SimRacing.org.uk

NGT Sprint Cup - Season 1, Round 5 at Donington Park

Date: Tuesday 9th August

Practice 1: 8:45pm (15 mins)
Qual 2: 9:00pm (15 mins)
Warmup: 9:15pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:17pm (30 mins)

Cars allowed: Any NGT car or 911 Bi-Turbo or Mosler or Vertigo or Morgan. (Lotus Elise, BMW Z3M, Porsche GT3 Cup are allowed but will not score points.)

Notes:
(1) Please try to arrive 15 minutes early during Practice 1.
(2) Server Password has been emailed to those registered racers for each championship. Please contact a member of the admin team to get the password if you are registered and have forgotten or not received the password. It will not be given out in the GTR chatroom as that is a public place. The password wont change for the season unless there are security concerns.
(3) See  UKGTR Season 1 Info (http://www.ukgtr.org/series.php?series=103) for general Season 1 info.
(4) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (http://www.ukgtr.org/rules.php)

oooooooh F360 time again !!! :D:D

Blimey, can't believe we'll have done half the season after tonight, doesn't time fly when you're having fun!  ;D

Donington, run-off capital of the GTR-world, completely the opposite of Brno last week, tight, twisty and bumpy  :o

Got my times down a LOT over the last week here (best of 1:34.3xx) but racing at Doni is a different kettle of proverbials to hotlapping!

Pops.

Will try and make it as well as reserve ( /me looks at Dave with puppydog eyes ;)). Just a quick question though... I've just checked Brno N-GT race and there were no other cars than 360 (most), gt3 and ONE Bi-T!? Is everyone going to be driving those again today? If so, hopefully I can get in with either a Morgan, Vertigo or even Mosler, lol! :D

T

I'd guess so Tyf, almost everyone seems to have plumped for the 360 over the last few races.

Gotta ask though - why aren't you taking your 'boat' out at Doni tonight?

Pops

See you all there. Donnington is one of those awkward tracks for me- I like it a lot but nailing the ideal line is so important for a fast lap and I'm a bit inconsistent with doing it it seems. The first corner a real case in point. I think my favourite corner in the whole game though is the old hairpin as it feels damn sexy when you get it right. I'm lapping 1:35 on a good lap and 1:34 on a great lap, so will probably do my usual terrible qually performance and manage a 1:36 ;)

Hope to be there with mosler but domestic duties may mean I miss it.bye for now gerald

Well, I was thinking of a change before and seeing I got about 6 better times on Donny ;) with all the other N-GT cars kinda helped too :). Saying this too, I'll be there with 'Ze Boat' !

Wish me luck! ;) :D loool!

T

Holy crap - what a race that was!

Dreadful qualifying period - back in 14th, 1 decent lap which I screwed up by spinning.

Thought I was in for a tough time with Fozz right behind me but after a little tap going into the chicane, Fozz span, I didn't. I think I braked a bit early on cold tyres / brakes which might have contributed to that.

Chased Aangram for a while 'til we caught PaulW, who did the gentlemanly thing to let his team-mate through (by spinning  ;D). Had Fozz on my tail again, was mighty relieved to see him overcook a corner and disappear. Aangram was next to go, spinning at the chicane, which left me in 10th, behind Don1.

Don1 drove brilliantly, we were about 1s apart for about 15mins, did all I could to close and put some pressure on but he kept responding. I think as the tyre wear built, we both made some mistakes, managed some contact, let PaulW through, who then did the gentlemanly thing again to let me though!

Chased down Don1 again, with about 3 laps to go we caught some backmarkers, somewhere in the melee, Don1 span and finally I was through for 8th.

Don, you really deserved that 8th with some great defensive driving, I'd have caved in immediately  :D, gutted for you m8  :'(.

Good to see both the NGT Legends in the top 10  ;D

God I'm knackered, my first race, well, actually racing all the way!

Pops

Woah, quite a race.

Qualifying 2nd was quite a shock as I really don't like the NGTs round Donington. Like Donington just not particularly in the NGTs there's a distinct lack of grip. Anyway knew it would be a tough race, but was hopful for a podium. PaulH led off the formation lap but lost control weaving warming his tyres so I had to take over the formation lap lead which was very odd with PaulH managing to just hang on to 2nd pos on the formation lap.

