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 is a great community sim racer that enjoys racing, challenges and more. Dan likes to take part in league races, but also has 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 ladies & gentlemen of the sim racing world and welcome to weekly blog number 7 of 2022.
This past week has been a very intriguing one in so many ways. There have been positives for sure, but there have also been many challenges and struggles that I’m currently dealing with. If anyone truly knows me as a person, something that I always like to be is to be truthful and honest with everyone. So, just before I talk about all of my activities from last week, I thought I would share a couple of things with you all.
Firstly, it’s becoming increasingly frustrating lately to be streaming and content creating on Youtube, because of how the site works with its algorithm system and also how my streams are not picking up for most of my subscribers, even if they hit the notification bell for the channel. As a result, with the number of subs I do have, to have a small fraction of people watching because of this issue can be very deflating. I don’t blame my subscribers at all. At the end of the day, we all have our own lives to get on with as well which is completely understandable. My big issue here is with Youtube! And nothing is being done about it.
As a result of which, I am strongly considering (not 100% certain) switching platforms and moving to Twitch. I honestly feel that is the place to go in terms of streaming but also having progression as well. Youtube will still exist for the purpose of videos, but streaming would be dedicated to Twitch only. There’s still lots I must think about, but I will inform everyone when I’ve reached a decision on that.
The second and final point, despite how positive I might appear on my streams, is something that I’ve been secretly battling behind the scenes. Those who read my first blog will know that I suffer with mental health issues. Well, for the past 4 weeks, I’ve been battling a deep bout of depression. I have been struggling so much to keep myself positive and motivated whilst I’m sitting for a couple of hours at a time on the webcam and on in the streams. Not only am I trying to carry on as normal, but I’m also having to battle constantly with these inner demons that keep plaguing my life.
Since I released a quick update video on my channel talking about my struggles, I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of people who wrote to me or got in touch to see whether I was ok, which I am extremely grateful for and has helped me so much. Thank you to everyone who was extremely kind enough to take the time to get in contact and wanted to talk with me. You have no idea just how much that has helped.
Those are the two important things I wanted to discuss. So, without any further ado, let’s talk about all of the streams I did this past week.
Monday kick started the racing action with round 5 of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship in Assetto Corsa Competizione. This time, around a circuit that is unanimously disliked by the entire sim racing community. And that of course is Paul Ricard. I honestly thought “OH! What utter joy that I will be tackling this circuit which I will never like or never provides a good rhythm or feel through it. I know this will be a struggle to keep positive!” And to throw further insult, the entire race meeting was going to be wet.
However, it wasn’t the venue that caused me to feel positive and optimistic about my chances for the race. It was during private testing when I drove my Aston Martin on the first lap out of the pits, it immediately felt very nice to drive. It was one of those “This feels GOOOOOOD” moments. The wet setup I created for the V8 Vantage GT3 was meant to be for Brands Hatch, but I made a couple of alterations including lowering the rear wing and ride height on the rear of the car. And straight away, it felt amazing.
So, after all the practicing and climatising myself to Paul Ricard, I knew that I was going to do well, but even I couldn’t have predicted just how brilliantly the entire race event was. To give you an idea, my nearest rival in the championship, Miles Hemming, in the faster & infamous McLaren 720S, qualified 2nd on the grid but was a massive 7 tenths of a second slower. I honestly couldn’t believe the size of the gap. In racing terms, that’s massive!
After qualifying was complete, it was then time to tackle the 60-minute wet race. Provided that I kept concentrated & focused, stayed out of trouble, and stuck with the strategy I was going with for the race, I knew that I would be in with a shout of claiming my second race win and my fifth podium out of 5 races in this championship season. And sure enough, that’s exactly what I did.
I was edging away from everyone slowly during the first stint of the race. I wasn’t expecting to grow the gap massively because with the strategy, I wasn’t planning to make a mandatory pitstop until 40 minutes in the race. So, I was carrying a fair amount of fuel in the car. So, to pull away like I did and still produce faster lap times than my main competitors Hemming & Graeme Kerr, that felt satisfying.
So, the second and final portion of the race was much easier knowing that the stint would be much shorter, and the car would be lighter, I could pull away even further. At times, the gap was increasing by as much as 1.5 seconds per lap which amazed me even further.
After one hour’s racing, I survived all the way to the chequered flag by claiming victory and conquering the wet conditions at Paul Ricard. And in big style as well. The final gap between myself in P1 and Kerr in second place was exactly 40 seconds. I honestly couldn’t have been more delighted with how this entire event went. Not a single thing went wrong, and the Aston Martin was absolutely amazing in the wet conditions. I still don’t like Paul Ricard though, even after this success! Ha!
