Sebring Int'l Raceway GTC-76

Nice race!

I'm surprised with my pace. I usually put at least 3 hours of practice for each event, but this time I downloaded the game on Friday and made a handful of laps with each car. Then today I was most day out of home and came close to Q time, but I made a good time and was 4th on grid.

On the early laps I took Neil Gault and managed to open a gap while Ross and Mike had their race waaay ahead of me.

I felt good with the car for most of the race, but, about the middle of the race, I started to make mistakes on turns 13 & 15. Don't really know why as tires where OK, but it was quite easy for me to loose the car there and visited the gravel too many times, so Garret and Neil had it easy to reach and pass me.

Then it was time for me to pit, and weird thing happened. I pressed the speed limiter button and entered pits,then AI took control of the car, and the crew put the fuel, but then the car didn't move until I pressed the accelerator and moved on, but then the speed limiter WASN'T ON!! it was too late when I realized that and had to made a S&G next lap, with the same situation, but at least I knew it and pressed the speed limiter again before accelerating the car.

Apart from that, nice race on a new sim for me, but maybe with the actual set of cars the Porsche is a bit superior.

Congrats to the podium, and see you next time!

Interesting race; after qualie i thought it would be tough to beat the 'Vette, but in the race Mike never got more than 3 or 4s ahead, and towards the end of the stint i was closing in. The Porsche makes up a lot of time in the pits, but i still expected Mike to be able to claw back a big margin over me with his fresher tyres, and to some extent the gap did come down but again towards the end of the second stint it increased again despite me being a little cautious. Also, myself and Mike's fastest laps were almost identical- not really ideal when one car has an advantage in the pits. (i think i gained around 22s in the pit-stops)

When testing out the 'Vette before this event i was able to do low 17's and late 16's in qualie trim, while in race trim it was more like 18's & 19's- pretty similar to the Porsche but with more fuel useage & tyre wear, similar to Mike's 'Vette pace tonight too.

Overall though, had a lot of fun in the Porsche- it's a car i don't normally drive, but tonight for me it was the lesser of 3 evils! Thanks to the lapped cars tonight- very considerate driving on display- and congrats to Mike & Garret for 2nd & 3rd places. Thanks Eduardo for organising this, GTL is a cruelly underused sim that deserves more exposure.

Cheers all.

Everything was going fine until my pit stop, I didn't get enough fuel and I got a S&G. On my out lap I hit a wall and lost my lights. That meant 2 more pit stops >:(
After that I still did not have enough fuel and with a couple of laps left to go I had to pit again.
Apart from the pit stop horrors I really enjoyed this race, GTL has a lot of miles in it yet.

Outstanding pace from Ross today. My only chance in the Vette was to run 1+ seconds per lap quicker knowing I would be much slower in the pit. Ross found a way to negate the surperior engine performance in the vette with the surperior turning and braking ability of the Porsche. Add to that, the Porsche has a HUGE advantage in the pits because it sips fuel and has less than half the tire wear of the vette. The Porsche does not need to take tires where the vette feels like it needs tires after 12 laps.

Look for me in the Porsche next round. Hopefully I can give you more of a race next time Ross.

Thanks again to everyone for coming out this night/afternoon to race this sim. As Norman Bruce said, this is a sim that still has some life in it!

I had a lot of fun, in spite of a disappointing result. I managed to qualify seventh, but I felt like there was still some time speed left in the car I hadn't tapped into.

The pace lap appeared to go well, although I could see a couple Porsches in front of me bumping fenders on more than one occasion. At the start, I was a little too cautious and gave up a couple positions before T2. I don't know what I was thinking, because I overcompensated for this and spun the car into the tires on T3.

From last place I hauled myself up into the top 10, but screwed this up when I failed to add fuel during my stop. So I had to stop again in the next for another lengthy delay as I added enough gas to finish the final 15 laps. My pace was there, as I could keep up with some of the top 5 cars after I was lapped, but my mistakes held me back. Fortunately, this is a non-points series -- the perfect opportunity to learn the quirks of the sim before we try a full championship.

Admin's Notes:

I hope everyone had fun and returns for our second exhibition event at Hockenheim next month. In the meantime, I'll start to draft a survey so everyone can have an opportunity to help decide which vintage era we should race in the Fall.

Similar story to Alberto really. Had the game on the PC but never set it up, so it was only yesterday I got some limited running. Decided on the BMW CSL thinking it would be more stable than the Porsche, decided on less powerful/lighter car thinking it would be easier to handle. Of course it was slow (read I was way off the pace!!!).

Qualified P17 of 18, and race aim was to avoid any incidents or self spins. Constanlty being passed, then theose cars would spin and rejoin behind, catch me, pass, spin. It was quite unreal, and we were having a laugh on Teamspeak (with Ed and Neil) that I must be a magnet for spinners!!!

