AMR DANI3L keeps the sim racing community posted with his upcoming community races and streams. Check him out and join in with the fun!
AMR DANI3L has been back to his sim racing events and streams, Dan is a great community racer that likes to take part in events, but also have fun with friends and like minded sim racers from the gaming community.
Make sure you visit his socials and Youtube channel and subscribe, sign up and join in.
Hello one & all. Welcome to my 5th weekly blog of 2022.
Compared to the start of the previous week, I was feeling a little more refreshed and ready to rock and roll. To try again & do the best job possible with live streaming on the Youtube channel. Also, as you’re about to read, it’s been a week of mixed fortunes. The first of which was literally a case of diving into the unknown. Allow me to explain a little further.
So, the first stream of the week was the third round of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship from the awesome circuit of Brands Hatch. I’ve always loved the challenge of the venue with the vast number of difficult corners and elevation changes that this short circuit provides.
Going into this event, I was feeling positive that I could produce another strong result to further improve our chances of fighting for the championship. However, we all faced a very difficult task ahead of us.
Because, unlike the first two rounds at Oulton and Barcelona, we had the prospect of dynamic weather in Assetto Corsa Competizione. So, the conditions could be either dry, wet or very changeable within the space of the 60-minute race duration.
After the previous round, I wanted to spend as much time as possible to improve my abilities in the wet weather. I reckon that over the space of two days, about 75% of my time was spent solely on trying to create a great race car for the tricky conditions. And over that period, the Aston felt great, and I was feeling confident that I could challenge my main championship rival, Matt Whitburn, in the upcoming event.
So, you can only imagine the disappointment, after all the time I spent testing and developing in the wet, the entire race meeting at Brands Hatch turned out to be dry. All through practise, qualifying and the race, not a single rain droplet. I didn’t show it on the live stream but in my mind, I thought “OH SHOOT!!”
I tried my best to remain positive and optimistic but realistically, even if I spent more time practising in the dry, I knew I would be doomed and wouldn’t be able to compete, especially with this current sticky situation regarding the BOP (Balance of Performance) with the McLaren 720S.
The fact it’s the most dominant GT3 car in ACC right now. And sure enough, that turned out to be the case. Because in qualifying, I was only able to place my Aston Martin P3 on the grid, 6 tenths away from P1. 3 of the top 4 positions on the grid were filled with those pesky McLaren’s. It’s a common theme in ACC at present which is a shame. So, being the first non 720S at the sharp end of the grid was some consolation.
One thing I’ve always been good at though is race pace. And I knew that if I could keep my head and remain upbeat, I might have a chance. At the start of the race, I lost out to Luke Andrews but soon turned it around with a sweet overtake around the outside at Clark Curve and finally completed the pass after Paddock Hill Bend at the start of lap 2.
That moment of joy didn’t last long as a couple of laps later, whilst trying valiantly to keep in touch with the McLaren’s of Whitburn and Hemming, I touched the grass with two wheels heading into Stirling’s corner and lost control. So then, I lost P3 again.
In a way, this was a very frustrating race because I was working my butt off trying to keep up with the McLaren’s in front of me, but I felt powerless to do anything about it. And sure enough, that frustration got the better of me when I accidentally tagged and spun Andrews around at Druids corner.
I did the honest thing by waiting for Luke to recover his car and allowed him back past again. I reckon that entire incident alone cost us around 15 seconds. Many apologies to Luke for that unintentional contact.
The rest of the first stint was spent trying to keep up and see if I could potentially make the jump on fresh tires. But somehow, I lost more time after my pitstop and ended up 1.6 seconds behind.
It was a little infuriating, but my motto I always like to share with everyone is to “Never Give Up”. That’s exactly what I did. I drove very hard to keep the pressure on and see if Andrews would slip up. Sure enough, he made a mistake going into Sheene Curve, and I was back into second place, which is where we stayed right up to the chequered flag. Only just!
