[MVRC] Mantium Virtual Racecar Challenge 2024 (Grand Prix Cars)

[LVDH]

It seems like I uploaded the wrong engine cover. You can see the difference between the images I published and the official ones. I suppose that's what causing the car to be off balance (on top of non-perfect sim correlation).

That is definitely one frustrating way to give away a victory...

Hey, I just checked the video and it says my car is DNF for cooling issues. I am aware that it was 158,000 instead of 180,000. But the submission mail says that first few violations will result in added time. I just want to know why I was DNF'ed instead of extra time being added.

I will have a look at what happened to your car. I can imagine the monitoring surface has some issues. You are not the first to run into issues. Before I check, please have a look at this first though and let me know if you might have an idea of what happened:
https://mantiumchallenge.com/porous-media-openfoam/


So from my side, I can also only congratulate GRaph. This is some domination we are witnessing. While for the championship it would be nice for him to do something like RB is doing in this strange real world racing, I think the other teams should learn and also come up with something new.

And as always a huge thanks to Max and Christian. At some point, I send them my numbers and they turn them into the race results. Without them there would be no MVRC.

I hope tomorrow, I can post the page with the full results containing the scrutineering findings. This time, there was actually not that much. Obviously, the new teams made some small mistakes but there was nothing major.

[variante]

That is definitely one frustrating way to give away a victory...

I found the previous race to be more frustrating, since I gave away the championship fight due to a stupid issue.
Now les jeux sont fait, and I'm not trying as hard, so it's not a big deal.

This is some domination we are witnessing

I beg to differ. A little Season recap:
- The 1st race is where G-raph was truly unchallenged. My car wasn't mature yet, having some cooling / setup issues.
- The 2nd race, in Monaco, was closer. Graph won by 0.2s, leveraging his raw downforce. But the tables were turning.
- The 3rd race is where I would've won by 0.2s, without that correlation issue. I had the stronger car anyway.
- This 4th race, in Monza, is where I would've won by 0.3s, without that mismatched bodywork.
G-raph has an excellent car, and the victory streak is impressive. But he won the Season by relying on my messiness.
I think it's last year, 2023, when he truly dominated, as I never had a real chance of winning the Season.
But 2024 could've easily taken a different turn.

[CAEdevice]

That is definitely one frustrating way to give away a victory...

I found the previous race to be more frustrating, since I gave away the championship fight due to a stupid issue.
Now les jeux sont fait, and I'm not trying as hard, so it's not a big deal.

This is some domination we are witnessing

I beg to differ. A little Season recap:
- The 1st race is where G-raph was truly unchallenged. My car wasn't mature yet, having some cooling / setup issues.
- The 2nd race, in Monaco, was closer. Graph won by 0.2s, leveraging his raw downforce. But the tables were turning.
- The 3rd race is where I would've won by 0.2s, without that correlation issue. I had the stronger car anyway.
- This 4th race, in Monza, is where I would've won by 0.3s, without that mismatched bodywork.
G-raph has an excellent car, and the victory streak is impressive. But he won the Season by relying on my messiness.
I think it's last year, 2023, when he truly dominated, as I never had a real chance of winning the Season.
But 2024 could've easily taken a different turn.

I also made several mistakes, but I think that G-Raph is so strong that he can afford a more "serene" development, slightly sacrificing the absolute performance (he has a margin anyway) to avoid risks or to do an extra check. This year, however, I have had the impression of a tendency towards convergence of the performance, so the possibility of reaching G-Raph next year is concrete.

[yinlad]

That is definitely one frustrating way to give away a victory...

I found the previous race to be more frustrating, since I gave away the championship fight due to a stupid issue.
Now les jeux sont fait, and I'm not trying as hard, so it's not a big deal.

This is some domination we are witnessing

I beg to differ. A little Season recap:
- The 1st race is where G-raph was truly unchallenged. My car wasn't mature yet, having some cooling / setup issues.
- The 2nd race, in Monaco, was closer. Graph won by 0.2s, leveraging his raw downforce. But the tables were turning.
- The 3rd race is where I would've won by 0.2s, without that correlation issue. I had the stronger car anyway.
- This 4th race, in Monza, is where I would've won by 0.3s, without that mismatched bodywork.
G-raph has an excellent car, and the victory streak is impressive. But he won the Season by relying on my messiness.
I think it's last year, 2023, when he truly dominated, as I never had a real chance of winning the Season.
But 2024 could've easily taken a different turn.

I also made several mistakes, but I think that G-Raph is so strong that he can afford a more "serene" development, slightly sacrificing the absolute performance (he has a margin anyway) to avoid risks or to do an extra check. This year, however, I have had the impression of a tendency towards convergence of the performance, so the possibility of reaching G-Raph next year is concrete.

If we weren't moving a new regulation set for next year, anyway

[CAEdevice]

If we weren't moving a new regulation set for next year, anyway

I think (and hope) we will anticipate 2026 rules, but, when I say "performance convergence" I also mean modeling skills, capability to "imagine" the flow before the simulation and some tricks (ex. vortex generators). Probably the new rules would not change the ranking today. As a reference: I recentely updated my old LMPx car from 2017 (it was almost as dominant as GRaph is today) and I easily gained 10% downforce with 5 iterations.

