USA F3k: Brands Hatch

What a great opening battle with Steve... I haven't been pressured on like that in ages. I got a 1:15 in race trim! And it was because I knew Steve was faster than me. Shit! I'm still sweating from this one.

Steve had a small off and just lost a few seconds to me somewhere in the first stint, and by a miracle, I gained about 20 (!) seconds on him in my pitstop, so I was just cruising along on worn tires with a lump of fuel in the back when, entering turn 1, I suddenly had an image of Chief Slapaho enter my mind, which broke my concentration just enough for me not to notice I was steering in just barely too much, causing a snap-oversteer at the bottom of the corner. Wheeeee slingshot into the wall!

Well, at least I tore off the right front instead of the right rear... and limped around for three laps to finish in the points.

Congratulations Garret!! We knew it would be a race of attrition, and you held it together better than all the rest of us. Well done.

You too, Brandon, for finding so much pace. "I can only show you the doorway. It is you who must walk through it."

Next up on Tristan's setup tutoring, "There is no spoon."

Following that, "How to paint the inside walls of McArthur's place with five different shades of baby poo."

Tune in next week, when we're on location at Monza!!

ok race for me. crashed in qually. decided to start easy and let people spread out and make mistakes

Made a mistake of my own and spun it in turn 3 in the early laps. Didn't receive any damage, but lost a couple spots.

Made up to 8th and then had to pit on lap 14. Whoa my setup up was very tight on a full tank of gas. couldn't get the titanic to turn and ended up hitting the iceberg (wall) and lost a rear wheel. I limped it back to the pits somehow, in hopes of avoiding the dnf....but i forgot to request pit coming in and and did a drive through. now i'm on the other side off the pit with a missing rear wheel. wtf Kind of funny but at the same time very very aggravating...........i wish i could control myself in the pits in this game

'Grats to Garret and Brandon for keeping it in bounds and up front which is what it took tonight - good job, guys!

Was a lot of fun trying to run with Tristan for a bit, which for me is a rare treat. Don't know where the pace came from since I'd only seen a high 18 as of this morning. Saw the posts online about 15's and thought... about bailing! ;-) But I managed to get in a few laps before the Vertigo race and just touched the 16's, so I figured it would be ok.

That was about what I had, too. But when I saw I was still in 2nd with just enough time and fuel for one more lap in qualifying, I figured I'd just hang one out there - it'd either be fast or I'd end up in the top of a tree! Fortunately it was the former, and at 15.50 it was good enough for pole by a few hundredths. Looked at it in Motec and it was actually a 15.2 until I got into the last corner too deep. Damn fun lap in the doing, too; these cars are a blast when you've really got 'em pinned.

Knew I'd be hard pressed to maintain once the race got underway, and that turned out to be the case. Fudged T1 and lost the lead right off the bat, and then just tried to match pace with Tristan. Could just barely do it for a while, but wasn't going to last long at that pace without error. Sure enough I made a few small blunders and lost a few tenths here and there. Finally had a small off at Dingle Dell and lost the gap for good.

Things deteriorated pretty seriously after that! I'd just filled the tank for the start so my stop was late, and I'd cycled into the lead. But just before my pit lap, I went off again at Dingle Dell and spun onto the track. Forgot I had the darned autoclutch off and couldn't figure it out at first, so I sat there for a good while unable to get re-fired. DOH! Sorry to anyone who had to avoid my stalled car...

Pitted right after that and resumed back in 4th, having lost a lot of time in my blunder. Saw Brandon in 3rd up ahead and managed to get by after several laps of trying, but then missed my turn-in at T1, went wide and was off again. Got back on and chased back up for another go, but lost my sightline into DD and got into the wall hard enough that I really should've gotten some damage. Back on and chasing yet again toward the end, where I saw Tristan wobbling around on 3 wheels. No fair; he crashes once and loses a bunch of stuff and I hit the wall a bunch of times and lose no parts! I think he's got the light stuff they only give the special people... ;-)

Congrats podium.
great racing while it lasted! Sorry for holding you up SN I never looked back to see your name I was just holding steady, I would have let you pass earlier if I saw it was my teamate. It was very fun racing for 10th some close fair racing!!

