SimRacing.org.uk

The teams' transporters head "oop north" to Cheshire and the challenging circuit of Oulton Park. Clive Gardner took the points lead at Brands Hatch after Attilio Artiglietti fell by the wayside. With just this race remaining several drivers could be the winner of the inaugural Joe Shaw Memorial Trophy.

Race list	iGOR
Server	UKGPL_GPG
IP address	62.195.32.131
Date	29-04-2012
Race time	Race starts at 21:30 UK time
Qualifying time	Between 30 and 60 minutes, starting no later than 21:00 UK time
Track	Oulton Park (http://www.zenadsl5531.zen.co.uk/Tracks/Oulton/)
Mod	67
Damage model	PRO
Race length	34 laps
Replay	Available here (ftp://ukgpl3.dyndns.org/Replays/Archive/Season22/Joe_Shaw_Memorial/S22_JoeShawMemorial_R03_2012_04_29_OultonPark.rar)

The red zone will be fully moderated for lap 1 only. For this event the red zone will be from the start line to the exit of turn 4 (Esso Bend). Other moderation will be on reported incidents only.

Chassis rules, schedule and standings can be viewed here (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=355&theme=6). Please remember a driver cannot use the same chassis more than once in this series.

GPG server is set to 34 laps Long race.
Ciao

Thank you Fulvio.

sorry for the little tap i gave you exiting turn one Fulvio , i didn't realize you were there . it was a real shame as we were not yet up to racing speed .

john

Just over an hour ago I was a bit stuck for something to do so thought I'd pop in and see what was on.  Saw this race was due to go at 9:30 so hurriedly grabbed the wheel out of its box and throw it on the desk.  Did 2 practice laps of Oulton to see if I could still turn the wheel the right way and joined with 6 minutes left.  Ran off track on both quali laps and the 3 race laps that I got round and got disco'd!

Oh well!

I last drove in January so was a bit rusty and well off pace anyway.

Hope you had a good race.

What a weird night.

I haven't had a chance to practice for this race, just grabbed a Kyalami setup, and jumped in. Earlier this season I started a race with Qually fuel, and ran out early in the race. As such I am very careful to a load 'a' race setup right at the start, just in case. Tonight, I used race fuel to qualify. A bit daft, but at least it meant I was reasonably confident my race pace would be OK. Not quite sure how I ended up 4th on L1, but I amazed myself by holding this for about 10 laps, with KH in front, and Al behind. Its the first time in a long time that I've been in the position to be looking to overtake someone, but having to watch for a pass from behind at the same time. Really good fun...

And then I span. I missed a downshift coming into Druids, and put a tyre on the grass. That let Al through, but I was pleased to see I took a second out of him on the next lap. I actually thought I might be able to catch him and Tom (the drugs have since worn off). But then coming up to the hairpin my car didn't stop and I lost a wheel. Game over.

Now....

...there has been a lot of discussion on the PSC thread about the 'brake bug', and those that seem to know stuff about the inner workings of GPL say its a GT only problem...BUT. I don't think my braking was out of sync with what I'd done before, and before I disconnected I had a look at my tyre temps - absolutely fine. I might be grasping for an excuse and latching on the current favourite...but I don't think I did anything wrong. Forgot to save a replay, so looking forward to seeing what happened.

Arf

Np John, racing incident for me, I'm sorry for Ronnie ena Steve that were involved though. One lap later I clipped a brake marker before hairpin and lost a wheel. :(
Ciao

started my practice 30 mins before the race and was surprised to be so high up. Lucky lap I guess since I gave up keeping AA and Evil behind me. At 3 rd spot most of the race and thought I would finish there. Al was close behind, but he knows I will give him an OTK spank if he pass me and Al isn t into that. AA blasted the engine. I looked at your driving AA and although superb technique I think you torture the engine too much. I don t think you loose much keeping lower revs, the lot has nice torque.
Anyways I was about to settle for 2 nd when Evil decided to take a small nap on the SF  straight and woke up when car hit the wall. He recovered 3 secs behind me and now I really pushed a couple of laps to get my win. I managed to keep Evil behind although he gained some the last couple of laps. I could afford that ;).
I m not a religious person, but if we come some place after this, I hope you watched from there Joe. Rest in peace mate.
Tom

