Season 38: GT cup: Round 1 at Riverside (28 laps)

So we kick off the season at Riverside, and nice to see 16 drivers take to the track.  Most of us are in Lolas for the first race.  Maybe the track suits that car more but I think the Ferrari is slightly faster and didn't want to use one up for the first round.  Managed to get into the 1.43's at the end of qualifying but only good enough for third behind Tristain and Raoni.  That will have to do.

Surprised at the start with the car bogging down a little, I guess we're carrying a lot more fuel than usual.  Everybody played it safe into turn 1 and as it shook out I ran third behind Raoni with Tristain comfortably in the lead.  Alain Maurice was behind me in one of the few Ferrari's.  I could see Raoni having a few slides here and there and on the second lap he skated wide in turn 7 and I could take 2nd spot.  The gap to Tris steadied at around 4-5 seconds for a few laps and I thought maybe I could start to reel him in a little.  But around lap 10 it seems Tris decided to get on with it and started pulling away.  He was driving really hard, even throwing the Lola into the slower corners, and I couldn't really match his pace.

I was safe in second, and also noticed as the race wound on I started to pick up some understeer in the slower corners.  I suspect in testing I was more aggressive with pitching the car around, sliding the rears and keeping them hot.  In the race I may have been a bit more careful and hence not heating the rear tyres as much.  Anyway it was controllable.

So that was really it, I did have a silly quick spin and touched the fence in the difficult braking into turn 8.  I was on the wrong line and got caught out.  The car wasn't really affected and it didn't cost me that much time.  So the race ground out to the end.  Not a spectacular race but I'm glad I survived and got some good points.  Concerning about how quick Tris is though.

Open - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	MagicArsouille (FT)		50.0	Lola T70 MkIII	50.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		43.0	Lola T70 MkIII	43.0
3	Alain Maurice (FT)		37.0	Ferrari 330/P4	37.0
4	Cookie (FT)		32.0	Lola T70 MkIII	32.0
5	Enrique Farina (FT)		28.0	Lola T70 MkIII	28.0
6	EvilClive (FT)		25.0	Ferrari 330/P4	25.0
7	Markus Friedrich (R1)		23.0	Lola T70 MkIII	23.0
8	philippe GIRARD (FT)		21.0	Lola T70 MkIII	21.0
9	Doni Yourth (FT)		19.0	Lola T70 MkIII	19.0
10	fpolicardi (FT)		17.0	Ferrari 330/P4	17.0
11	Phil Thornton (R1)		15.0	Lola T70 MkIII	15.0
12	Rainier (FT)		13.0	Ferrari 330/P4	13.0
13	francesco (FT)		11.0	Lola T70 MkIII	11.0
14	Pete Bennett (FT)		9.0	Lola T70 MkIII	9.0
	PaulV (FT)
	GregT (R1)
	Raoni Frizzo (R1)