Atlantic nGT: Monza

The NGT class cars are hard to handle and my finish shows. I never really got control of this car during practice, qualifying or the race. Too bad there aren't additional options of cars for this class. I have nothing really positive to say about this class nor this race.

Congrats Ari

Congrats Ari, Conor, Heinz.
Forgot to qualify with the right setup :P. The race went well despite a 15 second lock up. Raced with Ralph K. for a good portion of the race. We had a little contact the first time we met. The second resulted in a good battle for 5+ laps ending in a clean pass down the front straight. The efforts were futile because shortly after I had the lock up. What was ironic was he locked up on last lap to let me regain 11th.

These last place to victory races are something extraordinary .. same thing happened in Euro NGT race today.

Congrats Ari, very impressive. Unlucky Conor, but what a finish.. Top class.

I am happy with the podium, race was boring in first stint after making a place down to Turn 1 and just loosing 1 second a lap to Conor till he pitted and I pulled away from battle behind me so was all alone mostly, i came out of pits infront of Conor, but a brave move saw him take it back, though i then noticed i wasnt second anymore but 3rd.. had some fun with backmarkers battling after pits .. so was waiting all the time for whoever was infront of me and Conor to pit .. ha ha ha.. was scratching my head when i realised it wasnt going to happen...

Good race, see yall next time

Grrr.... Once again I tossed away a decent finish through my pit bungling. Ran about a half dozen laps for practice this morning before work since I knew I wouldn't get it in the evening, but did it on 1X fuel use. NP, I thought; took a quick look at the telemetry when I got home tonight while munching some sushi and was using right at 2L/lap. Did my fuel calcs at 2X on that, and figured 100L for the first stint with 30L to finish it off would do fine. Nope. Of course if I'd been looking at it during the race I'd have realized I was off, but...

Had trouble getting a clean/clear lap in Qualy and ended up 10th on the grid. No worries, at least the RSR wasn't as evil as the BMW was the night before; still not comfy over the curbs, but much more agreeable.

First few laps were great in traffic, with everyone staying pretty tight and racing clean - lots of fun! Opened up a bit after that and through just staying with it I gained several spots before my pit. Did a good stop (I thought) and came out in 4th, but then had an off at 2nd Lesmo trying to lap Tom who was pushing hard and holding his line. I was trying to get him before the corner so Barry, who was behind in 5th would get balked on the exit, but it didn't go so well. Was a bit peeved at first, but that's life. And I soon realized I was going to be short on fuel anyway, which really brightened my outlook! Ran it till it was about dry, pitted again and thought I had plenty.

Experience should have taught me better! Got right to the end and almost ran out again - had to do the last lap in 6th at about 40kph and finished with 0L... Looked at motec afterwards and the darned thing was going through 5+ Liters a lap - some 2X useage!

I think I need a new engineer. My current one is a moron! And I need tutoring on that darn Della Roggia chicane. Pretty much any lap I got it right on was a 51, and most laps I lost around a second there. Maybe I need a new driver too!

Great racing tonight with Paul Devine. We diced during the first half and then had a very slight touch and I explored the sandbox for awhile. My pit stop strategy put me out in front of Paul in the second half of the race and we proceeded to dice for another five laps or so when he executed a fine pass.
His RS seemed to have some top end on my RSR (couldn't possibly been the driver, though :)). He appeared to lock up and handed a position back with about four minutes to go and then I discoed a few seconds later.

Congrats to the podium. Ari made some spectacular passes early on coming through the field. It was neat to watch even if I was one of the guys being passed.

Holy cow, that was an insane finish! Grats to you Ari, you deserved it :).

Well, I have never actually raced the GTC before in a points paying race and since I could care less about Monza and hate Porsches, I just went with the Ferrari. Got it to work pretty well in practice and was on top of the charts within minutes of arriving. The car felt great...much better than any Porsche I tried to setup so I liked my chances.

In qual, my first attempt at the pole was interrupted by crashing into Russ while he was trying to get back onto the track in Ascari. Came back in, made a few quick adjustments, came out, and finally grabbed the pole and track record :).

