Sebring Super Touring

I didn't check the weather before I left the pits at qualy and being a GTR2 boy I ESC to change tyres, DOH!

I did the same thing. Esc'ed and I was locked out of qualification. To add insult to injury, when the race started, I had no FFB at all. I drove through the melee of the first lap but I had to park it. I just cannot judge steering properly without FFB and RACE does not have the FFB reset key like rFactor.

OK, if someone wants to throw away a good pace and probably a good position, follow this simple rules:

You're PC fails the day before, my PSU can't run my 6970 card, but it works without it, so I have to use an integrated 4290, reduce all resolution and details to the most sh*tty level and still run in the edge of 25FPS
Let you're dad call you for an "unavoidable day of hard work" Come home with a bit of a headache and just in time for one out lap in a wet Q.
Also let Simbin patch the game and change you're car physics (well, they updated RaceOn, so it maybe didn't affect the STCC cars, but I point that too)
(if Neil wants to copy this for his "sim racing excuses book", feel free to do it. Unfortunately they're all real)

If you follow all this guideline, your race pace will go from great 2:13 for several laps, to one miserable 2:14, and 2:17-2:21 for most of the time, and very irregular. I needed several time to get a bit used to the framerate, and the car was very hard to drive.

On the positive side, great fights with Peiter, Eugeni, Ransom, Jones... really nice and clean on my side, hope you feel the same.

I finished, so I'll take that after all.

Congrats to the podium, and see you at Instabul, hopefully it will be all solved.

Very nice Race, excellent track, good disputes for positions and lots of fun.
I apologize to Neil Larson by touch in the first round but I guess not my fault and I could not avoid because due to his touch with Eugeni Xavier had to try to divert his car and I could not stop in time, anyway I apologize again.
I am very happy and having so much fun with this championship was very well planned, excellent mix of tracks and cars.

See you guys in the coming races ...

in quali i make the same mistake as the other guys - see the weather and think - shit - and pressed esc - and that was it with quali...

in the first laps of the race there some accidents where i get through without trouble...

with alberto i have a nice fight about some laps - and it was very good and fair i think...

when i got to the box at lap 13 the box dont work - and i have only 2 ltr in the tank - i try to go another round but i have to stop in the pit some meters away from my box without fuel...

shit :)

i hope somebody understand my german-english-shit :)

see you at istanbul

I was very happy to Q 3rd after it started raining usually im all over the place in the rain so was happy to produce a decent lap.

Was a very good race lost to much time doing an extra lap then messing up my pitstop when my engine wouldnt restart after the pit, Estevao deserved to win though and atleast i gave him a good race this time, the weather in race started hotter than my practice/race sessions and my tires were over heating at one stage then the clouds came out lowering the temperature and saving my one stop strategy never been so happy to see clouds lol.

On to Istanbul enjoying this championship mainly because i get to use my favorite car for once, also has been an excellent choice of tracks never raced kylami and havent driven sebring in a long time and never in TC, looking forward to adelaide, melbourne and malaysia will be 1st races there for me aswell:p

I think most of us will agree, that if you survived that first lap, then the rest of the race was pretty fun.

Leading up to the race, I had been able to get into the low '14s in my race setup. Still, I was worried about tire wear and had decided that a one stop race was going to be just too tricky for me to pull off.

Qualifying: Like most drivers, I was completely surprised by the wet qualifying session. I didn't make any setup changes, but put on some wets and managed a reasonable 12th place on the grid. I made a few errors, but I figured everyone else was probably having just as tough a time with the wet conditions.

Race: I was happy to see we were back to dry conditions for the start of the race. And when the lights went green, I had a great launch, but was briefly held up by Marcos. I backed off slightly, but that allowed several cars to crowd me -- still I managed to avoid all of the carnage around T1 and T2.

I had a few great contests throughout the race, but tire wear is so critical in this series that I couldn't avoid doing a 2 stop strategy. From one stop to the next, I fell back to 16th place and managed to recover to 9th before my second pit stop.

The storyline of the last half of the race for me involved battling with Eugeni, Neil and John. In the end I just managed to get ahead of Neil by virtue of having a shorter 2nd pitstop. But I cut it very close (less than 1 liter), and just barely got my coughing and stuttering car across the finish line ahead of him.

