Riverside Post Race

[Ced Collins]

And I remind myself why I am not a professional driver...lol

Bad start but recovered well. By lap 8 was battling for 8th and Lap 9 closing on 7th and lap 10 had the battle with the Concrete Tire that killed it all. Pitted on lap 11 and tried to play a fuel race. 84 second pitstop and filled it to the brim with fuel.

While thinking that this could work out for me at the 35 minute mark I had the ultimate brain fart and went wide entering turn 8 and hit a telephone pole....ROFL.

Limped back to the pits for a 115 second stop and just tried to salvage the race.

Was looking for a solid top 5 in this. Running 1:30's on and offline. Big disappointment.

Big Congrats to Sandy and Bob on the class wins

[DaveS]

Qualified 2nd but when the green dropped I got a lousey start and wound up back in 4th after the first lap. I worked my way up to 2nd but lost my back end in the corner that leads onto the long back straight and a couple of cars got by me. About 2 laps later I had one of them "BRAIN FART'S", losted it and hit the outside wall facing the wrong way. I then got hit by 2 other cars while I was waiting for a clean track to turn around on. Once under way my crew chief told me I had suspension damage, a flat left front tire, and major body damage. I limped back to the pits and after about 1:30 minutes of repairs I took off again in last place.

The cars top end was down to 190 mph but it was handling pretty good. So I took a deep breath and told myself to relax. So off I went trying to catch up the the field, I then started to work my way back up through the field for the next 45 minutes or so and at the end I managed to get 6th place.

Congrat's to all on the podium, cya at Laguna Seca

DaveS ;D

[blackcat77]

Congrats to Bob on the LMP2 win.

Had an amazing contest with Mr. Weasel -- I had him in the turns he had me on the straights and we were -->|| <-- that close lap after lap after lap. Most fun I've had racing in a long long, time. Unfortunately it all ended in tears for me when I couldn't get the crew to do a splash and go when I stopped with one minute left on the clock. I'd earlier tried to add additional fuel during my midrace stop which didn't work either. The stupidly-long stop left me in third or fourth in class and more than a little frustrated about it. Hopefully someone will explain to me how to change pit strategies...

[greds04]

Had a brilliant start and went from sixth to 3rd by the first slight left turn near the pit exit, was okay until the right hand turn after the esses, went a little wide and the rear caught the dirt and let go, was down to 17th after letting the traffic clear, then fought my way up through the field and then got blind sided by a caddy I was passing over the start finish line and had some pretty bad damage, just got worse from there really managed 13th.

I just want to remember my McNish style move at the start and sitting between two cars both fighting for 1st (lasted for about 3 seconds).

Hope that Laguna has better favour for me.

[Harrison]

I was feeling pretty good about tonight. Brent and I had a great battle for what seemed 20 minutes. He and I went side by side through the last corner and we made contact sending me into the wall. I bounced off with minimal damaged but the bounce sent me into the pit wall ending my race. Congrats to the winners!

Harrison

[Greg 'GP' Haley]

never saw much of paul and head weasel jb--you guys were flying (sorry about your pit troubles)! i did have an early close run with signor roberson.. some real fun dome vs. dome battling. he had a car that just got quicker though; by half distance there was a 10 sec. gap between us and he handled traffic much better. glad you got the win in the end. bravo bravo
cheers,
greg #78 miska lmp2

[lnerell]

My first race back after working too many hours, I think I may have touched my wheel on my computer twice in the last two months. For practice I only managed to put in a single lap in before joining the server, which in itself was a problem. I had to reinstall Riverside for some reason.

So, no time on track and no setup, tried running the default and adjusting that got me nowhere slowly. Ended up using a setup from a much different track that was too slow on the back straight and not enough grip in the corners. I ended up qualifying 10th.

The race wasn't much better. At the start I got a great jump but the person in front of me didn't move so I ended up hitting him. Sorry whoever that was, my fault. Got as high as 5th at one point but not knowing the track gave me troubles. I went off in a corner looking down at my dash and hit a car that had just crashed. I limped back to the pits with a flat tire and no front end, pitted for over a minute. I got out just in time to join the front runners in LMP2. I was quicker in the corners but because of my damage I was slower down the straights. I think I did two more laps before I crashed again in the same corner. I decided I had done enough damage for one day and didn't want to take anyone else with me so I parked it.

[BCurtis]

Qualified P4...had a good start and got past Dave on the front row. Couple laps in, I had one of them brain farts and ran a little wide half way thru the lap and got back on track in P6, no damage just did some lawn-mowing. The first half of the race ended up being a great battle with Harrison for P3. We ran pretty much nose to tail and was lots of fun. Towards the end of the first stint I got a great jump onto the backstraight and tried my luck into the final right-hander. I ended up sliding up high and as I had no idea where Harrison was, I figured he was up high so I tried to get out of the throttle. Not enough though and got into him and the wall. Didnt think there was too much damage but coming off the corner it looks like Harrison got loose or something and ended up in a guard rail. Sorry to see your race end.
I ran longer than pretty much everyone and decided (after seeing the gaps around me) not to fix damage and ran okay laps to finish the race. No drama in the final 20 minutes other than me having a couple off track excursions. The gap to P3 was big enough not to hurt me.

[Bob"oldnslo"Roberson]

Well, for the first time in many tries I stayed out of trouble. I just cruised the whole race. Managed to luckily out duel a couple of competitors but most of the time I was just turning good safe laps.
And I have to give credit to the LMP1 drivers they all were very careful when they lapped me.

