Atlantic G2: Dubai

I finally convinced myself to use my race setup in qualy and it paid off. I made it up to 3rd at the start. Sounds easy, but that is a tough group at the top! I pushed really hard the first half of my first stint trying to keep up with George and Ari. George disco'd and froze at the left hander on top of the wiggly chicane. I inherited 2nd and let Ari go. My pushing at the beginning ate my left side tires and Scott was right on my bumper. Very interesting to see the weaknesses/strengths between the BMW & Porsche. Scott (BMW) would catch me on the long high speed turns, about equal in the med speed turns and the Porsche would pull away at the straight. We had a great battle and fought for a long time for 2nd. I made a mistake and drifted wide on the long left hander in the middle of the track and Scott eased underneath to take my spot. After our 1st pitstop, Scott was about 7s ahead of me and I couldn't gain on him.
I ran the middle stint all alone! I only saw one or two cars the entire run. After the last pitstop, Scott had about an 11s lead on me so I just cruised until the end.

Very fun race. EVERYONE was extremely courteous on track, very professional. Aplause to ALL.

Great finish for CanAm! 3,4,5 - that should help in the points!

Well O Well- Discoed out again hmmm. She just froze on lap 2 with teamie Dennis right behind me. Hope no one had damage or an off because of it.

Congrats Ari and the team for bringing it home...good job guys finishing 3rd 4th and 5th :-)

Well that was exciting. It started with me hitting John Mueller. Sorry John. I was trying to follow the mosler on the inside and you closed that door in a hurry. I didnt have time to back off. After pulling over and waiting for you fell back to 18th. Took damage and the car was all over the place. Settled in untill first pit. After the repair, the car felt good again. After the second pit found myself in 11th with 10th place (Russ Spencer) coming out of the pits right in front of me. He tried a little to hard to stay in front of me with cold tires, but settled in behind me. Since Russ is a clean driver I knew I didnt have to worry about getting punted. Last lap, Russ did you hit the power booster or what? All of a sudden he passed me and it was over. So when we crossed the finished line I rammed him....LOL...
Congrats to the podium....

Well, fun race tonight.

Had a good start and was ready to poke my nose between first and second and out of nowhere Garrett (who had a FANTASTIC start) cruises right past me.

After that it became a waiting game. I could see Garrett was have problems under braking as he was pushing to catch the leaders and I was happy enough to cruise in fourth as long as I kept opening a bigger lead on fifth.

Eventually, Barry discoed and that left it to Garrett and I to battle for second.

Sure enough I didn't have prayer on the straights and had a few scary moment nearly running onto Garrett's back bumper on the long, sweeping right hander. I kept the pressure up, but despite deteriorating tires Garrett wouldn't brake.

Finally, I think the tires just got to be too much, Garrett locked up his left rear entering the mid-lap left hander and I was able to sneak past him.

I opened up a second and a half or two second gap after a couple laps, Garrett pitted and that was the end of some of the better and more fun racing I have had here.

Thanks, Garrett.

Congrats to Ari.

Thanks to everyone else as well. Great race.

Well,what am i doing in this biturbo,car felt great to drive at Magny and Anderstorp but a real chore at Imola and Dubai.Just no fun to drive atm,just struggle with it from start to finish.I guess an 8th from 16th on the grid is reasonable,but i need to get this thing going again.

That was so much fun - -
my tires really didnt kick in till around 7 to 8 laps on them - mediums all the way around
and to Michael Liley - that last 3 laps behind you was cool- i had to wait and wait till the last minute to make a move - this track has been pretty good to me -
congradulations to the winner and podium finishes - and thanks to the faster cars for the patience in passing - holy crap you guys were flying with 1.24 laps and better -
i was full of energy at the end of this event - glad to snag a top ten - weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

edit/ and thanks alot Michael for the compliment !

First off, congrats to Ari for cruising it on a different level than the rest of us, and to the rest of the top five. Well done!

My race was a comedy of errors, begun right before Q when I tripped over my headphone wire, yanking it out of the PC and breaking the socket in the back of my sound card. Great! Managed to wedge the now-bent plug in and brace it (with a shoe!) and got the sound to work in time for some Qualifying laps. Oh well, was thinking of getting a new sound card - Now seems like a good time... ;-) Put in a decent Q lap in spite of the troubles; not great but a good one for me and enough for 3rd.

Anticipated the start really well and almost ran into Ari so I had to back out and go again. Still had enough of a run on George to go into 2nd, and then almost blew it when cold brakes had me going very deep into T1. Ari wisely saw it and stayed clear on the outside, and I managed to hold it and came out in 1st. Wasn't planning that, but I figured I'd take it for as long as it lasted.

I knew Ari was bound to go by sooner or later, so I just tried to be steady while the tires came in and not make any big mistakes. Problem was my setup was loose off the slower corners and I got into a big tank slapper off the last turn. Ari got enough of a run to go by into T1 - order restored... ;-)

Tried to hang onto him but got loose again off the next to last corner and slo-mo slid into the wall nose first. Mashed the front end in and even though I could continue after that, the car was a dog and over a second a lap slower. Dumb mistake, and costly!

Utterly trashed the tires after that trying to make the car go quicker than it wanted to and had to pit on lap 14. Got fronts only and went back out, hoping to get some decent laps in. But the rears were so far gone I was counting down the 5 laps until I could pit again, which I did on lap 19. Seeing as how it was going to be a long run, I took all four (med/hard) and went back out to see what I could salvage. Somewhere along the way I spun off in the same corner again and mushed the front some more. One of those nights!

Since I was good to go to the finish, I was curious to see how far up I'd get when everyone cycled through their pitstops. I made it up as far as 5th, but Dennis was soon behind me. Tried to race with him at first, but with 16-17 laps on the tires at that point, it was pointless. So I eased over and concentrated on trying to hold onto 6th. The last five laps were just holding on and trying not to go off, since the grip was long gone. Ugly, but it did the job - a hard earned 6th from 3rd on the grid.

Good quali in 2nd ... was running in 2nd and slowly increasing the gap to 3rd when ...... the game frooze again.
Was really pissed about that. A win in the euro-race and now a DNF. :-( Still don't know what casuses it. Coretemps are ok. Had to manually shut down the pc and tried to do that asap cos I knew I was frozen at a difficult spot. Sure hope no-one got into trouble by that. Grats to the guys on the podium.

Les lamont and i had a great battle for about 40 minutes, until the game got minimized from some stupid popups that have been infesting my pc for the last week or two. i cannot get rid of them, and a clean install is imminent because of it. While the race lasted, i had an error-free run and i was pushing 100% to catch Les, he had the same race, as our difference never exceeded the 2 second mark. Got him in the pits twice, gaining about a second each time, it was a blast LES!!!

Also the start was kinda cool, as i gained 3 spots before the end of the straight

WOOHOO!!!
Boooo for results and popups :(

Another lost connection in gtr 2!I thought perhaps everyone else left so I could finally get a top 20 finish.lol.
Very frustrating!!