Season 30: Specials. Round 4: Le Mans 16 laps (67 GT cars)

Well, it all went to shit.  I mean, not straight away, I was able to easily set pole position.  The Mk 4 GT 40 is really the perfect car for this track.  So I lined up on the grid ahead of Axel (also in a Mk 4) and Greg (Ferrari) feeling pretty confident.  Ok start, Greg got ahead due to the Ferrari being better geared, but as we got onto the straight I powered past him and took the lead ahead of Axel. We settled into a good pace, but I noticed that I was having some odd handling issues.  Certain places on the track the car would slide very oddly.  Axel had a chance to pass me and I drafted him back down the Mulsanne straight.  Amazingly, I failed to compensate for the extra speed through the Mulsanne kink and the car ran just slightly wide on the exit, slightly nudged the grass, and got sucked onto the grass.  Before I knew it, the car had spun and hit a tree.

So I had to do a reset and go round to do a stop go penalty.  Axel was doing the same ahead of me as he'd also had a mistake, and sadly I accidentally tapped him while trying to stop in the pits, knocking him upside down.  So I continued on, with Axel behind, both of us now chasing Greg.  Next lap Greg pitted for his fuel stop so I took back the lead.  Then Axel stopped and I continued on.  I just decided to ignore strategy and try and run consistent laps again.  Finally it was working again and I could bang out the laps the car is capable of.

I still had to do a stop go and a fuel stop, so I waited for the fuel to run down.  The gap to Greg was growing each lap, I just had to press on and hope I had enough of a gap.  Finally I was low on fuel so I stormed in and got the stop go out of the way.  The gap to Greg dropped to roughly 30 seconds when I came in the next lap for fuel.  Thankfully the pit board was visible and I stopped right on it and hit the button.  Now all I could do was wait and watch the gap back to Greg.  Then the fuel was done and I revved the car up to leave the pits.  As I accellerated away I could see I'd done it, Greg was still 10 seconds behind - I'd managed to take the lead back.  Then, disaster.  As I changed into 2nd gear something went wrong with the throttle.  The car was surging, on and off randomly.  I couldn't figure it out.  Why wasn't the car going?  I was frantically knocking around the pedals with my foot as Greg raced by to take the lead.  Finally I realised that if I pushed down on the left side of the throttle the car would go, so I did that.  But it was too late to catch Greg, there was only a couple of laps left.

And so Greg took an unlikely victory, it's almost as if he was fated to win this race.  I haven't checked my pedals yet, I haven't got the heart.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		193.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		129.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0
3	Cookie (FT)		125.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		107.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		102.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0
6	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
7	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
8	AnGex (R1)		32.0	Matra MS80 (DF…		32.0
= 8	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
	bagrupp (R1)
	Gareth (R1)
	Iestyn Davies (R1)
	Rainier (R1)
	Robert Fleurke (R1)
	Ronnie Nilsson (R1)

Testing at Le Mans

Finally the long break is over and the next round is up - GT's at Le Mans.  I've had a lot of success at this track over the years, but it's always important to start from scratch and build up steam slowly.  There's only one car here from the 1967 set that's competitive - the Mark 4 GT40.  It's a truck compared to the other cars, but it's a truck that works brilliantly at this particular track.  I'm pulling 220 mph down the Mulsanne!  Getting back in the Mk4 is always a bit of a shock, but after a few laps it all starts to come back.  I'm running a bit behind this week, I've been recovering from a cold so I've lost some practice time already.

Testing here is all about picking up where I left off last time.  You always end up making a few small adjustments to the setup even if the old setup was good enough for a win.  Amazingly I'm up to version 9 of the setup for this track, 9 iterations over the years.  After some initial fiddling about that really only ended up making the car lock it's tyres here and there I calmed it down and ran a good consistent series of laps.  Pitstops will be a part of this race, so I also practiced hammering into pitlane and stopping on the boards.  Once you get dialed into this thing it can feel absurdly comfortable, it feels sometimes more like a train than a car.  More practice needed.