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AMR DANI3L COMMUNITY SIM RACER BLOG #6

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 enjoying his sim racing events and streams in 2022 that have been packed with fun, challenges and more, Dan is a great community racer that likes to take part in league races, 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 weekly blog number 6 of 2022.

I can’t believe another week of streaming and content creating is already behind me. Sometimes, we don’t get many occasions to appreciate all that has happened in our lives because of how time just flashes by. Thankfully, this is one of the brilliant things about writing blogs.

You get the opportunity to document everything you’ve done and achieved through a certain period of your life. In this case, most of the days throughout this past week which I went live again on the channel.

So, without any further ado, let’s talk you through all of the streams and races throughout this past week.

 

To kick things off, we had the fourth round of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship from the wonderful circuit of Mount Panorama in Australia. In a way, I was kind of dreading this event for a couple of reasons:

1) The circuit is notorious for producing tonnes of crashes and can result in lots of traffic jams if one car ends up being parked on track, especially as you climb the circuit where the walls get narrower and narrower.

2) My poor Aston Martin tends to struggle in certain scenarios, including in a straight line. You lose a lot of time on the long straights. That’s where it suffers the most and feared that I wouldn’t be competitive around Bathurst.

I always try to keep an open mind before each meeting because you never know what the opposition might be doing in terms of lap times and general competitiveness. So, once the race server opened, we all entered the event and to my surprise, two of my main rivals for the series, Matt Whitburn and Luke Andrews, weren’t present for the race.

Already, I was at a slight advantage in terms of my championship prospects. However, I wasn’t counting my chickens and knew anything could still potentially happen in the race.

Sure enough, in the qualifying session, I was only able to place myself second on the grid. However, only 1 tenth of a second away from pole position which wasn’t as terrible as I thought. That’s despite all the doubts I had in my mind about how competitive I and the Aston Martin were going to be around Mount Panorama.

Heading into the race, I was starting to have more self-confident and belief that I could potentially be on for a great result. But only if I was able to get away cleanly at the start and keep the pressure on the pole sitter, Miles Hemming in his McLaren 720S.

Unfortunately, as is the way with my luck sometimes, the opening lap didn’t go accordingly. I tried valiantly to keep up with Miles, but I had a massive oversteer moment as I was braking for the Forest Elbow and nearly ended up sliding into the concrete wall on the outside. Thankfully, I managed to recover the car, but I wound up being just shy of 2 seconds behind after the first lap.

As the stint wore on, the gap to the race leader was extending further and further by around half a second a lap. I was starting to feel a little disheartened. But even more so when 10 minutes into the race, I lost concentration for the braking zone after the conrod straight and for a moment, I decided to turn my Aston into a lawn mower by taking a trip through the grass, losing second place in the process. It was very difficult to try and keep up with the top 2 as Miles and the BMW driver of Graeme Kerr were pulling away slowly but surely.

To my amazement though, Hemming decided to make his scheduled pitstop 20 minutes into the race. There was some hope yet with the strategy I was running, deciding to pit with around 25 minutes of the race left, I could potentially catch back up as my car would be lighter on fuel as well as having fresher tires.

I gave it absolutely everything I had despite having a damaged car as well with the number of times I tagged the walls throughout the race. Despite the setbacks, I still managed to produce the fastest lap of the race which was a huge achievement.

With myself sitting 3rd and the top three all being within 10 seconds of each other, it only had to require one incident, particularly with the traffic, for us to bunch back up and the fight could really be back on for the victory. Sure enough, with just under 10 minutes to go, the #66 BMW had a crash at Griffins corner which slowed down the front 2 cars.

But unfortunately, as I was about to thread my way through the stricken BMW, the driver suddenly decided to try and reverse at the very moment as I was trying to get by. It resulted in a huge side impact which caused even further damage. That effectively ended my challenge for the race win on the spot.

For the remaining few minutes, I couldn’t do anything to stay in touch with the top two. At the chequered flag, 3rd place was all that I could produce. I think considering everything that happened, finishing on the podium was a brilliant result and it now means that I’m back in the lead of the championship by 24 points which is a huge relief at this stage. But I know for the remaining 3 races, I’m going to have to work even harder to produce something special to take the fight and try to win this championship outright.

After a day’s rest, it was then time to tackle experiment number 3 in my “What If Multi-Multiclass Racing Competed Here?” series. For the second consecutive stream, we had another Formula One circuit install with the awesome Interlagos circuit at Sao Paulo, Brazil. Or, as the track is officially titled, the Autódromo José Carlos Pace.

I had a suspicious feeling that, considering how it panned out around the circuit when the FIA World Endurance Championship used to compete at the venue, things would work out just fine. However, where as the WEC only has 3 categories (4 technically with GTE being split in two), the experiment I was trying in Automobilista 2 had a total of 6 categories of vehicles. So, with that in mind and with the speed difference between all the categories of vehicles involved, another part of me was saying that this could be very chaotic.

Sure enough, it turned out to be the latter. Whilst the majority of the race was good, and I ended up spinning my Cadillac Dpi in the early laps and also on the final lap whilst chasing an LMP1 car for position (if in doubt, blame the game! Ha Ha!), there was a couple of very amusing moments where it resulted into a multicar pileup.

