Wow this week is flying by. Thanks for all the reports and pictures
. Great turnout as well
. My race report will be to the point. Other than Hristo who once again was the class of the field I was lucky enough to get a clean lap in early that held up for 2nd on the grid. But with 3-4 others with lap times within a second I knew this could be a tough race. The warm up lap was well.. interesting.. From my point of view everything went just like clock work as Hristo did a great job of pacing the field at a steady rate and then even called out pit speed limiter on so others don't start running over each other. Or that was the plan..
After seeing the replay it was obvious that several didn't have a clue of what was going on with the rolling start. So much so that one person even asked "are we racing?". I saw that several drivers were just trying to get back to there original starting grid positions after having collisions which were not of their own doing only to be taking out again by the drivers that still had no clue of the warm up. Hotkeys having his race ended before it even started
. Now as others have said "they know who they are". But do they? My fear at this point is that they did not read the starting procedures and they wont see any of these posts. More than anything I'm just disappointed that no one has come forward and even said the simplest "sorry" at this point. Come on guys... As far as my race goes it was a race for 2nd the whole way. Hristo was checking out after couple of laps and then I could see that Geoffers was fairly close and knowing he can be one of the better consistent drivers I knew I'd have to keeping my thinking cap on to hang on to second place. Like Geoffers I was just trying to be as clean and smooth as I could be and not slide the car too much. We were in lockstep for most of the race but with 3 laps to go I had someone spinout in front of me going into turn one which made me adjust my line a bit and I really had to slide the car to get back to the apex. This must of put some extra unwanted heat in my tires and it was tricky for the last couple of laps. That or the pressure was getting to me and I was cracking a bit
. But I was able to hang on for second place
. Congrats to Hristo for a well deserved win
. Also to Geoffers for a rock solid drive to third
The only thing I would like to add to the rolling start procedure is the possibility of instead of everyone guessing when the leader gets to the starting line is that we run it like Goldtops F-1 series. In that series we all cued up with the speed limiter on and then did not start until we got to the starting line ourselves no matter what our starting position is. I say this because like in so many rolling starts you will always have some drivers towards the middle and even more starting in the back leave a little extra room in-between themselves and the car in front of them so they can go just before the leader gets to the line and that way they can get a running start on the cars in front of them. We used to call it ramp starting back in the day. This rolling start procedure seemed to work very well in GT's series. It allowed a bit of a gap in-between the cars so we all didn't run into each other in turn one. Plus without the ramp start possibility all of the drivers somehow figured out how to be right behind the car in front of them. Go figure huh
Just an idea Tony for future rolling races
Cheers