Round 5 - Indianapolis 500 [May 19th]

hearing this its me

Richard Coxon wrote:

Official server is now up.

Bump

Have lost connection and been spit out of the server 3 times now. Hope it is on my end.

Are there any issues with the server or is it on my end???????

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Richard Coxon wrote:

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Server is back up

15 mins to start.

I don’t know what happened but all I saw was Wilks possibly spike in lag into Lacina and I had no where to go.

Nothing no one could do to predict that and no ones fualt but I can not describe how gutted I am right now

Good luck everyone

Grant Riddall wrote:

I don’t know what happened but all I saw was Wilks possibly spike in lag into Lacina and I had no where to go.

Nothing no one could do to predict that and no ones fualt but I can not describe how gutted I am right now

Good luck everyone

The same for me Grant. A lot of preparation for nothing. Willks suddenly appeared right in front of me and i couldn't do anything.

Started 24th. Moved up to 8th by lap 20. Then the game showed me on P21 and I got disconnected shortly after. I had a great run, the car was awesome. Gutted

It's unbelievable I couldn't finish a CART race if my life depended on it. I dont understand why cars are diving to the apron at 200 mph the sliding up the track when we are going that fast there is no margin for this type of crap. Good luck all sry to everyone involved but I think we need a serious discussion on oval racing.

It is great to finish the race. My car was fantastic in traffic, could keep up with the Penskes and Buick using draft without any problem. After meeting Sabre on the track I was forced to lose the pull from Albertos and it put me a lap down. I think he had damage in his car, something was wrong.
In the last yellow, I came clear from the pit but I got a penalty because I overtook Mick before green flag. It is what it is, it was fun the whole time. I'm sure a lot of drivers with the "what if...." feeling in the end of the race. In the end, well deserved podium for Mick, Iquino and Raul.

Tks for the broadcast!

See you next race!

Grats to Mick Chapman!
Well deserved and happy for you.
You were a beast! Even when not in fuel saving mode I was having trouble matching that pace.

Lots of fun most of the way!

while running a seemingly comfortable 2nd @ lap176?, I made a last second decision to run 1 more lap to insure I would not need to stop again, which was called perfectly in the Broadcast! Juha was it?
Unfortunately as I came out of turn 4 on fumes to enter pits I see a Gerards car flipping down pitlane, the full coarse yellow gets called and pits closed less than 3 seconds before I entered.
Having no option I pit anyway and receive DRIVE THRU, Bummer but correct!

I decide I will enter pit as track goes green to serve penalty, upon doing so I receive another penalty, this one a STOP/GO for not being behind correct car when Green is given. (?? There was only 1 car ahead of me besides SC) So I stop, BUT I didnt know the procedure and it became a standard 16 second stop for fuel n tire

I come around and pit a 3rd time to properly serve the Stop Go.
Somewhere in all that I remember seeing another Deduct 1 LAP penalty? But I dont remember what it was for?

Car was an absolute blast!
Happy to finish and salvage something at the very end
But if an Admin or anyone could check into my sequence of penalties (lap176~185?), please do. I struggle processing all the goofy rules in American racing, so insight will be appreciated and useful in future.

Apologies for being long winded, didnt know how to sum up shorter, because still not sure what happened

Broadcast was really great despite the tech hiccups! Rather have everyone finish but the drivers that joined the booth added a LOT to the show

Brian Janik wrote:

while running a seemingly comfortable 2nd @ lap176?, I made a last second decision to run 1 more lap to insure I would not need to stop again, which was called perfectly in the Broadcast! Juha was it?

It was me indeed. I noticed you shifted into 5th and with the number of laps remaining being just 1 over a full tank run under green it became obvious what was going on.

I hop you all enjoyed the broadcast (in two parts). I'd have preferred to be in the race but my internet connection had other ideas. At least I held the lead for a lap so I didn't go completely unnoticed.

Well done Mick! Amazing drive!

And also Little Al, that was a really well driven and impressive run by you

Although I lasted only a few laps, I was very pleased to have a setup that was planted and quick, Massive thank you to Alberto for the help, not only here but in previous weeks helping me with ovals. My game plan was to simply finish in the top 6. The start I took extremely cautious and followed Lacina round for a few laps. Just a very unfortunate incident with lag that ended the race early for both of us.

The broadcast was fantastic, will have to push harder the next few rounds to claw back some points from Thiago and Coxon if possible


Thanks again to the admin for organising this one. Think everyone would agree that it’s very much appreciated

Looking at the race with a cooler head, I think this wasn't a particularly bad one, especially for being an oval. But as Austin said, some situations showed unappropiate driving and unfortunately I was caught in one of them, which effectively ruined my race. At least I was able to repair and go back to track to help my team, and the 1-2 Penske finish was a nice reward. It is a pity that we got a row of weird and maybe bugged penalties at the end that confused the hell out of everyone at the top, because otherwise it had shaped to be a much more competitive finish.

I think Automobilist shat the bed in that final caution. Half the field got some kind of penalty there, many got deducted a whole lap on top of that (including me).

