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Post 08 May 2018, 3:14 pm

Feel free to post thoughts, comments, and analysis here.
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Post 09 May 2018, 8:49 am

Thanks to Brad for running a great race & congrats to Chris on finding a good way to navigate this treacherous track!

I really didn't know what would work with Estoril but I figured Curva 3 and VIP would be a bottleneck that I didn't want to fight other cars to get through a potential mess. Perhaps a 'from the back' strategy would work with a good car and lots of wear.

My race was competent but not spectacular. I figured Tim for the series win until that spin in Orelha. With Jeff having no chance to take the checkered flag, I realized that all I needed to do was pass Will with my extra 2 wear and I could take the championship by a hair. I was worried he would take some chances but he stayed responsible. Woot!

I never thought a 1st, 3rd, and 7th would be good enough for a title but that just speaks to the incredible amount of talent this season. It won't get any easier in season 5 when I look at who's advancing from C2.

Doug - a very special thanks for creating the 3 historical courses for this season. I'm still not sure how I feel about Estoril but looking at all four circuits, there appears to be several ways of attacking it. That's always a good thing!

See y'all in a few weeks when we start our Americas tour in Sao Paulo!
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Post 09 May 2018, 10:06 am

I found this track to be very interesting. There are a couple corner combinations that you want to make sure you navigate correctly, but then there's also a lot of flexibility in where you spend wear in other sections that can net you similar results.

Curva 3 and Curva VIP are a first obvious combination. You need to make it through those two corners in two moves or you've lost significant space. We can see the results of that in Turn 16 with what happened to Jeff. He ultimately caught back up to me at Esses, but had to spend a lot of wear to get back there.

The other less obvious combination is Orehla and Esses. I felt pretty strongly that I needed to get through that combination in two turns. I didn't like the play where you finish Orehla and then line up in front of Esses. Because in that scenario you have to spend too much wear in Esses and Parabolica (like Mike did in turn 23), or you have no momentum in Parabolica.

Which brings us to the other type of corner on this track: corners that don't really hurt if you don't complete them. Parabolica Interior, Parabolica Main, and Curva 1 are all very interesting in the sense that getting "stuck" in the middle of them doesn't really hurt.

With Parabolica Interior, the amount of space between it and Orelha is such that if you spent a wear to finish in the middle, you can accelerate out at 120 and still be in good shape to complete Orelha/Esses in the next two turns.

As for Parabolica Main, I think you want to spend at least 1 wear in there just to make sure you can keep up your speed heading out of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say it feels like a trap to try to actually complete the corner in one turn. In terms of wear expense, it makes way more sense to get to the last 120 space and then accelerate out of the 140's next turn. You're essentially going the same speed but you saved a wear.

Lastly, Curva 1 is an interesting one because of that tantalizing green line. I saw a lot of people go through for free, but I spent wear in there twice, and I felt like it was well worth it. Heading one or two spaces into the corner at 160 for 1W nets you several spaces on the other side that you wouldn't have if you slow-played it on the line for free.

Now, some of what I've pointed out is definitely specific to the car I raced. But I liked my car build and I think it was the right choice for me on this track. The spaces between Curva 1 and 3, between VIP and Parabolica Interior, and between Parabolica and Curva 1 all screamed 60/60/160 to me. I was hoping to leverage my beefier car from the front and I feel like I did that pretty successfully.

That said, I certainly got lucky several times throughout this race. My starting position on the grid was 6th, but I had already moved to 4th by Turn 2, due to an unfortunate no-plot by Doug. Had Doug actually plotted, I would have taken the outside lane for an extra wear and been another car back.

Again I got lucky in Turn 5 by another mis-plot, this time by Marshall who gave up inside position to me. That put me in 2nd, albeit briefly. A few turns later (turn 9) I let Jim pass me through Orehla in order to save some wear and because I knew I could still get through Esses safely and that's what I cared about. I felt that I could eventually catch him just by leveraging my better car.

That opportunity came quickly in Turn 13, where I headed into Curva 1 with the wear expense while everyone else lined up ahead of the corner. I feel like this is the real move of the race here, because not only did I get separation immediately, but by the time you get done with the Curva 3 and VIP combination, I've gone from one space in front of Jim and turned it into 7 spaces. That's basically a full turn on the chase pack, which I never really gave up for the rest of the race.

The only car left at that point to contend with was Tim, and I felt with my better car I could eventually chase him down. Of course, that came a little earlier than I was expecting. After what happened in Turn 13 with Curva 1, I felt like I needed to beat Tim to that spot in lap 3.

So despite what I said earlier about not needing to finish Parabolica, in Turn 22 I choose to spend the extra wear to get through there and line up next to Tim. All of this was done to try to leverage my better car to beat him out to the line in Curva 1. I even went so far as to push top to 180 under the assumption that Tim would be racing me for that spot, which turned out not to be the case. Tim clearly had a line for his 40/40 car and he was following it. But that was my thought process at the time. To overspend my wear early in order to take away the line and the initiative.

But then I was out of wear for the second half of lap 3. Initially I was planning to roll chance on Parabolica Interior because recovering from a spin at 60 would still let me finish that corner and still be ahead of most of the pack. But plotting it out some more I realized the over decel was the much better choice since the odds were considerably better. That was the *other* reason for the 180 push in Turn 23. The extra space I got out of that move, putting me directly in front of Parabolica Interior here in Turn 28, allowing me to run that corner for free at 80 with a pretty safe decel push.

The rest of that race was just leveraging my 60/60 car to run through the Orehla/Esses combo for free.

