GT Sprint - S3 R1 - Barcelona - 18th April

[Paul Cowan]

Sorry guys I can't make it tonight as a family issue has popped up.

See you at Magny-Cours.

[Mark J]

I'll be there and looking forward to the new challenge....but i am going to feel a right pikey with my non-skinned stock paintjob  :'(

Where shall i park me caravan guv'nor 

If any of you modding geniuses get bored i'd love a GT skin in the resplendent colours of NGTL, ie sky blue and yellow 

[JonM_uk]

Nuts Have been wallpapering most of the day and totally forgot about this sucker. Damn DIY

[Mark J]

What a great race !

Tried the Viper early on in praccy but just couldnt get anywhere near my usual lap times here so binned it and went for the Saleen. Qualied 8th with only 5 mins of qualy time so reasonably pleased though could have gone quicker with a few more runs.

Race started well, tucked up nicely behind Aagramm as we closed on SBG after several laps, then coming out of turn 1 into turn 2 i must have just touched the kerb with the still cool meds and it immediately lost traction putting me sideways onto the verge  , i had to sit there and watch the whole pack steam through and rejoined last and 10 secs down. :'(
Then proceeded to fight my way up through the grid having great battles especially with Jamera and Willier for lap after lap whilst Flybri stayed within 3 secs behind me for most of the race.
Then with about 6 minutes to go and catching fast with Whitham about 2 secs in front for 6th/7th? i just braked a fraction late into the uphill S bend and the bugger saleen span on me again as i tried to turn in and Flyrbi nipped past for some easy points :'(
My tyres were just about shagged for the last few laps and i got the 'tyres worn' warning so eased off and saw Spacefox off on about the penultimate lap (unlucky mate...guess it was Saleen tyres for you too?) and i was able to finish where i started...8th.

Not a bad result, but if it hadnt been for the early spin i could have had a good battle with SBG and Aagramm up near the front.

Great driving by everyone, i didnt see the usual number of spinners that we often get in GT.

Well done to Greg on the win 

[Zacari]

That was quite fun in the end!

Quali was awful, I hadn't raced round Barca for an age in the Ferrari so I decided to use my race setup and run a little less wing and a stiffer front a-r bar.  Ended up 13th I think which was way off the pace seen as my pb's in the 1:38s.

The race started badly, I had too much understeer and had to change to an Alonso-style 'launch' into the corner to get the car to turn.  After an over-ambitious lunge into T1 when the car just understeered wide, and a small spin also in T1 when I caught the curb, I was back in 10th again.  After that I got used to the understeer, and could stay in the low 1:41s most of the time.  Gained quite a lot through other people's misfortune and by around lap 16 was running in 6th and about 10 secs back.  Managed to catch Aargramn and SBG's battle 2 laps from the end but decided against potentially ruining a good race with a lunge up the inside, especially from a Team Shark point-of-view!

I'm happy with 5th from 13th anyway, better get some practice in at Magny and hopefully qualify a bit better!

[Aagramn]

Excellent race. Qualified 7th with an OK time, had a couple quicker runs ruined by traffic (no-ones fault, just met slower hot-lapping cars in the wrong places). Had a very good race-long battle with SBG. Was trying to keep him under pressure but couldn't stay close enough through the fast corners before the straights. Had a silly off watching for Leuven in my mirrors and lost a few seconds. Slowly clawed my way back up to SBG at 2-3 tenths a lap, and picked up a few places when people went off. Was getting concerned at the end - SBG seemed to be struggling with his tyres and I was losing lots of time behind him, but I still couldn't find a way past. Zacari was closing at a rate of knots, think he took 10 seconds off me in the last ten minutes. Lukily for me there wasn't quite enough time left, the race ended just as he got on my tail. Finshed 4th in a convoy.

Good win by Greg, and well raced SBG. Great result for Team Shark as well.  

Good start for me, Barcelona is one of my slower tracks these days. Could do well at Magny - if I can stay on the track that is.  

[Simon Gymer]

Fabulous team effort from Team Shark. Well done guys. All 4 Team Shark boys in the top 6 I believe.

Congratulations Greg, very solid win and SBG for the 3rd place.

WARNING! - LONG REPORT TO FOLLOW...

Having hardly driven a GT car in while, was a bit nervous turning up with no practice or tweaked setup. Took me all of practice to remember how to drive a GT car at all let alone fast. Boy do you have to hang on to those things compared to the NGTs. My hands were so firmly gripping the wheel I had to prise them away at the end.  NGTs seem a doddle compared to these vicious GT beasties. Mind you 40 minutes seemed a doddle compared to the usual 80 minute races, was over in a flash. Normally when 35 minutes is on the clock you know you are nearing the end, it was odd knowing it had only just got going, felt like there wasn't long to get racing. 

I was very pleased with qualifying 5th with an ok time 1:39.5 as I knew I wasn't as fast as many of the other guys in the field. Top 4 guys with Greg in 4th were all into the 1:38s, something I've only ever done on one occasion.

