Mobil 1 6 Hours of Sebring

I had two days of hard practice to get up to speed (my speed, not Conor's) after a year and a half off from sim-racing. Conor and I settled on a setup that he was very fast in an I could control enough to, hopefully, give him an un-damaged car after each stint.

Stint 1
Conor ran the first hour and I stepped in for hour #2. I couldnt believe how nervous I was for the first 20 minutes or so. I was lapping 3-4 seconds off what I could do but I wasnt ready to step it up just yet. I felt quite nervous any time another car was around me. I needed to build up my confidence before I started lapping faster. After 30 minutes I was feeling it and started hunting out the 1:56's I know I am capable of. I was giving up a second a lap to Barry in the Saleen, but Conor gave me a car with a 50 second lead so I had time to burn. After the 32 laps of my stint I was very pleased; No damage to the car, no spins, and we still had a 30+ second lead over Barry and Garret in the Saleen.

Had two scares; One in T-17 with two PT cars nearly blocking the track after spinning. This while letting another PT car pass me to the inside... I lost 3 seconds to our rivals there. Another was a local caution in sector 1 after a GT2 car spun which prompted me to goof up all me gear changes for 15 seconds. Fun stuff though...

Half way through Conor's 2nd stint (hour 3) his wheel started dismounting itself from his desk. Here I am, under his desk with tools, re-tightening bolts. It was cool :-)

Stint 2
The fourth hour was much tougher with the sun setting an what seemed to be a constant stream of P-cars lapping me. I just could not find and consistency all stint long. One off due to losing concentration and and another bigger one due to a rear brake lockup. Fatigue is setting in, but the car is still perfect an without a single scratch. The car actually gets better as the tires wear... amazing Vette.

I gave the car over to Conor with a 2-lap lead over the next GT1 car (George Pol) after Hedrick and Diduck had some problems.

Final stint
It was supper sloppy, but I made it although with extreme fatigue. Numerous minor mistakes every lap but I got to drive it to the checkered flag which becomes my first sim-racing win since Oct 18th, 2008 (oh god!).

Fantastic racing from all, I am super impressed.

Did we have server setting problems? Driver swaps was a joke due to the fact that my team mate John v d Geest just could not get our setup we have worked on. This was set/saved as only setup and named the same + asigned by both of us.. Still John gets the default setup, 60 liters and supersofts!! yaay!! Needed to run 1 lap, go in pit to make changes to car and come out way behind.

Any other got this problem?

Ending with a Congratz to podium in all four classes!
Well done guys!!

Apart from my arms giving up on the second part of the race, I got very happy with the race :D

Qualify was better than expected. My main worry was qualify the Oreca ahead of the GT1s. Impossible mission since Conor was racing ;D, but at the end a 1:54:4, better time I did since the first practices, and only 0.4 secs from Paulo.

The start of the race was awesome for me. Paulo slept a bit on the green flag and I passed them before the first turn. With it I could define my own pace, and run calm most of the time.

I just don't believed how I managed the 2 first stints. Maybe the most consistent 2:30 hours of my sim racing carrer. 1 little 5 secs spin :P, but no damage and a car better every new lap on the stint.

The race was doing great for me, except for my body. My wrists were already in pain, so as my arms. Had to do a stop of +-15 mins for eat something and take some care on the wrists. My gap of almost 2 laps to Paulo then turned into a 7 lap deficit.

The follow stints had all the problems I didn't had on the 1st two. 20 mins After the return to the track i kissed the wall on T1 and lost the front body of the car. A forced pit stop for repair, but good on one side cause 1 more stop and I could take the car to the end.

After this one I ran almost a full stint, the gap to Paulo was diminished to a 4 lap deficit, but I smashed the front of the car on the tires at turn 2 or 3, not sure. Then the car turned to shit, losing 2 seconds every lap. Thought better to take a break again, since catch Paulo was a impossible task now, and I had nothing to lose, the 2 other PCs were already retired.

Congrats to all class winners, and in special to all iron men that did 6 hours of solo driving, like Paulo, Nik, Marcos, Petry, Anton, Matt, George. Wish I had your stamina guys :D (Marcos is from other planet, he ran the Formula RaceRoom before and then full 6 hrs, amazing!!)

