SimRacing.org.uk

This is the fifth race of our Season 17 Gold Cup fortnightly races being run in conjunction with GBGPL. Our first four races leave the leaders as Hristo, Fulvio and Evil Clive. With 26 points between the top three and five races to go the championship is still wide open.
As well as registering at UKGPL you will also need to have registered at GBGPL; http://www.gbsimracing.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1098.0.html (http://www.gbsimracing.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1098.0.html)
The races will not be moderated by the UKGPL moderating staff but any driver disqualified by the GBGPL moderators will be removed from the race results. The race results will be imported into the SRou results system and the points awarded according to the UKGPL scoring system.

For server joining details see the GBGPL website http://www.gbsimracing.co.uk/forum/ (http://www.gbsimracing.co.uk/forum/)

Server GBGPL - VROC
Race date = 04-05-2009
Time = 20:00 (UK time)
Track = Watkins Glen
Variant = 69F1
Damage Model = Int-Long
Qually time = 30 minutes.
Race length = 33 laps

Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=202;theme=6)
Any chassis may be used

Race replays are available at http://freeleo.wplanet.hu/weekly/1_downloads.php (http://freeleo.wplanet.hu/weekly/1_downloads.php)

Watkins Glen International ("The Glen") is an auto race track located near Watkins Glen, New York, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. It was long known around the world as the home of the United States Grand Prix, which it hosted for 20 consecutive years (1961–1980). In the early years races passed through the heart of the town with spectators lining the sidewalks, but after a car left the road in a 1952 race, killing one spectator and injuring several others, the race was moved to a new location on a wooded hilltop southwest of town. Later a permanent race course was constructed on 550 acres, overlapping part of the previous course. Despite improvements, the circuit became unable to safely handle the increasingly faster and stiffer ground effect cars of the late 70s and a few horrendous, sometimes fatal accidents and increasingly rowdy segments of the crowd began to tarnish its image. Finally, in May, 1981, several months after Alan Jones had won the 1980 race for Williams, the International Auto Sports Federation removed the race from its schedule because the track had failed to pay its debts to the teams.

Finally had a half decent race at Watkins, I really don’t get on with this circuit much. I wasn’t fast, but at least I had a fairly clean race, with minimal mistakes, still one or two, but zero mistakes is a bit too much to ask of me at the moment.

I thought that I’d qualify last, but didn’t, managed to get ahead of Phil Thornton by a hair. I was very please with my time, as it was a second quicker than I had been up to then.

I stayed out of trouble in the race, got a run on the guy in front of me at the start, but pulled out of it to be extra safe. I made my first mistake and went to the back of the field, I then made another mistake trying to make up too much time. At this stage I was a lap down on the leaders and 30 seconds off the next guy. I decided to get some consistent running in and forget about catching anyone, I started chasing my lap time, not by over driving but by concertinaing on my line, and it really worked. I was really impressed with a 1:03.7, which was my fastest lap, and I’m sure that there is another second to be found if I had more time. I was surprised when I did manage to catch Phil, was had a bit of a battle but I lost the car again and he got away. He had a small moment on the last corner, of the last lap but managed to cross the line 0.7 seconds in front of me.

So that was my best ever race at Watkins, I qualified second to last, and finished last but I had a lot of fun. 33 laps seemed to fly by, it really felt like it was over quickly. I’m now looking forward to the 65 race, I don’t know what to expect in terms of my pace, I really want a clean race, I think I’ll back off a little and see what happens.