Silverstone GP Feature

I came to this one straight from 150 laps at Loudon in the NR2003 Cup cars with about 10 minutes to spare ... Boy, these little cars sure felt flighty the first few laps till I got the handle on 'em again!

Qualified about three-quarters the way back, which was OK. My bread-and-butter is usually staying clean while others don't. I picked up a few places when people got slip-slidey, but I was losing 'em again in that long righthand bend at the end of the backstraight before I figured I can take that one a lot faster than I was.

Mid-race I was slotted behind Dean and Joe, staying right on Joe's tail but not getting any further. Another great run, Joe! You were tough.

At some point I think Joe and Dean touched, however, and I zipped by. Later on, I caught a surprise zooming up on a lap car and Joe closed the gap, but I held him off to the finish.

Was a good race. Big field, and I think everyone did pretty well.

Great racing tonight, but not without its share of off's. I haven't touched these car in months and it really showed this first race.

My setup, while not excessively fast, was really stable. I had some great opening lap dices with a few folks--I know Todd was around for a bit. All was well, and then...

One thing my setup doesn't like are the curbs--if I touched one while turning too hard the back end would just come around, which is what happen turning into the long right after the sharp left-hander. The next lap while turning in to Stowe I accidentally down-shifted from 6th to 2nd--instant loop. Now with my tires toasted from those two spins the back end was pretty sloppy and I ended up looping it a couple more times before being able to settle in again.

Happily, I managed to finish in the position I started in, 15th. I guess that's not too bad considering all the loops....

Got no practice, used my old Silverstone setup, but for some reason couldn't get the pig to turn in. Had some good racing throughout with some of the new guys.

I learned one lesson: Don't dive bomb on Joe. :P

I got a good draft on Joe coming down the back straight at one point, was on the inside line with Joe about half a car length ahead of me. But he stuck the big fat right leg pad out and shut the door! I had to jam on the brakes to avoid torpedoing both of us, and spun out. Man, those old goalie instincts don't go away eh Joe? ;)

This race was just....well...ugly. I decided about 2/3rd the way though it that I would try a line that intersected with a wall. Sadly this was NOT a faster line than I had been using onto the S/F straight. I believe I was 5th at the time, not that it matters. My poor crew at the SMO shop (it is more of a wooden shack, Dave is too cheap to build a real shop) will be piecing that car back together for MONTHS!

My skill in these cars is getting better, but still lagging behind what I expect of myself. Next season....next season!

Jason

EDIT by TM: Sean, the odd characters are due to Microsoft formating of text. If you type your report into notepad instead of word or wordpad, you wont get these odd characters. You could just type the directly here, we wont time-out your login or anything :) Ok thanks TM :)

This was another really bad race for my connection (or whatever is going on). As more and more people joined into practice my lap times got slower and slower and was continually having to adjust the car setup to offset the different physics/handling as the car totals got more and more.
By the end of Practice time I was almost 1.5sec slower and had 2 more rear wing to cope with the lower grip, plus other setup changes. And 2 more wing on an F3 is notably detrimental to its speed!

For Qual I ran the 'normal' setup, but didn't go out until the pack of cars on track were around the other half of the track. That seemed to make that session all go fine. Though it was still a bit 'worse' than the car should have been. Qualled 11th I think.

All my R2P races have had massive handling changes for the Race, so I used the 'modified, extra wing' race car and added yet another 2 rear wing and moved the brake bias forward (to offset the common rear wheel lock ups that begin in races for me).
Just as well I did those changes as it was still quite squirelly even with all those 'additions' for extra grip! But it would have been even worse without those changes!
Too bad all the changes made me really slow then too, though at least able to keep it on track!

I think I got up to about 7th pos within a lap or two and then of course I had to ride a curb too much and spin. Dropping back to 17th. Then recovering many spots, only to clip another curb and spin off into a wall. So then the car was severely damaged and pretty well undriveable at any speed.

I did pit to get it repaired, but they couldn't do much of use to cure it, so I just limped around the track to get a finish.

And thus I did not bother wasting any time on the next F3 race, seeing the first race showed how useless it would be to bother.

Im not sure how this happens to you Peter. Is it only open-wheel cars or something? You just finished racing on a R2p server in the V8 race without this problem right?

Wow, what a race.

I barely took 2nd place on the grid from Tim, Conor was way out of sight on pole. Had a good start and good pace for the first five laps until my laziness made me drive over one eses kerb and spun the car, it took forever to regain to race and three cars had passed me. It became pretty interesting catching and passing the cars, but things got pretty hard with Kent, who was very fast on the second sector. I came close to him a couple of times but was not able to even draft him. I kept pushed really hard until unbelievable on the last lap after the eses he did a mistake which I took advantage and was able to pass him on the long straight.

Once again I finished second, with the fastest lap of race Tim, we should award a point for that on the races :)

what a blast in these cars! early had some side by side w/ scott juliano and it was terrific. later, dean and i had some incidental contact in the Ss and todd just powered on by.

todd being todd failed to make any mistakes and i could get close but not past him. great job man especially just hoping into an f3 from a cup car. gunning for tony stewart?

jerry, what can i say? i thought i still had the corner just a tick ahead of you. that corner gave me fits in both races so if my move was akin to "inadvertantly" knocking the net of its moorings, please say so. i am still learning the etiquette some but since you play D, you know i cant let anyone run me in the crease. beiatch!

i thought it was a great race. great job by the newcomers.

LOL Joe.

It's like the one time I tried to help my goalie by carefully pushing a rebound back into his glove to cover up, only he let it go and it went right through the 5 hole. After that, I learned not to mess with the goalie's crease. ;)