Team cheMO Interlagos Vintage GT

I was afraid this was going to be a very lonely night for me, but Pete kept it very interesting much of the race. Pete, you must have been pulling your hair out trying to get by me! Every time he pulled it off it was late enough in the lap that I was able to stay close and pick him back off on the straight. Then for the first half of the next lap, every corner Pete would come storming up behind, only to find my chrome-domium lump taking up the better part of the preferred line, forcing him to check up and even causing him to go off once or twice. I was definitely getting my money's worth out of my tires, the ol' girl was shrieking around the track at full volume tonight. Twice I was pushing hard to maximize my gain on the straight before the right-left hairpin, blew the braking point, and did a big ugly Dukes-of-Hazard through the grass to slide sideways right back on the track, still in front of Pete. Sorry about those, Pete, I was thanking my stars I didn't get called for cutting.

Sadly that all came to an end when Pete had some pit trouble, what happened? Huge bummer, I was looking forward to round 2.

Well done to Barrett for the win from the back!

As always very good fun. Try'd my hardest to get Kaiser but not today. Good racing from the start all the way through. Thank you guys, looking for next one.

Ever have one of those feelings that you're just not heading into a good scenario? Tonight was one of those for me.

I wasn't expecting a top pace as I simply hadn't practiced much before tonight. I was content to live with a 320ish laptime and just click off laps (surprised to Q in P3!). Unfortunately, my fuel calculations turned out to be catastrophically wrong, despite the XD analysis. I don't know where I screwed up, but my initial fuel strategy (based on offline practice) appeared ridiculously excessive, so I changed it right before the race based on clean estimates made during qualifying. But the changes I made ended up wrong in the opposite direction... too little!!! But I couldn't really divert enough attention from driving to do maths in my head, so when I increased my pit fuel load, I came up short still. Of course, I didn't realize this til I exited the pit and started doing battle with Mike Kolar again. I soon found out I was still 2 laps short. So I pitted again with another increase. Only, my crew didn't put in a drop. So I leave again and plan to stop again, figuring that my 50s gap to the next car behind assured I would hold on to and finish in P9. Unfortunately, I made one final unprovoked, solo spin (after 4-5 already throughout the race) and I was so frustrated and fed up, I just walked away from the car.

The keys are still in it. I scrawled a note on an oil filter receipt and put it on the dash, visible through the windscreen.

"Free to any garage but mine"

I knew I wasn't prepared. The above fuel concern, and driving someone elses setup (Barrett's, which was faster, but less stable, even with my own tweaks, than the one I've used in all other events), along with a couple other distractions with my real world driving setup meant my concentration was overtaxed. Once I started making stupid, retarded mistakes, followed by the strategy/pit problems, my concentration deteriorated completely.

Ghaaaaa!

And to think, I was having the battle of my life with that Vette of yours Mike. You describe the situation perfectly. I was impressed at how well you were able to hold me off. The few times I got by were predictable after a few laps, and you of course took the position back under long power. Great seesaw fight. And I didn't see you do anything unsporting or squirrely to compromise my race. I made every mistake all by myself.

I hated taking the DNF, but I just couldn't bear the sheer frustration I found myself in. All hopes for fun were long gone by the time I hit ESC.

Thanks for a great clean fight though, Mike. I really enjoyed that part of the event.

Again, I drove the wheels off my little Cobra. Les did too in his Mustang. Barrett must have worked hard to come through the field and used his speed and pit strategy to consolidate his victory.

I was surprised to see Barrett so far down the order after qualifying but knew he would bounce back to the pointy end if he didn't make any major mistakes. I put in my best lap ever during quali to take the pole. It was close to 2 seconds quicker than my race pace. I also put in my best race pace lap during the race, but it was still 1 second slower than Barrett. He had a great setup and knew how to use it. This is a real drivers track. So much time can be lost being offline, not attacking the decreasing radius turns hard, excessive sliding midcorner, etc...

I was lonely on track the entire time, but the loop back nature of (forget the turn #) allowed me to keep watch on Barrett's progress.

