Watkins Rost Race

[Ced Collins]

Well I can say I didn't get as much practice for this as I wanted to for various reasons. But I am happy with my drive. Except for the spin late in the race that almost cost someone in a dome their finish. Hope they were able to finish the race.

Got on the server with 6 min left in practice because my wheel wouldn't calibrate. Finally got that. Had some puter issues during the week and had to recopy my locations folder....Dooooh, wrong version of the track.

Thanks to all that voted to restart practice so I could get in. I made it with about 5 seconds I think.

First laps 8. 5 seconds slower that quick time. Warmup 4 seconds slower than quick time so I was feeling pretty good.

Start of the race going well except for the warp and lag that got me tagged by Dave which was not his fault.

Battled back from 19th to 11th....I'll take it...lol.

Congrats to Sandy and Bob on the wins.

[BCurtis]

Qualified P3...kinda disappointed as I was on a hot lap with no time left and had the pole by an extremely tiny margin after sector 2 but then spun out in the final couple of corners.
Lost a quite a few places on the start as Don came over in front of me and we had some contact. Then settled into what was one heck of a battle with Rob and Tom for the next 20-25 minutes. I think we were racing for P5 but not sure and didnt really matter as it was a blast. We all passed and re-passed each other several times. Kevin had gotten in front of us at some point and then I think I got into him into turn1, sorry but I didnt anticipate your corner entry speed I guess.

Not too far from my pit stop, I was trying to get by Alex going into the busstop, Rob and Tom on my tail. As I took the inside, I got it all wrong and bolted thru the sand and into the barrier, blowing off my front lid.
Limped around, got repairs and realized that I could only take 12 gallons ... so I'd have to make another stop. Came out in pretty open road for quite some time. As the race wore on it looked like I would pit with 10 minutes left and may have a shot at P5 as Jim wasnt too far ahead. Paul was a little ways back but after some mistakes on my part...it was the three of us going for P5. Then I spun out and figured that would be it for me but those guys couldnt avoid me and I think Paul got tore up pretty bad with just a couple laps left I think.
Got by the wreck of Paul and managed to get by Jim for P5.
Again, kudos to the LMP2 drivers, another tough track with the high speeds and everyone did an excellent job from what I seen. Sorry to James, I wasnt trying to pass just shifted down too quickly, locked the rears and think I spun into you.

[DaveS]

First off I have to apologize to about half of the LMP2 field tonight for my lack of driving skills. After the first corner at the start I just about lost it and let up on the gas a little to stop my rear end from coming around, but then I got tagged by someone (not their fault) and spun into the inside guard rail. It took me about three or four over corrected spins before I finally got my car turned in the right direction and was able to get going again. After that I just drove really crappy and hit a couple of people with my lousy timing of passes, I’m not that kind of driver 99.9 % of the time but for some reason tonight I just couldn’t drive worth a d**n. On about my fifth lap my tires were worn out from the lap one incident and I lost it coming out of the chicane and went into the outside guard rail, with that I figured it would be better for everyone if I parked it, so I did and called it a night. Again, I’m really sorry to the people that I had incidents with.

DaveS

[Greg 'GP' Haley]

first of all -- great lmp2 duel with the momo fiat's ;D of bob and alex. lots of door to door action early and was very close at the end. fuel only at the stop and got out 10 secs ahead of bob. with a couple minutes to go, my lead had shrunk to .5 sec--made my car VERY wide but screwed up t1 and bob got by. glad you held on despite your last minute off course excursion! great circuit--total immersion and sense of speed into and out of inner loop section really blew me away.
cheers,
greg #78 miska

[forddude]

This had to be one of my most exciting races ever. Didn't run as good a qualifying lap as I had wanted but in the end it didn't matter. Had I equaled my best lap ever I would have started in the same position anyway! Some early problems by guys ahead of me allowed me to gain a couple of positions and get into the donnybrook that Brent mentioned. That was the longest duration of hard hard racing that I've ever done and it was a blast. Brent, Rob and I went at it hammer and tong for quite some time. We each made mistakes that led to position changes, caught traffic that helped us pass each other and just really drove our butts off. It was a blast and a pleasure to race like that with two of our best. That settled down and everything was pretty placid until near mid race when I tagged James on the exit of turn 1. Fortunately he didn't hit anything but none the less I hate that it happened. James, if you read this I expected you to be on full throttle at that point but the replay looks like you might have hesitated a tick, perhaps because of the car off the track to the left a short way in front of us. I was already hammer down and couldn't get stopped before contact. It wasn't much, didn't even give me yellow damage but I know that doesn't make you feel any better about getting spun. Outside of that incident I had a great race and was thrilled with a 3rd place finish.

[Bob"oldnslo"Roberson]

First of all let me congratulate the LMP1 drivers and for other LMP2 drivers for their courtesy. I didn't get run over by any of them. And the ones I was fortuante enough to pass moved over nicely.
Second after watching the replay I have to apologize to my teammate Alex and to Greg Haley for my Montoya like passes I made on them. It just brushed them and apparantly didn't hurt either but I should have waited.