There was another bonus as well. My nearest championship rival, Miles Hemming, had a disastrous race when his team accidentally fitted dry tires during his mandatory pitstop. As a result of which, he was only able to finish in 9th place overall, but also 3rd in the Pro category. So that means, our championship lead has been increased to 36 points. And with 46 available for a win, technically, if I can win at the next round at Snetterton and outscore Hemming by at least 10 points, I could win the Pro Drivers championship with one race remaining. Anything can happen as you know so I will definitely keep an open mind, but Paul Ricard was the perfect race that I wanted to help with our championship chances. It couldn’t have gone any better.
Of all the streams I was planning for this particular week, episode 4 of the “What If Multi-Multiclass Racing Competed Here?” series in Assetto Corsa was the one I was looking forward to most. Why? Because it’s not very often you get the chance to mix old with new. And this case, we had modern Prototype & GT machines competing around the historic circuit of Goodwood. We all know of course that the venue plays host to the annual revival meeting, but would the track cut it as a modern racing venue? Well, not quite.
In terms of grid size, this was the largest to date with a total of 32 cars, which if you’re not familiar with my series, includes Le Mans Hypercar, LMP2, GTE, GT3 & GT4. So a lot more categories on offer than the FIA World Endurance Championship. For this episode, I was piloting the GT4 Ford Mustang, a car which we don’t get to pilot in ACC unfortunately. But thanks to the wonderful world of modding, we can in Assetto Corsa.
For those who don’t know, the A.I in Assetto Corsa can be questionable at times. And for some reason, they found Goodwood to be very challenging. The circuit was almost becoming like an official graveyard for racing cars as they were parked left, right and centre. In the gravel traps, by the barriers and at the final chicane as well.
As a result of the A.I’s incompetence of threading their way through each other and handling the Goodwood circuit, of the 32 cars that started, only 9 finished with a GTE Corvette winning outright. All of the Le Mans Hypercars & LMP2’s had fallen by the wayside. So really, in terms of success, with a large percentage of retirements, we could only really classify this experiment as a failure which is a shame. But it was still enormous fun to pilot modern racing cars around the classic venue of Goodwood.
Thursday saw the second episode of my WRC 10 rally career. Honestly, the less I talk about this stream, the better. So, what was it about this particular stream that wasn’t so memorable? Well, the first thing was the rally I thought I was going to be tackling in the game was Sweden (as stated on the in-game calendar). Where in fact it turned out to be Portugal. I was massively underprepared because of this.
Secondly, because of how exhausted I was feeling with all the previous streams I’ve done for the past few weeks, I wasn’t really focussing or concentrating properly on the rallying or on the stream itself. The event was a disaster, and I didn’t get chance to fully complete it either. I had to end the stream early as a result of this exhaustion and feeling unwell. My apologies to everyone who tuned in but I’m always very thankful for your encouragement and for being very understanding!
The WRC stream turned out to be the final one of the week as I was feeling unwell and I couldn’t host the Forza Horizon convoy on Friday which I really wanted to do. I must apologise to everyone who was looking forward to partaking with me in the event. Normal service will resume next week. I plan to make it up don’t you worry.
Let’s talk you through all the upcoming streams I have planned for this week. Starting with Monday where we have the sixth and penultimate round of the BoA eSports GT3 Championship from the fast and awesome circuit of Snetterton. Admittedly, this is a circuit that I have hardly driven much in Assetto Corsa Competizione. So, by the time you read this, plenty of practise would have already been done behind the scenes to prepare for this one. So, can we claim another victory and clinch the driver’s championship as well at this event? As always, I will give it my absolute best.
This Wednesday will see something completely different from the normal format. The “What If” series will be taking a rest for this week as I will be streaming one of my “Pedal To The Metal” specials. If you’re a fan of Nascar, I think you’ll definitely love this stream. This weekend will see the biggest Nascar event in the real world with the Daytona 500. So, for all of my American friends, I thought what better way to celebrate the upcoming event by showcasing a lot of the Nascar and stock car mods I’ve been able to source for Assetto Corsa and piloting all of them around the famous Daytona Oval. Just to inform you, I am an utter novice and don’t follow the sport at all so this will be a new and no doubt fun experience. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
Thursday will see myself trying to put on a brave face as I tackle the second event in the Master Mastercup. This time, we’ll be tackling the ultra-fast stages of Rally USA in the slowest category of vehicles in DiRT Rally 2.0, the Historic H1 vehicles which include the Citroen DS, Mini Cooper S & Lancia Fulvia HF Coupe. Really, I can’t see what can go wrong with this. Then again, I did crash the Lancia in one of my community rallies around Argentina so I can’t speak too soon otherwise I’ll jinx myself. After retiring in the last event around Scotland, can I produce a great comeback and achieve a brilliant result? Fingers crossed!!
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 joyful races besides.
If any of you good folks own Forza Horizon 5 on the PC or XBOX and want to participate, everyone is welcome. I host every Friday at 7:30pm UK time/8:30pm 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.
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 everything for this seventh blog of 2022. Thank you so much for taking the time to real. Thank you to all my subscribers as well on Youtube. You’re all amazing as always. Take care, stay safe & happy sim racing!!