My race was an uphill struggle from the start. I didnt really have time to try the car in pro mode, but when I blew  :o four (4) :o engines during qually, I felt the race was kinda doomed whatever I did. The shy flagman at the start first made himself invisible amongst the crowd,then dropped the flag when I was adjusting on my chair, resulting in me already chasing the 2 leaders at T2. Had another brilliant race with Clive, we even swapped positions owing to a mutual exchange of favours at Druids, but my 360 put me 3rd from 1st, as KH was cunningly waiting in the wings, unseen by anyone. Then, just when I was starting squeezing some serious speed from the green thing, the engine started smoking and I decided to park it. You are right Tommie, I had tried to moderate my downshifting in praccy yesterday, but when I was chasing Clive I kind of forgot about it...Then completely threw caution out of the window after my mistake, as third was doing nothing for my champ hopes, and really became careless, I have to give this enigne thing a serious look in the off season.

Grats to Tom for his deserved win, quick and consistent, thats how it is done. Also, big grats to Clive for securing the first Joe Shaw Memorial Trophy, well deserving winner and great representative for the league. Hope we can make this a regular somewhat (I mean the trophy, not Clive winning it.. ;)), so I will have another chance! It was good to be able to remember Joe's name here, he is one of those rare drivers who just need a few races to make their mark. We miss you mate.

See you all soon on track guys, thanks for the racing!

Hi Arf - for me, any braking issues with the 67's can normally be solved by tweaking the brake balance. For stability under braking I'd certainly also avoid any assymetric setups or even running unequal ride heights (though I know some people swear by that kind of thing...) 

Really enjoyed this race - close fastest laptimes at the front showed how evenly matched it was. Got myself marooned on the inside of T1 at the start & dropped 2 places to Sergio & Arf. After the race settled down, I started to try & find a way past Arf who in turn was trying to find a way past Tom but we were all pretty similar on pace so it was proving to be a really good scrap. Sadly Arf dropped out of the party & so I slotted in behind teammate Tom & followed his smooth race rhythm as we gradually closed on the leaders Clive & Art. A silly half-spin by me after clipping one of those solid bushes cost me about 10 seconds & try as I might I wasn't making any inroads into the gap but Art's smokey Lotus elevated me onto the podium. Bad luck Art. 

Very well done to Tom for the race win :thumbup1: Congrats to Clive on being the inaugural winner of the series :clap: - very well deserved & as usual, achieved with a hard-racing yet gentlemanly approach that I think Joe would have appreciated (not to mention securing the win in a Brabham ;) ). Right, now get back in that white whale Clive - the holiday's over! 

Congratulations to Clive on securing the first Joe Shaw Memorial Trophy with an impressive three out of three podiums. You displayed the sort of speed and consistency that Joe did when winning the Works Trophy.

Also a big thank you to everyone who has taken part in this series. I hope this is something we can fit in every year, in some form or other, so we continue to remember Joe. He was one of the very best drivers we've had in this league but more importantly a top bloke who we all liked and respected.

Congratulations to Clive.

I have a trophy and it will be my grat pleasure to present this in person.

Please let me know where and when we can get together to do this.

We have been overwhelmed by the wonderful tributes and response of the UkGPL community and wish to extend out thanks to all of you.

I will be delighted to support the JS memorial trophy going forwards in any way I can.

Thank you

Malcolm Shaw

Thankyou for your support Malcolm and for your offer of a trophy. Something that we have not seen in UKGPL for many years.

More important to me was that all of us here at UKGPL showed the how much we had enjoyed Joe's company by supporting this series. Even in our virtual world we could tell that he was a genuine guy and a great racer who will be missed.


I think that we live at opposite ends of the country, you in Essex and me in Bristol. I will probably have occasion to travel into London from time to time as my daughter has taken up a teaching post there. Paul (badblood) is insisting that I meet him whenever I get up to London so maybe we can make it a threesome? Alternatively although a little belated, I will be at Goodwood for the Revival and at the Silverstone British GP. When I know of any dates when I will be travelling in your neck of the woods I will post them here and let Paul know.


Thanks for all the applause guys ( but keep it down will you, Mrs Fujikawa has not sanctioned my participation in this series!!  :o).