Aim was to pit as late as possible, tyre wear not being an issue at all. Fuel was an issue, and in my stop it didn't appear to add any fuel. Also the pit limiter disengaged itself when I left my stall - but drove it manually (guessing my speed as I had no dials to go by other than the rev counter - which didn't work in the race - LOL) and got away with it. Being 2 laps down saved me, as I don't think I could have completed one more lap.

Really enjoyed this event despite not being anywhere near the pace. Car was a real handful to drive but fun to be had just trying to get it into and out of the corners.

In the end I had one major spin (no contact) - changing down too early (which I was trying to avoid doing all race as I knew the rears would lock up). 1 part spin saved, then floored it in 2nd gear and it spun the other way - LOL!

Towards race end Neil Gault liked my rear bumper (it's official 'cos Ed saw it behind us - LOL), but I'll forgive him!!! Being lapped by P3 through to P5, and I think my early brake point caught him out, I went wide onto the grass and no damage done in the big scheme of things.

Amazed by the quality of this Sim. Have the disc, hardly ever drove it on my old PC. Looks like a couple of glitchy things (though add on track may be an issue re the adding fuel thing as we had a similar problem in the Race 07 GT Pro series recently). I'll be back for more!

P17 to P10 in the end, only the 16th fastest race lap. So I have to be happy with that.

@Eduardo: I was one of the Porsche bumping on the pace lap. I had qualified in 5th behind Alberto but the 6th place car decided that my spot looked better and proceeded to get in front of me and stay! Any time I tried to go around him to get my spot back I would get brake checked or bumped. I finally let him go. If he wanted it that bad, he should have qualified better!

The first part of the race was full of cars jockeying for position and spinning everywhere. I worked my way up to Alberto in 4th but spun to avoid him into the last turn. I spun yet again avoiding the zealous 6th place car. Now I was well and truly back in the pack around 10th and a full 18+ seconds behind Alberto who was now in 3rd.

I finally got clear spot of track to work with and got in a good pace. I slowly worked my way up through the field and eventually caught back up to Alberto. I took me about 25 laps to get to him again! As soon as I got there, he handed me the spot and I never looked back.

Pitting wasn't an issue for me, although I've run a few series here recently and knew what to expect. I think the guys having fuel issue may want to check out their plr file to make sure your fuel addition is relative and not absolute.

Congrats to Ross! Nice drive!

Where is that "hard charger" award, I think I earned that today, from P18 to P5 should qualify for that. Of course if there is a punishment for sillyness on a warm up lap I earned that too. When I was looking at live tire temp. readings on XD Telemetry, I was wondering how much of weaving actually making diffecence, so I must have been doing it a little too hard, end result is only helps 2-3 degrees but you can spin it in a heart beat (how uncharacteristic of me) :}, It happened on Gendebien Bend and I had to waive the whole field by and start the race from P18, then at the same corner spun again on L1.

After that I was done with silly mistakes and started to charge through the field, having a good scrap along the way with Ed, Neil and Kenneth. I had a solid setup that prevented oversteer coming out of corners and that seemed to work fine against BMW's. Pitted on lap 28 I think, planned to take fuel only, and knowing that pit crew was not interested in small amount of fuel, I asked for 25liters, well that did not worked either, did not get any fuel. Still maintaining 6th place I was calculating and coming up 1.5 laps short while I was pushing hard again just in case. Teammate Glyn had fallen almost a min. behind I assumed he had taken fresh tires.

The leaders were about 20sec. behindd me I thought I could wait for them, to go 1 lap down, but still .4 of a lap short of fuel, then I saw Alberto coming out of the pits, now I had P5, and Alberto was falling behind rapidly. What to do?. Decided to push hard for 4 laps and still thinking about taking the chance, but then realized I could not gamble with fuel situation and loosing the race, Alberto and Glyn were about 1min. behind me so I pitted second time, 3 laps to go, this time I punched in 35 lts. and crew seemed to liked these numbers, came out 10 seconds in front of Alberto and kept that gap to the finnish. Was very exiting, and glad this is exhibition only series so we can still iron out (or learn) the sims shortfalls.

Strong sign up numbers and good race turn up. It will be a healty series and when we do the actual championship, we have LeMans track waiting will be perfect with these cars, will be exiting. Also kudos to R2P they added another series this season (Vintage Mini Cooper), GT Legends lives on...

An extremely enjoyable race on a great track with a good sized grid and driving a 911, what more could i ask for :-).
Had 2 setups for the 911, one a bit more aggressive than the other, tried the tame one in practice and found i was well off the pace but in qual i went with the aggressive one and it worked as i grabbed 3rd so i thought stuff it lets go with it for the race also and it worked well apart from some bad tyre wear to the front left. Went too deep into a few corners but once i got that sorted it was fine, had a few nice fights and a few scary moments, i guess Garret had connection problems as twice i found him frozen on the grid as the server tried to pick him up again.
Sorry to Andy who i gave a nudge to as i lapped him, i thought he had left the outside line for me to go around him and i was already committed to it when he came across in front of me.
Half the fun of these beasts is trying to keep them pointed the right way and last night i got lucky and managed just that, thnx all for a fun event.