PCM, Inc. Magny-Cours 350k

Wow, amazingly tough race! After qualifying on pole, me and Marko were no more than 5 seconds apart for the entire 2 hours... We each had one incident in traffic, my one lost me the lead after about 40 minutes, Marko's lost him the lead after about 55 minutes, and after that we both drove as hard as we could for the last hour but stayed put, me first, Marko second, with the gap fluctuating between 5 and 2 seconds the whole time. I'm so tired... I'm gonna have a shower :-)

just when you think it cant get any worse lol,not really sure what happened today,practice before race was good,running 39/40s race set,then got booted before q started,got back in and went out for q,and car was all over the place,np start from rear ,same thing in race,it struggled to hold line,and couldnt get near previous pace{its a complete fresh install,so i dont know of anything that could be wrong},settled in to just try and finish,25 laps in engine blew no warning,feckin ferrari's lol.sat and watched conor and george for awhile,good racing guys,unlucky george,u got the short shift with the back markers,congrats to both podiums

Wow, what a race, from pole to last place and then to victory.
As a poleman I started formation lap but too early (red lights still on) and immediately got a stop and go penalty 10 sec.
A served that in first race lap and exiting in 20th position and after that all was a battles, overtaking and a lot of action.
Before 2nd stop I was 3rd. behind Conor and George. What a great battle that was, three different cars (Corvette, Lambo and F575) were on the 1-2 seconds.
Dont know what happened with George but after last pits stops battle remains between Conor and me. About 15 laps to go Conor slightly slowed behind nGT car and I make a overtake on Adelaide hairpin.
Grats Conor, battle was great.
Grats to Dennis in my class and Scortt, Marko and Samuel on nGT, great racing guys.

Was happy with my 3rd in quali and hoped I could keep the red brigade of 4 550's behind me. That worked out very well in the beginning. Had a great race with Conor until we came close to my 2nd stop at 2/3 of the race. And that point Milan had caught up with us again and we had some great laps together. Then ... into T1 I lost the car trying to avoid a nGT-car. Didn't lose too much time but decided to do my 2nd stop one lap earlier than planned. That was a miscalculation cos I forgot to add some extra fuel. Tried to save fuel the best I could but it wasn't enough. Needed 2L to make the final lap and that stunt costed me 3 places. But it also shows how close the competition is ... and that makes races like this very enjoyable. Grats to the guys who made it to the podium.

Extremely pleased with my performance today. Very nice to get a good competitive race in with a lathargic car against a bunch of strong and powerful cars :). An hour before offical practice, I wasn't even sure I wanted to run this race since I had literally no practice before hand. However, I found a tweak that actually worked very well in the stock car shootout race last night, applied to the Vette and found it worked very well in this car. I was about a half a second or more faster than my previous races here in the same car. So I came into offical practice very hopefully of good speeds and right off the bat, I was running low 33s.

Qual was rather a disappointment, though as I was overheating on my second hot lap and had to end it ASAP. Still ended up 2nd, though.

On the start of the race, Milan false started and had to do a drive through so I got 1st after lap 1. I was surprised that he did that but knew that he would be back up near the front before race's end ;). So I just cruised around the track with George hot on my tail for the whole stint.

The first stops came and went and we found ourselves right with each other again. This time, though, we encountered another Vette and I had a lot of trouble getting around him. George got right on my bumper this time so I let him go on the front straight to see if he could get around the Vette himself :P. As I expected, he was having trouble too and even rubbed fenders with the other Vette. So I sat back a bit watched the battle unfold until I had a brake fade going into the corner before the final chicane and lost a lot of time. George soon got around the Vette so I had to climb back to him to continue our battle. I eventually did and started pressuring him. Going through the 2nd chicane, George got wide and screwed up his rhythm which allowed me to get back around him. All this battling allowed Milan to close up even more and by the end of the stint he was right with us. Soon after that, George had a problem with an nGT car and spun out so it was Milan and I fighting for 1st. He didn't pressure me much at first so we went into the pits evenly distanced.

I had a great stop and gained a few seconds on Milan. However, I soon ran into some traffic and lost all that time to Milan and he was then right on my bumper. It was like this for quite a few laps as I tried my best to keep him behind me. We then came up on another lapped car going through the long sweeper and I had a lot of trouble getting around him. Milan took advantage of this and was able to draft up behind me and take 1st going into Adelaide...couldn't do much to keep him behind me then. With him in 1st now, the race was pretty much over :P. I just couldn't climb back to him and only had to hope for him to make a mistake. Since I had a nice lead over 3rd, I relaxed a little and kept an eye on Milan in case he made a mistake. He didn't...so he eventually won :P. Not a bad race at all, though. Lots of fun and gave me a lot of confidence in this car :).

Congrats Milan on the win and nice comeback :). Had a lot of fun racing with ya as well as George.

