Well so much for tacking it easy and try to complete all stages in my first online Rally, heeh.
It was going well on the 5. stage until a highspeedsection ending in a 3 or 4 right turn after a jump. I missed the callout and hit the jump in the wrong direction. Hello trees and terminal dammage.
Blaaaahh!
Is it possible to do any on road repairs on terminal damage or is the only option to retire? I have not really checked so I retired.
It was fun and high concentration, but I am really soaking in sweat now.
I’m not sure, because haven’t seen the terminal message yet. But most of the time, if you are off of the path for a certain length of time, you get a recover option of gamepad or arrow key down.
Finished up Sweden. Manged to roll the little Pug on the second to last stage. Thankfully the spectators were nearby and had us back on our wheels in 8 seconds, with nothing but a cracked windshield to show for it. Other than that, smooth sailing.
All in all, I’ve done my bit to uphold the honor of the Pugs! Was great, fun, as always.
Forgot to post this up, but Alt Rally Finland was a carnage fest with @Roo taking first, @chipwich 2nd and @Aginor 3rd by surviving longer than the rest.
Yowza, only 2 out of 6 finishers. Even worse than the monsoon in Scotland (3 out of 6), honestly I thought that one was harder. Perhaps it was because Scotland looked menacing, so people were more careful. Finland looks somewhat inviting, encouraging you to push a bit more, but severely punishes the smallest mistake and especially overconfidence.
Monte Carlo may be similar. The transition from dry tarmac to ice and snow is very dicey where there are patches of both. Looking forward to it!
Seconded. For people engrossed in both we can generally follow along, but if you’re only in one or the other I’m sure it can get confusing.
I thought and still think Scotland is harder, it’s like the speed of Finland with the turns and weather of Wales and of course logs. Think there was just some bad luck, I didn’t put in a lot of extra stops because I didn’t think tires were going to be the issue they were. Monte Carlo was my least favorite in DR1 so not really looking forward to it.
Yeah, I think Scotland was harder, mostly because you couldn’t see. Finland was inviting. Grippy gravel that stuck like asphalt, but those jumps in the middle of turns were insane. You miss one co-driver call and you are going for a wild ride. Anyway, DR2 is doing a fantastic job at making each rally unique.
I’ve been analyzing my driving in Finland trying to understand what I can change to feel a little more comfortable with the speed. My car setup was pretty good, but maybe not perfect. Watching some WRC video of Finland, it looks like the cars are setup similar to Baja trophy trucks in that the front is raised slightly higher than the rear. I believe that this is so that when they launch off of a jump, the attitude is already nose high so that when it inevitably pitches nose down, the landing will be flatter. The problem with doing that in an R5, is that would limit the rear travel.
But, the main thing is that the steering is too loose or vague at the center and going down a 5th gear straight trying to be precise about where you place the car on the face of the jump or crest. That’s aggravated by bumps in the road. I’m playing around with FFB settings on the G29, but I’m not sure that it’s completely fixable.
A shame about @keets getting discoed in SS12 of Sweden. He deserved to have a shot at knocking me down. He was certainly quicker.
Well done @Roo. Even with a clear run in the snow, I was still at least 3 seconds down on your time. I’m not sure I could have gone much quicker. There were places where I made mistakes, but even then I know you will have had sections where you could have gone quicker as well.
On the Finnish carnage, the stage I did complete, I really enjoyed. To me Scotland felt harder because of the gullies and edges/banks, coupled with the rain it made my driving very tentative.
I’m not sure how Monte Carlo is going to go. I’ve not driven it before so when I drove stage 1 last night, the change into dry road then progressing to some ice in the corners took me by surprise.
Fortunately some spectators had parked their cars on the outside of one bed and that stopped me from an untimely demise.
@Mudcat - thinking on team events, we could do an average time across each team, that way everyone in each team contributes and we also have an additional responsibility to make it to the end? Not sure if this works or would increase the fun, but I’m happy to help track it if there’s interest.
Yeah, I was planning on doing stuff like dropping lowest from each, kinda thought we might have a few more swaps to even things out without needing to prompt anyone to. I’ll most likely tabulate results a few different ways instead of just overall, or even avg.
I would have put out the metrics beforehand, but I wanted to see how things were shaking out. Right now we have 10 finishers with 7 1/2 hours to go. With a slight edge in VW drivers, but all the partials are VW as well.
Just fyi, it doesn’t get real icy in Monte Carlo til stage 3 or so. I ran the entire thing last night and I’m not entirely happy with how they handle ice. First patch I saw I let off the gas, kept the wheels pointed in same direction I was moving and my car decided while gliding over a small bit of ice to move in a different direction without any provocation. So I slid while doing everything you do to keep you from sliding.
Had a good rally in Sweden. I drove mostly conservatively to not get a car too beaten up to continue, like in Finland. However, this cost me quite a bit of time. On stage 9 I overdrove and flipped the car, resulting in a blown tire. That basically meant good bye to any nice position, but I kept going on with the tempered approach.
I had a few green sectors on stages in and between, but usually I lost 5 to 10 seconds each split… Anyway, was fun and it’s nice to see you all progressing as well!
I drove the first half of the Monte Carlo Rally.
That’s the first time I drove Monte Carlo in that car.
That’s why I am especially happy for driving a decent time. Even though I clipped some parked car once…
Video is uploading right now.
Second stage wasn’t that great but still OK.
The third one was a lot of fun. I also made a video of that one, I will upload it soon.
Stages 4-6 I struggled a bit to get into rhythm. In the night stage I killed my lights, but everything turned out OK since the moon is shining and the snow reflects the light well.
Not many repairs until stage 5 but then I had a little crash (and also lost 8 seconds because I slipped down a hill) so it seems I have to repair the car in the stop before stage 7.
Good fun so far, but driving on that ice and snow is stressful, even with those very stable cars. I guess that will show in my times of those very icy stages. I drive to finish, not to win.
Much better than with an RWD car though (I tried that a few weeks ago and it was hilariously bad).