Into the race, was pretty sure Matjaz was going to be faster than anyone and sure enough he didn't take long to take the 3 ahead of him and into the lead. I thought he would pull away then but I managed to keep with him for about half distance and then I just don't know what happened. My car just lost a lot of grip, the tyre temps were fine, there was nothing wrong with the car but the car suddenly felt real lacking in grip. This helped Paul close right up with me and he looked like he was pushing very hard. I somehow fended him off only twice actually having to fend off overtaking attempts (from memory). Eventually Paul made a mistake on the s/f straight as we were side by side after doing a sandwich job on one of the back markers (he must have wondered where to go and just closed his eyes as Paul and I went either side  ;D), paul just touched the grass and he lost about 3 seconds and that was that. Just needed to be tidy on the last 2 laps and I took 2nd, very pleased.

Excellent race Paul, well done on managing to follow so close to my arse for so long, great stuff. I have been taking a big effort to stay relaxed whilst racing as i have been holding the wheel way to hard and it's killing my wrists. The best drivers always nice and loose on the wheel so I tried to take a leaf out of their book and it worked quite well as I stayed fairly relaxed even with Paul right behind me for practically 30 mins.

Donington is a really hard place to overtake, there aren't any safe overtaking places unless the other person makes a mistake.

Well done to Matjaz once again for the win, becoming too regular  :P ;)

Also well done to Team Shark drivers, 5th for Picnic, excellent points finish nice one and Aagramn managed a very respectable 9th? in the Morgan (nice car).


Finally, I must again apologise to Jamera. Near the end of qualifying I was very close to him about to go past on the s/f straight and into the last hairpin i clipped THAT bump really badly and i just lost it and slammed into the side of Jamera's 911. Very embaressing I should have just backed off and not been so close as I was not really on a full flyer.

What a right arse of a race.

Some loon setup my car (me). Right undrivable joke in qualiify, right oversearing b*s*a*d. still I can see how it'd be quick, but after joining, and ending up at some ausie race, joining and entereing phantom ukgtr (where everyone is in but nobody other than me on track), joining and entering ausie race again. I didn't have time to re-learn the car (no practice what-so-ever) so started something around 14th ish.

In the race I had the same oversteary monster (well it was slightly less) but it took me a good 20 minutes to figure it out. and once i'd done that I was quite depressed with my position and was quite careless.

Shame I think I would have done well, Did well in the GT fun race a bit ago on Smoothy's server. (it's easy to say now I know)

Well there you go - you just cant account for the human being! There I was albeit 3rd from the back of the grid, feeling quite confident nevertheless, after all the practice Ive been putting in (thanks to Paul and Mark for their help), the form lap is moving away and WHACK, I get punted off the track from behind. Get a puncture and have to try and ease it all the way round into the pits to get a new tyre put on. In my haste to do this (all the cars were streaming past the pits now on lap 1) I forgot to change the fuel input, and ended up with 60 laps worth of fuel in the tank, lol! It was like driving a Sherman (I think, cos I`ve never actually driven a tank!)

However managed to stay pretty consistent throughout the race, with 3 stupid spins! Hope I managed to let most of the leaders thru ok.

Was great fun though, am really enjoying the experience.

Cheers

Rob

Negative stuff first- had another qually lap ruined with someone exiting the pits without looking to see if its clear- just drove straight onto the track and myself and the car behind were totalled  >:( Very annoying and very avoidable >:(

On the positive side, that was a really eventful and enjoyable race. Pops, Don1, Aaagramn and I seemed to match each other for pace really well but still managed to swap places several times through each others mistakes. I was a little annoyed to find myself up in 8th but then spin clipping a curb I've hit fine many times. My rear tyres were then overheated and I had problems with the rear sliding out in each corner after that. I'd started a frustrating cycle of overheating the tyres and driving badly as the cooled before making a naff mistake and spinning them back up to 120 degrees again :(

*EDIT* (it was contact with Mo)
I'm not sure what happened at the last corner of the first lap Mo- we were close at the exit of the turn before and so I went over to the far left of the last corner to give you room to brake and yet it looked like I tapped you? Will have to check the replay but sorry if I did  :(

It's a shame the Sprints dont have divisions- as an average driver I'm automatically about 8 places down with the super fast drivers the sprints attract whereas there would be a brilliantly competitive league with an 'anyone can win it' aspect with the middle chunk of the drivers tonight. 6th place through to 11th in qualification tonight was separated by 0.2 of a second!

Wow it dosn't get any easier, but waht good fun.

Qualified in 7th with a new NGT PB, not very quick by most standards but pleasing for me.