Anyway! I had a beautiful car the entire race. I thought before when it came to setup, "if in doubt, add more wing". To add a click more wing just before the start was an inspired decision. I could run circles around people, while still being able to keep up with them on the straights, yet also saving fuel. My Achilles heal was my Cossie, which felt a little underpowered.

So just taking it easy at the start was safe and easy. I could use my great fuel mileage to great effect. I had no real issues with turbulence. So was a pretty fun race. Hopes were dashed with that final caution though.

In all, very glad with this event and my performance. Looked to have been less incidents than before, lots of long green flag runs and close racing.

And a belated congratulations to Mick with a grand performance in the Penske!

Thiago Canola wrote:

After meeting Sabre on the track I was forced to lose the pull from Albertos and it put me a lap down. I think he had damage in his car, something was wrong.

I had some damage and the car was a bit unstable. I didn't know what you were doing to start with as you kept trying to overtake me and it felt like you were going to dive up the inside late into a corner therefore I was spending a lot of time looking in my mirrors. Once it settled down and we ran together that was better.

A very enjoyable race for me and indeed a very enjoyable event from the start of practice to the end of the race.

Only my own mistakes affected me, clipping the wall a couple of times and then entering the pits when it was only open to lead lap cars and I wasn't on the lead lap. A stop and go penalty.

Congratulation to Mick

Thanks for the broadcast.

Austin Johnson wrote:

I dont understand why cars are diving to the apron at 200 mph the sliding

I'll take blame for that. Why was I down there you kindly ask? I was trying to move down to pit (out of harms way) and hit the banking out of frustration. I was handed a 'drive trough penalty' being past by another driver during the SC who then decided to pit when the green flag fell?! Therefore I couldn't let him by to avoid penalty.

I'm sorry. Everyone makes mistakes, you in your statement don't. I'm to guess lanesplitting side by side at Avus is an act of pure genius? This is clearly a place for that (your quotation) crap.

It was a very tiring and tense race for me. With a very low spin limitation and yet having to monitor engine overheating, finishing the race was rewarding.
I did not have straight speed, although the car was always firm and safe in the corners, I could not dispute positions and I followed my strategy faithfully. I had good battles with Fillipo, Jan and Ryon. In the end I was in 13th place but a stop and go came up for no apparent reason and that made me lose 2 positions.
The fact that I was able to finish the race without getting involved in accidents and without making mistakes alleviate my frustration of running with a slow and uncompetitive car.

I am still trying to make sense of how I came to be so many laps down.
Pretty sure it started when I came to the pits while field was under green. I exited and immediately the yellow flag was dropped. ...that happened twice. Couldn't have picked worse timing

However, it seems (to me, and I'm not really sure, I need to gain a deeper understanding of this process) to me that I was not overtaken by the field (at least the first time it happened I'm pretty sure I wasn't), and should have been waved around to the rear of the lead lap pack. AMS doesn't seem to do that though, even when appropriate. (not the first time I've been left wondering how I got so out of sync with the field)
I suppose some of this is on me. We're supposed to know when to head on around to the rear of the field, or whether to get gobbled up by the safety car and automatically placed a lap or more down, but I generally don't like to do anything not advised by the game under yellow, and it's nigh impossible for me to keep track in my head of that sort of thing while in the racing as well.

I also got the stop/go 10 sec penalty near the end. One sec it's telling me to follow the car ahead of me. I have labels up and name is highlighted yellow. Suddenly tells me I'm ahead of the car I should be following, and just as quickly gives me the penalty.

...................................................

Anyways, that said, it's just good to have finished and ran the race relatively trouble free.
Wasn't sure during the week how it would work out, but after all the talk during/surrounding quali and the notion that some were running high-ish wings, I realized that when I was behind a faster car, my car was kind of great. It was like a vacuum cleaner in the draft and would just suck right up to anything with speed.
It was also very stable (after quite a bit of working with it) on low wings. Planted even. So much so that in quali even the broadcasters thought I was on high wings.
So I didn't say anything, and I hoped that it would be my only shot at a top 10, perhaps running lower wings and being fast in the draft. It seemed to work, and I was elated when I found myself inside the top 10 quite quickly after having started P26.

Only problem, I was burning through fuel like crazy. Outside the draft, anything besides highest boost was useless and I started losing out to most others. Behind another car, I was able to save some fuel, but still a gas hogging monster.

In the end, I hope most of those near me realized I wanted to work together more than I wanted to fight and/or lead the way. Car was kind of useless in any scenario besides follow the guy ahead, and I tried to signal that most times, but sometimes found myself carrying more speed through the corners, so got forced to slow or go around and play the musical positions game.

Overall, it was fun. Tough, but fun. Was glad to see quite a few green flag stretches as well!

Broadcast crew did a great job, considering the issues....thanks for that!

And a big congrats to Mick on the win! WD!

Now, to go see if I can sort this falling laps down stuff (I need a massive refresher, it seems) so I can actually maintain the positions I can often gain during some of these oval races.