UKGTL Season 14 Motorsport World Cup - Zeltweg - Jun 23

[BillThomas]

I'm fated, tried to post here 3 times only for it to disappear into the ether.  >:(Thanks Tony for event. 

[Erling G-P]

Ach, powers that be were not on my side yesterday 

Race 1 was going swimmingly.  I was in 1st, with a 25 sec and growing gap to 2nd, and thus looking set to extend my championship lead over Clive, my current nearest competitor. Then the darn server decided to turn things upside down.

In race 2, everything went wrong.  Started in pole again, by coincidence this time.  Again lost some places to the rwd cars, that just get off the line quicker.  Slotted into 2nd at lap 2, behind Geezer. Clive was hot on my case from the get go. I made a mistake and he slipped past some laps later. Geezer also fell back, and we exchanged 2nd-3rd several times, depending on who made a mistake.  I was running 2nd, when something I had dreaded since qualify for race 1 happened: GTL minimized! 

Fortunately I was approaching a corner with a big gravel bed, so the car just coasted to a stop without damage.  Rejoined in 6th.  Slowly made my way back up the field.  Squeezed past Tony into 3rd in the first part of the double lefthander, but my braking for the 2nd part caught him out, as he promptly punted me off. When 2.5 ton Commodore decides a 500 kg Mini needs a trip to the gravel, said Mini gets a deep trip into the gravel...  Tony waited and I rejoined in 4th, but sadly without hope of advancing further - had only just caught up to Tibernius when the race ended.

I'm wondering about the incidents with GTL minimizing. It happened in qualy, in race 2, and I'm wondering if it perhaps caused the glitch in race 1. I wouldn't expect a client to be able to affect the server that way, and it didn't the other two times. Still, I think it minimized too at that point in race 1, but exactly what happened is a bit blurry, as you can probably imagine my reaction..

Only thing changed on the PC, was installation of a work-related Citrix client earlier Monday. I had restarted before the race, and when GTL minimized the first time, I checked for Citrix processes running, but didn't find any. When looking at replays after the races, it happened again. Checked Msconfig and found that several Citrix tasks were set to load upon boot.  Have disabled them, and have not seen the minimizing in replays since, but need to run them for longer, before I can say for sure that they were the cause of it.

Cheers,
Erling

[Wiltshire Tony]

Race results table revised to show Phspok's correct position.

Still waiting word on whether we can get the Championship table to play ball with the "rigged" results table.

For information purposes here are the results from the two races.

RACE 1

1st - Coyote (30 points)
2nd - Sorted Geezer (26 points)
3rd - W Tony (23 points)
4th - Evil Clive (20 points)
5th - Roguk (18 points)
6th - Tibernius (16 points)
7th - Phspok (14 points)
8th - SpecialKS (13 points)
9th - Will (12 points)

RACE 2

1st - Evil Clive (30 points)
2nd - Phspok (26 points)
3rd - Tibernius (23 points)
4th - Coyote (20 points)
5th - Roguk (18 points)
6th - W Tony (16 points)
7th - Will (14 points)
8th - Sorted Geezer (0 points)
9th - SpecialKS (0 points)

Total your points. That's how the results table has been obtained.

[BillThomas]

I had minimize in race 1, not happened before.

[SpecialKS]

First - good to be back.  

However - new track for me, but easy to learn.
Main problem with all these 76-cars is that I can not get a setup suitable to
my style of driving which remains stable all over the race as I have no possibility
to practice over longer distances.

Race 1: Quali went very well - third spot. Good start, some short moment of leading  
Some offs and in the end just before game crashed, I recorded fastest lap of the race
with 1:46,512, a very rare moment for me  .
 
Race 2. not worth to talk about. Went out with suspension damage very early.

Thanks Tony and all involved for organizing this event! Always a pleasure.

See you next time.

[EvilClive]

Chapter one

Yes , well… I should have known that any plan to get to Austria without Mabel was doomed to fail. Despite my strict instructions to Arnold that he was to say nothing,  that we would use the Mini, simply because we could load it inside ( and out of sight!) in the horsebox and leave quietly in the early hours for the drive through France ad Germany….. the plan failed miserably.
Mabel it transpires, had read the season programme months ago and had decided that a woman of her grace and allure just had to be at every race darling, and had laid her own plans.

So when we crept from our beds at the Milton Keynes headquarters of Blue Moose Racing at 2:30a.m.one crisp June morning, making our way to the transporter , which was not only fully fuelled and stocked with food for the journey, but cunningly parked on a slope away from the house , so that we could let the handbrake off and move away silently. We thought we were away and “Mabel free” for the whole trip.

This state of euphoria lasted  far too long and we became quite complacent as we drank coffee on Le Shuttle and stuffed our faces with fresh croissants, chuckling about our plan and how we had been so clever.

The transporter rumbled off the train in the early dawn light and headed across France with fresh, clear blue skies above and the promise of a beautiful warm day ahead.  
Arnold and I discussed the forthcoming race around the A1 ring and how we should set up the Mini for this special circuit. I wanted the car to be quick out of the corners using the front wheel drive to get the power on early, but Arnold was insisting that the fastest lap would be with a car that had real bite on the turn in and carried more raw speed through the apex.
The discussion bounced to and fro as we each tried to convince the other that our theory was best as the sun rose higher in the sky and the day turned into one of those perfect summer days without a cloud in sight. The kilometres clicked past and we were beginning to think about a stop for brunch as we continued to discuss  tactics. But it was when I uttered the phrase ….
“ Well, we are up against some pretty quick guys for this race and we need to show some good speed if we are going to get some silverware for the trophy cabinet back home “

