Nippon: Adelaide

Unmitigated disaster for myself & our team.

On to next season :)

I got rear ended and punted off 1st lap @ last turn had to go around full lap with messed up car came in to fix damage car seemed ok from there but I just cruised around trying not to over do it and keep it off the walls. I guess I should be pleased with 5th.

David, so sorry about ruining your race. I don't know what I was thnking of, I was still in the throttle when you and the other two cars ahead were already braking. Of course I should have been braking as well.

I got a blistering start up to 4th, only to over shoot T1 so I slowed to rejoin safely then I was just too cautious midlap and got gobbled up by a few more cars and found myself back in 7th where I started, this still before lap one is complete. I had David Carney ahead of me with Anthony ahead of him as we exited the last lefthander. I got through the esses section and brain fade and ran right into David sending his car flying off track. I felt so back I pulled over and was reaching for the escape button when I thought, well that was a stupid mistake, just do your drive through and continue.

Somehow I only had minor wing damage and I conitued around and did my drive through rejoining in 5th. I saw a lot of carnage during the first couple laps and realized if I just keep it clean I could have a top 5. Then I caught Anthony who made a mistake giving me 4th uncontested. At some point Eduardo caught and passed me the same lap as another lead car exited the race so I remained 4th.

At this point I had huge lead over David and Eduardo eventually caught and passed Kieron but I had no chance to catch either of them so I continued my conservative pace to the end but I was gifted 3rd when Eduardo had to pit for some unknown reason.

Grats to Tristan who I never saw after T1.

Again my apologies to David.

can i get a replay? I did'nt have record on.

Yep I will upload a replay today.

Not much to say about my attempt, tapped the wall on lap 1 and totalled the car on lap 2.

These cars are fun but certainly demand more attention than I have given them in terms of practice etc.

Live and learn for next season.

Well done to the champs, a tough track which we soon decided highlighted that picking Monaco next season was a bad idea :-]

Webcast Replay

We had a unxpected internet provider manutence what caused the lag.

It was clear from all the crashing I did in practice that I would just have to race the track, and not worry about anyone else. I had pretty good pace but no way did I dare go that hard in the race.

Happy with 5th and got away well enough and found myself in some space pretty early on. Tris scamperd off into the distance and I had Eraldo a couple of seconds behind.

After a few laps though Eraldo fell away and now it was Kent and Ed 20 odd seconds back. Ed was flying though and he was taking chunks out of the gap. I knew he'd catch me no matter how hard I went so I just kept it at the same pace and pretty much let him through.

After that I was just keeping an eye on the gap to Kent so i could at least keep 3rd. With a few laps to go the gap came down a little but I still had a good buffer there to Kent. Then I was surprised to find myself in 2nd again as Ed must have had to pit.

So after a very steady drive I was well happy to come away with 2nd which even bumped me up to 3rd in the drivers champ :).

Grats once again Tris on the win and the drivers champ and also to GTNDC for the team champ. Grats to Kent also for coming home in 3rd.

Thanks for a great season guys. Cya next time.

Thanks Kieron, I totally agree about race pace versus practice pace. I found running 20's and below to be a very risky pace for race so I settled into 21's and 22's for race pace. It was pretty obvious during practice that attrition would be very high.

Really too bad I cannot run this series regularly being as I am USA and work when you chaps are racing.

My computer had problem on warmup and when the server went to race i was completely frozen... when i managed to get on track, the race had already begun and i was forced to start from pits and to wait about 30 seconds for the green lights.

Pushed all i could since the begin, had a very good setup and a great pace to fight for the victory here, but it wasn't meant to be.
Less than 5 laps to go and i was driving automatically, without paying attention, which leaded me to a completely blank on where was i, so i turned completely wrong and ended up crashing extremely hard, broken my suspension and pitted for 50seconds... i consider myself just lucky to finish this race.

Had fun on track, its one of my favorite courses, just a little sad because i know i would had a great challenge with Tristan.

Humm, i was forgetting because its something so usual, but congrats Tristan for one more victory and one more championship.

This will be a pictoral post-race report.

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Steve and Tim jumping the unconventional start lights...

Through sector 2, lap 1...

Kent and his awesome livery through the hairpin on lap 1...

Steve overshooting the pit entry for his jumped-start penalty means he will sit in the pits for two laps...

Not looking good for Eraldo as Kent, Eduardo and Anthony all close in to Silva's damaged Nippon...

Eduardo dropping the hammer after getting around Kent...

Totally understand how Hakkinen had a big off here...

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Thank you everyone for the wonderful series! Thank you Steve Davis for putting it on, and to all the guys for such fun events.

Big thanks to Kent for helping secure the team championship at the last round. My connection was wanting to drop at any time, so his efforts were vital. :-)