After this one is more than clear for me that if I have ambitions to win a big enduro race, I will need a partner. Nothing else. Not healthy for me to do more than 4 hours on a race.

See you guys at Long Beach.

First, apologies to Garret for our contact at the exit of Sunset Bend. I thought you knew that I was alongside you. I had nowhere else to go but the wall.

I am completely exhausted. And sore.

Great racing by everyone for 6 long, hard hours.

Neil qualified the car (9th) and handled the first stint well, getting the car back up among the lead group. I took over after he ended his stint and just tried to keep the car on track without damaging it. Which worked, for the most part, until my in-lap when Neil was about to take back over. I misjudged a braking point and nosed the car into the tire barrier at Turn 13, completely buggering the left-front suspension. Limped back to the pits for damage repair and driver swap.

My second stint was better up until the contact with Garret coming out of Sunset. Nothing much to report outside of a couple of unforced errors here and there.

Third and final stint was also uneventful, with the exception of two or three spins. As it got darker, the corners got harder and harder to pick out, until the track lighting finally came on and provided some much needed illumination. Then all I had to do was bring the car home in one piece, which I'm happy to say that I did.

All in all, a good day and I'm happy to finish 9th. On to Montreal!

Congrats to all the winners and podium finishers. And thanks to the GT and PC drivers, you all did well being lapped.

Fun race despite the lackadaisical numbers in attendance in both GT classes and LMPC (although P2 looked strong!).

I knew going in that working with the lofty site admin who's been away from proper endurance sim racing for years was going to be no easy task. The first few hours of testing on Friday were somewhat comical but promising because Tim started to get the hang of the car after what seemed like hundreds of laps of testing (and spinning....and crashing). We dialed in the car quite effectively over the past couple of days and made it very comfortable for the both of us, which is quite a feat in itself since we do not share the same driving style. Eventually, he was able to drive lap times within two seconds of mine which would suffice for the race.

Regarding the race itself, I don't have much to add. My end of the strategy was to extend the lead as much as possible without sacrificing the fuel mileage (Vette gets lousy MPGs). This forced me to run boost 1 the entire race which, luckily, kept us within our pit stop strategy. Tim was more or less free to do what he wanted because even with increased boost, he was still more efficient than me and within the needed fuel parameters. All he had to do was keep it on track and out of trouble.

I was quite impressed with the traffic behavior throughout the race. I didn't have too many issues nor did I see very many accidents related to car-to-car contact. I did have a close call late in my last stint where a GT2 slowed up some P-cars in front of me, causing me to take evasive action on the outside of the corner. Other than that and my wheel loosening itself off my desk, it was a fairly trouble-free race for both of us.

Tim brought it home with a car that neither spun nor took on damage. After six hours on this torturous track, I am quite pleased with that accomplishment.

Grats to the other class winners and to those that finished (especially those that ran the whole six hours...crazy fuckers!)

See ya next time.

Congratulations to Paulo Martins on his first win at R2P

Thanks :)
And it was in a special race :)

The qualify was better than I thought. I took pole with some good advantage of Felipe Anzolin.
But in race all was different. F. Anzolin had a very good race pace and my lack of top speed was definitely bad! So I was in third after 5 laps behind Team Middleton. They got some problems and DNF so I was able to get 2nd position.
I tried just to keep focus and dont get tired because there still was a lot of time to finish the race. Then F. Anzolin made a very very long pit stop. Thought that he had high damage but no, he was resting because he could handle the 6 hours in a row which is perfectly normal.
So I just need to drive the car untill the end. Last hour was bad! My eyes were crying and my legs shaking! Made a lot of mistakes but was all good and enough to bring a 1st win in R2P to home!

Congrats for all drivers in special for those who finish
Hope to see more LMPC cars in next race :)

Paulo

WOW! Intense race for us! 2 seconds between 1st and 2nd after 6 hours of racing, you kidding me!

Pre-race: Kevin and I discussed a few weeks prior teaming up as we knew some would do the 6hours solo, and knew the fatigue could easily play a part in the race and thought it was smart to teamup for this one. We both easily fell into a setup that worked for both of us well and I knew from past Endurance experience teaming up with Kevin that we were in good shape for this race.

