Lotus Elise Challenge (fun-run)

Second in a row!.... Lost connection during warm-up!!!! f&$%^*@ .....
Bad weekend for me....2 races, but disconected during warm-up... Anyone have an idea why?

BTW, Why can't we rejoin on Warm-ups? At least on Fun-Run events. :) ...

Using the canam setup of Barry's didn't help me any. Qualy'ed last as usual, got a good start, all the way up to 11th. Then over the next few laps slowly got passed by everyone. My car just didn't have the top speed on the long straight. Lap 5 or 6, whatever, I took too much curbing, lost control, hit the wall, game over. Gonna watch the F1 2006 Season Highlights DVD.

Was an interesting race. Got 3rd place in qualy which was enough for me. In start i couldnt get on good and i lost 3 positions. I took 2 of them back in first lap but while trying to get 4th position i found myself in gravel, it was my mistake braked too late and lost many positions there. Tried to regain positions after this incident rest of the race lol.

I started the race with hard ones for not changing tyres in pits and i was guessing some others will change tyres so i still had hope for a T3. I was one of the guys who pitted early, i think Tim pitted early too. I only took fuel and went on racing. I was very surprised that i took 2nd position after everyones pits. But Kent was closing the gap very fastly. A couple of laps later Kent was just behind me. I tried to defend my position like 3 or 4 laps but i think his tyres were new and i had no chance against him. But after pulling back to 3rd i saw that 4th guy was 20 secs behind me and i thought it will be enough by far to finish 3rd. But damn i was in gravel again what a noobish move. I was on my own driving alone and i made a mistake ://. After i came to track 4th guy was 6 secs behind me. But i knew it wont last long lol. Again gap melted very fast and i couldnt even defend much, my car was dying.

I got 4th position even with these mistakes and a bit happy with the result. When will i stop making mistakes :// LOL.

That was fun even if it was a bitch! LOL Had a decent qual well off my PB but good enough for Pole. It was very tight with .3 seperating the top 4!

I got a good start and opened up a 1.4 second lead the first lap. Continued to open up to 2.3 by lap 2, but thats when it all turned around. Tim was behind me and taking chucnks out of me. It got to the point were I was watching the timer instead of driving :(

Well he finally got to within about .5 when I made my first mistake and locked up the brakes at the fisr left hander and drove it right off the track. Rejoined with about 1.3 on Barry and behind Tim by about 7 seconds, and sure enough he closed up on me in the next lap and well I did it again at T1. Locked up and drove it straight in dropping another 5 seconds back. So now I am thinking, what the hell is going on, the car wont turn anymore. A couple laps later I see Tim in the pit and I get 2nd back thinking Tim on a 2 stopper?

A few laps later now 10 seconds back from Barry I pit for fresh rubber and some fuel. I rejoin in 9th and make a couple ontrack passed up to 5th when the rest pitted and I found myself 5 seonds back from Tolga who was in 2nd. It only took 2 laps to catch him but he wasn't going to just hand me the position. He was cleary on teh edge of traction so I figured this shouldn't be too hard....I was wrong.

My first move was drafting into T1, I got by him easily on the outside but he fought back, we made a little contact and he maintained the postition. I dropped back a little but made it up in the next corner. I got another run on him leading on to the back straight and again gave him the inside. But this time I had a little trick up my sleeve. Knowing he was pushing it hard I braked early and as he slid in and wide I knifed under him taking the postion. Now I am 21 seconds behind Tim and my car is handling great. To late though, I managed to close to about 5 seconds as the flag dropped.

Great win on strategy Tim, not that you weren't fast. If only I could have kept it on the track in could have been an interesting finish.

That was a lot of fun guys.

I did not decide to race until 15 minutes in practice. Due to the smaller then expected field, I went for it and got 4 laps in before qualifying. I had a setup, which is weird as I dont recall racing here in the Elise in GTR2. But, I loaded it and it was fast enough for a top-5 I thought.

Qual showed just how close the top-5 where, all within a half second. I was on my fastest lap on the last lap but the server changed session on me as I approached the final corner.

At the start of the race I was wondering why everyone was going so slow. Couldnt figure it out, but after a lap I realized they were just going slow and I couldnt just let Kent go driving off. I made my pass to claim 2nd and started chasing down Kent in the lead. After a few laps just nipping away at the 2 second lead I was close enough to apply pressure. It seemed I was a lot faster then him in sec-1 and sec-3, but he had me in sec-2. I just kept laying it on as best I could hoping for that rare minor mistake from Kent.

About 10 laps in he slid off into the gravel under braking. I wasnt really on him too hard so it was probably just a minor loss of concentration. I took over the lead and started thinking about when to pit. I had started with a full tank and med/med tires and didnt plan to take tires at the stop. Once I realized I was using a lot less fuel then originally planned I began thinking about a better strategy then just a 50/50 race distance.

20 minutes into the race and I had only used up a half-tank of fuel. With that, I knew I could pit and take on a full load (taking only 13 gallons to max out the tank) and make it to the end. I waited one more lap to be on the safe side and entered pit lane. I knew I was already going to spend some time at the clip-board to not take tires, and I didnt want to spend even more time to reduce fuel load... which is the sole reason I short-pitted the race. Plus the fact that Im still on pretty good tires with my added fuel load over others.

