1h of Imola

I made a late decision to join up with the RSR Porsche. It seemed to be a good car to learn the track with. FPS was pretty poor even without other cars visible, sometimes going to 20 in Aqua Minerale. I had no chance to keep up with Claus and I got away from the other NGT cars and Beamers so it was rather lonely apart from lappees and the GT duo lapping me. No big mistakes apart from overshooting Rivazza 1 twice towards the end and my no stop strategy worked nicely.

I decided to join with Tim and Scott in the Elises for this race just to have some fun without the annoying Viper. Fortunately, more joined up including Samuel who barely beat me in qualifying so i knew this was going to be a competitive race between us :).

And competitive it was....right off the bat, i got a run on him after the final corner to take the green and managed to pass him before we got to turn 1. He didn't go away though; he managed to stick to my rear in case i made a mistake and i eventually did after the 2nd chicane. So i then followed him for a while and manged to stick with him for most of the time until i made a mistake at the 3rd chicane i believe where i spun out. I lost a lot of time there but i got back on my feet and tried to chase him down again. Luckily, i was able to do that in about 10 laps and once again was battling with him. Soon after, i passed him and started pulling away. Unfortunately, my lotus blew up after the final corner a couple laps before i was going to pit :(. I surely didn't expect that but i still had fun battling with Sam anyway so it wasn't all a lost cause :).

Menaged to qualify on pole, 1:43.1, to my surprise. And it wasn't really a fast nor clean lap.

I drove about 10 laps here some 7 days ago in Saleen, and 2 laps online the other day. Needless to say I didn't expect too much.

First few laps were really messy, I'm still fighting terrible headache. :( I was leading while Steve was right behind me, then something happened to him. What was that?

Few laps later, I came to lap Tim in his Elise, Jeff was really close, and little impatient. ;) I had to slow down on exit to get around Tim, and Jeff didn't I guess so he pushed me from behind, wasn't really anything, but was enough to distract me and I missed braking point on last chicane. Jeff and I exited side by side then. We went down the straight, with me being less than half a car in front. We got to first chicane, and I don't know what happend there Jeff, did you miss a braking point or something, but I got huge kick in the side which sent me immidiately off the track.

With my headache still going on, I decided I had just about enough. :)

Grats to winners.

Elise power.. :D LOL Funny little car , took some time to get used to it , but it was pretty fun to drive as long as there was other Elises around. We had a nice long chase going on with Conor , with some driving errors and swapping places few times :D . But unfortunately Conors engine blew up on mainstraight and that was the end of the good chase :( , tough luck mate :| . Would have been interesting to see how it would have ended up , i was planning to take only soft tires at the last few laps and i had the car filled up from the start.

My apologies to that yellow Ferrari 360 ,i think i was a bit on your way and you spinned while trying to find a way through in the last laps :|.

These cars are quite fun , but only with other alikes around , was pretty boring feeling to drive alone with 'em and prolly was the last time i drove 'em in mixed class sessions. Elise cup maybe a different story then.. :D

Congrats to Kent about thrilling race win , well done mate 8). Grats to other finishers and podium guys , was a good show.. :)

------
Samuel

comcast socalled "high speed internet" went to the toilet during practice. wanted to try that funny looking tvr. glad you guys had a good race.

My qual went terrible, I was on my hot lap and went to go around tim and for some reason he started drifting to the right on the front stretch, so I went to the left and right into him. Sry tim.

The race started with my usual jitters, finally settled down kept pace with enis and steve, then steve decides to try high speed drifting with bad consequences.

Then on to enis, wow dude, I didn’t think I was overly aggressive or impatient, but on the tim thing, I was keeping pace with you to not hit you but to follow your line b/4 it closed up, but I honestly thought I only taped you, really, you squeezed more brake ubruptly, well more than i was expecting,your car seemed un touched, its line of direction was in tact, on the other deal, I seen you go off and I wondered what happened, I left atleast 1-1/2 cars to the side, how you got a hit??? I am sry if I caused something, but I honestly thought it was clean racing and I didn’t hear a thing. Just to finish this off, I know how to race on the non-prefered line, and I was on it and prepared to give the preferred to you on exit:(

The balance of my race went from second place into the pits on my schedule and to throw up a fast lap out or two and it did work as I passed kent in the pits, I held on until the second to last lap while watching my mirror and the slower cars I got loose in the second to last corner and kent went by, and from there I was not going to catch Kent.

Congrats to all the winners, and more importantly the sportsmanship displayed today. I just hope I was a sporting guy in return.

If not...fire away!

Jeff I thought you were impatient cause you tapped me on behind, but as I said it wasn't really anything serious.

On that first chicane accident I guess it was netcode prob then, cause I felt huge hit either on the side of the car or on left rear corner, and that sent me off.

First, Congrats to the winners and to all who finished. :)
My BMW M3 GTR was really fun to drive. Had some fun laps with Dave Pike and Pete Bunce at various times during the race. During the early laps Dave and I came together at Villeneuve.
Dave, no hard feelings, just wished it was closer to pits - the GTR was a real beast w/out the rear wing. After looking at the replay, it looked like a very mild tap, but from inside the car, it was quite a jolt. There appears to be quite a lot of warping from your car (you are all the way down in S. Africa).
Actually I felt bad that you were trying to stay behind me after the incident but w/out my wing, I just was'nt able to go at race speeds so I wanted you to just continue with your race. Wish there was some kind of little arm we could wave, lol.
I mention this on another post, I noticed under "Sim racing", "Series" the remainder of S3 races are shown as GTR2 events.
Is this a mistake or are we switching to GTR2 mid season. I sure hope so. :-)
Till the next one,

Dan

Enis, I do not want an asterisk next to my name in any way, shape or form, I was so looking forward to see if i could even remotely keep pace with you,steve and kent. Sry again for the bump :(

But i will add this, i experienced more lag especially thru the chicanes than in GTR1, i mean every chicane of every lap.

Had a reasonable qualy, only put in 2 laps as I was happy with my M3's pace and setup. Race start went well, managed to hold station behind the leading M3 and had a great chase for the first 7 laps or so. I had a lapse in concentration and ran wide at the exit of the second chicane, allowing Dan to get past me. We had a great battle until my over enthusiasm and 700+ ping resulted in a coming together. Dan, I'm really sorry, you had great pace and I was looking forward to a race long battle. I felt really awful, so I slowed up as I knew you would be pitting and in the process I got in the way of the leaders and may or may not have caused an incident with the Viper (Sorry mate, i'll check the replay)

I pitted behind Dan in hopes of having a fun battle for the remaining laps, but my concentration was gone. I finally caught up with 2 laps remaining and from the results I see that we finished only a 10th or so apart :)

Anyway, I had tremendous fun and I really enjoy the fact that going off onto sand now doesnt result in terminal failure.

REALLY looking forward to the next race :)