I have to say that I feel somewhat humbled and honoured as the first winner of this series, because it was to remember a very special person. Joe was someone we all respected and whose company we all enjoyed. The chat room was usually the closest we got to him! on the track he was usually alone out front!!

I hope we never forget to run this as an annual event. We may only be racing in a sim, but it is just as competitive as the real world when we take to the track...maybe a fraction easier on the pocket?.

I would have undertaken the whole series in the Waza, but as the rules stated that we had to use a different car in each round, I figured "what the hell!" and just for fun I would try one blue, one red and one green car.

It has been so long since I drove anything but the Honda in 67's that it took a while to build a setup for each chassis that was even remotely useful.
Silverstone in the Eagle was not good and I really did not extract the best from that car, but still scraped a 3rd spot when really I should have been much farther down the field if I am being honest.

For Brands it was either the Brabham, Cooper or Fezza. I tried the Brabham and it felt sooooo different from the Waza that I took the Ferrari and spent a good few hours experimenting off line to find out how to make it work!!! Once again I was lucky in snatching pole and therefore a clear track ahead, whilst there were a few incidents behind that removed any threat. This allowed me a safe win when I expected a far tighter race on such a short circuit.

So to last nights race at Oulton park.

I did try the Lotus, but although it was quick I was very nervous about the reliability. I tried the Honda and was getting respectable times in 1:33's-1:34's but it was on a knife edge all the way. The Cooper just did not feel quite right, so I returned to the Brabham.

It was green and the default setup was a nightmare. So I threw out the whole suspension and gearbox and set about rebuilding the whole car to drive like a proper racing car , if I could have painted it white with a red stripe it might have been almost perfect ::)

The only thing I could not do was get 2nd gear as high as I wanted, and as a result was constantly spinning up the tyres out of the slower corners and having to quickly shift into 3rd. Gradually the times came down and all off line practice was done on an overfuelled race setup ( approx 45 laps worth ) until I was regularly putting in 1:33's. Some further tweaks to ride height and bump rubbers made the car more and more predictable. All of those laps also honed my braking points and lines through the more awkward corners until I felt I was not going to get any better.

I had guessed that Art would go for the Lotus as probably the fastest car around Oulton ( or anywhere for that matter) and was more than a little concerned that with the lap record of 1:28 he might be some 3-4 secs a lap quicker if he was at his best. I had also worked through all the permutations of points and positions to see what was the minimum I needed to achieve to finish top of the table. Gee !!! it was close.
If any of the top 5 cars won it was possible with a few DNF's for any driver to snatch the title, so the first thing was survival. Art was obviously the biggest threat, but it did not matter where he finished as long as I was directly behind him. Of course, that meant if he won then I had to finish 2nd!!  easier said than done with some of the talent on the grid  :-\

3rd on the grid was probably about as good as I could have hoped for, because my qually setup was just my race setup with less fuel and Tom and Art's time were in unknown territory for me. But I had just squeaked in front of Al, who would always be a problem to get past in a race  ;).
If I was to have a chance I had to be on Art's tail from the start. The only problem was that I had Tom between me and him!!!

The start was a bit of a pantomime and when I Art stalled off the line, I just had to move across onto Tom's tail and take the inside at T1. I can assure you that my buttocks have rarely been clenched as tightly as that in any GPL race. Moving across off the grid is fraught with danger and a tap from behind would have ended everything before T1...... :eek:  But we slipped around the inside of T1 and I was doubly surprised ( and secretly pleased) when Art backed off on the outside and dropped in behind me  ;).

Tom was either very worried about cold tyres or the heavy fuel load on lap 1 whereas my Brabham felt solid and hooked up immediately. I knew I could go faster if I could just find an opening. The longer I waited the quicker he would get as his tyres and confidence warmed up. Lap 2 and he was already speeding up, plus Art had recovered and was getting closer....not my ideal scenario sandwiched between 2 fast guys both in a Lotus!!!. On the first laps I had already sussed that Tom was braking very early for the hairpin ( well, much earlier than I was  ::)) so I set up a possible pass by giving it some serious wellie out of the long left hander and aiming my car down the inside.

