Intro to S4 Extreme GT

I figured on about 55 laps.I put 58 laps of fuel in the car all totaled (so I thought).I ran out of fuel on about lap 47 with 10 minutes to go while running 3rd.Darn.

Good Race. Everyone was cautious and avoided contact. I am dam proud of myself, my longest race ever and I didn't spin. Did get sideways twice however. Had a great battle with Fernando for the last 20 laps it seemed. Thanks to the lappers for being carefull, very nice. I had 10 laps of fuel left at end, not bad.
Great Race! RA

I arrived right at the end of qualy so I started at the back of the pack, with 4 empty spaces between me and the next car (the race stewards spaces evidently). The car did not handle well at all, arriving late as I did, had no time to do anything to it. I eventually got up to 10th place, was within 5 seconds of 9th when lapping traffic came up on me, and I ended up losing 10 seconds more with the overtaking traffic. Pitted with about 20 minutes left, again got back up to 10th, again about 4 seconds back, again overtaking traffic caused me to lose another 10 seconds to the car ahead.

Somewhere along the way one overtaking car comes up behind me, right on my bumper, flashing headlight wildly, why? You think I'm gonna move over for you? Think again, especially if you flash your lights like a madman, and you weren't even the race leader. Anyone does that to me and I just stick to my line and put my foot down, I won't give an inch to someone who does that. Hell, you even had the entire length of the front straight to go around me.

You know, I've been tempted to post replies to races I haven't taken part in before, but I always hold back, but now I'm compelled to.

Chip, any driver about to lap you who's flashing his headlights, no matter how "wildly," is just trying to let you know he or she is there. It may otherwise be hard to tell if he's a competitor or somebody who's driven faster than you to the point that they've gapped you to well over a minute and a full lap worth of track distance. A lapper may not even notice a leader coming up. It's in no way inflamitory to flash your lights at a lapper to make sure he or she doesn't cost you time.

It's understood that you're fighting for position too, but as a lapper, it's most gentlemanly to give room to the leader. To be motivated to put the pedal to the metal not to improve your position or laptimes, but to actually impead the progress of a lead driver going for a podium, points, or a win is kind of unsportsmanly and is the act of some crazy guy on the Long Island Expressway, not a fellow racer in group of respectful, careful driving sim racers.

Ok, I'm done with my mini rant. Sorry. Nothin personal either, Chip. I just don't want to see the driving standards get too low (or pickup-race-like) at R2P, and I've been hearing about wrecks on pace laps when reading race reviews lately. Anyway, it looks like we raced together once before and I certanly had no problem with you. It looks like you also got a good top 10 finish in this race too after starting at the back. I'm going back to school soon so I'll be hitting the track again with you guys soon!

That was a nice little sprint , good practice for the upcoming endurances :D. Didn't have a setup for this track , so i took my Valencia setup and just tweaked the gears a bit. Car felt great and i could take the pole quite confortably.

Start of the race didn't go very smootly , had a good reactiontime , but too much wheelspin and dropped to 2nd place before T1. Got a little nudge there, but it didn't do any big harm , just a little slide and race continued without problems.

Chased David for few laps and then had a good run into mainstraight and we were side by side on T1 braking. I went for inside and kept it tight , but behind me Frosty and David got together and that opened up a nice gap for me. Rest of the race was quite lonely driving , except the lapped traffic which seem to spread out through the track pretty fast.
Made a few overtakes which i didn't want to make , but if the door is opened to me or the car infront of me went out of the racing line , i took the opportunity to ovetake even in the middle of the turn. Tried to keep it clean thou and what i saw it went pretty well...

Estoril has never been favorite of mine , but with the new tiremodelling in GTR2 it wasn't such a pain as usual :D . Still didn't like the track , but atleast it was more flowing than before.

Medium tires worked perfectly and didn't have any probs in the stint , took a new set of mediums and 85 liters of fuel on my only stop. Got back in track on 2nd place i think , but soon all had pitted and i was in the lead again , it was quite surprising that some stopped twice and the gap went up to a lap.

Rest of the race was just keeping it on track and got the 1st place after 90 mins of racing :).

Thanks for the race and grats to all survivors , cya soon again ;).

------
Samuel

I had a good race going for a while. Had a terrific start and lead for a bit, then got a terrible exit from the Parabolica and Sam made a great run down the front straight. I decide to brake early and try to turn inside of him, but forgot to radio Frosty to tell him my intentions and he gave me a tap and I spun. No fault of yours, dude, I definately used a nonstandard braking point. Of course I got the clutch in too late and stalled as well, so it took me a while to get going again (thanks for waiting Frosty). It was only a small hit, but it must have done a little damage to the rear aero because the car was very loose after that and I couldn't get back to the lap times I was running before.

