G3x: Birmingham

Just wanted to apologize for being a rolling roadblock at the start. Couldn't see the starting lights from outside on the front row for some reason, so I cued on other cars' sounds and misjudged when to go. Realized I'd jumped it and backed out just when everyone launched. Not the best way to do it... ;-)

Got turned in the hairpin on lap one to make it even better, then for topping did my Stop-Go and finally resumed. First lap was about 5 minutes it felt like... ;-) Lonely drive after that, just hung in to see what attrition might bring. About eight spots from the look of it. Nice to be out with GP and JM on track, and great to see JM take the series lead. Go team. ;-)

Steve, I owe you an apology, I tapped you in the hairpin and am really sorry about that. Stupid mistake on my part. I don't know if that qualified as a punt but I felt bad enough about it that I took a drive thru. Then you followed me into the pits...thought maybe you wanted to get out of your car and whip my butt. Oh...that's right...this isn't nascar... Again, sorry for my mistake.

Congrats Garret and the podium!

I have to give Tim credit for my 8th place finish. I used his car and setup. Just tweaked the brakes a bit to fit my driving style and all I had to do was hit my marks. I would like to thank everyone who posts setups. It helps new guys gain experience and learn a few things.

Very frustrating race for me. I got bumped from behind on the first turn and then the car flipped. I came out in almost last place. Amazingly though, the car felt ok still. I worked my way back to about 10th place and then I just had a lapse of judgement and had an off into the grass. The area I went off in had a long guard rail and I had no way to reenter the track! So I drove along the outside of the guardrail to find a hole to get back on the track. Apparently I went too far away because my car started floating above the ground and my speedometer read 250 mph. I was hoping to see the moon, but alas I could not. :) To top it off, I am still in the top 5 in points. :(

In quali I was 0,6 down on my previous best 1.27 when the game crashed to the desktop with less than 3 minutes to go. What to do? Back to bed and leave it to my teamm8's John and Steve or get back in and start from the back? Well ... after two coffee's I was awake enough to go for the second option. Managed to get through the hassle of lap 1 and followed John, Ed and Mark in around 10th place. Ed and Mark dropped out and got replaced by Kim and Hugo. They also dropped out. So eventually John and I were running 3rd and 4th which I thought was a great result for the team. Grats to Garret and Gregg who were, by looking at their laptimes, in a league of their own. A well done to John for not yielding under a lot of pressure and taking the overall lead and last but not least .... good to see you back on track Steve. :-) Better luck next time.

Qualy was beyond my expectations and I turned a PB and almost cleared the track record!

I've had some success at this track previously in the GT3, so I was confident about my race pace and setup. With Steve's jump at the start, that left a two horse race to the end between Gregg and myself.

Gregg applied relentless pressure on me from the start. The gap never got above 2s and was at.5s for most of the event. His pressure caused some errors in my driving that almost cost me the race and let Gregg get right on my bumper each time.

The most frightening was a HUGE tail wag exiting the last turn onto the home straight. The car seemed to slide right to the edge of control and slowly straightened out. Wow, I dropped a brick at that point which caused my times to increase drastically.

With a couple to go, it looked as if Gregg was content with 2nd and he dropped back a bit. So I let off. Tisk-tisk, silly me. That was almost my demise. In the last series of corners, Gregg lurched ahead and put tremendous pressure on me for the top spot. Very well done my friend! I really enjoyed battling with you this race.

I got the kids to bed early, so I joined in during the practice session. I downloaded a setup and qualified a respectable 10th after about an 30 minutes or so of practice (I couldn't have done that well without my teammate's help).

Start of the race, I was trying to be cautious going into T1, when my teammate got hit and did a sharp left across the track collecting me. We ended up near the back and climbed up to 9th and 10th respectively. I picked up 9th after his accident and might have held on, except that I didn't put enough gas in the car. I was trying to conserve, but ran out of gas on the last lap - during my last two laps, Jeff, Colin and Steve were able to pass me for position.

@ Jeff - yup, that was pretty much a classic punt! But no worries; been on the other end of same myself enough to know that funny stuff happens on cold tires - plus that corner tends to make you push out on exit anyway. My race was already toast from my jumped start, so it didn't make much difference, possibly one position's worth at the end, no more. No blood was shed, and virtual parts are cheap! ;-)

I'm thinking maybe my GTR2-XD display might have been in the way of seeing the lights at the start; I'll have to check it and remember to toggle it off for future starts if that's the case.

Steve - I couldn't see the lights myself. That is until I saw ANOTHER set of lights on the pitwall at pit exit. FYI. Probably didn't want to hear that, huh?

Well Garret, I can only add to the excitement- that was a great race and Birm is on of my favorite tracks, it has such a great flow!. I didn't want to overdrive myself just to get ahead, so keeping pace was where I wanted to be for the first 2/3rds of race, would rather pursue unless I know I can really pull away and that was not going to happen.
Like you said was waiting for a mistake, and there was only a couple of small errors that you caught, excellent driving there.

Funny thing, I came home, saw 6 minutes to Q and never turned a lap! Maybe I found something !

Good race!