My initial start wasn't as good as I had planned but after a few laps, I started pulling away about a second a lap over Heinz. I thought I had this cat in the bag until pit stops where I had planned to just take fuel only. Well, I kept stalling the car after getting the fuel and wasted about 20 seconds getting the damn thing to go. It probably would have been quicker to get tires as well :(.

So after that, I wasn't sure how much ground I lost to the rest of the field. Once it was all cycled through, I saw Ari come out in front of me from his stop. Not too surprised there. A lap later, I saw Heinz come out but I wasn't going to let him stay in 2nd between Ari and I so I just dived right pass him into 1 and took 2nd back. That was with about 10 or so laps left in the race so I had time to catch Ari. It wasn't easy, but I did eventually reel him in which was kinda surprising since he was in the dominant RSR. I caught up to him with about 3 laps left and made a daring pass down the right side into T1. He stuck with me though and would always catch up to me coming out of the Lesmos where I used a weak 3rd gear. On the last lap, he was closer to me through the Lesmos so I had to position myself so he wouldn't get past me by Ascari. Well, I wasn't thinking and blocked the left side. What I should have done was stick to the right hand side down that straight so I would have the right side of the sweeper and thus, have a better angle through the final left hand corner. That's what Ari did and got past me by passing me on the outside. Smart move, but that was my fault :P.

So I chased him down the back straight and caught a little draft. I did my best to get through the Parabolica but it wasn't enough to get around him down the front straight so I was right on his bumper as we crossed the finish line...2 tenths of a second apart...close, but no cigar :P

Yes, I was kicking myself after that...I had the win in my grasps and let it get away from stupid mistakes. But that was great fun and would rather have a finish like that than a boring win I was destined to take :). That was what R2P racing is all about!

I just made it home in time, joining the server with one min to go in qualifying. And not only that, there were a few other concerning things:
-I had run no laps at Monza with any car I had planned on
-Obviously no setup ready either nor any strategy
-I had a new video card that hadn't been tested much
-GTR2XD Motec hud was misaligned on top of the original lcd
-I had to alt-tab to configure my wheel and pedals. No ctd, luckily

Not the best settings to race under. Since I knew I'd have no time for even one qual lap, I decided to go with an RSR for once. Start was quite good, I gained some places before and in T1. Sorry to Les for the little nudge when you didn't get off the grid quite so fast, cars are simply too tight here on the grid. I continued to pick off places one by one, the battles were all nice and some not so easy to win. The setup felt reasonable but not very comfortable, however at least I had the fuel consumption covered fairly well - I was just using my earlier RS estimate and setup.

When pitstops started, I had Barry in my sights and Heinz&Conor much farther ahead. Yet my stop went so well that due to not changing tires I jumped to the lead. That was surprising, I was anticipating p2-p3 after stops. Now it was Conor chasing me and he was just a few seconds behind, closing the gap little by little. My tires were quite worn and the setup was just making things worse.

You can read about the last two laps in Conor's post but after he passed me, I started pushing even harder. That last lap pass at Ascari, back to the lead, was especially sweet. I guess it was a continuation of our battle at S4 GT-open Valencia Long, nose to tail there as well.

It was nice to see fairly many other cars than Freisinger RSRs.

After watching the replay I owe a big apology to Mark Benvenuti for my conn re-sync and in the process I hammered him and didn't even know it. So sorry my friend. I was behind him in the opening laps and after re-syncing I am in front of him???? In that process he got hammered hard....My Sorries

Didn't have a real good setup for the RSR here and seriously thought about using the RS...I went ahead and chose the RSR and just fought the setup but did learn alot on the setup for the Pacific race.

Had a real sh!tty start cause of the long first gear. I lost several positions right off the bat and not only fighting the setup but struggling just to stay in the top 10 I fought my way to a 4th place finish and was just plain uncomfortable the whole time but i'll take 4th in this gang'o guys. Another fine job by Ari coming from the back and winning by what I see as a very tight finish. Congrats to the podium.