Overall, I think this was a great track for my particular style of racing. I like 60/60 cars and I like racing from the front and leveraging my better car in the final lap once I've run out of wear. I also tend to like to split my wear as evenly as possible, and this track certainly demands quite a bit of wear per lap in order to have any sort of decent line. You pretty much need 3 wear through Curva 3 and VIP at the bare minimum, but really a little more than that. I did the final lap in 4 wear and I think that's about as much as you can hope for with that style car.

Anyway, big thanks to Brad for stewarding a great race, and big thanks to everyone else for a great race. I really enjoyed this one.
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Post 10 May 2018, 6:37 pm

First, I'd like to thank Brad for a well run race.

I think this race went extremely well for me, except for 1 little dice roll!


SETUP

I was extremely happy with my build, and starting position for this race. Being a shorter track, I was torn between the 100 start speed and a higher top speed. The track looked to me like it was going to use a lot of wear to get around the track cleanly so I maxed the wear for my build.

Starting position bid

I over bid a bit and could have had to pole position using fewer points. The strategy to get out fast and run in the clear air, lead me to push my bid a bit too much. I sure could have used that extra wear point on lap 3.

Lap 1

I won't go into a lot of detail, but Marshall taking the inside on the first turn, cost me the line I was looking for heading into curva3. I regained the lead,but really wanted to be out of the corner 1 turn sooner.

Lap 2

The second lap was all about hitting my marks and keeping as much lead as I could. I knew Chris would be coming on strong at the end of this lap. I set up for a top speed roll as Chris caught me on turn 22. I thought he would probably roll for exceeding top speed and I was planning on rolling myself to pick up his draft.

At this point, I decided I needed to choose between keeping pace with Chris and possibly damaging my car or keeping my car intact and gong for the season championship. There was this nagging feeling that the dice were waiting on me to roll them. I felt I had to make one roll to win the championship and this was not it, so I let Chris go. I knew I could keep it close, but if he wins this race I only needed to finish on the podium to win the season.

Lap 3

On turn 30, I had to choose between setting up for the braking dice roll next turn or slowing down and taking the turn ahead a turn later. The option to slow down would allow enough cars to get close enough, that I could not guarantee a top 3 finish, so I set up for the braking roll.

Turn 31, I had a feeling all race that I needed to avoid rolling the dice and the impending doom struck as I spun trying t slow my car down.

From there it was a matter of recovering and making the best possible finish. I even rolled again and was successful in exceed my top speed on the last turn, but it really didn't matter.....

Summary

I was happy with my build, starting position, and the race save the 1 failed dice roll.

For the season I was successful in all 3 races in exceeding start speed, but these were all highly modified rolls.

In the Rouen race, I rolled 3 times and was successful all 3 times.

At Castellet my luck changed. Here I had 2 forced passing rolls fail (72% chance of success) and a brake failure (83% chance of sucess). Early on I did successfully over brake.

I was 1 and 1 at Estoril, but only the one that resulted in my brake failure really mattered.

Looking forward to the next season, great racing with all of you!

Thanks everyone for a great race!


Kudos to Chris, Jeff, and Mike for their trip to the Podium!
Congrats to MIke and Jeff as the top 2 finishers this season!

P.S. I am curious about how others feel about racing for a single race or the championship, would you continue to push for the win of the race, or take a safer route to win the championship?
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Post 11 May 2018, 5:37 am

tcbaker07 wrote:P.S. I am curious about how others feel about racing for a single race or the championship, would you continue to push for the win of the race, or take a safer route to win the championship?


Good question. I would shoot for the championship, not the race win. I think that attitude is reinforced by Doug's rankings: The Redscape title stands to garner more ranking points than almost any other series or single race (probably about the same as a WBC or Doug's PBEM title, if I had to guess). C1 has become increasingly top heavy over the past year or two and that becomes even more pronounced in season 5. You go for wins in races 1 & 2 but the title is the ultimate goal for race 3.

Nice write-up, btw!
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Post 12 May 2018, 12:02 pm

SLOTerp wrote:Nice write-up, btw!


Thanks, Mike! It's good to get validation of the importance of the race vs. the championship.

I want to add a bit about my view on dice rolls. I tend to not look at the odds cause they are just that odds. Clearly the last season, the odds were against me. I was basically 4 and 4 for rolls that really mattered during the race. I tend to look at risk vs reward on decisions to roll the dice. I do not think of it as an 83% chance of success, but more like a coin toss, either I will be successful or I will fail.

Let's take Estoril as an example. I could have rolled on turn 2 to keep the lead, but deemed it too risky to try, if I miss that roll then I'm a lame duck and will probably finish last. The roll at the end of the lap 2 was probably the biggest question mark, and I honestly thought about it a long time. If I had been playing face to face, I probably would have rolled, but given the extra time to think about it, I concluded I only needed 1 roll to finish in at least the top 3 and win the championship. If I rolled and made it, then I would probably still race with Chris, because I'm a competitor. Also sticking with Chris might make it harder to hit my marks in the upcoming corner. So I decided to wait for the brake roll in lap 3......
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Post 22 May 2018, 8:20 am

Well the big problem with sticking with me was top speed. You'd have to seriously consider rolling more than once. That top speed push at the end of lap 2 would have kept you behind me, but we're immediately going into Corner 1 on the first turn of lap 3, and at that point you fall off my tail simply because you're not going 160.

So realistically, you only get two spaces out of that top speed push. One for the push itself, and one slip from me into corner 1. Is that worth it? Maybe if it gets you through corner 2/3 cleaner than maybe. But its hard to say.