Race got going, people were quite spaced out on at the front as we started and SpaceFox seemed to jump the gun a little, anyhoo...Looked like I was going to have a tough time from the 2 guys behind me SBG and my team mate Aagramn as they had qualified only just behind me on time. But it never happened, I slowly pulled away from them and Greg slowly pulled away from me ahead. I was driving in my usual steady, consistent, tyre conserving GT driving style, smooth but reasonably quick. Looked like I was going to have a bit of a dull race in 5th from start to finish.

Well Leuven decided that he didn't think I should be lonely  so he went off somewhere and rejoined a bit behind Aagramn and SBG (could only just see you on look back at that point). The next 5 - 8 laps Leuven passed them and caught me up. With only 15 minutes to go I decided he wasn't going to get by that easily and up'd my pace a little. Leuven checked me out for a couple of laps and then took me into T1. Good move. I knew Lueven was a little faster at that point, but I pushed even harder than before and managed to get right back to Leuven. I couldn't keep that pace up though and after a few laps he gradually started to pull away. I also didn't want to wear the tyres too much, tyre conservancy is very important in GTs for 40 minutes to get mediums to last nicely and not feel rubbish at the end of it.

In the meantime RichA had an accident in T1 and was out and a sometime in the last quarter of the race SpaceFox the pole sitter and for the most part race leader did the same. This left me in a unexpected 3rd. Even better was to come for me me as Leuven lost it under power in front of me and ripped off his front splitter (bad luck).

Couldn't believe it 2nd place and Greg now in the lead seemed to be coming back to me. I didn't really know what to do next. With only a few minutes left, push hard and try to get up to Greg or settle for an unexpected and very welcome 2nd? I guessed Greg was slowing a little to make sure of the win, so thought he probably had some more pace if I did get up to him. Thought better of it and settled for 2nd.

Fantastic result for me, really pleased.

Better yet was coming back to the pits and finding the Team Shark boys doing a fantastic job with 4th, 5th and 6th. Nice one guys.

[ginsters sponsored]

Congrats to Greg, UKGTR's Mr.Consistent, and Shark. Not to shabby either Willer  .

Had a very good race-long battle with SBG. Was trying to keep him under pressure but couldn't stay close enough through the fast corners before the straights.At the end  SBG seemed to be struggling with his tyres

Great stuff Aagramn. I twigged in our first skirmish that the only place I was quicker than you was on those last corners and it was going to be tough for you to get the easy pass down the straight. Concentrated on not making mistakes elsewhere and getting those corners perfect everytime. Thats easier to say than do. It took a lot of concentration and it was me that was gone (exhausted) at the end and not the tyres .

Not sure if I was going to try the GT's again, frankly I find them a real handful now, but if the racing is half as good as tonight, count me in every week. It could only get better with a few more entrants.

[picnic]

replay and provisional results posted

[Rich_A]

Great quali from my team but we screwed up big time in the race. Missed braking point into T1 bye bye splitter, then about 15 mins in pits repairing it.

Got new PB though but never good idea to start season off so bad.

[mclaessen]

Aahh man, I just saw I missed the season opener 

Ah well, I had some pc issues to fix first, and probably my internet connection would have failed anyway during the race. I'll be there next round and if everything goes according to plan my new adsl subscription should be active by then

[Rich_A]

More than likely it's a problem with line stats which a new ISP won't fix! There is a solution though and it's completely free ..

https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=1146.0

[mclaessen]

Thanks. I will look into that. But the problem also occured when I was racing ESCORS on sunday. Yesterday I discovered the problem was with both my pc and with my isp.

It's with my isp because the ping times to my isp were fluctuating a lot (between 20ms and 290ms). I tested this by pinging to the ESCORS server with an auto ping tool. It showed that the latency was fluctuating the most from my router to my gateway at my isp. Everything behind the isp's gateway was steady.

My pc caused the problem partially too because I use a seperate instance of Windows XP for online racing. The 2nd instance had SP2 and an older graphics driver than the 1st. Both instanced were using different graphics settings, so probably something was enabled by one driver which couldn't be disabled by the other. Also page files were on the same partitions.

I sorted everything out now and it seems the problem is solved now. The new adsl connection was ordered two weeks ago after a lot of problems with the internet connection in general (slow/fast/slow/fast again). I will do the tweaks in the other topic and hope everything works fine then.

[greg130]

Had a good qualifying, any time in the 1.38s is fine by me.

My plan was to drive a steady pace and see what developed.  Couldn't believe it when the front 3 all had offs, bad luck guys.  If you can keep doing that everyweek I might have half a chance of defending the championship. 

My tyres were hurting a bit towards the end so backed off a bit, no point in risking an off so close to the end.
Then it was just a case of keeping a reasonable gap to Shark in 2nd place and bring the pikey 550 home for an unexpected win.

Great start to the season and as always good fun.

[Mark J]

One thing i wasnt happy about was the really slow opening pace lap, my tyres were no higher than 38 degrees when the race started properly across the line, its just a recipe for accidents/offs with everyone then trying to brake at turn 1 on cold medium (or on saleen hard) tyres.
It was a very slow snake with no room to burn some energy into the tyres.  

Surely we should be setting a reasonably faster pace for the warm up lap in the GT cars ? Think when i looked at my speedo we were doing 58mph