Atlantic nGT: Barcelona

Con-grats to Ari, Dennis and Barry. The best part of the race for me was following Barry H. and Scott around watching the battle. It was great racing and I hope I stayed out of your guy's way.

After what seems like 5 days at Barcelona I have gaining a whole new respect for this place. Its still a toss up for me as to which one tarck is better GTR2 or rFactor.

I'll see some of you guys later tonight at the same track for round two......

Good Race Qualified 4th and finished as such.Good start. Followed Barry H. for half a race until I pit. Didn't want to press a move early on. Ran consistent the rest of the race. Needed 1 more lap to fight for podium. Need to work on pitting. Congrats Ari

Horrible race for me,
Was too unprepared, (only noticed during the warm up that I had been running only half a tank during practise then wasn't sure if I could make a one stop etc)
Only managed to get two qualifying laps in and both were poor so was surprised to see i qualified mid field in 12th.
Drove through the slight bit of trouble and the start on the first lap, but had two spins early on that landed me 18th (and dead last?) which was annoying.
Then i started getting lapped, and when the 3rd and 4th place guys cam up on me they suddenly disappeared from my rear view mirror, I knew I had lag so tried to calmly drive off the track so as to not obstruct them, waited for a couple of seconds in the gravel but there were no cars anywhere to be seen, so esc'd back to the pits and sure enough after a few seconds lost connection altogether.
Most Frustrating, I had some lag and one lost connection early on in practise, but then everything seemed fine.
Shame.

One more DNF to add my tally, courtesy of a blowed-up Ferrari. At least I got some seat time before it went, so that was nice; I need it!

Barely got into Q once again and chose the Ferrari, for some reason thinking it was familiar, but then the only local setup I could find was from Estoril. Turns out now that I looked, the NGT race back in March is the only time I've done the series, and hadn't been in the 360 since then. DOH! Not only that, I couldn't remember whether it was just 2X fuel use or 2X tires too, and when I tried to go out in Q I promptly ran right into the wall at T1 since I didn't notice it was the national course. Nice... ;-)

Who cares I figure, I'm wanting to race! Got away DFL in 20th and tip-toed through a very slow lap one to avoid any possible contact, then tried to work my way into it. Had to relearn the track and car in the race, but having cars to follow helped and I was up to mid pack pretty quick. Had a couple of bad (and atypical) PC stutters for some reason early and had minor offs as a result, but otherwise I enjoyed getting back into the business of finding some pace. Had some nice racing along the way, particularly with George, Les and Todd, and pitted from 6th on lap 31. Didn't know what to do about tires or fuel, so I took all 4 and 100L. Loooonnng stop; made for a 2:38 lap with Motec showing me dead stopped for a full 1:10. I'm guessing now that the ticket was no tires, seeing Ari's smoking 1:55 pit lap. Not overfilling the heck out of the car would have helped too. C;est la vie.

Finally rejoined in 12th and gradually worked my way back up to 9th by lap 42 when the motor let go without warning. I'd vaguely remembered the Ferrari was prone to that (blew in Estoril too) so I'd dropped a few hundred rpms off the rev limit in the setup and tried to be sure to lift for my shifts, but I it apparently wasn't enough. Guess it's Porsche from now on; judging from the proliferation of them in the field there must be some reason almost everyone's in one!

Summary; my race sucked every way from Sunday. But it was a race, meaning I still had fun. Next please!

For me this was a difficult race because I had problems from the gitgo. Couldn't log on to server for a long time and therefore had little practice time as a result. My qualifier was slow because I was nervous and the car was sliding bad. The race was like driving on ice (bad setup because of last minute changes). Went into the pits after two spins to change rubber and accidently gave myself a DNF by hitting escape (whoops!). Oh well, next time I will know better, see ya in Germany for the GT on the 21st.