USA G3: Dubai

Race results will be posted soon and will be taken from the last complete lap before the server restart.

what a waste of time ... got punted L1 T4 and driver didnt get penalty or drive through .. sportsmanship!!
lost all interest .. didnt want a dnf so kept going.

I seen that Heinz, it happend right in front of me. I was wondering if or when he was gonna do a drive through?

My race was all i had tonight. I'm having a real hard time figuring out a good setup for this z3. Garret, good racing with ya, you were faster and it was all i had to keep you back there. :-)

Good run Rob!

Congrats up front..

-m

Protest/Complaint procedure is the proper way of dealing with that Heinz. Easy to verify and easy to add a penalty.

I needed a re-run cos in the euro-race I had too many f*ck*ps and lost some good places at the end of the race. I was surprised to see only Dennis in a Viper too because the euro-race showed that was the car to use here. Got pole and a good start and extended my lead to Steve a bit every lap while trying to save the tyres.

Interesting standings in the serie. Two teams up front in the teamstanding and a very close top 6 in the driversstanding. I'm not entirely unhappy with being 6th atm. :-)

I noticed that too George, with what 3 races to go and the top 6 are 5 points apart. The last race is gonna be a thriller.

-m........j

Mark,

Good job in the Z3 - did great for the team considering the POS you had to drive.

Steve,

I had nothing for you other than to keep you honest. My only chance was that issue with a lapper.

George,

Great job, you could have at least sent us a postcard. Don't count Team Venom Racing out just yet.

I was suprised to be the only Lotus here among the handicappers. Still, getting passed on every front straight is frustrating. Enjoyed this race, even though it was very strange. My force feedback on my wheel quit after qualifying. I must say, it is strange to drive without it. Still, I managed to keep my times down. On lap one I could not avoid hitting a spinning car (Heinz I think?). So I ended up in the grass, losing prescious time in my little Lotus. Then after a few laps about 4 cars in front of me simply disappeared for about 5 seconds. Then they reappeared in the grass, and I was in 12th place. I will have to watch the replay on that. Shortly before the server crashed I saw Heinz in my rearview. And I had a flashback from the Elise race where we battled for many laps. Then, race over.

Ryan .. You were my only compititor this race .. I kept catching you, then falling back, then catching you again ..
was looking forward to the last few mins of the race.. pity

A mostly uneventful race for me, with again a better than expected result. Didn't get a chance to practice so I just loaded up a set from Brno which turned out to work fine. Dubai's a known quantity and the GT3 is easy to drive, so that helped a lot.

Was pleased to end up 2nd on the grid, moreso to see George on pole. From his qualifying pace I knew I couldn't run heads-up with him, so the thing for me to do was protect 2nd, try to stay in touch and see how his tires held up. I haven't ever gotten around to trying the Viper, but was thinking it probably eats tires. Ought to, anyway... ;-)

Start went OK and the race was proceeding to plan when we encountered Shane, who was already a lap down in a damaged car. I got banged up a bit getting by and had a couple of big lockups, since he appeared to be contesting the position in a car that was obviously hard to handle. Didn't quite understand that; were blue flags not working? Anyway, after abusing my fronts pretty badly in that encounter, they gave up enough grip that I couldn't lean on 'em for the rest of the race. Crank the wheel over past about 20 degrees and the FF would just go away since the grip was gone. Soon also was George, so I forgot about his tires and started worrying about mine!

Took a while for me to get adjusted to the balance change and was worried at first about slipping back into reach of Rob, but managed to get it stabilized. Got hit by Shane again the next time we lapped him when he got out of shape at the chicane. No big damage done which was lucky, and I held position to the premature race end.

I hesitate to mention this, but (looked at the replay just to make sure I was seeing things correctly) I saw Shane get into about half a dozen incidents during the race while contesting positions with cars who were racing each other a lap (or two) ahead. Have to say, not the best of form. I appreciate and applaud wanting to avoid a DNF, but when you know you're out of contention and are nursing a bent car that's 4-5 sec/lap off pace, you owe it to your fellow competitors to make an extra effort not to impede them when they're coming through. Doing otherwise can only hurt them and you. If it's too damaged to do that reliably, it's better to park it.

Considering the standings, it looks like I'd better be prepared to get out of peoples' way myself, unless I can find a nitrous bottle somewhere for the next event. But as I live two hours from Barber, maybe I should just sneak down there for some live track time... ;-)