Season 30: Specials. Final Round: Nurburgring (GT Cars)

I was joined in a final pre race online testing session with Greg, who was trying different cars.  i was rusty in the Ferrari.  To qualifying proper, and after a few spins I finally got stuck in and punched out a pretty terrific lap.  It was the kind of lap you can only really do once, with the car twitching and sliding and kicking about wildly.  I forced it round, and despite annoyingly missing the Karrussel by braking a touch too late, I clicked an 8.18 which turned into an easy pole.  Greg was third in a Chapparal 2D behind Axel in a 2F.  So I had an easy start and sprinted away into the lead.  The car was never really happy, I think it was just too low, and kept touching the ground at various moments.  I pulled a gap on Axel before Greg managed to get past him.  I was looking good in terms of pace ahead of Greg, but on lap 3 the car landed awkwardly after one of the jumps, grounded out too hard and fired off into the fence.  That damaged the engine so after a reset I had to do a stop and go.  Greg closed right up, and a lap later the car just had an awkward slide at the worst place, the left hander at the end of the straight.  It pushed wide and hit the end of the fence.  Greg just managed to miss me.  As I didn't have any more resets I limped it into the pits to retire.

A terrible shame, I guess I needed more testing for such a large track.  So Greg takes the final win, and of course the championship.  He deserves it I think, I've had too much bad luck and bad races overall.

We'll see what next year brings in terms of championship rules and events as to if I come back.  It's been a long season, and I certainly didn't get the results I thought I would get.  But there were some high spots, so we'll remember those.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		386.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0	50.0	43.0	50.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		352.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	43.0		37.0
3	Cookie (FT)		239.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0			43.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		231.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0		50.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		230.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0	32.0	32.0	32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		106.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0			37.0
7	Tom van Ostade (R1)		74.0	Lola T222			37.0						37.0
8	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
11	bagrupp (R1)		28.0	Lola T222									28.0
= 11	Rainier (R1)		28.0	McLaren M9A								28.0
	Gareth (R1)
	Iestyn Davies (R1)
	Robert Fleurke (R1)

Testing in Germany

To the nurburgring,  and it's a lot of hard work getting the Ferrari p4 to work around here.  I'm sticking with it because it's my favourite car, and this could be my last UK league race.  It's snappy and difficult though,  but when it works it's just fantastic.  May as well go out with a bang.

Zeltweg Protest published

As an extra kick to the ribs, the moderators have published the result of the protest at the Zeltweg race.

Server replay time: 0h33m34s

Lap 20
Greg follows Mark close into the Bosch Kurve.
At the entrance Mark slides understeering to the left and slows down much more than the laps before to 113kph.
In the 4 laps before his speed was 15-30kph faster at this point!
Greg 140kph is caught out by this and collides.
It does not look like a passing attempt.
IMO a 50:50

• GregT (Greg 69X Taber) — racing incident
• Mark Jones — racing incident

I'd be lying if I agreed with that.  The simple fact is Greg himself said it was his fault and wanted to give me back the race win.  I guess it doesn't matter now anyway, but it's still annoying.  

Season 30: Specials. Round 9: Watkins Glen (Can Am cars)

I awoke early on Saturday morning, not really sure why.  I looked over at the clock and saw it was off.  After a moment I realised what that meant: a power cut.  I got up and checked, and it seemed everyone in the street was off.  The time wasn't yet 7.00, and I used a cell phone to check the details.  Sure enough, the provider had posted a message on their website that an "outage" had occurred, knocking out the entire town.

What to do.  I still had a couple of hours, but the website said it wouldn't be fixed until evening.  I'll be damned if I was going to give up.  I decided to pack everything up and load it in the car.  Monitor, keyboard, wheel and pedals, all the cables, everything.  Then we took off, through the tunnel to the city, where the power was still on.  At a friends house, I unloaded everything onto a kitchen table, and then carefully assembled it all together again.  Finally I was ready, I turned on the power and winced as the house circuit breaker popped.  I reset it, tried a different main plug, and started it again.

This time the computer seemed to start, but I couldn't see anything on the screen.  While fiddling with the screen, suddenly smoke came out of the computer!  I switched it off.  Somehow while the powerboard held fine, the UPS held fine, the power supply in the computer blew up.  Typical.

So, that's that.  The race went on without me (Carlos won from Greg).  A non start cripples my (already narrow) chances of the championship.  And there wasn't even anything I could do.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		379.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0	50.0	43.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		315.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	43.0
3	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		231.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0		50.0
4	Doni Yourth (FT)		198.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0	32.0	32.0
5	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
6	AnGex (R1)		106.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0			37.0
7	Tom van Ostade (R1)		74.0	Lola T222			37.0						37.0
8	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
11	bagrupp (R1)		28.0	Lola T222									28.0
= 11	Rainier (R1)		28.0	McLaren M9A								28.0
	Gareth (R1)

Testing in New York

(Still waiting on the outcome of the protest, so rather than dinner we just went to a Whiskey bar.  It was very tasty.)

