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1955 Grand Prix - Round 9 – Syracuse

The ninth race in the 1955 Grand Prix series is in at Syracuse, a street circuit in Sicily. Situated on the outskirts of Syracuse, the 3.4 mile circuit on public roads is in the shape of a triangle, with two slow corners, an acute hairpin, and concrete walls bordering the fairly wide road for practically the entire distance and demanding maximum concentration. There is no real straight, but the three sides of the triangle each have fast, gentle curves. It is, in fact, what is known as a 'driver's circuit', leaving no margin for the slightest error.

The 1955 race was memorable in that Tony Brooks, a dental student from Manchester England, qualified his Connaught in third place on the grid behind the Maseratis of Luigi Musso and Luigi Villoresi. Brooks made a great start and diced for the lead with Musso over several laps before pulling a way to win by over 50 seconds. Thus, Brooks became the first British driver in the history of the sport to win a major race in a car designed, developed and built in Great Britain (unlike Segrave's Sunbeam which won the 1923 French G.P. and, the 1924 San Sebastian G.P. which was designed by Ernest Henry in in Suresnes, Paris). The Mercedes Benz team did not participate as the race did not count towards the driver’s championship, nevertheless Brooks race average of 99.05 mph over the 2 hour 24 minute race would have been hard to beat.
 
Carefully read the rules on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=639&theme=6).

Race list	iGOR
Server	UKGPL_4
IP address	95.144.125.170
Date	09-09-2018
Track	syracuse (http://srmz.net/index.php?showtopic=3339%20%20%20%20%20%20http://home.arcor.de/pierre.dietze/pierre.dietze/)
Mod	55F1 with 60fpsV2newmod
Damage	PRO long
Race time	~ 21:30 UK time
Qualifying	20:45 UK time - 45 minutes
Race length	24 laps
Replay	here (ftp://ftp.ukgpl9.co.uk:32122/Season33/55GP)

Please restrict chat to emergency messages only including at the end of the race until ALL drivers still racing have crossed the line.

Password: see above (#post_event_password)
Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=639&theme=6)

Handicapping and chassis allocation.
This season the 1955 Grand Prix cars will be using a token system which allows drivers to purchase any chassis of their choice for a given number of tokens as published on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R&group=639&theme=6). Drivers classed as Amateurs will be allocated an additional 10 tokens.  The token allocation will not be managed in SRou this season so (unlike the 67F1 Works and 67F1 Privateer divisions) the tokens available to each driver will not appear in the championship table (when the mouse pointer is hovered over the driver's total).  Rather, the available tokens will be published in the race announcement. See table below.

Available Tokens:
Note: These are the tokens available to each driver before the 10 tokens are added for making the race start.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	15	Pro
Clive Loynes	13	Pro
Doni Yourth	30	Pro
EvilClive	16	Pro
fpolicardi	6	Am
francesco	7	Am
Phil Thornton	15	Am
DLogan	8	Am
Gareth	10	Am
Jeep	7	Am
Uli	6	Pro
FullMetalGasket	90	Pro
Will Tway	5	Pro
Baab	18	Am
Cookie	10	Pro
Samb	10	Pro
Ziu Bacubacu	5	Pro

Something of a challenge this one!

Good luck all.

It certainly is but truly authentic. Practice server will be up all day, please take time to practice. No grass run-off areas mean the risk of a big incident is high, please take care.

Not attending this one. Been some major upheaval in my life (rant about living up to your part of a contract before bitching about others may be shared later), and am posting this on the flakiest-ass wifi this side of 1994, while looking for a new place to live. :(

Sorry to hear that Dean. Hope you get things sorted out soon.

Tuned in, intending to say something about tonight's race and saw Dean's post....which changed things a little.

Some things are more important even than simracing. Sounds like life is being a little harsh for you right now buddy, hope that you can get some equilibrium back into your world soon.

Out on lap 1  :(. Tried to avoid Tim's Gordini which was sideways after turn 3 but just clipped his rear.  Minor contact nevertheless lost a wheel but Tim could continue. The GPL gods were harsh on me today  :2guns:. On another day the Lancia would have been unaffected.

Sorry Phil - The back wheel just clipped the bales and I lost control :(
If it's any consolation I blew my engine on the next lap, must be karma as I'm normally very good at looking after them.

In the lead 3 laps to go I lost it under braking into the lefthander to the long backstraight, kissed the wall and damaged my engine, one lap later it popped...

Grats Clive nice fight ;D

I've loaded the chassis the drivers used into the token calculator spreadsheet.  For the next race the available tokens will be as declared in the table below (the table will also appear in the next race announcement).  The calculated values are automated but selecting the cars is a manual process so please check your tokens to make sure I haven't made a silly error.  There was no token overspend for this round so no one is disqualified.

