Thankyou for your support Malcolm and for your offer of a trophy. Something that we have not seen in UKGPL for many years.
More important to me was that all of us here at UKGPL showed the how much we had enjoyed Joe's company by supporting this series. Even in our virtual world we could tell that he was a genuine guy and a great racer who will be missed.
I think that we live at opposite ends of the country, you in Essex and me in Bristol. I will probably have occasion to travel into London from time to time as my daughter has taken up a teaching post there. Paul (badblood) is insisting that I meet him whenever I get up to London so maybe we can make it a threesome? Alternatively although a little belated, I will be at Goodwood for the Revival and at the Silverstone British GP. When I know of any dates when I will be travelling in your neck of the woods I will post them here and let Paul know.
Thanks for all the applause guys ( but keep it down will you, Mrs Fujikawa has not sanctioned my participation in this series!!
).
I have to say that I feel somewhat humbled and honoured as the first winner of this series, because it was to remember a very special person. Joe was someone we all respected and whose company we all enjoyed. The chat room was usually the closest we got to him! on the track he was usually alone out front!!
I hope we never forget to run this as an annual event. We may only be racing in a sim, but it is just as competitive as the real world when we take to the track...maybe a fraction easier on the pocket?.
I would have undertaken the whole series in the Waza, but as the rules stated that we had to use a different car in each round, I figured "what the hell!" and just for fun I would try one blue, one red and one green car.
It has been so long since I drove anything but the Honda in 67's that it took a while to build a setup for each chassis that was even remotely useful.
Silverstone in the Eagle was not good and I really did not extract the best from that car, but still scraped a 3rd spot when really I should have been much farther down the field if I am being honest.
For Brands it was either the Brabham, Cooper or Fezza. I tried the Brabham and it felt sooooo different from the Waza that I took the Ferrari and spent a good few hours experimenting off line to find out how to make it work!!! Once again I was lucky in snatching pole and therefore a clear track ahead, whilst there were a few incidents behind that removed any threat. This allowed me a safe win when I expected a far tighter race on such a short circuit.
So to last nights race at Oulton park.
I did try the Lotus, but although it was quick I was very nervous about the reliability. I tried the Honda and was getting respectable times in 1:33's-1:34's but it was on a knife edge all the way. The Cooper just did not feel quite right, so I returned to the Brabham.
It was green and the default setup was a nightmare. So I threw out the whole suspension and gearbox and set about rebuilding the whole car to drive like a proper racing car , if I could have painted it white with a red stripe it might have been almost perfect
The only thing I could not do was get 2nd gear as high as I wanted, and as a result was constantly spinning up the tyres out of the slower corners and having to quickly shift into 3rd. Gradually the times came down and all off line practice was done on an overfuelled race setup ( approx 45 laps worth ) until I was regularly putting in 1:33's. Some further tweaks to ride height and bump rubbers made the car more and more predictable. All of those laps also honed my braking points and lines through the more awkward corners until I felt I was not going to get any better.
I had guessed that Art would go for the Lotus as probably the fastest car around Oulton ( or anywhere for that matter) and was more than a little concerned that with the lap record of 1:28 he might be some 3-4 secs a lap quicker if he was at his best. I had also worked through all the permutations of points and positions to see what was the minimum I needed to achieve to finish top of the table. Gee !!! it was close.
If any of the top 5 cars won it was possible with a few DNF's for any driver to snatch the title, so the first thing was survival. Art was obviously the biggest threat, but it did not matter where he finished as long as I was directly behind him. Of course, that meant if he won then I had to finish 2nd!! easier said than done with some of the talent on the grid
3rd on the grid was probably about as good as I could have hoped for, because my qually setup was just my race setup with less fuel and Tom and Art's time were in unknown territory for me. But I had just squeaked in front of Al, who would always be a problem to get past in a race
.
If I was to have a chance I had to be on Art's tail from the start. The only problem was that I had Tom between me and him!!!
The start was a bit of a pantomime and when I Art stalled off the line, I just had to move across onto Tom's tail and take the inside at T1. I can assure you that my buttocks have rarely been clenched as tightly as that in any GPL race. Moving across off the grid is fraught with danger and a tap from behind would have ended everything before T1......
But we slipped around the inside of T1 and I was doubly surprised ( and secretly pleased) when Art backed off on the outside and dropped in behind me
.
Tom was either very worried about cold tyres or the heavy fuel load on lap 1 whereas my Brabham felt solid and hooked up immediately. I knew I could go faster if I could just find an opening. The longer I waited the quicker he would get as his tyres and confidence warmed up. Lap 2 and he was already speeding up, plus Art had recovered and was getting closer....not my ideal scenario sandwiched between 2 fast guys both in a Lotus!!!. On the first laps I had already sussed that Tom was braking very early for the hairpin ( well, much earlier than I was
) so I set up a possible pass by giving it some serious wellie out of the long left hander and aiming my car down the inside.
If he moved across I could still slow it down enough to avoid contact and when he did not, it was just a case of waiting for him to brake first and going through. (It seems that Tom had decided that I was too dangerous to have on his tail and had decided to let me through anyway. I was hoping that he would present more of a problem for Art and his Lotus and allow me to escape and build a lead. But within 2 laps Prib showed Art in 2nd..shucks!! and I already knew how quickly he could go by his qually time.
From then on it was a case of concentration on every braking point, gearchange and apex to try and maintain the pace and hold that gap back to Art. Maybe, just maybe I could tempt him into over cooking the engine as he tried to catch me. All those years racing the Waza have at least taught me how to protect an engine...thanks Mrs Fujikawa!!
For lap after lap the gap hovered around 200mtrs until I momentarily lost concentration and ran wide... Art was through!! Still all was not lost because I was right behind him
. I kept the pressure on willing that Cosworth engine in front to make some nice smokey shapes, but instead Art chose to spin on the exit of Druids...not perfect but it would do
Once again there was a 200mtr gap and it stayed that way for several laps until Prib suddenly announced that Art was gone and TOM was behind and VERY close and getting closer by the lap!! Where the hell had he come from!!!.
In my confused state I actually looked at the pitboard, totally missed my braking point for T1 and used the grass banking and the advertising hoarding to complete the turn. Meanwhile Tom took full advantage and swept through to take the lead. For the next lap I was pre-occupied checking Prib to see where Art was and allowed Tom to stretch his lead, although he had such pace in his Lotus that even when I returned to full concentration I could make very little impact on him, so he easily held the lead to the flag and a well deserved win.Proving that a little patience early in a race can generate some good results at the end.
A little disappointing to see that so few finished the race, but all I can say was that it was never relaxed at the front not even for a single lap.
I hope that we have offered something that Joe would have enjoyed and the races were conducted in a truly competitive way that reflected the way in which he approached GPL.
R.I.P. Joe you showed us how it should be done, now all we have to do is practice until we can drive as well as you did.