I got wide onto the bumps and too much gas sent me into the wall losing a wheel. I made it aroud to wait for the end but was returned to garage automatically. I guess that DNF avoiding trick won't work in race07 :(

GR see you next time!
RA

"How to paint the inside walls of McArthur's place with five different shades of baby poo."
LMAO
I have an 18 month old son. He's eating everything now, so i can collect you a nice medley, of different shades as well!!! lol
You gotta let Chief Slapaho go!! Bummed your race!! lol
My race was pretty average. Had an off in the first 2 laps. Didn't spin but had to wait for the field to go by so i can continue. Pretty much stayed clean for the rest. Just tried like hell to stay on the track. Super happy just to finish. Let alone even gain a point or 2. Very happy for that. Came around the corner there on lap 25 or 26 to see Tristan getting back on track. Slowed up to let him back on. I knew he was in first and i was alone for the most part. But got close enough to notice he was bustin out the South LA special!! 3 wheel motion baby!! lol Takinf screenies of that one. Might be the second time i've ever seen Tristan go off course.
Nice win Garret and great podium to the others. Definately earned.

Ouch :-(

You see guys, he is beatable if you use some ninja jedi mind tricks. :-p

hehe :-)

No hard feelings, Mark. I laughed afterwards, Chief Slapaho... pretty funny.

:-)

That was a totally unexpected result! You guys had some difficult issues apparently.

I came into this race expecting to be lapped and just getting to the end. I have never seen this track before and got bad motion sickness during pracy for this one. I only had about 12 laps total in pracy with a best at 1:19.10. So winning this one was truly shocking!

I managed a decent qualy, by my standards, and learned a bit more about the track.
The start was straight forward and only gained 1 position by someones misfortune. I gained another spot by the start of lap 2, up to 5th. I quickly threw that away as I did a 360° out of the last, fast right hander in the back of the track. I stayed about .8s behind Brandon, giving and taking but never getting a good shot at a pass before pit stops. I wasn't quite sure where we were position wise as my telemetry was showing me in 13th with -.--.-- ahead and behind! Brandon stopped 1 lap before me right at the halfway point. After my stop, my telemetry cleared and showed my in, uh, 2nd? How can that be? I was WAAAAY behind Tristan at that point, somewhere around 30s and about 10s ahead of Brandon. He must have gotten cheated in his stop. I resigned myself to keep the gap at 10s to Brandon to secure the 2nd spot with Tristan leaving me behind. With about 5 to go, I noticed the gap to Tristan at 11s. Huh? Oh well, telemetry screwing up again. Wait a second, that's Tristan on the right heading down the back straight, tripod stylee. Leading the pack - no way I say. Sure enough, the checkers came and I'm on top.

Spin & Win - Danny Sullivan style! Man, you guys handed me a that one on a 7 course platter.

Tristan helped me up my pace by over 3 seconds with just a few words and a bit of a work with the setup. Thank you grand master.. i look forward to spooning.. err.. i mean.. there is no spoon?!?! doh!

Bad jokes aside, this was a great race for me which could have ended in a win. My goal was to finish podium and be ahead of Steve Parsons as he threatens my second place in the championship. I was behind steve in the opening laps until he understeered a bit too much and found himself in the grass. I realized i was not catching steve blankenship so i resigned myself to just keeping a steady pace and going at it with no mistakes.

I came up on my pitstops and came in a lap early than i planned to. I had a brainfart and did not notify my pit crew ahead of time which must have cost me a lot of seconds in the pits. I was 5 seconds ahead of Garret and when he exited pits he was 5-6 seconds ahead of me! I decided not to give chase because i was under the impression he had not pitted yet... oh how wrong i was about that. I did find myself ahead of Steve though to consolidate third but he gave me a hell of a fight for it. He did an amazing pass on T2 and really caught me sleeping. I was lucky enough to stay with him going into T1 the next time around as he made a mistake and i tried to slide in. I think he was trying to recover his car as he ended up touching wheels with me and he got the bad end of that deal :(.

Tristan had problems and i ended up getting second. I look forward to racing at Monza as this series has been a lot of fun