SimRacing.org.uk

Gents,

Welcome to round 3. Please note that this is at Rouen NOT Reims as originally published.

Good luck - please report incidents to me. Any unreported will NOT be moderated.

Cheers,

Steven


Please be in the UKGPL VROC chat-room by 20:55 BST.

Server 1.ukgpl
IP address 194.105.176.22


Race date = 27-04-08
Track = Rouen
Damage Model = PRO
Qually time = 35 minutes

Don't start qualifying until 30 mins is left on the clock to allow for reserves.

Race length = 25 laps


Groups Based on Divisional Standings:

Group 1 - 1st and 2nd - Limited to BRM, Cooper or Honda
Lorenzo Galluzzi
John Roberts

Group 2 - 3rd and 4th - Limited to BRM, Cooper, Honda or Brabham
Hristo Itchov
Clive Gardner

Group 3 - 5th and 6th - Cannot take Eagle or Lotus
Syd Drake
Mike Wrightson

Group 4 - 7th and 8th - Cannot take Lotus
Napo
Glyn

9th and below - Free choice of chassis.

If you want to take a chassis other than those you are restricted to, you will need to make the appropriate pit stop(s), as follows:


Group 1

Chassis	One Stop	Two Stops
Lotus	44	17
Eagle	33	12
Ferrari	31	10
Brabham	11	NA

Group 2

Chassis	One Stop
Lotus	23
Eagle	12
Ferrari	9

Group 3

Chassis	One Stop
Lotus	3
Eagle	SnG

Group 4

Chassis	One Stop
Lotus	1

The pit window is as follows:

First pit stop to be taken between 19 and 12 to go on your pit board. If a second stop is required it must be taken at least 1 full lap after the first and before 6 to go on your pit board.

 :o  I wasn't going to do Reims, so I haven't practised at all for this.

hmmm, will have to take a Ferrari for a practice and see what happens.  I may have to miss this if I can't get any practice time and I'll run the D1 race instead.

Sorry about the late notice - I was away last week.

I'm not gonna get any practice time, so in the interests of everyone elses safety, I won't be at this one :(

I'll get sorted for the D1 race.

Come on guys, whats this all about. I've not done much practice but what I have done was at Reims, not Rouen. You can't change races this late surely. Kruger, Clive G and me were just chatting about the next race on Thursday night and they both thought it was Reims too.

Why the change anyway???

I'd like to bet you actually get people turning up tonight still thinking it's Reims.

You couldn't get two more contrasting circuits to swap. Eventhough we all know Rouen as it is an original it still takes some time to re-familiarise. Reims on the other hand only has two proper corners. :)

The problem we have is that there isn't enough data for Reims for the pit stop handicapping. Apologies for the last minute change - if I hadn't been away last week, the announcement would have been made some time ago.

I was just about to engage some practice in Reims and then noticed the announcement. I imagine some people may not have been so lucky so we can expect some grumbling tonight :)

Yes, I would think so too.

What about a non-Championship race tonight and add a round on at the end???

Or just don't allow drivers a car choice then pitstops aren't relevant.

Hmm, well, most folk will know Rouen quite well, so I'm not sure if we have to resort to a non-Champ race. Let's see what folk say tonight - if there's very strong feeling against it, we can do something else, although I'd prefer to go ahead with a race at Rouen.

The only way it affects me is that, since I am running GPL more for fun, I was going to give the add-on tracks a miss.  Since Reims was planned, I planned to enter the GTR race tonight anyway.

We never planned to run a masters race at Reims.  Please look at the track list on the original registration post here (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=4335.msg69701#msg69701).  It was always planned to run Rouen not Reims.  When I entered the data into LM2 I was sure I selected Rouen but it looks like I made a mistake.  However, the database in LM2 isn't read only so it is quite possible someone changed it by mistake when they were browsing it.  Anyway that's all irrelevant, what is done is done.  All we can do now is run the race at Rouen tonight, if there are lots of complaints Steven can decide to rerun the round later in the year and treat tonight as a fun race. 

So was it lack of data or a mistake in the list?

Only winding you up guys, it's all just for fun anyway. :)

I just want to apologize for taking out Syd.  :(
It won't happen again.

Well, the plan was to take an eligible Lotus and then not push as hard as I would with other car but never got on with it actually. Rouen is also not my cup of tea (at least with 67s) so I didn't expect much of it anyway.

Had a nice dice with Ken but then made a mistake into braking area after the back straight and it seems I have damaged the suspension a bit although I only touched the fence. Later on, when I spun at T1, that suspension seemed to have gotten worse and an otherwise twitchy Lotus felt even twitchier so I called it a day.

Grats to Neil for a great run and rest of the podium.

Decided to take a better chassis than my championship position allows for this one seeing as I drove the Lotus earlier in the day for the GPL World Champs. It only had a 1s pit stop so thought it would be worth it. I knew I had to pull around a second a lap over Hristo to be able to stop and come out in front of him but there was no way this was ever going to happen. I pitted and Hristo drove past just as I was pulling away from the pits. Heading down the hill though I saw a load of yellow flags and found myself back in the lead after he had an off.

Nice race for me...
I'm happy about my qualifying lap, 1.55.6 :punk: which is my pb in the cooper!
I knew i couldn't fight with Hristo and Neil so i tried to end my race without mistakes, the fight between Ken and Kruger allowed me to arrive 3rd in a "relaxed" way...
Cheers
Lorenzo

I spent too much time on Sunday evening winding up our admins when I should have just fired up GPL and run a few laps of Rouen!!

I did make an effort to arrive early in VROC and hosted a Rouen session just to get my eye in. After only about 2 or 3 laps I posted a mid 1:56 so I was a little more relaxed about the change of venue.

I knew that was too good to be true and once into the race server I couldn’t string a lap together for toffee. I bumped a polo at the hairpin and knocked the tracking out, and then I blew an engine. I think at least half the session had gone before I even posted a 1:57. Eventually I did get a mid 1:56 but Glyn, Lorenzo and Hristo really put the rest of us to shame with the quick times they were doing.

Everybody behaved very well on the first lap with a nice orderly queue at the hairpin. On cold tyres Kruger got away a little and Clive was pressing me hard in his Ferrari. Eventually as the tyres got some temperature I increased my pace and I was able to push Kruger. He had two moments at the end of the back straight. On the first occasion he ran wide I nipped through but it wasn’t long before he was back on my tail, and even though I defended the inside line at the same corner he drove round the outside of me to regain his position! All this fighting allowed Lorenzo to ease away and I also noticed Clive re-appear in my mirrors. A few laps later Kruger repeated his error at Sciere and I was through again and this time he seemed to drop back much further before disappearing completely a few laps later.

It was then a case of keeping concentration to the end with plenty of opportunity for error at this demanding circuit. As it was I did get it home but I can only gape in awe at the times posted by our three podium drivers.

Serves you right  ;).

Seems it was quite a good race - some interesting reports to read. Sadly, there was a reported incident, so I'll have to do some work this time.