I had a horrible start. I got together with my own team mate ( once again my fault ) at turn one and I did a rollover. thankfully I ended up on my wheels. I did some damage which would cost me later on the pit stop.
After that cute move I was dead last and I drove as hard as I ever have. I was pushing so hard that the palms of my hands were literally sweating. I just had a fantastic handling car, thanks to Paul Hamilton's setup , and it was on rails.
I got kinda wild a couple of times but generally it was uneventful.
Greg Haley and I had some really competitive laps there at the end and thanks to his only glitch, getting a little sideways coming out of turn one, I was able to pass him.
My team mate, Alex, was really quick tonight but he had some unfortunate pit problems that took him out making this a close three way finish.

If you saw all those pitting messages at the end it was because I was having brain fade and pushing buttons like crazy. Near the end of the race I noticed I only had two laps of fuel left and I had no idea how many more laps were ahead. I was frantically trying to figure out how to make a stop for a splash stop. And I almost blew it when I lost it while doing all that foolishness. Fortunately I recovered and raced on. Thankfully that was the last lap.

[blackcat77]

Reposting my race report from the accidental duplicate thread I put up earlier.

Got off to a very good start and actually led the first couple laps. In fact, things went pretty well with me in 2nd or 3rd all the way to my mid-race pitstop but it fell totally apart from that point on. Traffic was heavy when I was getting ready to pull in and for some reason I pushed the wrong button on my wheel and didn't get the speed limiter on. I knew instantly I'd messed up, so I pulled out and right back in the next lap.

For some reason, instead of just doing a simple stop and go, it put on tires on my penalty stop, extending a ten-second stop to forty-five. Went back out in 9th or so and, as is my style, just tried to pick up whatever I could before the end. And I was doing pretty well. With five minutes to go, I was catching up with Brent pretty nicely. Unfortunately, he looped it coming out of the "toe" of the boot section of the course. I was close behind but managed to only scrape him a little but I got hit from behind and knocked off the rear wing with only two laps to go. Of course I couldn't prevent yet another tire change when I pulled in, and that dragged the stop from 30 seconds to about a minute.

Ended up 10th in a race that should have been much, much better, but it was also a pretty good outing for me in the LMP1, which up to this week has been a real problem for me. I did a few laps at Dega earlier and I think I'll try it again next time.

Congrats to Sandy and Bob.

[nasty13]

This was by far my best race I've had as I was incident free for the first time (I'm usually banging somebody) ... until about five min to go. It was at that point the freaking cat decided to jump on the computer desk, right in front of the monitor and I whacked the fence coming out of turn one. Can't really imagine what my brother was thinking when all the sudden, after about 55 min. of stone-cold silence on Teamspeak, a bunch of f-bombs, hisses, etc. in an effort to get little Coco (my now departed little kitty ..jk...Coco lives by the grace of God) out of the way, pierced his ears.
I'll take sixth every time with you guys. And, I must say it has been extemely beneficial to be lucky enough to practice with Tom, Brent, Paul, Alex, et al and go back and look at replays to see how you guys do this.
Thanks,

Jim N.

[JABowders]

Red Weasel Racing

The Glenn, found that the Reynard doesn’t like the few spots on the track where the transitions cause the car to go negative Gs. Just couldn’t get the cars to hook up and be as dominate has we thought it should be. As one example had to tip-toe around T-1, or the back end would break loose and unlike a boomerang would not return to track.

All in all I had a great race, had a few altercations I can only hope that were not intentional.

Just couldn’t put up the race I thought I should have. Maybe next time.

James
Head Weasel

[blackcat77]

jabowders said:

As one example had to tip-toe around T-1, or the back end would break loose

Make sure you have plenty of ride height. I use at least 1.75 front and 2.10 rear and that really helped my problems with oversteer on exit. I think my car was just running out of suspension...

[RobGuru]

Good and fun run here.

Had gotten some good practice on Saturday and knew that I would have a decent race pace. Qualified in P6 and got a good start... then the fun began!

As Tom mentioned, the initial laps with Tom and Brent were very, very fun! I have to admit that I was pushing really hard, and probably was overdriving the car. Might have actually been faster if I had slowed down a bit, but in the heat of the moment, you know! After a couple off-course excursions from all of us, I finally managed to get a bit of a gap on Tom and Brent, and was comfortably in P4 and closing slowly on Paul in P3. I was going to take a later pit stop and eventually inherited the lead for a few laps when the guys ahead pitted.

A couple laps before my pit, I had a 34 second or so lead on Sandy (who of course had already pitted). I didn't think that would be enough gap considering the length of pit road and the refuel time (no tires to be taken). But, a lap or 2 before I was going to pit, I was coming up on burmcat in the Outer Loop. He spun and I couldn't avoid. I don't think any significant damage was done to either of us, but I lost about 22 seconds before I got going again. So, no chance now to keep ahead of Sandy for P1.

Make the pit stop and get out about 8 seconds ahead of Tom. Was able to stretch that to about 16 seconds or so by the end of the race to secure P2, and my best finish of the season.

I hope the LMP2 guys feel I was clean on the overtaking. I know I was being more aggressive than I normally drive given the close proximity between Tom, Brent, and I early on. At times, the closing speeds were higher than I thought they would be as well. Apologies to anyone I may have caught by surprise.

So, good run for the Sim-Gear CST Dome, and I'm looking forward to the next event!

Rob

[forddude]

LMAO, Jim.......it's no wonder you're a writer. :-)

[Ced Collins]

Just getting the first lap vid completed. Man Paul that was a Helluva pass you made on Sandy in your return to LMP-1. I could see why you want to stay in it for Tally...lol

[blackcat77]

That was one of those "OMGZ! Look ou... uh, great pass" moments.