When i came out of the pits I slotted into 13th place (geez!) and right behind Bill. He wasnt giving me the spot (good!) and I even followed him through a quick trip in the gravel costing me 3-4 seconds. I slipped past and tried my best to run some good laps until everyone pitted. I blew the final corner once and spent another 5 seconds in the gravel (doh!), but was still confident in a podium at least.

When I started seeing more and more guys pitting, and was suprised to see them still sitting still as I blew past. I expected to have to race one or two as they were coming out of pit lane. As it turns out, when the final cars pitted I had a 20 second lead and I was still pulling away from 2nd place at nearly a second a lap.

I came up on Bill and Greg fighting for 11th at the time. Passed Bill without any hang ups, but when I caught up to Gregg I decided to just hang out there. I rode behind him until Bill caught back up to us so I pulled over to let them get back into their battle. Gregg looped it in the last corner with only a few minutes to go in the race so now I was just hanging behind Bill. We were lapping 3 seconds off my pace, but I was comfortable with the pace.

Kent in 2nd was making up a lot of time each lap, but the clock was on my side. I came to the finish line (with Bill still in front of me) with a 4 second lead and a lot of car and fuel left just in case I needed it.

I had a lot of fun in these little cars. They just suit me I guess. I surely didnt expect to win tonight, but I will take it.

well that was great fun!

congrats to Tim and Kent and Steve.

hey, i'm all for making a series out of _really_slow_ cars running on tracks i know pretty well. show of hands?

thought i was in pretty good shape coming in, having read a few of the pre-race posts. i figured Kent would sort the left front problem out and put up some discouraging time, but i was turning mid 50s in offline practice by this afternoon, so i was optimistic about a decent mid-field qualifying and perhaps a top 5 if i stayed clean.

well... it almost worked out.

did a 1 stop strategy and opted not to change tires. found myself running P5 with a comfortable cushion late in the race. but i used up what was left of my tires trying to maintain a gap to Barry and after a few laps he began catching up very quickly. no use contesting the pass when it came -- still too much time left in the race.

after that i returned to a pace that wasn't too taxing on the rubber. there wasn't any more drama from there on, aside from the pit-chief telling me i was low on fuel -- as some kind of practical joke apparently, since i had 5L left at the finish.

took me a half lap to "get it". man, those guys really have a dry sense of humor.

Fun run! Guess that's the idea... I really do like the one hour race format, and one stop's about right for that distance.

Just joined with about five minutes left in Q so my grid time ended up coming from my first flying lap, since I bobbled on the second and the session ended midway through the third. Had grabbed a setup from Valencia since I hadn't done Barcelona in the Elise before; heck, what simracer needs to learn Barcelona at this point anyway... ;-) Put mediums on the rear and a click off the front bar and that was good enough; still had a good bit of understeer, but it seems hard to get rid of that.

The first lap was pretty ugly as I got hammered a few times, first on the start when someone did the Schumacher swerve into the side of me, and then I got punted again midway through the lap. All fortunately without much harm, and I tried to settle in after that. Tolga got by me early and I figured he'd be a good rabbit, so I latched onto him and we ran close together for the rest of the stint until he pitted.

I was looking forward to resuming the chase after my own pit, but after taking tires and fuel and rejoining in 5th he was 20 seconds up the road. And I was looking to fire my engineer (me). Figured I'd hunker down and see what came to me, and managed to get back up to 4th. Noticed I was catching Tolga pretty quick, but not quick enough - and then the 18 second gap turned into 6 when he had an off. After that it was pretty much a done deal as his tires were obviously done, and he drove smart and didn't really try to defend without enough grip to make it work.

Finished the race a couple of laps later, with about 4 laps of fuel left in the tank; I really need to do some testing on race wear/usage settings and get better at pit strategy. Would be interesting to see what not overfilling and maybe running harder tires without a change would have done for the overall race time. I'm pretty easy on tires in general, especially in the Elise which requires you to drive tidily.

They do make for good racing though, since they're easy to drive and the time gaps are small. You just can't overdrive them though, since there's not enough grunt to get away with throwing them around.

Knockhill, anyone? ;-)

Good race, congrats leaders.
I had a good start, picked up a spot or 2. Got wild and slowed down the pack for a second. Continued with some OK laps. Some good racing back in 5-8. I pitted in 5th at the halfway mark. I took fuel and 4 tyres which was a big mistake. Lost 2 posistions b/c of that.
Need to do more testing prerace, and make sure the motec displays tire temps. My display would not cycle, is this my problem or the elise only has one display??
Came out in 7th, and slowly lost time to GMiller over the next 20 minutes. He then flipped the switch and caught me quickly, I got nervous and made a few mistakes so he passed me. He slowly pulled away for the remainder of the race. Good racing GMiller, both before and after the pits!!

Good race all, thanks R2P and all racers!!

Damn, I completely mixed up the time zone for this. Can I request a Euro version of this race?

Got a great start and was able to move up 2 spots. Started Lap 2, and on my way into T1, I pulled my wheel right off of the desk! Obviuosly I didn't make the turn and tried to drive out of the sandtrap while I treid to hold the wheel up to the desk. I was able to gt the car all the way to pitroad, but misjudged and slammed the barrier at pit-in. I was a bit pissed off at that point and hit esc. Sorry I missed a great race. At least the mounts on my wheel didn't break, looks like they just got loose.