USA nGTx: Valencia

I'm rather upset with this race if im honest.
I started 12th and jumped to 6th and held the line for 3 or so laps. Let Scott N by, didn't want to risk a wreck.
Was fine until i made a slight mistake letting couple other cars by. Was coming up to pit stops and i was delighted to be in the top 10.

Pit was fine.. and then i get out, "black flag for pitlane speeding"

...what? how?

I always am cautious in the pitlane and had my pit limiter on the whole time. I went in to do the stop and go the next lap, and my pit-crew-cheif was just standing there. Unbeleivably frusterated i went back onto the track and the crew cheif told me to come in for the black flag. I went back in and finally got the black flag cleared.

So much for my top 10.
What the hell is up with the pitlane at valencia? I evidently entered wrong or something of the sort.

Great job Kent.

What a goofy way to lose a shot at a win. The server was reset just before quali, so I went out with the default setup by mistake.

Of course, I came straight back in and put on the proper setup, but that left me anxious to get back on the track. Naturally, I spun it, hit the wall, and lost a wheel. ESC and to the back of the grid.

I knew I had a good car, so it was very frustrating to start from the back.

Anyways, I was able to pick my way through the crowd without any incidents and found myself in the lead as I planned to pit late. Unfortunately, my tires were not as well off as I hoped so I changed four. That cost me and extra 20 seconds or so, but it also meant I could make up sound ground.

Came out of my pit in third, passed George with about 6 laps to go, and found myself once again chasing Kent.

I figured I would try to close the gap from 12 and hope Kent would hit traffic. After running off a string of about four 34's, I'd only closed the gap about 5 seconds. Running those times on worn tires in a RS was fantastic work Kent! I couldn't believe it.

Once I realized Kent wouldn't fade, I called off the dogs and eased it in the last two laps.

Great race, Kent. Congrats to all the finishers.

Pressed brake instead of a clutch at the start (don't ask why :D) and by the time I realized what's going on I was already eaten alive and thrown into the sand... couldn't get out of the sand and was dead last after first lap 14 seconds behind anyone. Decided to continue to race but I was just unlucky to be hit by every single car that was going into the spin and was thrown into my car + I managed to spin Rob (sorry for that). What a wasted opportunity after having such a great car.

Congrats to Kent, Scott and George + all the survivors.

That's it, I'm changing ISP.

Great racing.
Was running in 5th for the first few laps, and actually opened up a reasonable gap back to 6th. A couple of nervous corners, and that gap closed rather quickly. I felt the pressure of the car behind, and held out for half a dozen or so laps, but eventually overshot the final turn and lost 4 or 5 places.
Gregg seemed to come from nowhere, and was all over me, until I pitted. I re-enterd in 14th, and gained a few spots back as others pitted. Gregg had pitted and re-entered right in front of me, and the battle began.
It must have been pretty to watch, as we went side by side through the turns, exchanging places every second corner it seemed. I think Gregg spun, and left me a reasonably clean run home. Full credit to Gregg for the great driving.
Congrtulations to the top 3, this was a great race.

Race was fun. Enjoyed running with Greg, some fun Ferrari driving.

I enjoyed watching greg and kris go at it, though for sure he and Kris were going to wreck, awsome driving you two.

After I came out of the pits I had a weird slow down, frams droped from 60 to 2 for a good 10 seconds, when it finally came out of its headache I was in the dirt, cost me a spot, but oh well.

I probly could have stayed on the same set of tires, but I was too scared to try it after finally get the 360GTC run stable.

Starting to like Valencia.

Completely horid qual effort for me but shit somehow I ended up 3rd on teh grid but well off of Matjas pole time. Great lap there Matjas.

Came to the grid thinking, hmmm I have the inside, maybe I can get a decent start and challenge Matjas into T1. Looked over at his car on the grid and it suddenly lurched forward. As much as I hate to see this sort of thing happen to anyone I would be lying if I didn't mention the smile that came to my face as I figured Matjas would need to do a drive through. But then as the race started I glanced my mirror and saw that Matjas got a really bad start and someone ran into his car.

Well not having Matjas challenging me I took lap one very easy and found that after the tires warmed I could keep a nice gap behind and just concetrated. By the 30 minute mark I had about 11 seconds clear and did some quick calculations and realized I had way too much fuel scheduled. I also checked GTRPD and found that my front right was not going to make it without being changed.

Pitted, change all four and plenty of fuel, rejoined in 8th. Soon found myself 3rd behind G Pol and went to pressure him a little thinking he still had to pit. WOW his tires must have been crap because I almost rear ended him a couple times before I quit waiting for him to pit and just made the pass.

Soon found myself in the lead again as Scott opted for a late stop. Lucky for me he came out behind GP giving me a few extra laps of play. When Scott passed GP I had about a 12 second lead with 7-8 minutes left. Thinking at the time that it was Matjas behind me and knowing that even with his speed he wasn't going to make up that much time, I just concentrated on making decent laps. I never saw the gap below 8.8 seconds, but then it suddenly started going back up again. I guess this was when Scott decided 2 laps wasn't enough time.

Grats to all the finishers.

Got double punted that race.

Oh well, probably should have bailed, but stuck it through til the end.

On the plus side, WinXP seems to be doing a lot better than Vista.

I was happy with my qualiposition, much better than the eurorace. At the start Matjaz didn't move and I just managed to go around him. The replay shows I slightly touched his left rear but at my stop I had no damage to repair. Garret started behind me and had a much better run to T1. He used all the available tarmac on my right side and managed to go around me in T1. Great move there Garret. From that moment on until my stop I was in a CanAm-sandwich. Garret, Dennis and yours truely were never more than 3 seconds apart which resulted in some great racing. I very much enjoyed that guys. After the eurorace in the RSR I regretted not having taken new tyres at my stop. But now I saw tyrewear in the RS was a bit less so I again decided on only taking fuel. That took care of the CanAm-clan :-) but I was raw meat for Kent and Scott. But happy with 3rd in the end. Grats to Kent and Scott. Been a while since I tasted champagne and it sure tasted good.

Not sure what happened, but I didn't even get to race. During the warmup, GTR2 crashed and locked up my system. By the time I rebooted the race had started and I couldn't get back into the server. Oh well...hope to race with you guys soon. Looked like some pretty deep talent out there in the practice and qual sessions...