VM Stock Hatch Series 6 - MSM Teams

Skismo, if and when you get on MSM and check this thread, your design will be on the design storefront thing as "MSMKia925". It will have your number on it and it will be ready to go.

Gents,

Ragarding Laguna.

Front Tire PSI = 27.5 ( not fully tested yet ) - seemed to run high psi when hot with settings at 28.5

Rear PSI = 28.0

Ive increased the final drive to 3.60   helped 3rd gear bogging and drastically improved the 2nd gear bogging out of the final turn, thanks Taco.

running with stock aero settings - and Dom's posted tune.

3 laps into racing Doms ghost - ran a 39.012

I hope this info helps everyone.

1:39.099 with Dom/Clark's tune.

Easily gonna be a sub 39 car during race time.

Clark was doing 1:38.6 during our practice the other night, and I've been able to dip into the 1:38.9 range a few times. That turn 4 seems to be really inconsistent for me. I think if I can nail that one down I'll stay in 1:38.9 a little more often.

thanks for all the hard work guys!  been out of town this weekend but will try to make the race tomorrow.  Two races this week will be tough with the work schedule but I will try to make it.  The cars look awesome!!!  thanks Taco for putting together my paint!

lots of 37's in the EU quali. wowza, those guys are quick!

Rather disappointed in my first race here.

Managed to squeek into A lobby and ended up never touching my quali time at all. I felt like there was 0 consistency. I kept overbraking or underbraking, clipping apexes too early or late, it was just a mess. Only managed 10th due to Dom and another racer colliding.

Hopefully next week shall be better. Great racing from Dom and Clark however. And to Skismo in B lobby.

the tone in this was a little more physical than in the mustang series. At race start i was almost forced off track on the inside line. Guys making more tahn one move to protect their position. I will have to be more vocal about these types of things. The other guys have been racing together for a while so it has a little bit of a frat / boys club mentality - if you arent part of the group....you know.

So here's what happened to me...

In practice I raised my rear PSI due to a suggestion by Clark. I was finally able to hit 1:38.7 in practice, although it took a lot of laps to get there, and made the car feel more slidey on cold tires. We went into qualifying and my controller disconnected, then my wife was playing some youtube video really loud and threw me off until I could get her to grab her headphones. Late in the session I finally hit 1:39.1 and that's where I qualified, as 12th on the grid in Lobby 1.

With all of those cars in front of me I decided I was going to play it cool and hang back, assuming there was bound to be some heavy contact on such a tight track. True to form, I gained two positions on the first lap as people went off-roading. Over the next handful of laps I actually started to reel some people in and made genuine on-track passes like a pro.

I was up to 7th spot, and then a couple people pitted and I was at 5th. I heard Xessiv call out his pit-in behind me and thought I should pit the next lap, but then I heard him pit out and it sounded like he ended up behind some cars, so I thought it best to hammer out a few more laps. I was doing solid 1:38.8 times at that point, but then I put down three terrible 1:39.5 laps and figured the tires must be shot. Clark had caught me at that point and we ended up pitting together.

It turns out we timed our pits horribly, as we came out right in the middle of a four car battle for position. I had to let the first guy by because he had the momentum into the first turn. I'll have to re-watch the replay, but I believe the next guy kinda bumped me out of the way going through the corkscrew to take the next spot. Clark caught me coming off the last turn and I let him go because I knew he had the best shot to take those two cars ahead of me. Around lap 20/24 the guy behind me appeared to divebomb the last turn and totally misjudged hit, punting me almost all the way out to the wall. He said it was lag, but then why did he hit the inside of my car on the turn instead of my rear? Anyway, I lost another position from that and finished 11th.

After running 7th it was kind of deflating to lose all of those positions so quickly after my pit stop. They were definitely driving more aggressive than in the Spec Mustang series. I will be eager to watch that replay tonight and see what really went down.

really interesting write up, i didnt even realise tires went off that quickly, but thats a good thing i guess as it adds more strategy. wonder how setup affects tire wear. and yeah fm5 seems alot more satisfying in the racing side of it, with all the braking and grip to take into account, its really cool when you work a pass and pull it off.

