11-23-2020, 08:53 PM
The Euro series is at the Nordschleife Endurance Cup circuit this week. This is a daunting race for me, I've never raced at the track before. For anyone who needs help learning certain sections of the track that they struggle to remember, this video playlist by Brad Philpot is very good (Brad has won real world VLN races there and is also currently a BTCC racer this season).
Link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVJPnTWv...VWF2MEezPU
In part 4 of the playlist he explains the 3 trees method for learning the corner flow after the Karussell, which used to be a section I struggled to remember until I applied that method.
While I knew the track to an okay degree, I have never pushed myself on it before. My practice so far has been feeling my way around the track, finding out what are the corners where I shouldn't push at all etc. For that reason I haven't tried anything new with my setup, I'm still on the one I said I used for Imola since I'm comfortable with it (see my first post in the thread). It might me exposed on the long straights, but that's better than crashing. So far I have managed to string 4 laps together without incident, so I need to be careful as the race goes on and not relax, lose focus or get too carried away with pushing for pace. I've managed to hit a few laps just under the 8 minute mark, best is 7:57 so far.
I expect the race to be 8 laps, even if there are people racing who are Nordschleife experts who can lap around here 15 seconds quicker than me. There some much quicker times than mine in the 2019 series, but all races where 8 laps from what I read. A person would need to average 7:30, including time lost in pits to add an extra lap.
Fuel for me seemed to be 11.25-11.35 litres per lap, so the total fuel load I used for Imola (93L) should be good here, but I might increase that by a few litres just in case.
Tyre life seems to be similar as for Imola, so the times at which the remaining tyre life goes into the different colour zones of the tyre apps are about the same.
I'd probably recommend that if you want to use softs only do 2 laps on them, maybe 3 if you feel confident although I feel the 3rd lap might actually lose time to the hards. I certainly wouldn't do strategy 2a from my previous post, where its soft for half the race and a new set of softs for the 2ns half, that would mean 2 laps on soft tyres with low grip which would lose a lot of time and make a crash very likely. Note if you start on softs, you will have to do 2 laps, since the pit window opens after 10:00 so you can't pit after the first lap (unless a disaster occured and you lost so much time that you could of course). However this also goes for if you want to finish on softs, you would need to pit on lap and not lap 7 as the end of lap 7 will be after the 50:00 mark.
I'm pretty much thinking for my first race I will follow the strategy 1 in my earlier post and start on hards with a fuel load that will last the race. Then on either lap 5 or lap 6, I will pit and either
a. keep my tyres
b. swap to softs
c . swap to new hards
depending on my comfort level with the car on this track in the race and also my position on the field.
One thing I didn't test is the overall time lost for a pit, so I don't know if a two stop strategy is viable here. I suppose it would be 2 laps soft, 3 laps soft, 3 laps soft in any order. It would probably require aggressive driving to even be have any chance of being worth it, so if that's the case I don't feel comfortable doing that at all.
Link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVJPnTWv...VWF2MEezPU
In part 4 of the playlist he explains the 3 trees method for learning the corner flow after the Karussell, which used to be a section I struggled to remember until I applied that method.
While I knew the track to an okay degree, I have never pushed myself on it before. My practice so far has been feeling my way around the track, finding out what are the corners where I shouldn't push at all etc. For that reason I haven't tried anything new with my setup, I'm still on the one I said I used for Imola since I'm comfortable with it (see my first post in the thread). It might me exposed on the long straights, but that's better than crashing. So far I have managed to string 4 laps together without incident, so I need to be careful as the race goes on and not relax, lose focus or get too carried away with pushing for pace. I've managed to hit a few laps just under the 8 minute mark, best is 7:57 so far.
I expect the race to be 8 laps, even if there are people racing who are Nordschleife experts who can lap around here 15 seconds quicker than me. There some much quicker times than mine in the 2019 series, but all races where 8 laps from what I read. A person would need to average 7:30, including time lost in pits to add an extra lap.
Fuel for me seemed to be 11.25-11.35 litres per lap, so the total fuel load I used for Imola (93L) should be good here, but I might increase that by a few litres just in case.
Tyre life seems to be similar as for Imola, so the times at which the remaining tyre life goes into the different colour zones of the tyre apps are about the same.
- Softs: Yellow medium grip zone at the start of lap 2, Red low grip zone at the end of lap 3 (on the long straight)
- Hards: Yellow medium grip zone somewhere on lap 7. (I didn't get the full 7 laps done to test the hards, but I did get 4 and the app seemed to be telling the truth.)
I'd probably recommend that if you want to use softs only do 2 laps on them, maybe 3 if you feel confident although I feel the 3rd lap might actually lose time to the hards. I certainly wouldn't do strategy 2a from my previous post, where its soft for half the race and a new set of softs for the 2ns half, that would mean 2 laps on soft tyres with low grip which would lose a lot of time and make a crash very likely. Note if you start on softs, you will have to do 2 laps, since the pit window opens after 10:00 so you can't pit after the first lap (unless a disaster occured and you lost so much time that you could of course). However this also goes for if you want to finish on softs, you would need to pit on lap and not lap 7 as the end of lap 7 will be after the 50:00 mark.
I'm pretty much thinking for my first race I will follow the strategy 1 in my earlier post and start on hards with a fuel load that will last the race. Then on either lap 5 or lap 6, I will pit and either
a. keep my tyres
b. swap to softs
c . swap to new hards
depending on my comfort level with the car on this track in the race and also my position on the field.
One thing I didn't test is the overall time lost for a pit, so I don't know if a two stop strategy is viable here. I suppose it would be 2 laps soft, 3 laps soft, 3 laps soft in any order. It would probably require aggressive driving to even be have any chance of being worth it, so if that's the case I don't feel comfortable doing that at all.