Susan , while getting harder to catch, really handled traffic well and was very courteous to me.

Both Paul and James were quicker than I was but they both had troubles.

[kevinchalk]

I had a great car again, thanks to Sandy. Based on practice times I thought I could qualify in the top 5 without a problem. For some reason the last time I used my qual setup I changed the fuel up to a race load and saved it. I didn't even realize I had done so until 3 or 4 laps into qual when my laps times kept coming up almost 2 seconds too slow. By the time I realized what I had done there were only about 4 minutes left, so I got two laps in with my reduced fuel load. Only ended up in P7 because of that mistake.

When the race started I stuck with my normal plan of being patient and letting the field spread out a bit. Within a few laps 2 - 3 of the guys in front of me had spun off course so I was able to get into about 4th place. Over the course of the race I had a total of 4 incidents. Two times I followed cars that were in front me me off track at high speed right hander that proceeds the slow speed right hander leading to the back stretch. Thankfully both times that I did so I was able to just bounce off of the guardrail and get back on track, avoiding the big barrier at the end of the rail.

One other time I lost the rear getting onto the back stretch and slid through the grandstands. My biggest mistake came as I was about to pit. Coming into pit road I was making my final pit request adjustments (was turning off dmage repair) and forgot that we had to stay WAY right to get in the pits. Ended up driving straight into the guard rail halfway between the track and pit entrance. The worst part was that I forgot that the damage repair gets reset each time you hurt the car, so when I stopped I had to do a 60 second damage repair. That ended all hopes of me advancing higher than P3.

I am happy with my result, specially since I was able to finish the race w/o losing my connection. This is two races in a row (Ironman 2) that I've been able to do so, so I think bypassing the router and plugging straight into the modem has solved my connection issues.

As always I want to thank Sandy for giving me an awesome setup for the race, without you I'd be spinning and parking. And I also want to thank Ced for taking the time and making the effort to put this all together for us!! You are THE man!!

OH, one other thing.....I thought the lapped traffic did a very good job this race. It seemed like they ran their races more this week and weren't as concerned with slowing to let us by, which is how it should be. Don't worry about slowing us down, that's a part of racing. It's our duty to find a safe way past and I think everyone worked well together this week!

[JABowders]

First the Weasels have to send hearty congratulations to Sandy and Bob.

Post race banter…

Well the Weasels faired OK for the most part. The Head Weasel was the LMP2 leader for a good portion of the race, and I was very pleased with that. Paul had me in the turns but I had the Red Weasel Racing Reynard stoked with Weasel Juice and she was flying like her tail was a rocket and her hair was on fire. My fist mistake was I went out to Q and I edited my setup dropping my fuel load to give me only ten laps. It was a fair trade for weight, but when I hit the Starting line for the race, it was apparent that the car chief forgot to fill it back up to my race set-up, so I hit the grid way short of fuel. I can over come this; I have an hour to do the math…so I planed to adjust on my scheduled pit and make up the fuel then…GREEN LIGHT, GO! GO! GO! Off we went. Starting well in mid pack, the Weasels worked their way to the front. Miss Susan, getting better with each race still tends to short shift, but she soldiered on through some tough spots there was a few cases of losing ground because she appeared to want a closer look at the flowers along the a few of the walls and then I think she decided that since so much of the Team Budget goes to the Pit Crew, she decided to make them earn every virtual cent. While this was going on the Head Weasel stretched his legs and reached P6 overall and had Paul hot on his tail, when a little breathing room opened with Paul’s Pit. Math calculations completed and fuel load adjusted, I pull in to pit and in the process relinquish position and the winded Pit Crew fielded a respectable stop. Reenter the track at P8 overall and wonder if I could push this rodent to a top 3 finish, as the 30 minute warning flashed on screen, I felt my stomach hit rock bottom as I realized that with all the grand mathematical wizardry that this old dog did, he was going to come up one lap shy of just enough fuel. So back straight fuel adjustments being made a splash and go, no need to be to stingy I’ll go ahead and get six laps worth. Well as I pitted I sat dumbfounded when I realized once again that Murphy was laughing at me, the pit crew did not add six laps of fuel to what I had, they only added the 1/2 gallon to bring me up to six laps. I was infuriated. So much so that I allowed this to distract me from my race and I overshot T8 and tore off my front wing, OK…I forced myself to settle down, and decided to pit for a full service and just salvage what I could. That seemed to be the best call I made regarding pit strategy what is 32 seconds for tyres when it takes 84 seconds to reinstall a front wing? So with duct tape and spit and bailing wire I hit the track to scrape up as many points as I could.

So let me pass on my lesson learned, Don’t loose your cool, Stay focused on the race. The track is where your mind needs to be. And the second lesson, Don’t underestimate your fuel usage, after you calculate it out three times and you have it on the money, add six more laps worth.

Great racing out there.

See you next time….

James
Head Weasel

[blackcat77]

I know how you feel, James. Last night I was mad because I couldn't set my stop for a splash and go. Today I'm mad at myself for not checking my math properly so I didn't *have* to make a second stop.

BTW, I see your 84-second time to replace the wing and raise you 64 seconds to change tires. That's how long it took them on my first stop. It was just a weird race overall.

[Klaus Cedwig]

Paul,

I was going to try and post something that showed where it was but is seems it is only available online. I tried a race weekend and couldn't get the same screen. If I can get one whilel testing for the Bull I will have it up shortly.