Given the circumstances of this event, what unfolded and happened during, and with this advantage that the McLaren’s have in Assetto Corsa Competizione right now, I will take the result that I achieved at Brands Hatch. It means now that I’m 5 points behind Matt Whitburn with 4 races left.
The next race will be around Bathurst. Always very demanding on the drivers. So, it will be very interesting to see how this pans out. It’s going to be a huge uphill struggle to overcome this points deficit and pace advantage the 720S has right now. But there’s still everything to play for. I’ll keep trying until the last lap of the final race of the season.
Wednesday saw the second installment of a series which I’ve recently returned to called “What If” with Multi class racing around some rather interesting racing venues. And the one we tried this time around was no exception. Because, for episode 2, we explored the Jeddah circuit in Saudi Arabia. YES! The same track where we had the controversial F1 race and the many incidents between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
Theoretically, if the venue could play host to the fastest racing machines on the planet, how hard could it be to race with many categories including Le Mans Hypercar, LMP2, GTE, GT3 and GT4 all at the same time? Well, that’s exactly what I did.
The platform of choice this time around for the second experiment was Assetto Corsa. Thankfully, there’s a mod version of the Jeddah circuit. But, if you compare it to the real-life version, the first immediate problem with the AC version is the width of the track itself. I reckon it was around twice as wide as the real equivalent.
Even though it wasn’t quite accurate, it was still very helpful to see whether the street circuit could work for multi class racing.
For this experiment, I drove the Oreca 07 LMP2 machine and decided to leave my fate to the viewers for the 24-lap race. To qualify, or not to qualify? That was the question I put forward and my subscribers decided that I should start at the very back of the grid, behind all of the GT field. So, think of this as one of my famous “Last to First” challenges!
After 24 laps of experimental racing with the A.I, I somehow succeeded in that particular challenge as we rose all the way from P28 to P1. All the Le Mans Hypercars faltered when trying to lap the traffic.
The race itself was very good fun. It’s always awesome and welcoming to try out a brand-new circuit that I’ve never driven in the virtual world before. And with Jeddah containing 27 corners, it was very challenging to navigate your way around. It’s a good job my geographical memory helped to figure out the circuit after a few laps.
The experiment itself was chaotic at times but somehow, we made it work. Obviously, the closing speeds between the categories could be a bit of an issue, with regarding to safety because of the high-speed nature of the blind corners. However, it could potentially work if any real-world motorsport championships & organisation would be tempted to give it a try.
There was this rather amusing moment during the experiment where I demonstrate to the world how to properly behave like a professional racing driver. I clearly show a good example here of what the proper conduct is in this very highly competitive world! Ha Ha!
Thursday’s stream was the one I dreaded the most. Because it was time to face my fears and tackle the most difficult DiRT Rally 2.0 series that SimRace247 has to offer. That championship of which I speak of, is of course, the Mastercup.
The first event of the series was contested in the highlands of Scotland with the Rally GT class. If you are new to this form of motorsport, the Scottish rally is sort of similar to the rally stages you get in Finland. Only difference between the two locations is that you don’t have lots of high-speed jumps in the Scottish rally.
After spending a little bit of time practising for the event, I was very confident that if I just kept focused and consistent, I could potentially do very well in the event. However, one thing that’s not on my side with regarding to rallying is good fortune!
Unbelievably, my game decided to crash about halfway through the very first stage of the event. I honestly couldn’t believe my wretched luck once again. And it wasn’t a short stage either that I retired on.
When I loaded DiRT Rally once again, and after completing the second stage, I found out that I lost over 23 minutes because of not being able to complete stage 1. To say that it was utter despair is a bit of an understatement because I really wanted to do very well for once. But, yet again, just like in my community rally, the game let me down.
So then, it was a case of trying to keep my head down to claw back as much time and as many positions up the leader board as I could. My only moment of glory in the rally was when I beat the overall leader, Aldyr, on stage 3 by 9 seconds. After that, I tried but failed as I kept faltering after putting too much pressure on myself to drive flat out.
