UKGTR Season 15 - Le Mans (Sarthe) - Jan 1

[H@L9000]

Some important information has been added to the first post.

[Jamera]

Well that was fun, 1st lap connection blipped, came back causing a spin then dropped altogether 

[Legzy]

Getting home at 8:30, after over 3.5 hours on the M4 has put an end to any chance I had of being a late joiner. Though I've not got GTR2 installed on my new PC yet, so it was always going to be dicey.
Hope you all have a good un.

[SRW]

had visitors round today so didnt manage to log on till 11 mins of qually left, did a warm up lap + 1 qually lap. then decided to put hard slicks on rear and softs on front as had experianced excessive rear tyre wear in testing earlier in the week. This was a big mistake as it seemed to make the car undriveable! the rear kept locking up under braking and mid corner so i was driving on eggshells trying not to swap ends, then as i passed clive loynes in the sand trap and made up a place i lost concentration and missed my braking point and slammed the barrier, hopefully laguna seca next week will be better!

[Roadrunner]

Epic racin in LMP...then with 90 secs to go i found in nessecary to destroy ones car 

Sorry if there was contact when ya spun TT...

[H@L9000]

Results and replay in the usual places

Can the driver called Smivin please let me know what your user name is for this forum so that I can include you in the results please.

[goldtop]

Another tough race at LM. I thought tonight was going to be easy after our 2.5 hour GTL marathon, but it turned out to be just as demanding.

Again I hadn't done much practice, just enough to get a setup for the M3 and a strategy (which I still got totally wrong). Had a good quali and start, but soon I was under pressure from Spanner in the RSR. I went a bit long into Ford chicanes and he was through, but a mistake pulling onto Mulsanne a lap or so later put me back in front again.

I started on a full tank and somehow my brain had convinced me that I needed to conserve fuel in order to do a one stop   In doing so I allowed nsfast to close in and had to start driving hard to hold a gap. It was only when he pitted that I realised I had loads of fuel to spare and so had to do a quick re-calculation before I eventually pitted. All this when lmps were appearing in my mirrors from seemingly nowhere   When I emerged from my pitstop, nsfast was only 3 secs behind me and I had to drive hard right through to race end to keep it that way.

The lmp race looked to be fantastic fun, with I think H@L, TT and Jose all lapping me within a half second of each other at one point. Well done on the win H@L and thanks for putting this together and of course for all your work this past year. A deserved win I reckon  

[H@L9000]

Great race.

I think I was lucky to get pole as Jose looked like he could beat me. Once the race had started I was maintaining a 2 second gap and trying to save my fuel as much as possible as I knew it would be close. I could see that there was a big battle going on for 2nd in my mirrors. I did go into a corner side by side with TT early on and TT seemed to loose a lot of time, I am not sure what happened there.

As we started to get near the half way point I was starting to feel the pressure as Jose closed in on me. He got past and I was trying really hard not to let him get too far ahead while still watching the fuel use the whole time. I then made a mistake and got stuck in a gravel trap for a while loosing about 20 seconds I think.

I seemed to make back a good deal of that time in the pit and I had about 8 seconds of time to regain between me and the fight between TT and Roadrunner. I caught them with about 20 - 25 mins left to go. We had an epic 3 way battle for a while. Lots of position swapping and trying to use/brake the toe. Great stuff guys.

TT eventually made a mistake leaving me and Roadrunner to battle it out to the end. Again we were making use of the slipstream and having to think a few corners ahead to maintain the inside line to the corners. Lots of close action and position swapping again. We both made a few brave moves I think but, without pushing too far. Roadrunner did also make a mistake eventually, gifting me the win.

I had just 1.7L left of fuel at the end. If there had been no mistakes from the front runners then we may have had an extra lap at the end that would have meant I would need to stop for a splash and dash.

So, in conclusion, I was lucky. Very lucky.

Well done all and thanks for taking part.

Grats TT, Prof, GT, nsfast and quicksilver.

[Clive Loynes]

Trying to drive and do mental arithmatic is always my downfall.

I had just reached the point of deciding that I would pit next time around when I lost concentration at T1 and ended up in the sand.

I spent ages trying to get out but when the car slewed around so that I could no longer see who was approaching in my mirror, and would thus have to lurch blindly across the track, that I decided that it was time to call it a day.  

I enjoyed the first half of the race and at least I was able to add to my Brownie Points stocks by watching the Christmas Day recording of Downton Abbey with my long suffering wife.

Many thanks to H@L9000 for organising the race and grats to all who finished.

[Smiv]

Hi Guys

I am all new to this league. I recognise some of the names and can relate to some of your pace. The race at Sarthe was more mentally challenging that I thought it would be... I qualified 5th and finished 5th. Thanx to all the racers, I had lots of fun. I had some good pace in the beginning of the race and thought I was headding for a good result, but in the end I spun off so many times and finished last...   I still had loads of fun tho.. I would have liked to race Prof and Apex more since we had (at some stage ) the same pace and it could have been nice... Hope to see you next time.
Smiv

[Prof]

I really enjoyed that. I don't race nearly as much as I would like here at the moment due to work and did very little preparation for this race. The first 4 or so had a pace much faster than the next four so I was more than a bit lucky to inherit an undeserved but nevertheless welcome podium. Congratulations to Apex who nearly chased me down in the second half of the race as my tyres and fuel started to run out as well as those in both classes who achieved the podium and indeed all who finished the race.

Happy New Year to all and with any luck I shall see you all a bit more often on track during 2012.

[Smiv]

Results and replay in the usual places

Can the driver called Smivin please let me know what your user name is for this forum so that I can include you in the results please.

User name "Smiv"

[Josè Arrogantio]

Had to try a couple of times when connecting to the server as I kept getting a lost connection error. Managed to set a couple of good laps in quli but when I returned to the pits I was shown in p14 with no one else having set a time so I assume I was no longer connected to the server. Reconnected with enough time left to get a few laps in but made a couple of silly errors in the final chicane on my best lap.

During the first half of the race I was doing my best to save fuel and tyres while battling with hal and TT. Just managed one lap more than the others before stopping and came out with a good lead after only changing rear tyres. But then my timing started going funny and after a couple laps of not seeing any other cars I realised the connection had gone again.

Not had this problem before, anyone have any ideas what caused it? 

[spanner]

Pretty annoyed it ended rather too quickly.

Being the lone non-Beemer which seem a bit quicker down the straights i thought I'd try and help and reduce any extra weight so decided to go with half fuel but was very surprised to start gaining on the track and catch even Goldtop. The car was tricky and wandered around alot so had a rather interesting time which was why once i got ahead i was pushing far too much and went in far too quickly into the first chicane dropping me back. The LMP's surprised the hell out of me as i was going down the straight, not really concentrating.

In the end i took too much speed through the Dunlop Chicane and came out a bit too far wide, Dont think i was in the gravel but clouted the tyres which seem to stick out just as the next corner comes up, which spun me towards the inside, flipped me over the barrier and thanks to the track creator not being thorough, fell towards the centre of the earth

Was enjoying that, shame. Surprised we were all so close. Good to see people turning up for it. Hope to see you guys for more racing this year.

[quicksilver384]

Awesome fun but very tiring.

decided to start the race with medium front and hard rear tyres. BIG mistake. went well for a few laps but then the car started to understeer in the first set or corners before the long straight with about 50ish mins left of the race decided to pit so got a full tank + hard front and rears then started to well again but then me being me went and made a few mistakes (as ususal)

grats to winners

was fun. next time lets try a 3hour race with simulated day / night transition :-)