USA G3: Barcelona

Wow , what a finish to the season.
First of all, congrats to Heinz for the win, great driving yet again!
But mostly a big well done to Rob for the Championship honours, and Team Venom for the team Championship.

My best finish for the season didnt come easy, found myself duelling with J Mueller in the early laps, I knew I needed a good run onto the straight to get a shot at a pass, and finally got it to a point where he let me through. Rob was on my tail for the next few laps, I saw some cars go round in my mirror, and I think he got caught up in that, which left me a decent gap to put in some good laps. A few cars in front went of and all of a sudden i was in 6th place.
I found myself having my usual mid race snooze, and losing over a second a lap to the car in front, and then out of nowhere came Rob Thaeler, who pretty much hounded me for the last 15 laps or so. In the dying laps I caught Marciej after he had an off, moved up to 5th, and on the last lap caught Mark Carty, also playing in the dirt, but had no chance of catching him. A nervous last lap ment the cars behind were all over me, and I was certainly glad the race finished when it did. Another lap and I reckon I would have finished 7th.

Well done everyone on a great season, I had a lot of fun, and hope it continues next season. Thanks to the stewards and R2P for making this happen. See you all soon.

Cheers Kris!

Congrats to Team Venom and its owner Rob Ainscough for both their 1st Drivers and Team Championships. Well done!

My goal was just to get as many points as possible from this one, as I wasn't able to make all the season races, i still had high hopes for a good drivers result.

Was happy with Pole and my Race start. Launch off the line was good, and noticed Tomo was nervous on the clutch anticipating the start. This held Barry up on his start which gave him really poor speed down to T1 .. unluckily involved in a spin aswell .. Unlucky barry. always try get around the guy infront of you if he botches a start, not enough power on these cars to loop it :p

My race was going according to plan, didnt think Steve would drop out on lap 2, but T1 can catch you out.
Tomo was all over me, and for a few laps i wondered how long i could keep this up. then he answered my question by running into the kitty.

Noticed Garret had come up from 8th to 2nd now, impressive in the z3m, but now i had a 10second gap, and starting with tyre and fuel management. Then I made a mistake and went off, came back on with 4 seconds to Garret now. This made me nervous when i couldnt pull away again, and was only seeing my time get reduced...

Was a nervous last few laps, but happy i could come home with another win, and a solid 4th in the season. Enjoyed the races i did race, Great crowd here, all gentleman.

Well done guys.

Well this was a very good race, I forgot how much I love the G3 series, these are my cars.

I jumped into qualifying, not really wanting to do anything amazing (I was just here to help out the team standings) and wound up in 2nd? Hmm ok I'll take it :p I wanted to make sure Garret finished in front of me, so my plan was to just bug the hell outta Heinz and make him make a mistake, then let Garret by and BAM he's won. But then, haha, silly me, I'm trying so hard to be obnoxious behind Heinz I just dump the car right off the track. Woops, ok, so then the plan changes to just ride behind Garret and protect his 2nd. Not that we ended up having anyone to protect against. But great race everyone, thoroughly enjoyed myself.

p.s. sorry for finishing on the podium in the season finisher, I know there are competitors who could have used those points :( Sorry!

Congrats to Rob and Venom on the champs; that's getting to sound familiar!

And to Heinz of course for the win; sorry I wasn't able to make a decent show of it, but unlike Tristan I'm not so good at getting around on 3 wheels!

Was just unprepared and paid the price, really; hadn't done any laps before the race, so once I was on race fuel load I didn't have a handle on proper braking distances. The first miss let Tom under me at La Caixa on the first lap and the second one put me into the wall hard at T1. Thought I'd try to continue even after seeing my splitter go flying, then I caught sight of my left front bouncing out of sight in my rear view mirror. Wasn't about to risk anyone's season by trying to limp back to the pit so I just bailed.

Pretty much the story of G3 for me this season. After winning last season, S7 has been a miserable one with five DNF's out of six events - awful! I have to own this last one though; can't blame it on the motor letting go or discoing, just bad driving.

On the plus side, it did give me some time to practice for the Vertigo and F3K races, which I needed. Silver linings all 'round... ;-)

Wow, what a great race. Many thanks to Kris for his help it getting the Team a championship -- it was much appreciated!

Like Steve I didn't do much prep time for this race and was pretty lost on the Z3 Setup for this track and how to make it go fast.

Then all you fast heavy hitters joined and I was thinking, this is really gonna suck. Big props to you guys that figured out how to make the Z3 fast here and drove it fast.

I qualified about as best as I could -- 16th I think. Got a great start and found myself in 10th by T1. People started dropping out or going off and I found myself in 7th. Battle with Kris and J Mueller, but I always had someone on my tail ready to pounce. What an intense race. I made a couple of mistakes that dropped me back to 12th, but apparently so did some other drivers and I found myself in 9th.

I tried to make myself as difficult as possible to pass but still provide enough racing room to avoid incident. It was a very fun race. Great season and looking forward to next season.

Cheers to all.

Sometimes it all turns to shit.Just before qual,i had the fastest time,but knew that would not hold up in qual.I managed 4th on the grid,told Tom not to bog down at the start.What do you know,Tom lurched just before the green light,i ease off when i see this,then bog down and get instantly overrun.Then i get half turned around in t1,got straighted back up but lost a lot of places.I made a couple of silly errors,but still make it to 9th.Three laps to go and i feel i have a chance at another spot,but outbrake myself in t1 and meet the wall,spoiler gone.

Well, after not playing GTR for some 8 months, I saw this race about 10 mins before qualifying. The server wasn't full so I jumped in and started from last in the field, trying to just stay out of the way.

With no practice or work on setup I just wanted to keep clean and have some fun. I had some great battles in the middle of the pack but forgot how braking was affected being right behind someone, so made the same mistake going into turn one several times, but at least I never hit anyone :)

On what i thought was the last lap I got a good run on Rob and just missed nipping him at the line. i slowed after we crossed and then realized there was still one to go! Oh well, big fun.

As always, great racers and management here at R2P, hopefully i can be around for more races now.

Gotta work hard with this group!

Had a good qualifying effort with the Porsche, dropping my PB by a couple tenths with a 12.7, good enough for P7 on the grid. Got a good start (finally!) since I tried to make sure my lower gears were a little shorter than I had previously been running. Lost maybe one place into T1 (just trying to make sure I didn't get into anyone), but made that up a couple laps later getting by a car who had spun.

My one major mistake came about 4 laps in when I just edged into the gravel through the esses on the back side of the track, which threw the car sideways. Although I only lost 3 or 3.5 seconds on my lap time, the slide cost me four positions. Immediately got going and started trying to hound the guys who had just gotten past.

Eventually made it back to P6, and was hounding Kris (as he said in his post) for many laps. Was fun trying to get a run on him, but he was solid and I couldn't quite get far enough alongside to make a pass. We almost got to Mark (as Kris indicated) on the last lap, and we all ended up about 1 second apart at the line, but with no change of position.

So, got a good P6... my best GTR2 finish to date. Looking forward to more events with the G3 cars.

Rob Thaeler

Congrats to Rob A & Team Venom Racing for capturing both championships! Well done!

Thanks to Tim for putting together another fun series.

I had an outside shot at pulling out the championship. It all was depending on my position at the end and Rob having misfortune. I did the best I could with help from TomO (thanks). It looks like Rob did well enough and without any trouble. I pushed hard to catch Heinz in the lead, esp. after his off. The gap was at it's smallest at the end. A few more laps and we would have had a batlle Heinz!

I wound up 3rd in the standings with CanAm pulling out a second.

Sorry to see this series off for a while.