If its gung-ho agressive next week, i'll have to start saying something. These guys were def racing shitty with bad tactics.

I uploaded a few highlight clips on XBone of my adventures in the Laguna race.

Got my xbox back, yay, and checked things out. Nice work with the paint job Dom. Put Dom's setup on it, tweaked the gears a little and put a 1:05.408, nearly a second under B4D B0Y. Still, early days...

what did you tweak the gears to consult?

Adjusted the ratios as follows. Seems to give it a balanced acceleration through the gears. On a few of the corners you can run in low revs on 3rd and it can pull away out the corner, saves a gear change...

Gear ratios:

I took off all the aero from the car and ran 1:04.2. I am using 5 gears, but I think I'm going to shorten 5th quite a bit so it's running near redline as soon as I am into it.

Im running right with you with zero aero.

Going to try and Add some aero to see if that helps at all through corner 2 and 4.

I feel like part of what's dragging my time down a bit is third gear. It is a little low in revs as I exit that turn 2 - 4 complex. I will try to fiddle with it tonight before we race.

im running consult gearing and i never get the corner call out right....

turn 4 is the corner for exit speed.

We'll I have had another play with the gears, shortened 5th like Dom suggested, and 3rd is now better at accelerating from about 56mph making the 2nd and 4th cornets a little easier. It could probably do with being a little shorter, but think that'll mess with 4th and 5th too much.
Also tried it with no aero and my times dropped, might be my driving style or the tyres warming up (found getting my best times around the 15/16 lap mark) but I set the front to 60lb helped with the last two corners. 
Managed to knock my time down by a second, now running at 1:04.8 average, got a 1:04.427 in testing.
Gear ratios below.

Gears:

Had a good qualifying session, started in 8th on my grid with b4d b0y in 2nd. First race I made two places by the second corner, then the race was abandoned. Second race got taken out on the second corner, went to last place and worked hard to get to 9th. Had a good running battle with b4db0y, don't think I made contact trying to pass, but went through the last set of corners side by side. Good race, wish I got the replay saved, lesson learnt for next time...

Enjoyed the race despite numerous fudge ups (to put it mildly). 

Surprised to find myself starting 2nd in lobby 2 (the lobbies were reduced from 4 to 3) but too much wheelspin at the start, and a too early upshift, saw me me lose a place by corner 1 and then another by turn 3. Took a bump on the next lap which sent me facing the wrong way and I ended up 2nd to last (out of 14)   . 

Fought my way back to 7th or 8th and then sis-in-law came in. As any of you who have raced with me before might know, she and the missus can be quite loud after a drink so I muted my mic but that caused everyone to start complaining about me making a "tutting" noise. Spent a few laps f**king about with the mic (was having a great race with consult at the time, he was on my tail for what, 14-15 laps? and we were making good time on those in front) but nobody could hear anything I said so I ended up just taking the bloody thing out. I was making up so much ground on the 2 in front I thought 5th, at least, was guaranteed but as I took the mic out I went into a tank slapper (sim steering didn't help) and went right off the track ending up way behind 11th (I think consult had a mishap just before I did and may have lost a place?, he was 9th when I managed to catch up again). Had 3 laps trying to get by 10th to get myself back into racing consult but too many aborted overtakes cost me and I ended up 11th. 

From 2nd to 11th   . Not what I was hoping for at all but it was a good clean race (being knocked round early on was a total accident and I accept these things) but was spoiled by my mic problems so I'm going back to the 360 headset next week. 

Summary, B+ for quali, D- for the race, must do better next week.

Thought I would snap a pic with all three MSM cars together at Silverstone.

Had a look on VM this morning, looks like the fastest time is 2:01.***, with the average seemingly 2:04/5. Going to have a practice tonight, have a play with the tune. 
B4D, part of the reason I was having that power struggle with you on the last race was that you had the speed on the corners. Wondering if you had a different setup, or if my playing with the gears slowed it down somehow...

I don't remember changing much from the initial setup that was posted. A tweak of gears, a higher acc diff and, possibly, tyre pressures, I think. I haven't had a go at Cat yet but I'll post whatever I can come up with.