Loudon Shootout

I'd like to apologise unreservedly to Bill J. for running up his behind and ruining his race. :(

I made it to the checkered!
Insane tire drop off for this track. The handling picked up toward the end, but it was too late to compete.

The start got messed up when rfactor decided to pick different people for me to start behind and by the time it settled on someone the green came. The upside, it created a separated pack and some early incidents were avoided.

Congrats Dmitry

It's been at least 3 years since I ran a stock car race, not since my OpenSpeedway pickup days in NR2003. So I was pretty nervous about handling the car in traffic, and just hanging on for the full 30 laps. My own setup was ok- pretty stable, but not exactly fast. Fortunately for me, Tim Leitz shared his setup with everybody- it was quite stable, and eager to turn in on braking. I think I learned a bunch from examining the settings, thanks Tim!

Anyway, things were pretty clean on green (in the back anyway, despite the confusion up front). Got pinched early on by somebody drifting up the track on cold tires, but didn't take any damage I don't think. Other than that I was easily able to miss the occasional spinner throughout the race- seemed to me that drivers did their best not to go wild across the track on the way out.

I spent 20+ laps of this race within a couple car lengths of Steve Blankenship, much of it side-by-side, and it was a blast. We did a lot of give and take trying to get by each other clean, swapped spots several times, and I don't think we ever touched. Great job Steve, it was a pleasure! And quite a thrill, I might add, I was really sweating it as the tire temps worked up. In retrospect I'm sure we would have been better off going nose to tail until closer to the end- we both had to back off as we started skating around, which let Larry and Mike Lilley catch us up with only a few to go. After all that I got the jump on Steve out of the final corner to pass for 7th on the final straight.

Thanks all for a great race, looking forward to more shootouts!

Good job Dmitry, Tom & Conor. :)
Some bad luck for Conor with 2 to go, but good luck for me as I got my lap back. :)
Very clean racing as far as I could tell & the a first for me, no bruises.

Yup, enjoyed that one too Mike. Except for that last little bit. ;-)

Was expecting to get hammered when I joined the race and saw all the low and mid 28's. I hadn't done any development since the last fun run here and just figured that set would be OK if I didn't overdrive it. But it appeared a number of folks had been busy!

I then proceeded to overdrive it in qualifying, costing several tenths. Some guys never learn...

No worries, the race would tell, and it did when I almost repeated my rear ending act from the fun run in T1. Went in fine but found Dmitry almost parked on the low line, probably trying to stay down underneath everyone who was high. Wasn't going to hit him if I could avoid it, so I locked up the fronts and pushed wide, causing what looked to be a small mess but nothing serious. Close one.

That was followed immediately by my getting banged on pretty mercilessly for a lap or so until things settled down. As Mike said, we spent most of the race at close quarters - fun stuff! And it was during that time I caught an aural clue that I confirmed by watching the replay afterwards. Most guys were downshifting for the corners! I was running 4th the whole time, and if you ran a long enough gear to keep from banging off the limiter you were barely doing over 5000rpms at the apex. No wonder I was getting killed off the corners! Guys stepping on it in 3rd were at 6000+ revs and just dumping me. Have to remember that for shorties...

My set from the fun run did really well with even tire temps and wear in testing, but it required a good bit of restrant. So in the heat of a race when you're overdoing it and running odd lines it didn't work out so well. Even though it started quite loose, by the end my RF was close to 390deg and it was super pushy. Which worked wonders with the long gear of course; I was a sitting duck when the 2 Mikes ate my lunch in the last few laps. At least Mike K had the decency to wait for the last lap, last corner so I could hold onto some sense of hope. ;-)

Well thats a race I would like to forget. Leading the 1 millionth lap was a nice bonus but I just hated that I threw the win away like that. Had a great car for most of the race then I T-Boned Larry Anderson after his spin (2nd time in a row actually, did the same thing at Joesville :P) and got a flat tire. So I pedaled as hard as I could for the last two laps to at least stay in the top 3. Barely made it...

