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.