Now we go to Watkins Glen, version 1971.  This is a great, fast flowing racetrack.  We're in the CanAm cars, and it's been a great challenge getting wound up round here.  Rules are free in terms of car choice, but we have to do a fuel stop and a stop and go.  I've gone with the M8F, the obvious choice.  When I started off it was a mess.  The old setup I had from a race several years ago was just awful, far too stiff and bouncing over every bump.  I've reworked everything, softening up the chassis and opening up the diff, and it's made a huge difference.  I can do low 1.05's pretty easy, and if I really concentrate I can almost break into the 1.04's.  More importantly, the car is feeling great, lots of grip and very predictable.

The only issue is a small locking of the front brakes into the slower corners.  I can drive around it, and it is safer, but I'm working on dialing it out a bit.  Overall the car feels great.  Did some pitstop practice as well, and that went well too.

Season 30: Specials. Round 8: Zeltweg (27 laps) (69 F1 cars)

Well after a lot of work I ended up with a very fast and competitive setup.  Set an easy pole position (although with a bit of a tow from Axel), and lined up ahead of Greg, who was also in a Ferrari.  Got a good start and took the lead.  What followed was basically 20 laps of pressure, as I could lead from Greg but could not pull away from him.  So lap after lap, corner after corner I was watching him in the mirrors.  I feel I had him covered for the most part, my car was hooked up nicely.  So on lap 20 I had a slight slide under braking for turn 4.  That put my car a little high, and Greg came charging in.  But he didn't go for the low line, he was more to the middle of the track.  And he basically slid into the side of me.  That combined with a bit of lag and ended up sending me over the fence.

I landed on my wheels but could not rejoin the track, so had to do a reset.  And then had to do a stop and go penalty stop at the pits.  I rejoined to find Greg waiting for me, but instead of letting me past he continued on ahead.  I tried to push hard to get into his slipstream but I now had a full tank of fuel, and cold tyres.  I just couldn't get close enough.  So Greg led across the finish line.  He said later he meant to let me past but got caught out by the finish.

So there we are.  On reflection I've decided to post an official incident report.  I can't accept that finish as it stands.  Greg's passing attempt just wasn't on.  Sad it's come to this, but.  Standings are pending.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		368.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0	50.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		315.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	43.0
3	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		181.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		166.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0	32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		106.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
11	Rainier (R1)		28.0	McLaren M9A								28.0
	bagrupp (R1)
	Gareth (R1)

Testing in Austria

Hard at work in Austria.  First had to figure out and confirm that the BRM is slower than the Ferrari, which entailed lots of back to back laps and refinement of setups.  Finally I could then concentrate on the Ferrari and experiment with the balance of the car.  I love the Zeltweg track, it's got a great flow to it, and the key is to have a car that can go deep into braking zones, get the car turned, and then be able to get early on the throttle.  So it has to be amenable to be slid about through the apex of the corners.  Lots of fine tuning and testing of small adjusments have followed.  Each one has to then be tried out which requires several laps to get the tyres up to temperature.  And hanging over it all is the question of what the benchmark is, is the car actually fast enough, and is there some key aspect of the setup I've overlooked.  Arrgh.

Restaurant review: Cafe Prague

Found a lovely restaurant filled with all sorts of pictures and paintings of the city of Prague.  Unfortunately it was totally empty, I suspect it's more of a breakfast and lunch place.  But they have a full dinner menu as well, so we settled down in some peace and quiet to make our selections for the very nice waitress.

We started with a brilliant bread and dips platter, featuring different kinds of bread as well as nice dips.  Then it was on to the mains!  I decided to be bold and selected something called the Svickova.  It's slices of beef with bread dumplings, and a creamy sauce - with real cream!

While I'm reliably informed that the roast vegetable dish was "nice", if not particularly European-feeling, I found the Svickova was delicious, if a little odd.  Anyhow, the restaurant was brilliant, with a good relaxed feel and packed full of character.

Season 30: Specials. Round 7: Brno (10 laps) (67 GT cars)

To Brno we go, and I notice that Greg has also picked the GT40 Mk2 for this race, and Axel has gone with the Mirage.  After grappling with the Mk 4 in practice I gave up on it when I couldn't stop it locking rears at the end of the long straights.  I prefer the feel of the mk2.  This is such a tough race track, it's relentless.  Laps are over four and a half minutes long, with a wide range of fast straights, hairpin bends, hills and fast hidden turns.  It's great.