Available Tokens:
Note: These are the tokens available to each driver before the 10 tokens are added for making the race start.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	15	Pro
Clive Loynes	8	Pro
Doni Yourth	30	Pro
EvilClive	21	Pro
fpolicardi	6	Am
francesco	5	Am
Phil Thornton	10	Am
DLogan	8	Am
Gareth	10	Am
Jeep	7	Am
Uli	6	Pro
FullMetalGasket	100	Pro
Will Tway	5	Pro
Baab	18	Am
Cookie	5	Pro
Samb	10	Pro
Ziu Bacubacu	5	Pro

No problem Tim. It's a bit like trying to avoid a pinball here. I slowed and decided to go to your right but you bounced off the wall so I tried to go to your left. These cars don't turn quick enough in such situations so I couldn't avoid you :(

Great race tonight Evil, a fitting tribute to Tony Brooks.

I'm very sorry Clive, clear my fault  ???
I finished a fine close fight for 3rd place - THX to you - until that silly crash ...
following seven boring laps
finally finishing but bad feelings  :-\

btw
over the whole event I had bad framerates (52-56 fps?) always at the same part of the circuit
in practice I tried to reduce the graphic, unfortunately without success

Fortunately i was able to avoid the incident between Phil and Tim but,i don't remeber exactly in which lap,the spring of my gear box broke.
I was able to change again the gear but with some difficult due to a different feeling and less precise gear engagement.

Grats to those who made it to the finish. This circuit does not forgive a driver's mistakes and I was extremely fortunate last night. A little sad to see a reduced grid.

Leading up to these final two races I had a chance to challenge Clive Loynes' lead in the championship. I was pretty certain that he would use the Lancia, and all that power would be a big threat around this tricky circuit. The track might be unforgiving, but there are some long and very fast sections where outright speed was going to be a big advantage. I did consider using my favourite chassis, the Maserati 250f, and tried a few laps. There is no doubt that the Mazzer was quick and after 5 laps prib was promising a sub 1:54 lap on race fuel, but when I read the race post about Tony Brooks winning in a Connaught???...….well I just had to try and re-create that victory didn't I??

Then Axel got involved in qually and proved that my fears about the Lancia power were right and despite throwing the Connaught around the track in a 100% all or nothing attempt I could only manage a 2nd spot on the grid. I was astonished ( again!!) when Tim got the Gordini in to 3rd spot  :notworthy:. Clive Loynes was a little further back and I suspected that he was playing the survival game, hoping that getting to the flag whilst others argued with the stone walls.


Axel took the lead from the start and I tucked into his slipstream. My worry was the first lap when cars behind might run out of brakes and do the bowling ball trick, but Axel was quick and dragged us both clear of the chasing pack. The rest of the race was a great battle, both with Axel and the track. Trying to push hard but not destroy the car against those walls or sticky haybales was stressful...but huge fun too!! There were a few contacts with the walls, but nothing that damaged the car fortunately until I got too close to the rear of Axel's car just as my brakes evaporated and I had to flick the car sideways to slow it down and avoid rear ending him. By the time I had recovered control the Lancia was powering away from me and out of slipstream range.

I think there were about 8 laps to go and I wondered if I could reel Axel in again, but I did want a win for the Connaught  ;) I nailed a couple of quick laps and halved the gap but I was risking everything and a certain 2nd spot. So I eased off a little and was resigned to following Axel home, until I came across a struggling Lancia....I could not believe that it was Axel and it took several checks on Prib over the next laps to confirm that I had taken the lead. I was concerned that the speed of the Lancia would allow Axel to catch me so I was absolutely on the limit until I realised that Axel was slow and not able to chase me.
Almost threw away the win on the last lap when I relaxed and ran wide into those sticky haybales, but I kept my foot planted on the gas and ripped myself free with all 4 wheels still attached  :sweatdrop: :sweatdrop:


It was nice to do a "Tony Brooks" in the Connaught and take the win. A shame that many were unable to complete the race and it looks like Clive and Tim suffered early exits. Still all to play for at Silverstone...…………………...

Not to worry Uli, these things happen.


I was running on Paracetamol last night, having brought home some bugs from Spain on Thursday.  I probably lost a couple of kilos during the race.

But that doesn't explain why I was so slow compared to Axel and t'other Clive.  Guess I'm just slow.  ;-(

I think that my chances of the title have now gone, unless t'other Clive has a disaster at Silverstone.  I could try to find the little doll and stick some more pins in it.  That's probably safer than trying to bribe Mable to let his tyres down on the grid!  Fearsome woman!

On a brighter note, Fran did an excellent job to finish on the podium, despite troubles of his own.  That puts SBRC in a strong position for the Team Championship, which was always our goal.

I had better get some practice in.

Sorry to hear that you got a dose of Spanish Fly  ::) Clive. It did cross my mind that you were not firing on all cylinders for some reason. Of course I hoped to be faster than you would be, but I did not expect you to be a couple of seconds off my race pace  :-\

Now if I can just recruit a new member for Blue Moose it is just possible that SBRC can be robbed of the Team Trophy too..... ;)

Ratbag!

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