We found problems with the Thermalito circuit whilst testing in longer endurance racing tests. We found that the AI cars were struggling with overtaking at the first and second tunnels which meant that a lot of the LMP1, LMP2 and Prototype cars were crashing out early in the race. A great shame as we really loved this circuit to race on but we want to race a good, long and fair race so we have had to abandon Thermalito.

Our new track? Birmingham, Alabama!

I've never raced on this track but Mr.Dave has extensive knowledge of the circuit so we decided to give it a go. I did a practice run on Thursday and although I prefer Thermalito overall, I still enjoyed the ride and some of the highly technical corners of Birmingham will provide an extra challenge in our 24 hour race next week.

Armed with the new circuit, I prepped the car - again, maximum downforce, maximum acceleration setup and I set a practice race for 25 hours condensed into one golden hour. This would mean that I would experience pit stops, night racing, tyre degredation etc and traffic all in the space of a 1 hour race. I faired pretty badly at first, totally fluffing my initial starting fuel load but I did manage to claw some places back to finish 40th out of 54 as well as put up the fastest lap in the GT1 class. A good sign. It served it's purpose of highlighting some issues that we will need to bear in mind for the big race.

Firstly, the Birmingham circuit is able to handle 60+ drivers on a starting grid. This is fine, but when it comes to pitting, the cars get pretty stacked up and a couple of times I ended up waiting behind an LMP car to get out of my pit box! My only other issue was I need to remember - MAKE SURE I SET THE FUEL LOAD BEFORE THE RACE! hehe Pitting after 4 laps of starting was no fun at all, because it put me a lap behind and right in the way of the much faster LMPs!

Anyway, here is a couple of videos of my hot lap during the race:

On the 28th January, we will be participating in a live gaming event. A 24 hour race around Thermalito, California in an Aston Martin DB9R FIA GT1 spec car. The game of choice is rFactor with mods and every moment of it will be streamed live to the internet for your enjoyment. Here is the TV Channel:

We had a bit of a change with the mods in preparation for the big race. It turns out that the controller that we will be using (A Fanatec racing wheel) has issues with the EnduRacer mod that we were using for the race. The handling on the Aston Martin was atrocious with the wheel. It was quite a handful with my cheap Thrustmaster wheel too, but I managed to tame it somewhat with a lot of practice. To cut a long story short, we have switched mods to the GT_All mod. It is a very well polished mod like the EnduRacer mod is but the problems with the wheel are none existent and the car handles a lot more predictable with the Fanatec wheel. Our new car is (still an Aston of course) the 2010 FIA GT1 Class Aston Martin DB9R Hexis AMR. It's handling is so much more predictable and after a few changes to the setup and around 20 laps of practice, lap 22 of my test session gave me my fastest time yet. 2 Minutes, 2.794 seconds. Very pleased with the performance now!

Here is the new Aston:

Here is my hotlap:

Here is an onboard view of the same lap: