Richmond Shootout

Similar deal to Loudon for me. Qualified back in 10th after struggling for the whole practice session with a crap car. Would constantly alternate between oversteer on entry and understeer on exit and then seemingly at random go the opposite way round. I think I may have gone wrong somewhere in the setup!

For the setup's faults the car was reasonably stable in the race and whilst I wasn't particularly pushing it I made it up to 8 before the wreck happened. I thought I'd take a "reel" effect screenshot to try to illustrate the moment I had to oh-so-carefully flick my car right then left past the spinning Sir Pete.

After that there was a big gap behind me and in front so I decided to lift right off for the rest of the race... big mistake, should have made use of the gap that appeared and put everyone behind me far enough behind not to be a worry.

Sir Pete, (the old hand ;-)) taught me (the rookie) a good lesson when he passed me on the last lap: don't ever think you can lift.

great race!!! thanks soooo much to all of you for giving me soooo much room today. greatly appreciated for sure. great bunch to run with. i know some of you had problems too but you all did great staying off the racing groove and controlling your car to the pits. phenominal!!!!!

Q was OK - couldn't expect more today, but the race is not my best experience.

At the start of the race I lost a few positions, but after firt 10 laps started improving and was just a few secs behind 3-4, Laurent Evenisse and David Fridley.
On lap 14 David self-spinned. Laurent avoided him, as in the first moments David's car was going to move high, while slowly swapping front-rear. But David tried to save from spin and that lead to his car going back from 2nd row to the inside. From my point of view it was a bit dangerous from David - I believe he shouldn't point his car from 2nd row to the inside while trying to avoid the spin. And after the big crash David did a reverse U-turn (no victims luckily) and @15mph was going round Sir Pete, changed line and appeared @15mph in front of Riley Martin -> crash.

After that I pitted, repaired, changed tires and got on track right behind Dan. Was following him for a few dozen laps, was aiming for at least Top10, but crashed to another self-spinned car. This time I must admit I was too "hot" and didn't drop speed while exiting T4, while I saw there is a car ahead. Didn't have much time to think, though. If I had more experience on ovals, I think I could avoid this.

All in one, finished 12th. Far from being happy, but that's short-tracks, as far as I understand stock car philosophy :) Sorry for not being "politically correct", but getting your 2nd race out of 4 destroyed by someone else's actions gets me a bit irritated.

Congratulations to Dan, Michael and Pete.

Still looking forward to next race.

Jon, this 'old hand' is a veteran of... exactly the same number of these races as you :)
Qually didn't go so well, so I started out just trying to look after the tyres and run a steady pace. All went according to plan until David spun, Dmitry went low and I aimed for the gap up high. Unfortunately, Dmitry tagged the spinning car and bumped him up into me. No big damage, but I could've done without the extra stress the spin put on the tyres. Having picked myself up & dusted myself down, I took 2 or 3 easy laps to settle the tyres back down, then picked up the pace and gained back some spots. Towards the end I could see I was catching Jon, but wasn't sure I had enough laps left. I drove as hard as the tyres would allow and just got by on the final lap!
Thanks to everone - if every series showed the same respect and consideration to fellow drivers as this one, we'd never need event stewards again :)
Grats to Dan, who was in a totally different class. Not only did he win by a mile, but just to rub salt in it, he acted as a bloody good TS spotter too!
So, Dan, you care to pass on any setup tips to us clueless Euro guys?

Dan had an incredible pace and no pitstop... very impressive.
I had a lot of fun, next time I will target the top 3 !
I really hope there will be a Euro scheduled stock car serie with speedways and super speedways right after the Shootout serie.