Cya guys next time!

This was a very daunting race, for me. I found out in practice that it was 126 MINUTES not 1hr 26mins. Oops :p I qualified 5th in class, after the freakishly fast Porsche RSRs were done with thier laps. I swear, Scott was going so fast when I was watching him that he went from 6th to 2nd gear faster than I go 6th to 5th. Needless to say I knew I wasn't a condender for a podium.

The start was kind of confusing, I asked Tim if I should go when Milan went, and he said yes. I think he thought I was driving a GT car, so when I started to go when I saw Milan go, and then Scott and the other 3 Porsches weren't going, I realized that I needed to go when Scott went not Milan. That balked my start, and the Porsches just drove away and were gone. I had a good battle with Sam Krueger, I knew I was holding him up a lot, but was doing my best to hold him behind me. He finally got me to mess up, only because he was in the way of me seeing my braking point :p oops, so he got by. Barry was right thre for a while, too, but I think I was slow in a corner and caught him out and he spun. Then I was alone, only being lapped by the GT drivers. I didn't really race with anyone this whole race after Sam got by, I just drove my race and made zero critical mistakes, which made me happy. I was so slow compared to the guys who won this one I'm very happy with 4th in class.

I had some trouble with some of the GT guys, first when one of them decided it was a good idea to duck inside in the Imola S-curves (the second ones) He surprised me and made me spin, and drove off. The second issue was when a different guy had just enough time to pass me on the straigh, but then pulled in front of me and slammed on the brakes. That resulted in him spinning, which in my eyes was his own dumb fault. I had a few more not-so-serious issues, with guys ducking underneath me at the last minute, and I would turn into them, nudge them, and then go wide.

Anyway, congrats Milan on the insane drive you put in, and Scott for the dominating drive. I think the European version of GTR2 has different tire wear because those damn euro guys can just drive the hell out of their cars and they NEVER go away! :p Just playing, very good job.

Tom, when a GT car has position on you ( and yes, I did have position on you. Check the replay) it's not a good idea to race said GT car into a corner. Unfortunately, you tried to outbrake me when I really thought you would see I was inside you and when I cut left for the second part of the chicane, you were there.

unfortunate but I really didn't expect you to race me into the corner with the head of steam I had going past you. I hope it didn't damage your car too badly.

I understand David, it's no big deal, like I said, you surprised me. I figured you woulnd't go in for a pass in the esses like that, it was a bad judgement call by me on what you would do.

Grats to Milan & Scott. And Enzo, good to see ya back!

Ok result after all , i knew already from the nGT race earlier here in Magny-Cours that i was off the pace pretty badly. Tried a very different setup on this race but didn't much make a difference. Maybe it's just me and Magny-Cours that doesn't get along ;).

But saying that i also have to say that i had a really good fight with Tom O'Gorman , absolutely the high point of the race. Tom's driving was very consistent and even if i was a bit faster on some parts of the track , i couldn't find a way through cleanly.

I really really enjoyed the fight , mainly because the 1st 20 minutes we both hit our marks on braking and it was just so 'real' , hanging on the bumper 1-2 feet away lap by lap :D.

Great stuff there Tom , thanks for the clean hard racing...nice Ferrari duel there , too bad the front Porsche guys were out of reach...

Barry was the 3rd Ferrari in very close proximity and sometimes there were 3 Ferrari's inside 1 second :D.

It took about 20 minutes of hard work to find a way past Tom and finally in T3 braking i had the chance to slip by. After that i build a small gap , but situation changed lap by lap depending on the traffic and where the GT's would catch us.

I had a couple of situations where i felt i was a bit on the way , but the places like T1 and T2 doesn't much give room for creative driving lines without slowing down to almost crawling speed. Tried to get out of the way as soon as possible , but not with the risk of running out of the track.

I saw that George lost it behind me when i had to turn in for T1 , i was already a bit late on turn-in because the GT leader took the inside line . Sorry if i spooked you George, but i left some room on the inside just in case you would have dived inside. Glad to see you recovered pretty quickly.

Later on the race Conor got a bit stuck behind me as well in T2 , but after the apex point the car starts to drift left and theres not much to do there. Kept it on the left side since i didn't want to move over the track again , but i think Conor was expecting me to move and there was some confusion which eventually helped Milan to make his move into the lead :|.

With the 1 stop strategy i ended up in 3rd place and there were huge gaps both ways so my race was quite boring towards the end , overtaking GT's were keeping up the concentration level and mostly things worked out pretty well.

Overall my pace was disappointing but a podium finish is always welcome and it was nice to get a Ferrari in to the podium :).

Congratulations to winners... Milan (GT) and Scott nGT), awesome pace with some monster laps on both classes. Cheers to other podium finishers too... Conor , Dennis ,Marko and me... :D

Thx all and cya in next one...

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Samuel