Oschersleben 330k (G2/G3)

Seat was quite difficult to drive at Oschersflippin' but I qualified 5th - luck maybe. After an on track incident and battle of wills my race turned into a test session with a broken car. Finished last of G2 but brought some points for the team. Defender of the Faith and Turbocharging was in class of his own once again. :)

Grats to winners and podium peeps.

Hmm. Let's see.

I started in 4th.
Spent the whole first stint in 4th.

Then I pulled in to the pits, and as I did so, passed 1-2-3 having thier stops. So while being serviced, I was IN THE LEAD! hehe. Then we all exited with me in 4th.

Spent the whole second stint in 4th.
Finished the race in 4th.

Gripping stuff.

Straight forward race for me. I was testing a new setup and a new internet connection and everything went fine :).

I ended up with a 1.29.2 in qual which was pretty good. I thought I had a good second lap going but I spun in the chicane and exited to end my session.

Overall, the race went well for me. Getting the class victory would solidify that but having a decent car and no mistakes is pretty cool as well :).

The car would start out really good; nice and neutral and move into a loose condition by the end of the stint. It was a good loose though since it was relatively easy to handle and I was pleased with that. The 2nd stint however, the car got a lot looser than I thought it would so I basically ended up sliding the rear around like at Estoril. No harm done though.

I did have one scare in the race, however. Goran just got around me coming out of turn 2 and caught up to JT relatively quickly on the next straight. Going through those two quick left-handers, they collided with one another and both flew off the track when I was right behind them. Fortunately they stayed off track so I never hit either of them but it sure caught my attention :).

a combination of poor setup, lack of practice, and a sore knee put me in the back of the pack for qual. i was at least 4 sec slower than almost everyone else. and the one guy my speed quit before qual :(.

at this point, i was still doing ok, and i was going to try not to pit, but at the 45 marker, i was off track on 3 turns in a row and i decided that was a sign from above ;).

so i pit with no incident and get back on track counting down. so i just dodged faster cars and clicked off the laps. i think i spun 3 or 4 times, but no contact till about 7 min to go.

thru the high speed corner 4 complex, someone tried to pass and i got a bmwectomy. minor damage and i continued.

then, i realized i had 1 lap to little fuel. DOH!!!!!

i had to pit on the final lap, for the second time, and that put me 2 laps down in last place.

but i still had a lot of fun, i got some good track time and i made it thru my first race in this series with no major incidents. not too bad. i hope next race i can offer a bit more resistance. Good driving everyone. Very very clean.

i am rather disappointed in the consistent 4 wheels over the line entering turn 4. i watched ppl do it in qual and then in the race like it was just fine. do the white line rules not matter in this series?

not like i could have caught them anyway :)

Thought we were in for a good turnout here, but once again half the entry evaporated before kick-off. Not the Seat's favorite track - nor mine for that matter. The thing just eats tyres! I somehow managed to qualify 2nd to John, but knew it would be hard work to keep Barry behind, especially once the tyres had worn. I managed it for most of the first stint, but for the last 10 minutes I was sliding all over the place, eventually running wide to give him an easy pass. Great driving, Barry, the only time you hit me was on the pace lap!!!!! :-)
After he made his stop, I was amazed to find myself back in front of Barry. Unfortunately, the shock got to me & I fell of at the T4/5/6 complex (tried to make T7 a left hander too!)
I'd switched to hard tyres at the stop, but I'm damned if I could tell much difference. Similar grip levels and were still shagged after 20 minutes. I have to admit, though, I'd been leaning on both sets pretty hard!!!
Grats to John, who must've been a tad bored up front with no-one to play with, and to Conor for the G3 win.

Not my worst drive. Things were pretty hectic in real life just before the race, so very little time to practice. I'm with Pete as well, the car and track are nowhere near my favorites. But as the race got underway, I was in a pretty hard battle with Tommy Christain and Zach Myler. I went a bit wide and both got by, and they were racing each other so close and hard that I figured they would take each other out, so I backed off a bit to not get in the mix. But, they motored on. I made 1 stop at halfway, and was pretty surprised that after the stops all cycled through, I was in front of both Tommy and Zach. But, of course, as their tires were just coming in, mine where already shot. They made it around me again, but it looked like Zach got buried in a sandtrap a few laps later, and made that postion back. Cruised on home after that, just making sure I kept it on the asphalt.

Never got a good run during qualifying and ended up in 3rd. In fact I ran a faster lap during the race than I did in Q.

Coming up to the last turn on the pace lap, I ended up tapping the rear of Petes car when they slowed way down and caught me by suprize. I had a good setup and felt I had enough to keep up with John but never had the chance to find out. The fender flairs on that Seat must be 12 feet wide cause I could not get around Pete and believe me I tried! For almost the entire first half of the race, I was on Petes tailpipe. He must have turned off his mirrors cause I was throwing every deek I could throw at him and he never shook enough to squeeze by him but I certainly did keep his mirrors full of Beemer 8D. Finally he went wide into turn 1 but by that time John was long gone.

Headed into the pits after that and had a terrible pitting episode and it cost me 2nd place to Pete again. And coming out of the pits and seeing him go by I was thinking "Damn here we go again. But Pete decided to help me out this time and went out to see if they had the right amount of kitty litter out there and handed me back 2nd place, Thanks Pete ;-)

I believe that moved me up in the points and should have Dean in 1st place points and me now in 2nd putting Can-Am Racing up to the top of the points :-)

So it's off to Donington and congrats to John and Conor for thier wins today.

Barry

Mirrors? These cars have mirrors........

This was a very enjoyable race for me.

The first half was truely awesome. We were at the back but Bob Fay, Tommy Christian, and myself were locked into a great battle for 10th place. During the first few laps I managed to take advantage of Bob's little burble and jump up 2 spots into 10th. The racing was certainly intense as Tommy C. was keeping me on my toes. He could be seen in my rear view mirror for the entire 1st stint all the while waiting patiently for me to make a mistake of my own. Unfortunately, the mistake came in the form of the GTR2 auto pit crap setting. :-( Having recently re-installed the game, I forgot about the auto pit setting. As I approach the pit entrance, the auto pit set my pit limiter just before I pressed the button on my wheel. So I sail through the entrance and thus was given a stop and go penalty. (Lame) This puts me a lap down and makes for an uneventful 2nd half. I did have one off track moment near the T6 area during the 2nd half, but it didn't cost me any track position (thankfully we were not playing the old GTR).

Great racing Tommy C! I hadn't had a stint like that in quite some time.

I think some of the guys under-performed in qualy so I had pole easily. In the race I was able to make a good chunk of time each lap. I pushed quite hard to do that, but chewed my tyres up a bit. Still at the half way mark I had a 15 - 16 second lead and pitted. Made a very efficent stop and after the stops shook out my lead had increased to about 23 seconds. I decide to look after the tyres this stint, but I think Barry had a few problems and that lead eased in bits and chunks to 40+ seconds at the end. No real drama for me, and good driving from all around.

Congrats to G2 and G3 podiums!