Well I finished about where I hoped but I drove better than expected. I wasn't as prepared as I would have preferred learning a new amd complicated track in a week. At the same time I was more focused than I have been for any race in a long time, I think things are starting to fall back into place. Fifth off the line and settled in, Barrett, who I knew would be coming from the back arrived after a few laps. I held him off for one lap and then went skidding through the grass in the right kink and decreasing left and let him go rather than continue blocking. I had my usual moment where everything goes black for 10-12 seconds - I am using Vista and I had this happen almost every race - the video driver stops working and then resets. No walls got in the way but I went from 10-12 seconds back to 22 and knew it would be tough to get any positions back. I ran fairly cleanly and the tires started squawking after 8 or 9 laps and I headed to the pits on lap 11. Front tires and enough fuel for 7 laps (plus a couple tenths) and I was back out in fifth, 7+ seconds behind Mike Erickson. I was gradually catching him with the benefit of my better front rubber. I caught and passed him with three laps to go and was too far behind Les to make a dent. I tried to just run clean to the finish and not make any blunders. I did get to witness Hutch's run over the bannked T1 after the race - terrific hang time and he definitely stuck the landing, forever to be dubbed our little gymnast...LOL

I too saw Hutch's arial display. It was quite impressive!

As for the race...

I really screwed up qualifying. Backed out of my first timed lap rather than harass John and went thru the pits to re-join behind the Mikes. But, i hadn't thought this thru. Going thru the pits meant i lost that lap and had to do another lap before the timer would start again. There just wasn't enough left in the session.

So i never got a timed lap in. But i figured that's about where i would have been anyway by T3 on the first lap so i wasn't beating myself up over it.

Had some fun battles with a lot of people once the race started.

I learned a lot from the race with Mike M at Kyalami about the value of just turning consistent laps and not getting seduced into trying to improve my lines during a race. So i just maintained focus and tried to capitalize on the Elan's strengths where ever the opportunity presented.

I have to say the NASRL fields have been superb this season. Its a pleasure to race with you all.

But i also have to admit the shine has gone off a bit. The more I've worked to become consistent in these races, the more obvious the Elan's exaggerated advantage in the pits. I just made a very lucky car choice based entirely on laziness (it was easy to drive) and color preference.

>I did get to witness Hutch's run over the bannked T1 after the race

LOL, I forgot about that this morning- I figured "Why waste this good head of steam I've got going here?", and angled to climb the banking in turn one at a good 130mph. To my surprise I cleared the wall completely and ended up with a nice landing on the grass outside... until that ran out and I fell endlessly into the black void :)

>I just made a very lucky car choice based entirely on laziness (it was easy to drive) and color preference.

Don't discount yourself too much- you are the only Elan in the top 7 in the season standings. If Mike hadn't DNF'd at Crystal he'd be right on top of you in the points, possibly even ahead by a couple, so it isn't all a gift of the car. You may think it felt easy looking back, but the fact is you've shown up at every event, and done everything right to maximize your car's potential, which not everybody was able to do.

Like Pete, I went into this race with very little practice. I knew the track layout well enough, having raced this layout before in a GPL league, but I learned soon enough that flinging a '67 Weslake Eagle around this track in Grand Prix Legends is NOTHING like trying to manhandle a 289 Cobra Coupe in GTR2/PnG.

I put in in a new PB in qualifying but that only netted me a 7th-place starting spot, which was no problem because I knew going in I wasn't going to be particularly fast or competitive. I made it through what I thought was the toughest part of the first lap with no problems (specifically, T1 and T3), so I figured I would at least be able to have some fun.

Pete and Barrett did a great job of dogging me early on, and my Cobra could pull away from then on the straights but they would be right back on my tail in the twisties. Knowing they were both faster than me overall, I did my best to give them room in the corners and I was happy with the fact that I didn't make contact with anybody throughout the race.

After letting Pete and Barrett get by, I then proceeded to have some significant brain-fade on Lap 4 with a couple of "offs" at places where I had never had problems in practice. That allowed Glenn and Bill to get past me, and then I floundered a couple more times just for good measure, allowing them to build up a hefty (1 minute +) lead on me, thus guaranteeing my "backmarker" status for the race.

Despite my on-track mistakes my pit stop went well, which was a welcome change from the pit entry debacle that ended my race at Kyalami. I was surprised to see Pete drop out, which put me up to 9th place (my only gain of the entire race after dropping back to 10th following my 7th-place start).

I saw some weird warping at T3 after leaving the pits -- a red car seemed to be almost stopped on the inside line of the turn entry as I followed Hutch into the turn, then, after passing the car it warped ahead of me and wasn't seen again. Very strange, but didn't really have any affect on my race, thankfully.

All in all, it wasn't a truly bad race considering how demanding the track is -- I'm sure that if I had put in a reasonable amount of practice I would have been able to avoid the boneheaded mistakes. In this case, my presumed "familiarity" with the track layout led to over-confidence, and I didn't give the track the amount of respect it deserved going in. Thankfully I managed to not cause any problems for anybody else, so that was a small victory, at least.

If Steve McQueen had one of these, The Great Escape would have been a much shorter movie.

Clearing the fence:

And the safety barrier on the way to a nice landing:

My God, it's full of stars!