Settled into the race running a steady 8th, nice comfatable pace.  Had some good battles along the way and only made a couple of minor mistakes, no spins which is a rareity for me at Doni.
Somewhere along the way one of the leaders vanished so up to 7th, happy with that.  Then with 1.5 laps to go ZIP had a spin which let me thro into 6th, bad luck fella, there was no way I was going to close that 4 secs on you.

So finished in 6th one place up on my qual position, which was a bonus.
Grats to the podium, far to quick for me.

First replay is up, help yourselves :)

I think they must have resurfaced the track between some offline practice and the race  :o Could just about do 1.37's is practice, so I decided to forgo a qualifying thrash and go with the race setup. Ran about 7 laps in practice 1 in the 35's and then several 34's in qually. Only got me 10th on the grid, but it was all very tight. With 30 secs of qual left 6-11 were seperated by just 0.101 seconds!

The race was good, I could consistently lap in the 35's and did a 34.8 for good measure. Didn't spin or fall off and finished 5th. Congratulations to the top 3, stirling effort.

Good fun race, stayed out of trouble and cruised around for 9th, pleased with that. Made one mistake, took too much kerb at the chicane and spun. The Morgan didn't seem to have much grip to start with, and seemed to lose some of it half way through. Bring on the GT cars tomorrow. :)

Lol @ tank Rob!

I had a much better qualyfying time than expected. Picked the 'boat with the dogface' again, because Popa told me so in another thread ;). Was only tenths behind Lomax, who's quick with the Bi-T. Managed to put enough fuel in... But yup, you guess it... Forgot to change friggin tyres! LOOOL!
Have you lot ever tried to drive the Bi-T on Donny with soft fronts and medium rears for more than 10 laps? Haha! I was on eggs aka 3665 (ZiP clan 'swear' word as well, lol  ;)). So actually I feel the morale winner today, having only gone off the track once in loads of laps! :D Woohoo! Congrats to winners! And well done Aagramn for NOT taking the 'default' cars ;)  >:( :o :D

(http://www.tyfdesk.com/gtrpics/UKGTR-Donny-race640-480.jpg)

T

:(  4th place was nice, but I was very frustrated with that one.  Great qually!  new PB by miles so thought it was going to come together, but my usuall bugbear of the BRAKES affects me badly here.  It's just soooo damn easy to lock them!  There must be something I can do with the setup to help lessen this, it is driving me mad.

When I'm by myself it's fine, but when I come up to another car, I'm so scared of locking the wheels and sliding into them that I don't brake hard enough and crash into them anyway!!   I think thats what happened when I crashed into as-here when coming up to lap him :(  Really sorry, I was hoping you would turn the corner, but I think you got sideways on the bump??

The pace at the front was amazing and I just couldn't stay with it!

Lol, I'd like to be able to claim I took it to add some variety to the grid, but I can't drive the 360 & GT3 at Doni without spinning. ;)

Results are up in the usual place btw.

Bloody hell! It's close at the top!
Shark = Mike = Matjas! All on 127!

Err, the maths is a bit (completely) wrong.
50 + 50 + 50 = 150 for Matjaz.
I should be leading by 6 on 156.

Mein gott, Shark has got his maths right for once.  :o

I'll raise this with Dave.

Adrenaline event for me. I couldn't enter the server for a very funny reason... track not installed... haha yeah right. When I did manage to enter I was then disconected 3 times. Wanted to call it a day but then decided to restart GTR and give it another try. When I joined the qualifying session there were 3 minutes left so I just grab the F360 with almost default setup and wrong front tyres to do 1 single hot lap which brought me to 4th position on the starting grid.

Start was very strange. I opened the throttle to soon and had to brake to avoid overtaking my team mate before the start/finish line. In the first corner Mike went a bit wide and I managed to gain a position. Then I saw Paul making a mistake when battling with Shark coming into the chicane so I could overtake him. Straight after that Shark did a very coutious braking in the very slow right corner after the chicane giving me a chance to take the lead. The two guys behind me had a great fight and were following me closely. I was completely unprepaired for the race and was doing half a second slower times from my Morgan times. I still regret not choosing the Morgan. It would be funny to lead a race with that wooden piece of english tradition... I really think I would have been faster then in F360. Lack of proper setup ment I was struggling in a few places but stil managed to stay ahead of Shark and Paul.

