Dubai GT3 Cup

That was easily the most annoying race I've ever won, lol :P

Quali went well. I hadn't done much practice so I didnt have a clue whether I was competitive or not. Clearly I was!

The race started well. After losing the race letting CJ through at T1 at Donnington I didnt want to let him get there first this time. So I promptly overshot the corner! I managed to do a couple of switchbacks on CJ though and regained the lead into T4 (not sure why CJ ran into me at that point, maybe he thought I didnt make a clean move? I dunno...)

Anyway, from then on I tried to pull a nice gap. I knew this track ate rear tyres, and I knew CJ would be saving his for the end, so I just tried to drive clean lines as much as possible to get a nice big lead. It was out to 6.5 seconds at one point, so I decided to sit back and cool my tyres.

Then everything turned against me.

My dog decided to do all she could to put me off because she wanted to go outside (its 2:30am you stupid dog! Go to sleep!), then every lapped car I came up to decided to spin infront of me! Most of them cost me quite a bit of time, and before I knew it the gap was down to 4 seconds with 4 laps to go. Still, I was just clinging onto the beleif that I could still pull it off...

I've gotta hold my tongue a bit on this part... Michael Kim decided that after being spun out in T1 by another competitor, he would rejoin not only the track, but THE RACING LINE without looking. Of course this was right infront of me (This is a complete violation of the clearly written rules Michael... maybe you should give them a little read, huh?). So I slammed on the brakes and ran into him, I had nowhere to go. (if anyone wants to see this, its at 2130 in the server replay). I got back the s/f line and found CJ 1.5 seconds behind, and I had damage and shot tyres after locking them up. THEN someone else decided to let me pass in the chicane! That melted my gap down to 0.4 and I had to go into banzai defending mode for the last two laps.

Really sorry the race had to end that way CJ... I know I threw a few controversial blocks, but after the sh*t that had happened to me during the race, I had to do all I could to keep the lead... sorry if you dont see it as fair :(

Oh well, cya next time!

Well that race went about as I expected. I could run in 1:25's with Med rears but I couldn't make them last more than about 10 laps. So I chose to run hard rears. Got a decent start and fell in behind Scott and Claus. It was an interesting view as they banged and slid the first lap. I actually thought they might take each other out. Then on lap 3 or 4 we already came upon a lapped car that was just plain all over the track and sure enough the car drives across the track right into Claus ahead of me. This allowed me to close up a bit but Claus recovered and began to drive away. Scott at this point was about 4-5 seconds ahead and I figured he would run off with the race. Now I have a little gap to David behind me and began to open up that gap about the same pace as Claus was pulling away from me.
About lap 10 or so I got loose and spun out and rejoined just behind David. We played follow the leader for a while and I was pressuring him pretty good, then he flashed me by...thanks David :) Rest of the race I was just dodging lappers, seemed like anytime I got near one they would lose control and spin out or turn into me :(

Grats to Scott on the win.

Man, I'm schizo about this track. Hate all the Mickey Mouse Chicanery, but fortunately for me, the paved runoff areas are awesome! If it had gravel traps I'd have been done early.

No practice as usual and a vague memory of Dubai when I went out for Qualy. For some reason my FF just vanished - I'd seen comments about that happening, but that's the first time for me. Was going to ESC, but didn't want to get a drive-through so I went with it for a few laps to get a time in. Weird driving with no resistance; no spring or anything... Went back to pit and hit the FF menu since that supposedly re-initializes the FF and it worked. Went out again for a bit in warmup and the car felt terrible here with a Barca setup in it so I dug around and found one from Donington, which I used for the race untried, fingers crossed. Better, but it still understeered like crazy. Odd to be fighting terminal understeer in a 911...

No matter, looked forward to the race and had fun, but it wasn't pretty. Tapped John Mueller lightly in the exit from the chicane section when he lifted and spun him (sorry John, my bad - had the brake on the floor but was just too close), though as consolation I lost a few spots too. Was running 13th about halfway in after many mistakes and relearning these cars along the way. Was overdriving terribly, going too deep and killing my exit speeds, but once I settled down and smoothed out, things started coming around. Gradually picked up a few spots, but started overdriving again when traffic tightened up and had to calm back down - these cars require a lot of restraint!

Ended up chasing Garrett for 6th, which became 5th due to David's drunken pit crew forgetting to put in enough gas ;-) Almost had it but lost my shot when I got too close once and slammed on the brakes and lost all my Mo. Better that than run into yet another car. Good job holding me off!

Good Race.
I qualified much higher than expected, then pathetically got sideways on the first corner! Embarrasing, but got a few posisitons back by the end of lap 1, they were clean moves but maybe pissed some people off. Had fun for 15 laps or so with DennisM,Steve B, Kim, Chris Smith in posisitons 6-10, we all swpped around, with small skids here and there.
Pleased with the top 10.
I need to watch you leaders on the replay and learn how to drive this car!!! I can drive the Pork RS well, but this one feels twice as heavy, and I get sloppy and lazy.
So, good race, see you all next tiome.

Scott, First of all, my public apology for that incident in turn one. I was going around a car that spun.... put the power down too early on shot rear tires ... And the result was what happened... car skidding across the track. Not a good thing...... another lesson learned.

After some quick test in P2 I decided better go med-hard and aim for consistent pace.
As last time Scott went wide in first corner and I got a good run out of T2 but I then got abit wide in T3, not sure why you think I ran in to you at the first lap Scott, was clearly a side-by-side contact there in T4.
Anyway car took forever to start gripping and after a few laps gap was like 5s but then stabilized so I figured there wasn't more hotlapping life left in his tires. Midway I started to close the gap slowly again but got whacked a couple times by some recovering backmarkers which didnt help the quest either, got that time lost back again when Scott ran into trouble and with 4 laps to go Í was close for an attack and he was clearly struggling alot, only managed a run on the outside for T1 on last lap but was side by side so no chance to make it around there on the outside. He almost loose it out of T5 then but Im not close enuff and he somehow manages to recover and slam the car into the inside line so I have to take some evasive action getting forced to use the grassline as help, should've figured that and gone outside instead but was closing too fast to swing the car around.
But car was great on the compound so with a bit of tweaking it should be better for the euro race I hope.

I was doing 1.25.7 in practice 1 session while i was practicing at R2P server before 3 or 4 hours before the race. I knew that CJ or Scott or both would get 24s in qualy, i said that to David we were practicing together. :P

I set my alarm clock and woke up after practice2 starts but i wasnt in mood of racing actually and wanted to give my place to Janko who was in waiting list. It seems he went to bed too lol.

LoL??? I signed up for this event? :| I made a mistake i wanted to sign up for Euro GT3CUP next week, guess i mistakenly joined this one. Had realy no intention of racing :). And by the time of this race start, i was having quite some other kind of race between me and my kidneys... :)

Grats to podium!

LoL??? I signed up for this event? :| I made a mistake i wanted to sign up for Euro GT3CUP next week, guess i mistakenly joined this one.

LOOOOOOL

Sorry Claus, I just looked at the replay and from outside it certainly looks more like regular racing contact than I first thought