So, for the last half of the rally, I decided to take it more steadily and had a bit of banter with my subscribers during the stream which was immense fun. Until inevitably, a lapse of concentration saw my demise as I retired on the 12th and final stage of the Scottish Rally.
Just as well that it ended the way it did because of how the event started. Oh well, we’ll try again on the next rally. I still had a great time and had a smile on my face which was the most important thing.
That turned out to be the final stream of the week. Unfortunately, about two hours before I was due to go live with my Forza Horizon Community Convoy event on Friday, my internet was non-existent which was absolutely a great thing…NOT! So, unfortunately, I had to cancel the final stream of the week. But we’ll be back for some more fun around Mexico on Friday 4th February. So, if you own Forza Horizon 5 and would like to participate with us, then please be sure to do the following:
Add me to your XBOX friends/followers list. My gamertag is “AMR DANI3L”
Send me a message on XBOX live to inform me that you would like to join my Horizon convoy
For this brand-new week, I’ll be hosting 4 more live streams once again. Starting on Monday with the fourth round of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship from the most difficult and satisfying circuit anyone could ever wish to drive around in ACC.
I am of course talking about Mount Panorama, Bathurst. It’s one of those tracks which always tests your nerves and driving precision, especially when you climb to the very top of the mountain where the walls on either side of the racetrack get very narrow.
This is an event I’m highly anticipating. Even though the current state of play with the cars not being balanced, I don’t think victory will be on the cards in this one. I shall give it my best as always. Will I succeed on the mountain, or will I play second fiddle once again to my main championship rival? We’ll wait and see!
After 2 successful experiments so far, we’ll be back into Automobilista 2 for episode 3 of the “What If Multi-Multi Class Racing Competed Here? Series. This time, we’ll be trying out our second grand prix venue in succession with the Brazilian circuit of Interlagos.
To be fair, the venue has already hosted the World Endurance Championship in the past, but with my experiments, I’ll be placing more varieties of vehicles into my race rather than the 3 categories you get in the WEC. So, will that mean more chaos, or will it be harmonious? There’s only one way you can find out of course. Please be sure to tune into Wednesday’s stream to find out.
Thursday will see the second round of my community rally series around Poland in the legendary 1990’s Group A 4wd cars. Vehicles such as the Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Escort Cosworth’s & Lancia Delta’s will be tackling the narrow and quick stages of the Polish rally. I’ll be attempting our community rally in a Subaru Legacy, another one of Colin McRae’s legendary rally machines which he claimed 2 British Rally Championship titles with.
If you would like to participate in our latest event, please be sure to register for my community rally club (link at the bottom of this blog).
Also, here’s the results from the first event around Monte Carlo. Less said about my attempt, the better. If you’re not sure what happened on my effort, please be sure to read more in blog number 3. However, it was a great attendance with 11 drivers taking to the difficult stages of the Monte. So, a massive thank you to everyone who had taken part. And many congratulations to our top 3: Winner overall was PeeEss with Frank Red (Donk) in second with Annalise Riot doing a phenomenal job to claim P3. Many congratulations lady & gents!
Finally, to celebrate another weekend arriving, I’ll be hosting my Forza Horizon 5 Community convoys. There will be more fun install for us as we’ll be tackling the seasonal events and plotting ways to defeat the soulless A.I bots or Drivatars in the game. They can be very sneaky and ruthless if you’re not too careful. But I’m sure all will be fine and everyone will have a great time which is the important thing.
If you want, please be sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel and you can follow me on social media and join our DiRT Rally 2.0 club with events being hosted once every month.
That’s everything folks for this fifth blog of 2022. Thank you so much for taking the time to read. I always appreciate you doing that and I’m always grateful to everyone of my subscribers and followers for all your support. Take care, stay safe & happy sim racing!!
