GTx: Dubai [Novice]

Ok, this was my 3de race ever. But it was the best by far. I think qualifing cought everybody off guard. A lot of the guys who was fast in practice struggled badly in q. I was lucky and got the car perfectly setup for grip. I the race i think sam got a great start and was very fast in the race. I the early stages i was fast (but forget i had softs on)! Killed the tires, and after lap 8 i was starting to lap very slowly. Had to pit early, and went over to hard, i wasnt ery fast, but finished. Bad the sam retired, (i saw his engine smoking when he went past me ) Further, good race. Tks guys
Oh yeah, great race jason. And is sorry my other teamate stephen dnf.

Well as they say, bad things come in 3's.

First was messing pits up, pressed what i thought was ignition button, ran to loo, came back and realised i hadn't, so frantically pressed it till it i found the correct one.

After pits 2nd was near end spinning after nearly crashing into a laggy 3rd place (can't remember who it was, a black 575).

3rd being down changing abit fast, maybe too hard on the gears in the race, so engine went up in smoke.

Ah well, it was a good race, and helped me learn a few things with setup for the longer races.

Qually went better than expected. I expected the track only to have some damp spots so I decided to put on soft slicks. It worked out and I got 2nd. I got caught behind a slightly slower car. I know it isn't in the rules but if you spin in qually just let the fast cars go. That lap won't be nearly as fast as other laps anyway :-)

After the start of the race Kinloch stayed close to me for a while. I saw that he was warping (not nearly as bad as in the other 2 races) a bit so I decided not to fight for position, let him go and wait for the lag to settle. 20 Minutes into the race he started lapping slower and I started to catch him again. He went into the pits and I got in 3rd again.

Close to halfway I started to think about not stopping until the end and taking a splash then if necessary. I feared that my laptimes would go down to much so I decided to go in for a splash of fuel and tyres anyway. In the end it payed of as soon after my pitstop I got in 2nd.

I'm quite happy with the result, especially because the Vette is a bit handicapped compared to the other cars.

Enjoyed this one very much. Congrats to Alex and see you guys next race.

Congratulations everyone !

I had a good race going after a good pit stop (rare for me in GTR) but then the brain went south.

@ LarryA - the other thing that could have happened is that you started the race with the post-qualifying fuel load.

Great race everyone, and my first ever , completed online race. I've been developing my "skills" over the last year or so but almost exclusively offline. The few online sorties I've had have been disastrous, but in this race it pretty much came together, so I'm really over the moon!

It wasn't perfect...qualifying was awful, my pit stop "strategy" was not exactly efficient (any tips anyone? what did everyone else do strategy-wise?) and my set-up wasn't quite right but I was at least reasonably consistent in the race and I didn't come off.. well not badly anyway. Keeping it together for an hour's race was a novelty for me, so I'm happy.

The icing on the cake was the last few laps where I started catching Nuno Aerias, and for the last couple of laps was nose to tail... fantastic racing, but he managed to keep me off, even though I suspect his tyres were shot... great driving Nuno!

Congrats to the podium, hope to see you all again in the next race.. and apologies for those trying to lap me... I was trying drive predictatbly but it's tricky under pressure!

A couple of things i saw in race, many people were bottoming there cars out way too much, i ran at 6cm front and 7cm rear ride height and it only bottomed out now and then, some people were sparking all the time.

For strategy, i tend to aim to pit around half way, then i get around 2 equal stints and i can expect the car to handle the same over both stints. Although, if in a pack, it can be handy to pit a few laps earlier, put abit more fuel in but use the fresh tyres to put in a few fast laps to jump ahead a few places.

I was using medium tyres, with them just going from green to red on the wear rate by the time i pitted but they weren't overheating at all, using default 170kpa.

For anyone who doesn't know, i recommend using GTR2 XD, its a plugin that can show you such as tyre temps, positions to all the field etc. I use it just for tyre temps, and use it for setting my pressures for race. I do use it for race, but only now and then to see how the tyres are doing with the less grip online. Its also handy as you can turn it on and off, so it doesn't block your view all race.

http://www.vitumo.de/ basically drop it into GTR2 folder, and press back slash ( \ ) to turn it on/off.

Thanks for tips Sam. I'm actually using XD for a while but I didn't know how to switch it off. Especially part with the times is very disturbing for me. Switch it off really helps wiew during the race. Thx

I always leave it on. Once the race is underway for 5 minutes I don't even notice it anymore.