Overall, whilst this experiment at Interlagos was a success, there’s still a couple of doubts about whether it would work for a massive field of several classes within it. It’s because of certain parts of the circuit could potentially lead to major accidents, especially with the closing speeds between the fastest and slowest categories of cars. If you’ve seen clips of it on Youtube, Mark Webber’s accident in the 2014 WEC race from Sao Paulo is a classic demonstration of what could potentially happen. So, whilst this has been an amusing and fun experiment to do in sim racing, in real life, I’m not so sure.

Another new week and another attempt for Danny McCrash (my rally driving alter-ego) to try and do very well at going sideways and produce a good result in an event. Well, one hoped anyway. After the two previous attempts at my first community event of 2022 and also round 1 of the Mastercup, my hopes were again not that high because of the 2 game crashes I had previously.

However, a massive thank you to Erudzitis84, one of my subscribers, I managed to find a solution which prevented DiRT Rally 2.0 from crashing whilst attempting an event and streaming at the same time.

After completing my investigations, it was time to take on my second community rally in Poland. For those who haven’t seen the event before, rally Poland is basically like Finland, only the roads are much narrower. So, you’re literally threading a fine needle whilst travelling at speeds in excess of 120mph (200kph) on the stages.

The vehicles which have been selected for the rally are the awesome Group A machines from the 1990’s. Every time this category is chosen for an event, I always choose one of the Subaru’s. And this was no exception as I went for the Legacy.

The first three stages produced mixed fortunes. Whilst the first was trouble free, I made an error on stage 2 where I piled straight into a tree. Thankfully, it didn’t cause a DNF from the rally, but I sustained damage to the radiator, which in turn was causing the engine to cook for the second and third stages before I could repair the Subaru in service.

Thankfully, apart from a couple of scary moments, the rest of the rally went accordingly and the relief at the end of the 12th and final stage was a massive relief. I was literally thinking “Hallelujah!”. For the first time in a long time, not only did I finish a rally but did so without any major issues, a game crash, or a lapse in concentration which usually spells disaster. Maybe my ambitions of becoming a better rally driver are still on after all. Or am I speaking too soon?

If you would like to participate in our community rallies, you are more than welcome to join us. You can find a link for the rally club at the very end of this blog. The more the merrier. It’ll be great to have you with us.

 

Finally, to conclude another busy and stressful week, I hosted the most relaxing of all the streams of which I broadcast live on the channel. Which is of course, the Forza Horizon convoys around Mexico.

These are always very welcoming at the end of every week and it’s always great to share something with my subscribers. Whether folks join me in the convoy or socialise via live stream chat, it’s always a great method of bringing people together. And this past week was no exception. A massive thank you to everyone who tuned into the stream and also to Toby Vanstone (Firepower376), Rhydian (ShogunNoire), naztytrainz and Evlanz3 for joining the convoy this week.

Again, just like the rally club, if you own Forza Horizon 5 on the PC or XBOX (one of the blessed things about cross platform titles) and want to participate, everyone is welcome. I host every Friday at 7:30 pm UK time/8:30 pm CET. Please make 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 upcoming week, we have even more streams installed. Monday with see the fifth round of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship from one of the most popular…..sorry! I mean least favourable circuits in Assetto Corsa Competizione. Apologies. I was trying to be upbeat about where we’re racing next but even that’s proving to be very tricky. Ha Ha! Anyway, round 5 of the series will be contested at Paul Ricard. Man, I’m really going to struggle around here. It’s not a track I race at on a regular basis anyway, but when I do, I always struggle. It’s not a circuit where you can get a nice, natural rhythm around. I have a feeling this race will be a testing one. But, will I be more successful than I first thought or will be a case of damage limitation in our quest for the championship?

In this upcoming fourth episode of the “What If Multi-Multi Class Racing Competed Here? Series”, we’ll be taking on a venue that officially, hasn’t hosted any major motor racing events since 1966. Yet, the circuit survives to this day and now plays host to the annual revival meeting where cars from yesteryear turn up and bring excitement back for old and new spectators alike. If you’re not sure which track is in question, we are heading to Goodwood! Can this old, unmodified venue host modern day motor racing events? That’s what we’ll be finding out in this upcoming episode.

Thursday will see the second episode of my WRC 10 Rally Career. After a flying start, being victorious around Monte Carlo, can myself and co-driver Crystal Starr (one of my subscribers), take on all the odds and claim rally victory once again around the snowy stages of Sweden? It’s a very different discipline driving on the snow but it’s always a joy to take on this unique rally in the entire world championship.

Finally, to celebrate the arrival of another weekend, 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 many other enjoyable races besides.

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 about wraps things up for blog number 6 of 2022. Thank you so much for taking the time to read. Take care, stay safe & happy sim racing!!

 

 

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Darren Buckner

Darren Buckner

Darren became a member of Simrace247 in January 2021 and has been a valuable addition to the platform ever since. He began his journey as an Editor and has progressed to the position of Editor in Chief, owing to his unwavering commitment and hard work. With his profound interest in motorsport and gaming, Darren is passionate about sharing news and exceptional content with like-minded people worldwide.View Author posts