If he moved across I could still slow it down enough to avoid contact and when he did not, it was just a case of waiting for him to brake first and going through. (It seems that Tom had decided that I was too dangerous to have on his tail and had decided to let me through anyway. I was hoping that he would present more of a problem for Art and his Lotus and allow me to escape and build a lead. But within 2 laps Prib showed Art in 2nd..shucks!! and I already knew how quickly he could go by his qually time.  :-\

From then on it was a case of concentration on every braking point, gearchange and apex to try and maintain the pace and hold that gap back to Art. Maybe, just maybe I could tempt him into over cooking the engine as he tried to catch me. All those years racing the Waza have at least taught me how to protect an engine...thanks Mrs Fujikawa!!

For lap after lap the gap hovered around 200mtrs until I momentarily lost concentration and ran wide... Art was through!! Still all was not lost because I was right behind him  ;D.  I kept the pressure on willing that Cosworth engine in front to make some nice smokey shapes, but instead Art chose to spin on the exit of Druids...not perfect but it would do  ;)
Once again there was a 200mtr gap and it stayed that way for several laps until Prib suddenly announced that Art was gone and TOM was behind and VERY close and getting closer by the lap!! Where the hell had he come from!!!.
In my confused state I actually looked at the pitboard, totally missed my braking point for T1 and used the grass banking and the advertising hoarding to complete the turn. Meanwhile Tom took full advantage and swept through to take the lead. For the next lap I was pre-occupied checking Prib to see where Art was and allowed Tom to stretch his lead, although he had such pace in his Lotus that even when I returned to full concentration I could make very little impact on him, so he easily held the lead to the flag and a well deserved win.Proving that a little patience early in a race can generate some good results at the end.

A little disappointing to see that so few finished the race, but all I can say was that it was never relaxed at the front not even for a single lap.

I hope that we have offered something that Joe would have enjoyed and the races were conducted in a truly competitive way that reflected the way in which he approached GPL.

R.I.P. Joe you showed us how it should be done, now all we have to do is practice until we can drive as well as you did.

Very sorry I missed this one :(

The Citroen 'drowned' so I spent most of yesterday pulling the engine apart to see if it would ever run again. 4 hours later and I most deffinatly have bent bits in the valve train!

Was too knackered and wet to take part after that I'm afraid and spent the night looking for replacement cars and getting quotes etc. :(

No problem Fulvio/John, and apologies to yourself and Steve, these things just happen sometimes. Sorry about our coming together in qualifying John, at least on the second occasion I came upon you I had a better idea of where you would break and managed to avoid you. Please don't let it affect how we race each other in the future.

To echo the words of Clive in a post above, it was an honour to drive in this series in memory of Joe. Top bloke, top driver and a top series which I look forwadr to supporting in the future. Well done to our champion Clive and everyone who competed last night and in the earlier rounds.

uhhmmmmm?  :detective: :detective: :detective:

I have just discovered something about our "results tables" at the top of each race post that I had never noticed before.......OK! call me dim!!  alright! alright!  not so loud, have a little compassion.  :-\

If you click on the car badges you get taken to a web page about that particular make...Honda, Ferrari, Lotus takes you to their corporate pages and the others to Wikipedia info.

Just WHEN did that little innovation get slipped under the radar????? ??? :stupid:

Congrats to Clive and Tom, for the series and race wins resp.  I had hoped to fair a bit better than I managed but it didn't work out for a variety of reasons. 

I had only managed a few laps praccy for this race and was struggling to even get round without incident in the Ferrari, a fast car that I am pretty unfamiliar with, esp the slow to warm up tyres.  Anyways, a bigger issue of late seems to have been my connection...I was ejected from qually several times and knew it was only a matter of time before this happened in the race.  Sure enough, after a cautious start and a spin in front of Sergio, I lost connection having run only 2 or 3 laps.  I should've tried quitting and rejoining...not sure of the issue, need to look into it.

Cheers,

Bob.

...and if you click on the tyres' brand, you get the same trick..:sorcerer: 

It has only been around for years Clive...  :D

Well done mate.

oooooh yes!  well slap me with a wet fish and call me Neville!!!

Mod published. Thanks again to everyone who supported this series, we hope to run it again next year.