[LVDH]

This is some domination we are witnessing

I beg to differ. A little Season recap:
- The 1st race is where G-raph was truly unchallenged. My car wasn't mature yet, having some cooling / setup issues.
- The 2nd race, in Monaco, was closer. Graph won by 0.2s, leveraging his raw downforce. But the tables were turning.
- The 3rd race is where I would've won by 0.2s, without that correlation issue. I had the stronger car anyway.
- This 4th race, in Monza, is where I would've won by 0.3s, without that mismatched bodywork.
G-raph has an excellent car, and the victory streak is impressive. But he won the Season by relying on my messiness.
I think it's last year, 2023, when he truly dominated, as I never had a real chance of winning the Season.
But 2024 could've easily taken a different turn.

He is winning all races, so I still call it domination. Also you are not the only team in this championship, so in theory somebody else could challenge GRaph but that is not really happening.

If we weren't moving a new regulation set for next year, anyway

I think (and hope) we will anticipate 2026 rules, but, when I say "performance convergence" I also mean modeling skills, capability to "imagine" the flow before the simulation and some tricks (ex. vortex generators). Probably the new rules would not change the ranking today. As a reference: I recentely updated my old LMPx car from 2017 (it was almost as dominant as GRaph is today) and I easily gained 10% downforce with 5 iterations.

Yes, as the rules were stable, other teams caught up. For next year, I really hope to get the 2026 rules out for us. And as I have changed some of my concepts, I think it should be possible.

[variante]

He is winning all races, so I still call it domination.

Good thing you aren't a data analyst, mate.

Also you are not the only team in this championship, so in theory somebody else could challenge GRaph

Who said otherwise? But I can only talk about myself, since I don't know the behind-the-scenes of other challengers. If other people think they were about to take a victory, save for a twist of fate, that would further weaken the domination narrative.

[G-raph]

I think you are a bit harsh on André. I can see his point, that, looking purely at the results, I have won the first 4 races of 2 seasons in a row. And apart from the first race of 2023, the winning margins have been quite similar considering the natural performance convergence.

In 2023, the gap to 2nd was 0.96s / 0.70s / 0.20s / 0.12s
And the gap to 3rd was 1.94s / 1.27s / 0.90s / 1.16s

In 2024, the gap to 2nd was 0.52s / 0.22s* / 0.69s / 0.10s
And the gap to 3rd was 1.65s / 0.84s / 0.86s / 0.21s
*(excluding your penalty)


But I also agree with you that these results have been achieved in a very different way that makes this season much less dominant than last year.

Last year, the performance advantage I had in the first race was big, because (I think) I understood better how to extract performance from the new rules (new tyres and suspensions, freedom in the brake ducts, ability to choose ride height and rake...). However, my car was unbalanced for the first 3 races, and lost downforce and efficiency with in-season developments, as I documented in my specific thread. There was still a lot of potential left in that car but it was still good enough to win 4 races and the championship.

This year was totally different. I nailed the balance in all races, there was no flowfield issues or miscorrelations (apart from a small rear wing separation at Monaco that prevented me from reaching -7.0Cl... I'm still angry about it! ), and my race 03 update worked as expected, improving efficiency. I got every small detail right whereas you made costly mistakes in every races (wrong balance, wrong parts, miscorrelations, silly penatly...) but it is obvious from your efficiency numbers that your car has more potential, and that you should have won the last 3 races and the championship.


Having said all of that, I hope that no one got discouraged by my "domination" and I'd like to think that you all took inspiration from my car, and my posts, to try new things on your own car, and learn a thing or two about aerodynamics along the way.
That's the only thing that matters really. Given how many of these parts I have seen appearing on other cars (including Variante!), how many competitors there still are, and how the quality of every single entry has increased over the years, I think that is the case.


... and the good news is that next year I won't be able to spend as much time as I have been in the last 2 years! So that's likely the end of my "domination"!

[CAEdevice]

Having said all of that, I hope that no one got discouraged by my "domination"

Absolutely not, I hope that the level of competitiveness of MVRC can always be so high

[variante]

I think you are a bit harsh on André. I can see his point, that, looking purely at the results, I have won the first 4 races of 2 seasons in a row. And apart from the first race of 2023, the winning margins have been quite similar considering the natural performance convergence.

Fair enough if that was the assessment of a passer-by...
And when I begged to differ and reminded the intricacies of this Season, which are a tale of a year-long efforts, my points got liquidated with Teutonic inflexibility. Don't expect me to respond faintly to that.

Anyway, it's not a big deal. I think everyone said what they needed to say.

This year was totally different. I nailed the balance in all races, there was no flowfield issues or miscorrelations (apart from a small rear wing separation at Monaco that prevented me from reaching -7.0Cl... I'm still angry about it! ), and my race 03 update worked as expected, improving efficiency. I got every small detail right whereas you made costly mistakes in every races (wrong balance, wrong parts, miscorrelations, silly penatly...) but it is obvious from your efficiency numbers that your car has more potential, and that you should have won the last 3 races and the championship.

I agree. You seemed just unbeatable in the first half of 2023. And I couldn't have done much better.
This year you had yet another great pre-Season development, but I can only pity myself (and my bad luck) if the championship hasn't been more interesting than it turned out.

Given how many of these parts I have seen appearing on other cars (including Variante!)

Yeah, the downwashing rear winglets were a nice performance boost!
Hopefully we'll see more next year, even though it seems that both of us will be forced to tune down the efforts.

[yinlad]

Yeah, the downwashing rear winglets were a nice performance boost!

I never did get them to work, which I find interesting in itself. Maybe something to revisit ahead of R05