1.5 hours of Nuerburgring

Disco while leading again. This time while having a great fight with Tristan. I really am having a shitty season...

That makes it neck and neck in the driver's championship guys, MidO will decide it.

Not too bad of a race for me, considering 24 hours ago I was sitting in terminal 6 at JFK Intl airport in NY. By the middle of the 2nd stint, I was struggling to stay focused.

Nice job by everyone.

Was having great fun until my power went out. Hope I didnt leave a ghost car on the track, there were a couple of cars not far behind me. I was nowhere near the pace, hope I didnt piss anyone off.

I am an idiot. I tweaked a setup to my specifications and did great with it right before quali. I qualified below the 1:50 range so i knew i had some speed in me now with minimal practice.

At warmup Tristan sent me a setup and i guess i let it get to my head that his was going to be better no matter what. It was perhaps the most terrible setup i have ever laid hands on to my driving style. I should have known that we have two very different driving styles and what ended up was me going a humiliating 3 seconds slower and overheated tires by lap 4. I had to pit in early and desperately try to make changes to the setups front end. I ended up giving it too much on the front end and the car spun and i hit the wall hard.

Lesson of the day? Do not take someones setup if you are already comfortable with yours! I do appreciate the great help Tristan tried to give me though :). I could have definitely gone for the podium.

I hate DNFing and having to wait till another race.

Good race, congrats podium. Tough luck CmC and BF... lousy!!
I Qed horribly, should have been around 10th. Rock solid race for me, no spins, only minor slides and no incidents. Made a few passes and applied pressure to the guys in front of me. Nice battle behind me at the very end, almost caught up to me, then into the last corner I saw RJ spin in my mirror and I almost went off track!! But came home safe.
Great race guys.

Ugh I should have woke my ass up for that BrandsHatch race and I might just be in the top10, which was my goal to qualify in sports car. Ugh, oh well, very pleased with my races the last few weeks however.
RA

i had a great race!
so much fun.

i also got tristans setup, im assuming on mistake. i tried it before qual started but found that the set that i had made i was faster with... and my tire temps werent 150+ in the front!

Had a spin early on that put me from 11th - 18th. but fought my way back to 9th, and on the last lap, caught p8. had minimal contact mostly because i was out braking people... i knew i had time to stop, but people were way slowed down by the time that i got up to them, so im sorry for any contact that was on my behalf.

About mid race, i noticed that my front brakes were really taking a beating (59:41 f:r split) so i backed it off nervously to 50:50, and found that i could actually brake better.

on the last lap, john and i came out of the final corner at a similar speed. i might have been a little bit faster. he did a good job of protecting his line going into t1, but he left me room, and being right on his tail on the last lap, i wasnt about to let opportunity pass me by. he locked, i locked, and fortunately for me, i was able to hold the car into t1.

all in all, i had a great race.
i look forward to the next one :)

Great race! Didn't qualify well and I knew that would cause problems on this tough overtaking track.

Stint 1:
Lost a couple of places being conservative, but wasn't too worried because I was a bit longer on fuel, so could save the tyres and push towards the end of the run.

Stint 2:
Didn't quite manage to push hard enough in the laps I had, got ahead of Ryan but emerged just behind Kevin. Gained a spot when Kevin had a coming together with someone, then a lap later I lost both the spots I'd worked for when the same driver ran wide and span into me. Had to drive hard just to get back in touch with the two people I was fighting from about 10s down.

Stint 3:
Emerged from the pits close behind Kevin and pushed him all the way to the flag, never more than a second or so back but also unable to pass. Managed a few moments alongside but that was as close to passing as I could manage. We were pushing so hard that I didn't even notice we were getting close to Ryan until late on!

On the last lap I had one final shot to pressure a mistake from Kevin but instead locked my own brakes and span, I knew it was no big deal because we had a good gap back to P8 anyway.

Fun racing with you Ryan and Kevin, really enjoyed it.

Ditto on everything Richard said about tight interesting fun race.

So I started practice with last season's setup, and oh man it was ghastly. As two others here have reported, it really cooked the front tires. I tweaked it a bit, added a ton of front positive toe, moved weight from 52:48 to 50:50 and gave that a whirl... seemed to work. I suppose I have a wacky driving style with these, because I've learned the front and rear tires seem (to me) to work best when they are a uniform 230-240°F or so. I've never been able to push these cars at maximum pace over a race distance without the tires inevitably going way past the 190° optimum mark.

I was surprised to qualify ahead of Conor. He was faster than I during fuel runs in practice.

The race began and it took several laps for me to get comfortable. Conor remained within 2 seconds behind me. I altered my line through turn 8 (the hairpin) and the chicane before the final corner, and gradually started to grow a gap. By the first stop, I think I had maybe 6 or 8 seconds on Conor. But, I was going really flat-out, trying my best to be faster than Conor, who has shown this season he has really stepped up to the plate with the time he has invested in setup and technique with Fabcars.

Conor pit a lap later than I and exited the pits ahead of me (!!!), but he later divulged this was due to taking less fuel than I had (which was a full tank.) I passed Conor on the outside of turn 5, the fast downhill left, as his tires were still coldish. However, this time I did not pull away, and Conor and I had a great fight, exchanging positions more than once as we fought through the second stint.

Suddenly... Conor disappears!!!! Sad panda :(((( He was leading, maybe .5 of a second ahead of me, and it was looking like stint 3 to the finish line was going to be mega. Very unfortunate Conor, I'm very sorry for your luck. I had a wonderful time battling you... a big grin wiped across my mug the whole time!

Aside from a big sloppy sideways moment while directly behind conor going up the hill to 9 and 10, I made no real mistakes here and am happy to take home another one.

Unfortunately I will miss the finale due to being on holiday, so I wish to thank everyone for another fantastic season of Fabcars. Here's hoping the Epsilons flop after half a season and Tim reconsiders!!! :-)

Congratulations to Conor who will win the driver's championship for just participating in the finale, and also to SoCal for the team's championship.

P.S. Garry... no worries about the miscommunicae!!

"P.S. Garry... no worries about the miscommunicae!!"

In case anyone is wondering, I entered the room only as a spectator and for teammate support and noticed Tim was running some laps, so I offered to Steward the race the best I could if he wanted to run, and he took me up on the offer.

The race was going very well, and after about midway, I seen Tim head in for a pitstop, so just to 'liven' things up a bit, I gave him (Tim) a mock drive-thru penalty for 'Tire abuse'. He took it the way it was intended and replied "Oh, I missed that one". Heh.

Later on, there wasn't anything happening on track, so I thought I'd mess around with Tristan (this was after Conor got discoed) and give him a mock Drive Thru for 'Rev Limiter abuse'. I chuckled to myself as I hit enter key, but when he came around to the pit entrance, I seen him dive onto pit road!? My heart just absolutely sank and I tried desperately to message him that it was not a true penalty. Then for a brief moment, I thought maybe it's just time for pit stops, but when I seen him complete the drive thru, I felt like an absolute heel.

As far as the race goes, it didn't hurt him at all. He still came out 33 seconds ahead, but it honestly didn't make me feel any better.

Guess I better quit messin' around like that. I thought the smiley face at the end of the 'penalty' was enough to show it was not real. Lesson learned.