Admin's notes: I'll update the Premium Member Cup points and post some pictures shortly.

As a reminder, if you feel that you were unfairly harmed by someone during the race, or saw someone breaking a rule (such as corner cutting), please consider filing a protest. If you need any help, feel free to email me and I will assist you.

I was surpirese to qualy 6th after a conservative lap on wet conditions.
Start was good but someone hit me on my rear right side and I lost over 20 positions.
Was a hard fight on the rear with lots of drivers, really enjoyed.
It was my fault to hit Jim on the big curve before finsh line, you seem to lose your rear, but I was so close that I couldn.t react properly, so sorry again, Jim. It was a nice fight, a later I lost it in the pits.
Nice series, 75 min of full stress every race!!!

Oh, the past few weeks were frustrating. Doing 2m17's and the times weren't dropping. Kyalami set up simply had no speed. Tried default Opel Astra set up and that got me into the 16's. But put fuel in and it was in the 17's again. Then the day before the race, I was trying all the set ups I had for the Peugeot 308 I drove in Ed's previous series, and straight away I was in the 15's. JOY!

Superpole and the track appeared wet - or it was raining at least! Took the risk of putting slicks on, but I spun on my outlap, and saw spray in my mirrors on the straights - so the track was wet to some degree. Went too deep into T3, losing 9 tenths alone at that point, so to end up P13 of 25 I was quite happy with.

Strategy - full tank (70 litres) at start, estimated 34 laps for 75 minutes, so top up of 32 litres around end of lap 17, new tyres all round - and see what we can do!

Into T1 I could see what was likely going to happen - cars all bunching into a fast sweeping left hander. Nieves spun around right in front of me, somehow missing him. I'd backed off and was P17 exiting T1. But other incidents meant by T3 I was P11.

Aim at this point was to keep it steady, push as much as the tyres would allow - no real concern with tyre wear in testing I'd done. I slowly started going backwards as clearly faster guys took me. Had a long duel with Kevin Ransom in the first 17 laps. Unfortunately he got past when he tapped me hard in the rear into the last turn - this sent me deep and wide (why don't we all apply the gentlemans agreement where a pass due to "punting" is corrected on track?). I stuck to him afterwards for quite a few laps until he started pulling away. He pitted 2 laps earlier than me, and then must have had problmes as he was a long way back.

My stop went perfectly, and I came out and eventually moved into P7. Quite a few of the cars ahead were two stopping, and that's what gained me position on my 1 stop strategy. But as the laps went by, Jon Uyan started hunting me down (he was a 2 stopper). I pushed again, and indeed set my fastest race lap on lap 25 (8 lap old tyres) - but slowly but surely the tyre wear started to increase and he caught up to me.

I managed to keep him behind for a lap, but he had better traction on his fresher tyres. Into T4, I took the inside line and let him try to outbrake me - my car was pretty good on the brakes and I retained position - but exiting the right hander onto the back straight, he had better momentum and was level by the 300 metre board for the last right hand turn - he took P7 from me. Nice chase and nice clean battle:).

Then, 2 laps left, Marcos Junior in P6 started dropping into Jon's and my clutches! I assume tyres or maybe more likely fuel, but he went wide into the last turn of the penultimate lap, and immediately headed for the pits. So, in the end it was P7 from P13 on the grid. Purely down to strategy - looking at my lap times they were nowhere near as quick as some cars that finished behind me.

EDIT - now P6 due to post race penalty for other car.

Really enjoyed this series again. We're lucky to have Ed running this for us to enjoy:).

Still fuming after many hours to cool off. I qualified mid-pack. I knew there were faster drivers who botched qualifying and wondered how they would handle the situation. In a word for a couple of drivers - poorly. It may be time to start showing less respect for fellow drivers, we'll see how the protest process works. I don't file many of them but will in this case. You only have to review the first 15-20 seconds of the race to know who it will be filed against.

How did my race go? Showed respect for drivers into T1, my reward was a car comes from the outside, hard into me, sending me careening and then head on into the outside wall of T1. Suspension damage and last in the field. I just had a wonderful time for the next 75 minutes struggling with a broken car, not getting to race anyone for any length of time, and finishing out of the points. I am glad many of you had a good time - Ed runs excellent race series here at R2P.