Historic F1: Longbeach

very disappointing.

Wow, Awesome

Grats To David on a great Win, Grats to Mike on the Can Am sweep of the podium.

I really like this track and just as much all of the competitors that show up for this series, everybody drives courteous and clean, this is what sim racing is suppose to be about.

My race started out cautiously, from P3 i found myself P5 by turn 2, I chipped away at burning off the fuel and keeping the tire temps in check and my laps being consistent 22's and knowing this will take care of itself come the checkered flag and it did.

I had a good battle with peter in the early going but it appeared he used up his rear tires b/4 1/4 way, I had been placing big pressure on him and he graciously gave me an un-fought pass, I had another from Tommy and Ray, Like i said earlier, its a great sim with great racers.

Thanks, Cya in Osterreichring

BTW...I cant wait for Monaco

i bottomed out on the curbing and got stuck, and my motor burned up..... congrats BANTA!

well, coming up to today, i had not done much driving, period. but today was my day off and i spend a good amount of it practicing just to get the feel back. not only that, but my paddles were acting up again, so i had to go with the stick shifter again. thank goodness this track only has 3 places you really need to shift gears.

I somehow qualified on the pole, with an ok lap.

In the race, i got a great start and never looked back. but my car didn't drive right, it had a nasty little push on turn in, just enough to make it hard to handle. see as i set the fastest lap of the race, i think lots of people had simillar issues. my whole race was just a test of me holding my concentration, just like Brianza last season. but this time i held onto it, just barely, unlike brianza last season. It's my first win of the season and i feel like the monkey from Brianza is finally off my back.

Congrasts to all the Team Can Am drivers, we took the podium once again and have all but lock up the team title, which is whats most importaint.

At least I survived a race!
I sneaked into 3rd by turn 1 (4th?) and was holding a constant gap to Mike, and then I had Jeff breathing down my neck. I knew he was faster but I was just maintaining enough speed to keep him at bay.

After quite a few laps, when he got to within 0.4secs I moved right on the back straight and slowed down to let him pass......and 2 seconds wasted later he was still not there and passing! sigh
It seems he had trouble coming onto the back straight and that was about how much time he lost, because when I resumed full racing he was right behind me again then! The bad part was that it had allowed Steve to be right behind him and then if I allowed a pass I would lose two spots!
So the racing resumed, and I was holding them up a bit I am sure.

Somewhere I clipped the right rear wheel on a wall ever so lightly and it flicked the front right wheel to lightly clip it also, but it stuffed the suspension notably anyway!
By then Steve had crashed out (?) and I let Jeff past very soon after that.

So from then on it was a tough battle with a 30deg steering offset and a rear end that could not accelerate fully, and a front end that would not turn left! It was tough to even run full accel down the main straight - the car trying to kick the rear sideways and crab down the road a bit.
But somehow I managed to lap just fast enough to hold off Anthony who was a constant close gap behind me and any tiny error would have seen my 5th position lost!!
PHEW!

Well done Peter. Not sure when you got your damage, but I did the same thing on lap 22 going into turn 9. Damaged the steering. After that you just pulled back away from me.
It was a good run and looking forward to the next event.

A fraught race, as Sam Posey would say... ;-) Came out decent in the end, mainly through suffering a bit less misfortune than some others. In fact, knowing how unforgiving street races are in this series is the only thing that kept me in it; glad I stuck it out!

Knew practice would be limited to non-existent in the evening so I thought I'd grab a short bit before heading to office in the morning. Used the same car/set as last time here for expediency and was in the 21's in two laps, so I parked it.

Qualy was hampered a bit by traffic and choosing to sacrifice a couple of laps to lag back hoping for clear track, but 5th was fine with 30 laps to sort it out. Then I utterly hosed the start; I was expecting sequential lights and flaked out big-time on the quick red/green transition. Sat there like a zombie and lost three spots into T1 as a result.

Spent the first lap behind Aubrey looking for a way 'round, and thought I had it when he half-spun to a stop on braking into T1 at the start of lap 2. But just when I thought I was going to squeeze by on the inside, he popped the clutch and we collided. Our collision spun him around and hosed my car, throwing the front suspension out of whack and knocking the front wing off. Got going again in 12th really pissed; not at Aubrey but just at having bent the car so early, since it now had about a 30-degree steering offset, a reluctance to turn left and a high-speed push.

If it had been bent the other way I'd have parked it, but since the track was clockwise with a lot of slow corners it was manageable; just had to remember to compensate and use twice as much lock going left as right. As I figured would happen, others ran into trouble of various sorts along the way and I gradually picked up places. Was surprised to be able to get some 22's out of the car the way it was driving, but it took a lot of effort and adjustment in approach. Finally made it into 4th and saw a 27-second gap up to 3rd, so I knew that was as far as I'd get. Just tried not to screw up from there, and managed to bring a somewhat-worse for-wear Ligier and its well-cooked driver home in 4th, looking for a beer. ;-)

Really enjoy this series and am very much looking forward to the update to the mod with corrected suspension geometry and all the other changes. RealFeel FF should be great with these when they get 'em sorted!

Peter, We all set our cars up differently, most say my set-ups are junk, I sacrifice a corner or two to get stability elsewhere, the section you are talking about is where my set-up doesn't fare well, my car is loose on entry and pushes like a pig on exit, but it does very well elsewhere, Thanks for the courtesy.

I had run 1:19.9 on Q tires in practice, so I was dissappointed in qualifying. Had a clean track on both runs but just couldn't put a complete lap together.

I started well and held P3. I was just starting to get warmed up to try to push Steve for P2 when he had an incident of some sort, which gave me the spot.

I didn't have anything for David so my goal was just to stay ahead of P3. I could see (on the timing display) Peter and Jeff and Steve all bunched up for 3-4-5, and I managed to get about 8 sec ahead of that group. I was pretty happy.

But the car felt weird all race. I felt like I was taking it easy but the tires just would not cool down. My race laps were .5 to 1 sec slower than practice. Actually my qual laps were slow too. I think I was just a little slow last night.

Anyways, with about 4 laps to go, it finally bit me and I had a very gentle half spin into the outside wall between 9 and 10. Pranged the front wing but everything else was OK. Jeff got by for P2 and pulled about 4 sec ahead. I was able to get within 2 sec by the finish but couldn't quite catch him.

I would have liked the extra points for 2nd, but I'm pretty happy to be on the podium considering how bad I screwed up! Congrats to David and Jeff on the 1-2, and hats off to everyone who had the cojones to take on this track in these cars!

Congrats podium. Good race for 10 laps for me. Then I got stuck on the wall and flung myself into the pit divider! Dissapointed with the DNF but was glad to see a larger field for this one!! See you next time.