While chasing later in the race a car I was about to lap went off the track in the switchback section and came back on in front of me. I hit the back of him and around I went again. At least I got to the clutch in time :)

To cap things off, my pit stop took 71 seconds! For 4 tires and fuel??? I see lots of drills for the crew coming this week. Is this the same as everyone else? I made sure that no other work was selected to be done.

In the end, it didn't matter. My engine sploded suddenly on lap 39. This was my first race over one hour and I thought I was being sensible, but I guess not. Oh well, it was still fun while it lasted.

Well, this was another race where in the end the only goal for me was to finish without losing any positions.

I enjoyed a fun run during the first stint trying to keep a couple of seconds gap ahead of Ray G. We were running pretty consistent laps and it was just a question of who pitted first. Ray did much to my delight. :) I stayed out a few laps longer in an attempt to open a gap before my stop. I ended up worried that I'd stayed out too long though because I was skating around on worn tires the last couple of laps before the stop.

I used a setup that was originally for Barcelona that turned out to be pretty balanced in the corners on entry and mid-corner. It was a little tail happy on low to medium speed corner exits and that ended up biting me twice.

One of the fast cars fresh from a pit stop caught me pretty easily. As I was on worn tires, my cornering speeds were even slower than normal and this caught the other guy out. He ended up tapping and spinning me. Fortunately, I did a 360 and ended up facing the right direction still rolling and got going again without losing more than a second or two. The guy who spun me slowed and pulled over just up ahead and didn't get going again until I went by. It looked like he was performing a self imposed penalty and giving me the position back. If that was the case, the gesture is appreciated but I wouldn't have had a problem if he didn't. It was just one of those racing incidents. He passed me again with no problems a couple of corners later. LOL.

A lap later a little too much throttle while exiting a corner brought the rear end around and I smacked one of the inside barriers. Again, it didn't cost me more than two or three seconds and the damage was minimal but enough was enough. I hit the pits.

After the stop, it was just a matter of lapping cleanly and bringing it home. Damn that was a long race.

I haven't raced with R2P yet - but while I wait, I do look at the Post Race comments - mainly to get an understanding of the "race ethic". Steve quotes above:

[i]The guy who spun me slowed and pulled over just up ahead and didn't get going again until I went by. It looked like he was performing a self imposed penalty and giving me the position back. If that was the case, the gesture is appreciated but I wouldn't have had a problem if he didn't. It was just one of those racing incidents.[/i]

In my past experience (other leagues that I've raced in TOCA series) this is absolutley the right thing to do, and shows "true spirt" and sportsmanship in the way we race together. Self imposed "drive-thrus" are usually quite harsh (in terms of time lost), so this was a perfect way to accept your error, and offer an apology (in a "no comms" environment).

My question is - How is this "ethic" looked on here at R2P ??

(Sorry to jump in on Post Race topic - just responding to a quote here)... :)

[quote]Chip, any driver about to lap you who's flashing his headlights, no matter how "wildly," is just trying to let you know he or she is there. ... It's in no way inflamitory to flash your lights at a lapper to make sure he or she doesn't cost you time.[/quote]

A driver who wants to pass need only flash his lights once or twice, certainly not 15 or more times erratically, while riding your bumper. When a driver does that it is annoying and gives the attitude that that driver is saying 'Get the H* out of my way!'.

I just watched this on the replay - I was completely to the left edge of the track, the driver not only flashed his lights repeatedly, but did it in the middle of the track. Which brings up the question - why flash lights at all? You're in the middle of the track, I'm to the left, just drive on by. Then he moved behind me, flashed lights some more. Why? He did eventually pass me - on turn one.

[quote]It's understood that you're fighting for position too, but as a lapper, it's most gentlemanly to give room to the leader. To be motivated to put the pedal to the metal not to improve your position or laptimes, but to actually impead the progress of a lead driver going for a podium, points, or a win is kind of unsportsmanly and is the act of some crazy guy on the Long Island Expressway, not a fellow racer in group of respectful, careful driving sim racers.[/quote]

Evidently you haven't read ALL the R2P rules yet, so please do so, if you haven't read them again. The passing driver is fully responsible for making a safe and courteous pass. The driver being passed maintains his driving line, and IF he wants to, he can let up off the throttle a bit to help him.

There were plenty of times during the race that a passing driver flashed his lights once or twice at me and I gave them room to pass. Just not to some a*hole who thinks he can push others out of the way by flashing his lights more than a dozen times. That's not sportsmanlike.

I assumed the tires would never last for 45 minutes so did a 2 stopper when everyone else did one. Big mistake! Though I didn't have the pace of the front runners I didn't make any critical mistakes for a change and wound up 2nd behind an excellent run from Sam. I figured I would be lucky to take 4th and after 1.5 hours I would have been glad with that. David had trouble and Frosty must have pit late and I ended up 2nd. I am very happy with the result.