Then we had some backmarkers and the first one almost cost me the lead while overtaking the second one gave me a 4 seconds advantage. After that the gap climbed to 8 seconds and I began to drive a bit more cautious. It was funny to observe my pitboard... one lap it said I was 19th then 13th and then finally 1st... I just hoped I'll survive it without disconection.

Great race like always, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did despite some Simbin hiccups.

Another absorbing, frustrating and intense race. Got a nice PB in qual to get pole (with less of a frame rate hit than normal, unsurprisingly), and then chucked it away by overdoing it warming my tyres on the pace lap. Over the start line in 2nd and followed Simon pretty closely up to the esses, where he made a small error, I had to back out to avoid contact and Mat was through - thx Simon! ;-) Mat then finished the job next corner, ducking inside a rather nervous Shark at the loop.

Spent the next few laps settling in, making a couple of small mistakes, and then started to close the gap. Simon was slower at the old hairpin and macleans, but it was very hard to make anything stick - the track was too twisty up the hill out of the old hairpin, and the straight to Coppice too short. Had a couple of good attempts but Simon always covered the inside line and it is very hard to outbrake someone from the outside given the poor peripheral vision. The battle went on and on, until Simon went wide round a backmarker at the last corner, I tucked in tight and we passed either side down the home straight. I glanced right to see where he was, stupidly drifted off the track and spun down the inside losing many seconds and a place to Bernie. He then lost it a lap later after the old hairpin.  

Amazingly I was back up with Simon only a few laps later, but by then my tyres must have been shagged and I was making too many little mistakes to really challenge for the place. Backed off for the last few laps and trundled home in 3rd.

Overall, despite being stupid on the pace lap, I had a great time dicing with Simon - very clean as always and very close. I finished bathed in sweat, but I loved every second of it.  ;D Surely though I'm due an uneventful race soon?

Paul

Yeah, I kept being promoted to 1st despite still being able to see you ahead, which was very nice of the game but a little unfair :o. I thought at one point maybe it had discounted one of your laps for cutting the chicane as there was one lap you seemed to not use any track at all but alas no it was just the game being silly. :D ;)


I must admit I toyed a lot with the idea of the Morgan too, it just seems to go so well round Donington, much better feel than the F360 which seems to really dislike Donington. In the end I chickened out. :P Next season I think I will either take the Morgan or Mosler as the F360 is very common now.

Just take the Lotus in an Endurance race m8, preferably on Spa! LOL! ;) :D  ;D

T

The real standings at the top of the NGT sprint table are:

1. Shark 156
2. Matjaz Plotajs 150
3. Mike Wrightson 134

Looks like the results table isn't accepting values greater than a signed byte, the GT Sprint table has the same problem.

If you could contrive for the system to permanently lose all points above 127, I'd be eternally grateful!  :D

And in the case of a tie at the end of the season, the winner will be decided alphabetically.  ;)

ROFL!  ;D ;D ;D ;D

Sorry to disappoint you but I've widened all the points fields from TINYINT to INT (even the ones where TINYINT is currently big enough) so Shark has his slender lead back. :P :D

Bah.  :(

Well, I probably wouldn't have got 127 points anyway.  ;)

Had a quick look at the replay, and it's funny how your memory plays tricks. I was well in touch by lap 5, the incident when we passed the backmarker either side was bang on half distance, after which I caught up and we had several very close laps ending in the side by side into the esses about 2-3 laps from the end, after which I ran wide at the loop and never got back in contention.

Paul

Yes took me ages to find that incident where we sandwiched the backmarker cause it was sooo much earlier than i thought possible. Felt much later into the race. I also forgot we caught back up to Matjaz at a couple of points where he came up to backmarkers was very close to him at a couple of points.

That was me, hope I behaved myself - I saw you spin off Paul and thought "I hope that wasnt my fault".

Cheers

Rob

Ah good I can use your name instead of "a backmarker" now. Sorry Rob, was too busy trying to beat Paul to notice who it was.

  >:(  ???  >:(  ???  >:(  ???

Had problems with internet connection last night and couldn't join the race (not a fault of Simbin for a change). I was so pissed...

Hope you had a good time, but here is more at stake - I missed a second race allready.

Sorry to hear that Tom, kinda missed my fellow Penguins a bit :D. Hope you're on for tonight though! :D

T

You did fine Rob - must have been a bit daunting with Simon all over you like a rash! My spin wasn't your fault, just me looking at Simon instead of the road  ::)

Paul

You bet I am! Though as a reserve GT I'll wait in the lobby.

Watch out, Penguins attacking!