USA PPRC: Silverstone

Plenty of horsepower but not enough brainpower. Sorry Tommy for the contact on lap 1. Great job by Barry H. to pick up the pieces!

A very fun race! Congratulations to Barry for keeping it together for the whole distance. I rarely saw you put a foot wrong while I was following. Cheers, mate.

I will switch to the 911 after I manage the Panoz to an overall win. It's only a matter of time, gents... beware! :-)

Well,that did my championship hopes no good.Poor qual,just didn't get a clear lap in.The start was good,picked up a couple of sports,then Tommy G got a touch on me which crossed me up a bit and then someone else made contact with me before i got it sorted and i went into the wall.The dumb spotter said only minor damage and no need to pit but with the front spoiler gone i had to pit.

This was my first real race with my Logitech G25 and Bob Earl Racing race frame, and even though I struggled from practice through the race, this was without a doubt the best learning experience ever. All the 900 degrees of rotation let you interpret the FF much better and make more precise corrections, the frame lets you mash the brake and modulate it more precisely without worrying about them pushing away from you, and the shifter was just another challenge to throw in there. I'm SO excited for the coming races!

As for the actual race, well, I sucked. I struggled to find speed during practice, had a frustrating qual with some traffic (not that I had too much more speed anyway), and then for the race, I had a spin in the first lap while making up lots of places, and then I eventually got a deserved drive through for course cutting. This was just due to a lack of understanding of the rules. I didn't know what the exact rules were for course cutting, but knowing the 2 wheels rule, you can clearly see I was blatantly violating it in the chicane. However, my spin and my penalty did give me the chance to have lots of great battles. I spun once in frustration after the penalty, and almost hit the escape key, but I'm glad I didn't.

So, I had an awful finish, got lapped for the first time ever, and got my first penalty, but I'm pretty happy and optimistic.

First rFactor race. Overall was good. A few over aggressive drivers, had to let them pass. All was good in the end as I was able to run clean and eventually catch all but one of the fullbacks.

My first race with PPRC and a win! WOOT

first lap turn 1 I was where I quallied in 3rd place and following Mike and Tommy C. when they both went sideways and around they went which handed me the lead. I never would have been able to keep up with them as they were the fasted out there. That put me in 1st and Tristan in 2nd and he stayed on my 6 for most of the race when I see Tommy C. catching both of us and luckily him and Tristan got to racing and allowed me to stretch some gap on them. Eventually Tommy got around Tristan and was running me down fast but he ran out of time.

Good job with my team mate Mike Waltz for coming in 3rd after that spin giving CanAm a good total finish :-)

I spun right in front of the leaders coming off the final turn and for that I am very sorry. Went wide to give you room on the line and just a tad too much throttle later I was seriously thinking my forst race on R2P was going to end in NEVER COME BACK! Glad all was well in the end. COngrats to the winners. I have nowhere to go but up from here, lol.

Wow that was intense.
Qual'd second, took Waltz at the lights and led thru T1 and the esses. Felt a *bang* from behind and now I'm sliding backwards, looking at Waltz who is also sliding backwards in a syncronized pirouette. Damn there goes the lead.

Got back on as quickly and cleanly as I could, somewhere about 5th I think, passed back up to 3rd, and end up right behind ... Tristan. :-) Oh here we go, it's on again buddy! lol

Once again we have an average driver in a faster car, vs a gifted driver in a beast. Being quite familiar with the differences between the GTS and PCC cars I tail him for a bit, and see that Barry H is not getting away, so I feel good about running him down with 17 laps left.

I sized Tristan up and once again realized that even tho I'm a second a lap faster, I just don't know how I'm ever going to get around him, but I start trying. I wanted to do it cleanly and without contact, and had several close calls as I aborted mid-attempt several times. Thought I had him about at halfway at the double lefts at the end of the course, but when he turned in I realized that I was going to center punch him, and so I deliberately yanked my wheel left and self spun to the inside of the turn, taking myself out instead of taking him out.

So now I'm 8 seconds down after I recover, less than 10 laps to go. I run him down again, starting to get desperate as time is running out to reach Barry. I saw an opportunity to outbrake him on the inside of the buttonhook right hander and went for it, but misjudged by about 6 inches. My left front just tagged his right rear.

Crap. A quick glance at the running order showed that we had a 20 sec gap on the next group, which were all Porsche's anyway, and since we're not actually racing each other for race position he was winning the Panoz class by a huge margin. I figured no real harm done then, and set off to reel Barry in for the last 2 laps. Got within 1 sec, damn just one more lap Barry ...

Sorry Tristan. It's not going to be long until he wins one of these outright in a Panoz, maybe next week at Neurburg Sprint. Anyone want to start a pool?

It seems my Trois Riviers setup was all wrong for this track. Spent the practice session fiddling with the setup. When practice ended, I was stunned to find the only way I could quickly dial out the understeer was to completely remove the front bar. Wasn't about to do that, so I decided to just live with the massive understeer, which made for some interesting racing.

The short first gear caught me by surprise, so didn't get one of my usual flying starts, but I managed to gain several positions by just avoiding various sliding cars on the first lap. Spent the rest of the race defending. Had an amazing moment with Gary Miller when we went side-by-side thru something like 4 or 5 corners! He didn't pass me then, I could just hold him off, but it was great watching him in my mirrors trying to plan his next move, always trying something a little different. I swear I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. :) And he eventually figured it out to take 2nd in style. Well done!

Like Aubrey said, he and I had a GREAT race. During practice and qualy I didn't think that I would have a prayer of coming away with a good finish on this track, as I couldn't quite come to grips with how to make the Panoz go quickly here. My race with Aubrey was set up when a few cars in front of me at the start would make small mistakes, and I'd manage to get by. I enjoyed a close race with Jim Barisoff for several laps at the start, only managing to get by when he braked a bit too late for the turn leading onto the back straight...he would recover and hound me for the rest of the race, though.

Once I moved up to third, I managed to slowly gain ground on Aubrey, but I just couldn't find a way to get by, even after several laps of trying everything that I might have expected to work on other drivers...Aubrey was just too quick on corner entry, managing to carry more speed into the turn and thus accelerate out from a higher speed. So that set up a very intense race for me, trying to figure out how I could set up a pass, while struggling to keep the beast of a car on the track and close enough to Aubrey to be able to make a move if the opportunity presented itself.

Aubrey and I went side-by-side through numerous turns, including more turns in succession than I could count, with Jim Barisoff closing the distance back to fourth with each lap, but I wasn't able to make any of these attempts cleanly stick.

After several laps of trying to set up a pass in just about every corner on the track, it became clear that I was going to have to put more planning into this pass than any I can ever remember, and set up the pass about 4 corners before it would actually happen. I had never been in a position to do that before, and I was surprised by how much more enjoyable it made the race. Great fun, and huge thanks to Aubrey for racing me clean the whole way. I didn't come into this race expecting it to be my most enjoyable one yet, but it certainly turned out that way. Good stuff!