Atlantic G2: Monza

Heh, My first race is now behind. :P

I was 6th before the first stop but I screwed the pit stops and got one stop & go cause of speeding in the pits.

How do you do the stops? Do you change tires on every stop or what kind of tactics do you use?

No complaints really... From dead last, not having a chance to qualify because i was in waiting list for the password to arrive. Barely made it to quali with 50 seconds to go. gained 6 spots by turn 1 and 2, then it was just charge! Overtook several guys, saw about 3 spinning in front of me, did my pit stops with no incident on laps 14 and 20. I was shooting for a top 5. But ended up in 2nd!!!

Really, i had a consistent race with no mistakes. After the 2nd pit stop the car balance was terrible for about 5 laps. I decided to load softs on the front, while running worn mediums in the rear. That made my car very unpredictable in mid-corner and unstable in braking. I fixed the braking by moving the brake bias to the front a little, then it was a matter of time to wear the softs to get that balance back.

WOOHOO!!!

I had a horrible start.

Note to self: Don't use such a tall 1st gear.

I was trying to stop the bleeding from then on and summarily got punted at Variante della Roggia. I waited for the field to go by and re-joined in last. On the next lap, I came up on a spun car in the race line at the same Variante. Instead of sitting still, the car pulled out and spun me. Score: 2-0 for Monza. I then fell in behind K Inkman and had a great run on him down the front straight. With a head of steam and about 20 mph top end on him, he pulled over in front of me. Kevin, I don't know if you saw me or not, but I had no time to react. We hit and spun. 3-0. Things settled down for a bit and I had a good 1st stop. On my second lap out, I came up behind the leader who obviously had not pitted. I was much faster, but he kept blocking me. Bad move. I was attempting very professional passes on you when you decided to weave in front of me and flash your lights. From then on I tried to work my way into the top 10. Things were looking good until Ari put me a lap down on my pit exit. He split Les and me so I knew 9th was going to be tough as I would miss a lap. I had a good time all in all.

Esa. When you enter the pits make sure you have speed limiter on. When your car stops, you will get a pit-board menu. you can use your arrow keys to go up down and change options. The least amount of time spent in the pits is to change only 2 tires at a time. you use the up/down arrows to go to the desired tire (front/rear) and select "no change" for one. then press enter.

on the 2nd pit stop, you do the same for the other tire.

practice it offline, its fun!

Well, 14th position was in site until an over anxious lead lapper gave a nudge with a few laps to go and I ended up limping around for a 17th place finish.

Congrats Ari

oh yaaaaa - wow all that was a blast
good racen to all and nice n clean
congradulations to the podiums !!!

Wow ... I cant believe i got a front row start P2!! .. i was really not expecting my pace to be so quick...

Tried not to let Ari get away in first laps and put some pressure on Ari in P1, cold tyres got him on L2, unlucky bro, but this meant i led my first ever R2P race for 14 laps and pulled what i thought was going to be a race winning 6 second gap!!

Pitstops were disasters, instead of changing one set of tyres in first stop, it changed both :( working that pitboard after 15 laps of racing is a nightmare, your head is somewhere else and clock is ticking!!.. spun coming out of pits on first chicane, Spun again before second pits stops. I had some issues with backmarkers also made one mistake getting passed Gregg Mulgrew, my fault dude, not yours, i lost my sense of track position in the braking zone..

Got second stop right, but i had lost so much time, Had a fight to the death with John Mueller coming out of pits into 1st chicane, I hope you are not mad at me, i thought it would be terrible to block so i just stuck to the right and it was a fight for position under braking.. sorry you lost your car bud :( and then it was just a charge to see how many places i could get back ..

Good race .. coming away with a podium and FL is good enough for me..

Cheers see you all again

Well that wasnt a very good race for me. But still had fun.

@ Garret D. I did see you behind me jsut before we made contact, but i had to brake for the car in front of me and didnt really know how much overtake you had on me. Just a racing accident.

@ Daniel Montour sorry about making contact with you upon my re-entry to the track. I just plain didnt see you when i looked before re-entering.

I was ready to call it quits before I started this one, I switched cars at the last minute and could not get a rhythm IN PRACTICE! The M3 setup just would not handle any rumble strip, frustrated I went on and took a setup from Mike Lilly (thank you) and went out to qualify 14th not really pleased because I was almost as fast in the G3 Viper last night!!
The start was wild, I knew there were some new names and man were they aggressive going into T 1, I made a few positions but thought best to weasel my way out of there. During the first stint there was some close racing for several laps but then you could sense the field spreading a bit, I found myself in some close racing with Charles Hodges, good driving Charles, I was hoping to stay closer but the car was too unbalanced after some tire wear.
Overall hoping to get into the top ten would have been nice but I had to short shift for a bit thinking I was going to run out of petrol, so 11th was not to shabby.
Great race up front Ari, Bobby and Hienz cheers!!

Man, that was a lot more work than fun. Sucking requires a lot of effort!

Don't know exactly what I did to hose the car, since it was mostly the same as it was at the last XG2 race (wherever that was). Just took some wing off and raised the ride height for the curbs, but ended up with bad high-speed oversteer and a car that was super unstable over the curbs, wanting to snap spin at every chance. A handful!

Qualified better than I was in 7th, so I was over my head on the first lap trying not to lose it and mess anyone up. Was completely clueless in the chicanes and lost a bunch of spots in them early, then almost took Charles out under braking into Parabolica after recovering from a near crash at Ascari. Had the brake pedal floored but could see I was going to hit him, so I went up onto the curb and thankfully just spun off by myself. Close one!

Got going again in 20th by a long way and had to fight the urge to park it since I was so far from finding the handle. But I stuck it out and had a few enjoyable moments, although I again blew my pit stops. First one, I forgot to nuke the fuel and ended up wasting time there. Then on the second stop I must've not completely hit the limiter since it didn't come on and I got a stop-go for speeding. Not only that, I got flustered by the penalty and in haste hit soft fronts. Not a good bet with worn hards on back and a car that was already oversteering!

At first, merely turning in would break the rear end loose, and I was sure I'd spin it. But I only had about nine laps to go at that point, so I just held my breath and tiptoed around until the fronts gave up enough that the balance was tolerable again. Any progress from that point was more from others' misfortune as any pace from me. Was counting the laps wanting that one to be over!