody improved their times, knocking me down the table. 1am arrived and I was safely in 6th place. I'd done it. I'd secured my spot in the driver's table and the podium finish for the team. The 200 hours (ish) of laps, the blood (literally), sweat and tears had all been worth it.
I set out to achieve one thing in the competition, namely to see how I fared against the best Project CARS players in the world. You can never know how fast you really are until you take part in something like this. I had always known I was quick, on a single-lap pace but I never knew how quick. I do now. And despite all the deep-rooted suspicions of cheating and exploiting, I still finished the competition in 7th place and put the league I race with in 3rd place in the team table. I proved not only to myself, but to my peers that I am, indeed, one very quick chicken.
Was the competition perfect? No. Could some things have been done better? Yes. But as with everything in life, nothing is perfect and I'm sure that the organisers will learn from what worked and, more importantly, what didn't work and use that to make the next competition even better. Talking of which, I have already signed up for the next event and I will sign up to any future "fixed setup" competitions that they choose to organise.
Hi, my name is Cluck and I am a time-trial addict.
(c) Clucksworld, 2016
