Concord 200

With this event my "comebeck" to the stock cars has finally happened :)

I had some practice before the race, but wasn't happy with my race setup. Q set was OK, but I wasn't sure if it will be competitive.

It was and I managed to get pole. "wow" - that was what I said :) Didn't expect it at all, thought I saw that , at least on hotlapping I was quite competitive :)

In the race I was a bit nervous - leading the pack when you haven't had a race for years before is scary. I got my part of satisfaction for the first lap and the YF, which happened on lap1 or lap2. After the green on lap 5/6 I found out that I wasn't competitive anymore :) and Conor and a few other guys got me.

OK, I settled down around p4-p5 for a while. Then we got another YF, on which I had to do some repairs after scrambling the wall, and appeared ~p8. On green I started getting places back, and when got my p5 (or it was p6?) back, and was aiming for P4(p5), I got rearended by Jim Barisoff, whom I just overtook :( The race was over by that moment. The car was heavily damaged.

But I was surprised that there was no YF. I thought "no cautions" applies only to Friday Night Shootouts.

Another story is with my pits. I couldn't get repairs/tire/fuel from my team. Seems the problem was is that my pit stall is 1st and when I got to it, I overshoot it a bit and my car's nose crossed the pit exit line. But I couldn't move my car back a bit - it wasn't moving :) Crew didn't do repairs/tires/fuel. So all I could do was retire.

After watching the race for a while I understood that YF appears only... don't know when :) When Tim decides. I don't like the idea with YF and not sure why it was decided to do this way. Are there too much self-spins? Or just too much accidents? In case of self-spins I'd prefer the ESCORS policy "after 2nd self-spin you must retire".
I'm still not sure if I can live with such YF policy.Is the same planned for S6?

OK, quite disappointed with the race in general, as always when someone ruines your race. But, at least, I have my 1st pole on R2P :)

Qualified 3rd, decided to change 4th gear ratio which made my car horribly slow. Crashed early on which lost me a bunch of laps and then got a drive-thru for speeding in the pits which lost me another lap. Kept going however, and somehow managed to eke out a 5th place, 5 laps down. :P

Sorry about the cautions gents, or lack of them (never thought I would say that LOL). We had 2 or 3 cautions... good number to keep it interesting.

rFactor itself decides on the cautions, not me. While I have the ability to throw them, I do not unless it is required (track blocked, etc). We get enough cautions already :-)

For future reference, the game will only throw a caution when;
1) Two or more cars are "piled up"
2) One car is on the racing line and facing the wrong direction.

With these high banked tracks, gravity pulls your car down the banking and off the line. So, cautions do not come out s easily.

Aha, sorry, Tim :) I was wrong thinking that it's you who decides to throw or not a YF.

I had a good race. I spun a little bit on the first green flag pit stop and lost 4 or 5 seconds that may have enabled me to battle for second. Oh well, dem`s da breaks.

Congrats Conor on the win.

That was an interesting race. A lot more fun than last week. I had not been able to find any speed at this place all week. Not sure if it was something I was doing wrong or what. Thought I would be ok for the race and was for the most part. Hopefully I didnt get into anyones way. Managed to get 13 laps down by the end of the race but pulled out a top 15 so not too bad.

I knew I didn't have a car that was going to win the race but I just wanted to drive around and have some fun even so.

Was cruising around in 5th or so when I let Charles pass me and unfortunately I went high and hit the wall, blowing my right front tire. So I pit, then it ended up I was speeding in the pits so I had a drive through. Then a couple laps later I had a stop and go penalty for no reason as far as I knew.

My car was really trash by that time and I was spinning all over the place and crashing.

I knew other people people had been crashing too, cars spinning, let alone me doing the same. Yet no cautions ever came out.

Also, during a restart, Justin Wilson took out me and Fernando and as the green flag flew, me and Fernando were just parked on the track. No clue why a caution didn't come out there.

Anyway, Tim has kicked me out of the league so I'll see some of you around other places.

Another quality race for the Ovation Plug It In Monte Carlo team! thanks to the sponsors, and my team for making it possible.
Happy as can be with a 4th place finish. Not that i was in any danger of threatening the Podium.. 4 laps down. What a bunch of pluggers we all are. Heres to sticking with it. I had a bunch of troubles with the pit stops it was my first race with them, and i just couldnt get onto pit road without spinning out my car. that killed alot of time, but i mananged to not speed in the pits, happy with that.
Good racing every body. i didnt have many cars around me most of the race, which for me is probably best, but when there was either going past or being passed everyone drove well.

Great Fun everyone, ill be back for more.

Well, I was doing better than I expected to, hadn't even gotton lapped by the second caution (not bad, for me!) then got disconnected under the second caution :( I've never had trouble with disconnects before, but tonight I had three counting the one in the race.

Mostly, I just want to say sorry to anyone my driverless car clobbered when I dropped.

James

The #23 Dr. Pepper/Red Baron Pizza team put in a lot of practice this week. It was good working with Tom Malanga, Francesco Zargani, and Bob Fay on setups and testing. It really paid off with a car that was competitive in the short and long runs. Unfortunately, I ended up in someone else's mess before making it to turn two. I don't know what happened before I got there I just know someone's car was across the track and I hit the person in front of me who I think was already into the sideways car. It looked like whoever that was also ran out of room to try to avoid a crash. After restarting in the back of the pack I had some warping issues which put me even farther back. Under the green flag I worked my way up to sixth place and was having a solid run. After pitting I came out onto the track in front of the leader. Unfortunately, with my cold tires I ended up slowing too much in front of him. Conor, I could see in the replay exactly what happened. It's funny how different it looks in the replay than when you're in the car. Between my speed dropping and a bit of a slide you didn't have any place to go really. That wreck pretty much ended any chance of being competitive. The car was a handful just to get into the pits since it was pulling to the left under very little throttle and I looped it between turns 3 and 4 on the apron and it stalled. On the bright side I was able to get repaired enough to continue and get in more laps. No matter how much you prepare you can't count on luck being on your side. This was a much more fun week than last week since we actually got in more green flag laps than caution laps. This week was more about racing and less about a parade. That's what keeps it fun. Next up lots of practice for the race at Brooklyn Speedway and, hopefully, another competitive setup.

Congratulations to Conor McCarrell on another victory. Conor, you make it look really easy out there. It shows what can be done with these cars when properly setup and driven.