Ugh...that was not good. Buuuuutttt...I'll be back :)

Like in the fun-run @Loudon 10 days ago, I didn't feel confident on track in practice. Seems I have to wake up a bit earlier, to "get to shape". :) Did nice Q lap, but that's all - I still was far from being a "single unit" with my car.

Race start went as it supposed to be - I dropped to 6th on lap1 and lost 2 more positions by lap3. The good news is that by that time I was undamaged and more or less OK with cantrolling the car so I got my pace and was looking how things are going to advance.

On lap 7 Tom S. hit Bill and, seems, damaged own car as well, because I catched him very quick and got inside entering T1 on lap9.

Exiting T2 we were going 2 wide, but Tom S. hit the wall and bounced in my direction. That was scary :) Luckily, Tom S. managed to turn the weel to the right quickly and touched me just slightly. So I'm 6th already.

On lap11 Creg C. spinned and I got 5th, right on Tom Malanga's tail. Seems Tom started to have tire problems and a few laps later I passed him when he took a bit wide in T1. On lap14 I grabbed 3rd from Francesco in the same manner.

So on lap15 I found myself on 3rd with Les +3 sec ahead and Conor +4 more secs. I was going to calm down and look around, as I was a bit strained and "lost" after that small "comeback" to 3rd.

Surprisingly, Les was rather slow, doing high 30s - mid 31s, while my pace was almost a sec faster and on lap19 I overtook him and got 2nd.

Actually, that was the best I could achieve today - there were lappers by that time and the gap from Conor stayed ~7 secs until 2 to go.

But with 1.5 to go I noticed on the in-car LCD that Conor is just 2 secs ahead and exiting T4 I was able to see his car. I was thinking that he just had to brake hard somewhere and us up-to-speed already, but entering T1 on the final lap, I passed Conor and understood that he has flat tire. Some of you guys know what a driver feels when he's winning a race this way - yes, I was pleased that I'm winning, but I felt sorry about Conor.

After finishing the race I did the "winner's lap" and slowed down on the S/F line and was going to make some donuts, but got heavily rearended by someone :) Not sure why someone was going on full speed there. Still did s few donuts, accepted congratulations from guys and headed to the bad :)

Thank you everyone involved for racing and making the race possible :)

Race stats/graphs by Autosim Analyser
Race stats/graphs by rFactor Report

I spent some time this week working on my setup but just never got comfortable. I could run somewhat consistently but it was never fast enough to be competitive. It was like racing with a dump truck most of the time. On lap 16 I hit the wall and things got even worse for my handling. That lack of handling may have led to some contact on lap 20 with Ron Coles. It felt like it during the race anyway since I was fighting with the handling and I knew Ron was inside. There just wasn't much I could do with my car in that condition. Sorry about that Ron. At first I thought you just dropped behind me and then I saw you spinning.
After that I was just trying to hang in there and get the experience on the track and hopefully something I could use to improve next time. It seemed like a million laps by the end and without the need to pit it's a bad feeling knowing your car isn't right and you can't pit to adjust it. But that's all part of what we do.

I will not be stupid...I will not be stupid... Oh well, I was. Had a set that wasn't lightning quick but was good and comfortable later on, and abandoned it late in practice for another that was faster out of the box...but I didn't have time to see what it would do with me at the wheel later on tires. Suffice it to say, we did not get along after the honeymoon ended...

Note to self: Ride the horse that brings you to the dance until you're absolutely sure your saddle will fit the next one...

Managed to miss a couple of early incidents, then had to brake very late and looped it into T3. Didn't hurt it too much, rode around a bit to cool the tires, was catching back up to cars...and woops, I did it again (apologies Britney) while braking unexpectedly. At that point, it was all out war between me and the car till the end, which mercifully came before I managed to pile it up again.

Had a good race setup in practice but found it was to loose first few laps in so i tighten it up for the race,which resulted in being to tight 10 laps in managed to finish 5th and i am happy with that.As for the pole i was doing numerous sub to low 4s in practise 28.424 being my lowest was looking for the track record but didnt back in up for qual time.i almost forgot how intense stockcar racing is especially on the short tracks .
Great Racing guys.