Euro GT: Barcelona

Disco in lap 69 of 81. Friday 13th? Not happy at all.

Hmmm nice race LOL :)

I know i cheated a bit by taking 550, but i wanted to be sure to get 1st position on this race coz i wont be able to do other gtx races.

I was confident with standard setup of 550 as usual, so i came to server 20 mins before qual and made some tweaks for best performance on race.

In qualy i was fast and got pole easily.

With the race start i could keep the lead and increased gap lap by lap. After tyres got flat my lap times got equal with George's and gap stayed in 20s. After every1s pits i saw that gap increased to 40s with George and i was lapping like hell lol. I even lapped twice to 3rd. Then i saw that George discoed. Bad luck George u were going good. In last laps i was just cruising around and finished the race in first place 1 lap ahead of 2nd guy.

Thanks all for the race guys and i say bye to all with this race. I will be away for a while from simracing. Hope it wont be long :)

Damn, I was out of luck with my internet today. Like usually on such days like Friday 13th...

At least it didn't happen mid race but before, I'm just happy with that LoL.

See you in the VETTE next time, not F550 Tolga :PPPP You're already leading enough, so why bother taking the fastest car?

Coz that was my last race :P

Friday 13 indeed George:)
Great job Tolga as usual :)

This race was probably the most physically and emotionally demanding race I've experienced.

Before the race, I half-jokingly said to my teammate "You know I woke up this morning wondering 'Is today the day?'... that I'll get my first R2P win? "

It certainly didn't start out in a winning fashion. Coming out of the first turn into the S-turn I got pushed off the track into the sandpit. 8th to last in a heartbeat. The car was not damaged and more importantly I still had my wing attached. I shook it off and proceeded with just under 90 minutes of racing. To the fella that pushed me off, no apology needed. It was very crowded out of the first hairpin.

By midway thru my first fuel run I was back in 8th and by the pitwindow I was seeing 6th.

As I took 5th I was amazed how far I had come. Towards the end, I saw people's tires start to fade and some pitting for a splash of gas. Luckily I was shortshifting to save fuel. Then George disco'ed, and I eventually caught Cristi Rus. To my astonishment I was in 2nd!, and I just put her on cruise to make sure I had the fuel and tires to finish.

So I didn't win but considering the adversity I overcame, I was quite pleased.

Aw OK Tolga, didn't see ur post I guess :P

'Grats to Tolga, Charles and Cristi.

i knew i'd be even more off pace than usual in this one. i just can't find my way around a couple of the corners on this layout unless someone remembers to put out the red cones. and an unusually busy work week has prevented me from doing any practice.

add to that, 90 minutes on the Barcelona Nat'l layout in a GT car is pretty much my idea of SIM-hell, and the only thing that kept me form unregistering was the possibility of getting a point or two from attrition.

surprisingly managed 6, which i guess makes the afternoon worthwhile. and actually, it might have been even better, but for a major lapse of concentration around pit time.

my plan was to just lap comfortably, take care of my tires, run the distance on one set, and finish where ever i finished. seemed to be working pretty well, until i was distracted trying to communicate with my pit-chief while on the truncated front straight, missed my brake point, and skidded into the wall.

this lost me a bit of time, but the damage didn't seem to have too much effect on the handling. looking at my times, i see it probably cost me 1 to 1.5 sec per lap, but frankly, i was so slow that i couldn't tell the difference.

the real problem was when i was rushing thru the clipboard to tell them not to repair and not change tires, i didn't notice that fuel was only set to 10L.

wish there was a way to bring that to the crew's attention while you're still sitting there. but if there is i don't know it. they all just turned away, self-satisfied at such a quick stop and totally deaf to my screams of protest.

so i had to go around and pit again on the very next lap to take on the fuel i'd wanted on the first stop.

now all the up-side of not changing tires was gone and all the down-side remained.

toward the end of the second stint as the understeer grew, Kevin was taking big chunks out of what i thought was a comfortable gap. but the clock ran out on him.

having to rush of to work immediately afterward actually seemed refreshing after this one.

addendum:
it seems i was running with my headlights on in the second stint. sorry for that. i'd tried to flash them when being lapped but couldn't see the difference. tested a couple times after that but couldn't see a difference. figured they'd been lost in the encounter with the wall before my pitstop.

i've run out of fuel while being in 2nd .. as it was my first real race with pitstops .. I'm forgiving myself for that :)
the race was very physical .. i'll have to get used to and stop making so many mistakes