Greg took pole, though.  By a long way too - about 5 seconds faster.  That got my attention, it seems Greg was really hooked up - able to brake later than I can, and his car looks much more stable.  I lined up second on the grid with some trepidation.  And then it all went my way.  As the flagman raised his flag (which I needed because until then I wasn't sure where he was), Greg took off - jumping the start.  He immediately stopped again but he'd lost the momentum and as the flag dropped we all swept past him.  Axel got a better start than I did and I followed him through the fast section of bends ok, then down the long straight I got a draft and went by on the inside - braking neatly into the slow turn ahead.  It kicked off behind me.  Carlos in the Ferrari outbraked Greg, and then himself into that same turn, locking his brakes and hitting Axel, spinning him around.  Greg tried to come through only to get tipped into a spin by Carlos.  Greg rejoined fourth behind Carlos and Doni.  Greg caught up to Carlos but the whole middle of the track is technical, and Carlos in the Ferrari was good enough to keep him at bay until they got onto the start/finish straight.  There was a moment as Carlos maybe blocked, but eventually Greg was through.

That put behind Doni, and again he had to spend a lap caught behind him, so as they wound up on the s/f straight again Greg was hot to get past.  He bombed down the inside line into the super fast and tricky turn one, but left his braking too late.  The back swung out and clouted a telegraph pole.  He tried to continue but he'd bent something, and needed to do a reset, then come around to do a penalty stop and go in the pits.  That put him far behind me.  I'd had a small silly spin on lap 3 when the car had got onto the grass under braking, but other than that it was under control.  The car had started to understeer as the tyres heated up, so it was a case of just driving carefully to the end.  As others made mistakes Greg got back up to second, and that's how we finished.

I'm still not thinking about the championship, the slope is too steep.  Just concentrate on the next one.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		318.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		272.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0
3	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		181.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		134.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		69.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	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)

Testing in Czechoslovakia

Brno (1965 version) is next up, and this should be a little special.  This is an amazing racetrack, long straights, fast curves, elevation changes, and a number of technical sections.  It's very difficult, fast and bumpy with absolutely no margin for error at all.  I'm on the back foot here.  I don't know the track as well as I should, and I spent a lot of time last month practicing in the Ferrari P4 - the car I thought we'd be allowed to use.  Turns out the official race post says we have to use something with a Ford engine.  So I've been forced to scramble and spend time first figuring out which Ford is probably the best one for this track (quick back to back testing at Monza short track showed the Mk2B slightly better than the Mk 4), then to start all over again at Brno trying to set the car up.

I'm exhausted, the car is like a truck compared to the wonderfully fleet Ferrari, and it's overheating the rear tyres after a couple of laps.  Very annoyed to be on the back foot.

Restaurant review: Belgian Beer Cafe

We've been to the BBC on a few occasions, so it was with comfortable familiarity we settled into our chairs.  Our waitress was still new to speaking english so we helped by pointing to the items on the menu we wanted. Bread with dips made way for the pasta dish, we were in the mood for the Italian flavourings of Belgium.

I'm informed that the vegetarian pasta deal was very very good, and I can confirm the Chicken pasta dish was absolutely perfect.  And not too large to prevent temptations of desert.

Yes, what could go better than victory Belgian waffles with chocolcate and cream?  Nothing, nothing can go better than that.  Nice food, nice people, it worked out really well.

Season 30: Specials. Round 6: Spa (16 laps) (71 Can Am cars)

Back to Spa again, this time in the 1971 Can Am monsters.  The rules forbid the top cars from being used, and also we have to do a stop and go penalty at some point.  I've gone with the Shadow (again - same car as Road Atlanta), and was reasonably confident of being competitive.  The car is very good around here, a lot of grip, but it's marginal under braking, wanting to spin around on the bumps.  I'm also being very careful under braking regarding not buzzing the engine on downshifts, which can also contribute to instability.

Axel also brought a Shadow, it's a good, bullet-fast car with a nice balance.  Greg was in the Ferrari, which is a slower car around this track.  Axel took pole position, I think I just didn't have enough heat in the tyres.  Anyway we lined up for the start.  I got an Ok start and followed Axel up through Eau Rouge.  I felt Ok behind him initially, but when we got to Stavelot it all went wrong.  I turned at the right point but the car just didn't stick, it slid across the track and thumped the bridge with the left rear.  That was that.  After a reset I set off after the field, did my stop go penalty, and just basically relaxed.  I figured my race was all over, and I turned up the music and cruised a bit.  I got past Doni and then did my compulsory stop and go out of the way, then pressed on expecting to spin off or blow the engine at any moment.

However, others starting having problems.  Axel spun off and got stuck for a bit.  Greg spun off and got stuck.  They both had to do resets, they both spun off again.  Eventually Greg damaged his car bad and had to retire just after half distance.  While trying to relax I caught up to Carlos in the M8F, and we ended up having a battle for what was the lead.  Carlos was struggling a bit but I was having a tough time behind him.  Every time I got close the car would get very darty and erratic everywhere.  It was awful.  You just can't seem to race these cars.  After a couple of laps I finally got a good run through the second part of Stavelot and was able to go around on the straight, taking the lead.  Then I could finally relax again, and drove to the finish.  Amazing, finally I got a win in this championship!!!

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		275.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		222.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0
3	Cookie (FT)		168.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		144.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		102.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0
6	AnGex (R1)		69.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	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)