And She Don’t Scrape No More

by Katier Scott on November 9th, 2011

iRacing’s Eric Hudec recently provided the Lotus 79 community with a superb example of community co-operation in working through a series of comparatively simple, but much requested, changes to this challenging Class B car.

Led by Classic Lotus Grand Prix Series/community leader, Frank Herfjord, the Lotus 79 community used a forum thread started by Hudec to discuss changes they felt were fairly simple to implement but important to improving the realism and enjoyment of the car.

The Lotus 79 is more fun to drive than ever thanks to some feedback from Classic Lotus GP sim racers and a few mods by iRacing's Eric Hudec.

Within a week of the discussion, Hudec had worked through the requests and created a patch which he successfully implemented on Monday night, allowing the community time to get used to the revisions before Week 2 commenced.

The revisions included changes to the Lotus 79′s fuel economy, the increments for fueling the car, increased steering ratio options and changes to the anti-roll bar settings together with the addition of an increased penalty for dragging the floor of the car along the ground. They also included a ‘travel stop’ which prevents the car from getting as low as before.

This latter change had a dramatic, but positive, effect on the handling of the Lotus as a noticeable amount of drag and grip was removed from the car. This had the effect of making it up to 15mph quicker in a straight line while making previously flat out corners substantially slower with the same wing settings.

Overall this has reduced lap times (around 1.5s a lap at Watkins Glen) while feedback for the handling of the car has been overall very positive.  The community expressed delight at the way Hudec had worked with them by thanking him in a thread on the general discussion part of the forum.