Q: Smashed the previous record by a second and knew it would be that way as I assumed the previous holder had to deal with traffic in his 10min qual session. The extra 5 minutes helped out, thank you!

R: Race got started with Stefan Persson all over me for the first two-three laps until I was able to build a small gap and get him out of my drafting zone. We got to traffic quite quickly and once lapping begun I was able to build on my gap to Stefan and by lap 15 I believe I had about an 11 second lead. On lap 17 I was exiting T10 coming into T11 and saw an LMPC spin on the inside of T11. I slowed and approached creeping to the right but the spun car did not lock his brakes after-ward and drifted from drivers left all the way across to drivers right wall. I slowed and slowed and tried to tuck off out of the way and even took to the grass but still bumped the LMPC and lost my front splitter along with some damage to both front fenders.
I had a long lap back to the pits and a 30 second out of sequence pit stop that when I exited put me back about 60 seconds on the leader and in 8th place. I was still on my used hards at that point and with a little bit of damage but just started trying to rip laps off to battle back some. I would lead each time the leaders pit but always back a few positions after my stop and slowly worked us back up to 3rd/4th overall before handing over to Kevin.
Kevin did a great job keeping the car clean and lapping at good pace considering he was on hards and the track was cooling rapidly. During his stint Kevin had to make the tough call that the hards had just fallen off too much and that it was probably smart to switch back to me with a different compound if we were going to have any chance. I loaded into game but after I pushed ride along decided that I needed to turn my graphics down for the low-lighting drive. This had Kevin drive an extra 2 laps than he would have and how pivotal this was I did not realize until after the race was over.
So I jump back in the car on lap 142 I believe with a gap to the leader Marcos of about 90 seconds with Anton close behind him. At this point I felt no way could I catch them unless there was a big incident or they had to stop to poop. Without much too lose I set off giving it my all ever lap to try and pull some gap off the leaders. I felt like it was an 100minute hotlap competition as I was fighting corner exit throttle oversteer constantly especially as the track got colder.
Closing in on my last stop I had a few crucial decisions to make; 1 - My softs lasted very well in the first stint so do I double stint and then 2 - How much fuel to take with about 50minutes to go. I chose to double-stint the softs and take about 70liters so I had extra fuel for increased boost. When I exited the pits and want to say I was about 40 seconds down on the leaders and was surprised how quick the car still was on the used tires so again just starting grinding away hard! and focusing on smooth driving and nailing my apexes. Around this time I was still doubtful of my chances of coming back but every lap I was taking time out of them and most everyone was very courteous with lapping and that helped! Coming into the 180lap range my tires were not looking great but I knew that it was possible to catch up but passing may be a whole other deal. Marcos and Anton were within about 2 second of each other and on lap 187 I got a great run out of T16 down the straight and managed to take Anton down the inside to T17 and stay past. Immediately after I was right with Marcos but had a much harder time getting by. I tried Marcos not once but twice down the outside to the hairpin and he held his line and position beautifully. After a few tries it wasn't looking good until I again got a good run out of T16 and lined Marcos up for an inside pass into 17. He didn't let it go so easily and we bashed fenders mid-corner in 17 but nothing serious and I was just barely able to stay ahead to T1.
Immediately after this! I had to turn the boost down to 1 as I left it at boost-4 for too long catching up and was very concerned about my fuel now with 10 minutes to go. I nursed it and short-shifted as much as I could without loosing too much ground on Marcos and crossed the line 14 seconds after the timer expired with 0-liters left in the tank and only the smallest sliver of the last red bar on my Left Front! Holy shit!
I was sweating hard and quite excited after it ended but mostly just in dis-belief that I was able to claw back for the win!

Very great race to Marcos who lead most of the race and was very consistent, Anton who no matter who was leading was always in close pursuit, Stefan who had a fabulous opening stint, all traffic as we all worked together great I thought, and of course Kevin Banic for helping me through this one since I am not a super-human like Marcos, Anton, GP, Joao, Willoughby, Nikola, John Passmore, and Paulo all who ran solo 6 hour stints!!!!

Well done guys! It sounds like it was an awesome event.
There are some things that just go well together, one being this track and this mod. Mix in 6 hours ... Spectacular!

Wow, nice reports guys - especially Ryan's!