Critical Mach Spa 500K

Well what can I say...engine overheat from lap 3 or 4. had 3 radiaor and 7600 rpm. aparently it was hot at Spa and i didn;t notice that. lack of experience i'd say. after that my laps went down about 1.5-2 sec. normal i was running on 2.12's. first pit had 30 sec ahead and i dont know how i was passed :) good strategy there Steve please share with us for the future. on the straight after the pit i was passed and followed the leader a few laps. again over heat warnings so i backed up a little. then traffic and i locked loosing about 10 seconds. before second pit a managed to catch Steve...was about 2 tenths behind. took 1st again when he pitted and on the next lap *puf* :) end of race. was fun while lasted. Don't know if i could have won but one thing was ok i managed to be very steady about 90 minutes. must have been 4 radiator.
Congrats for the winners :)
NGT guys rule. thanks for making it easy :)
Seeya at the next one.
Cristi.

Sorry to see that my race was ruined by a terrible lagging Marko. I know he can't help it but I expected the stewards to keep an eye on things as stated at the beginning of the race. I ran into Marko twice and the second time made me lose my rearwing with a long way to go to the pits. After the repair I was 2 laps down and that was practically race over. The actual ending of the race however I did completely by myself. :-)

It was a pretty lonely race there for me. Didn't have time to practice on the track (last time i had driven it was on GTR1 with a G3 car) so neither to set it up. I think 2 secs off the pace consistenly on a 2.13 lap under thiese conditions with default setup was a very decent result today.
Winners of both categories were really fast today, congratulations.

quali went pretty crap when marko's lagging rammed me off the road at the end of my fist flying lap so i didnt get a time in and had to start from the back.
after i picked my way through the field and ended up 4th at that time and had to settle into fuel saving mode for the whole race because i doing a 1 stopped. at the end it was quite close, only had 2L of fuel left when i crossed the finish line.
great race everyone

Mark drove brilliantly, but I feel I am the only person to blame for me not winning...

I came into qualifying with little or no practice so was happy with 2nd on the grid. I was going to go for a one stopper because I calculated that with a little fuel conservation I could make it. Turned out I needed a LOT of fuel conservation, but that wasnt what lost me the race. The car was just ever so slightly too oversteery for a 3 hour race, and near the end of the first stint I had an innocent little spin that apparently was the equivolent of grenading my rear tyres. From then on I lost about 6 seconds a lap and had 4 more spins, estimated time loss: 1 minute. I came out of the pits after the stop and gunned it, I reccon I was about 2 seconds a lap quicker than Mark at this time, and I reeled him in, and the gap was down to about a minute. Unfortunatley, John Passmore left the road at les combes, and rejoined the track at about 2mph right into my path, knocking me off the track. Then I got caught behind Tom Ostry when I caught him. Estimated total time loss: 20 seconds.
In the end, Mark caught me while I was still trying to save fuel with about 7 to go. I held him back for 2 or 3 laps, but he eventually fought through, at which point I decided I had saved enough fuel and tried to keep with him (which I did for a couple of laps), but eventually span coming out of Eau Rouge. At that point I totally gave up and cruised home 10 seconds off the pace.

If I hadnt had that one innocent spin, Mark would have never got near me, but hey, thats life :-(

Cya next season!

It's hard to force a guy to quit - Event Stuart job is not always easy to do. Too bad Marko had to quit, a bad way to end a race.
This was a killer race - only 9 finished. I'm glad I was faster than Tim McArthur in a GT, lol. Wanted to quit the race plenty of times but I was hanging on to not done 3 hrs race before. I'm very dissapointed over tires performance. Hard rears were useless after 20 minutes, I got oversteer and it just got worse over time. Seems like I had wing too low - good for speed but bad for corners.
Grats to all who finished and all who almost finished.

TT

Grats to Steve and the Podium, Grats to mark and the podium,

Qualy went terrible, There was big lag that killed 2 laps for myself, not sure if i could have done better but...

Race, Made small mistake after another, For some reason S5 has bit me in every conceivable way, So I thought i would change things up and run the saleen, after all i was fired from the lambo, well it was an improvement but not good enough. Race was pretty uneventful with a couple of passes and a hairy incident nearing the bus stop, I seen a Craig and a porsche spinning and picked the middle to shoot thru as the trajectory of the porsche looked safe, Uh wrong answer, he came back into my line and I clobbered him, sorry, then my spotter yells...you got a puncture, I pit take on new dunlops and finish off my race.

Grats to everybody who competed in the GT-Open for S5.

Cya in S6

Edit: Thank You Critical Mach Motorsports for your sponsorship!!!

Good riddance to GTR2. I am done with it for at least S6 and likely longer. As Alex pulled away, the race settled into nothing more than another wrestling match between me and the Lambo. Basically, I took a knee after an off at Kung Phuhan and saw no point to it anymore.

Great series with great drivers. Thanks for the lessons and thanks to R2P for putting on the show.

George, sorry to hear of your incident with the ghost car. I did not see the first instance, but I was watching Marko during that lap prior to your contact. In fact, I had the chat typed up and ready to ask him to park in when he came out of E'Rouge. Just a few seconds too late I guess. Prior to then, Marko was fine. It all of a sudden went from fine to 5-second long freezes every 15 seconds... just horrible. I responded as quickly as I could, again very sorry.

Steve I am pleased that you finally decided to start winning again congrats!

Tom