At first, I thought that the ear splitting squeal had come from the mechanics of the transporter, then I wondered for a  second that it had been Arnold’s response to possibly meeting with aristocracy on the podium.
Both options were dismissed very quickly and were replaced with a horrible realisation that the noise had come from beyond curtains of the transporters bunk bed which was behind our heads!
Arnold looked at me with an expression of almost pure panic and I just stared blankly back…………………………………..
“Good morning boys!!, are we there yet?” said Mabel as her face appeared between our shoulders.
 Our weekend ( and our lives) almost ended there and then as the double shock of  a) discovering that Mabel had outsmarted us and  b) the close up view of her puffy, just awake face sans makeup and with hair that would scare Methusula caused Arnold to freeze.  This was particularly unfortunate as I also took my eyes from the road ahead and turned to stare open mouthed at the apparition before us. Thus it was that neither Arnold or myself saw either the curve in the road, the service stop,  or the rather large articulated liquid gas tanker coming in the opposite direction.
In fairness it should be Mabel that gets the kudos for saving our bacon, but as she was also the prime cause for our predicament I am reluctant to give her that recognition.
When Mabel shrieked a second time both Arnold and I winced, but continued to stare at her. Then she shouted “TRUCK!!!” and in my bemused state I mis-heard and thought she was swearing at us for staring at her. I suppose that it was the change of her expression to one of blind panic and the focus of her gaze straight ahead, combined with the repeating of “TRUCK!! TRUCK!!” that caused both of us to swing our gaze back to where the road ahead should have been. Instead we were presented with wall of radiator grille complete with flashing headlamps, a deafening bull horn and a ghostly face silently screaming behind the windscreen.
Further examination of the  scene was prevented by the clouds of blue smoke emanating from the almost molten tyres which surrounded the tanker.
Quite what Arnold did, and how he did it so quickly remains a mystery. All I can remember is  a violent lurching of our transporter that simultaneously threw me against the side window, caused Mabel to vanish behind the curtains ( followed by a very loud thud as her head hit the rear bulkhead (which knocked her unconscious).
The G-force created by Arnold swinging on the steering wheel pressed my nose and cheek firmly against the side window as if it had been smothered in super glue and left overnight. I was convinced that we were all going to die anyway and just waited for what I expected to be the last thing I ever heard as the tanker ploughed through the place where our bodies had been.... I waited for what seemed like an age as my face slowly spread snot and tears across the side window, but the sound never came. There was the squeal of tortured rubber, a half animal howl from Arnold's direction and the sound of various heavy objects ( one of them being Mabel) rearranging themselves behind us in the truck. Slightly more distant was the roar sound of more rubber being smeared across the road as the tanker flew past my field of vision barely a few centimeters from my deformed nose.
Then the red  was gone and there were trees and sky. For a few blissful moments it was eerily quiet, apart from a few metallic objects rolling around in the back of the horsebox.
I turned to look at Arnold and he looked at me. His face was so white it was almost transparent and his eyes were so wide open that I was afraid his eyeballs would actually fall out and dangle like misplaced earrings on his cheeks.
Arnold's gaze shifted slightly and looked over my left shoulder. His face changed and his expression became one of abject terror as he screamed “DUCK!!!! GET DOWN NOW!!”
As he said this he threw his arm across my shoulders as he dropped his body into the footwell dragging me with him. I had just hit the rubber matting when a sheet of flame engulfed the cab for what seemed like an age but was probably a few seconds and then it was gone, leaving a distinct smell of burnt paint and rubber with a hint of woodsmoke and charcoal.

We crawled slowly from our hiding place and gingerly peered over the bottom edge of the windows, all the while trying to look in the large door mirrors. The mirrors were of little use as they were blackened and distorted from the passing fireball. But all seemed quiet and calm outside, so we opened our respective doors and climbed out.
The smell of burning was stronger outside and as I swivelled my gaze towards the rear of the truck I could see why. The horsebox was on fire!  
Arnold was on the other side of the truck and had already grabbed the fire extinguisher from the cab and was pounding it on the ground trying to make it work as I rounded the front of the truck. Eventually his frantic efforts hit the right spot and he was rewarded with a blast of white powder....straight up his nose. This caught him unawares and  threw him backwards so violently that his head made sharp contact with the tarmac rendering him instantly unconscious. I grabbed the extinguisher and set about the burning woodwork at the rear of the truck.

With the fire extinguished and the woodwork just smouldering I checked to see what damage had been done. The fibreglass roof of the horsebox was gone and there were blackend holes at various points along the side of the box. The large ramp/tailgate had suffered most but had taken the brunt of the blast and actually protected the mini and contents inside, save for a few light scorch marks.
Arnold was groaning and lifting himself carefully from the road, rubbing the back of his head where a small trickle of blood ran down his neck. Given what we had just lived through in the recent 3 minutes I felt we had escaped rather lightly.
Sadly, Mabel did not see it that way and she emerged from the cab with a face like a stamped out bushfire, hair like a sea of snakes and eyes like black marbles, with her handbag still gripped firmly in her hand. She made a beeline for the still groggy Arnold and screeched some obscenities which called into question Arnold's parentage in between blaming him for her suffering in the bunk bed and the state of her nails. I watched aghast as she approached Arnold who was tryng to turn and focus on this new source of of life threatening noises. He was about half way around as Mabel got to him, which probably made things worse as Mabel chose that moment to swing her handbag at him like a medieval knight with a mace on a chain.
The effect was similar as the combined force of Mabel's body weight and the extended arc of arm and handbag caught Arnold flat in the face. If any of you know what women keep in their handbags, you will know that we are talking several kilos of knobbly articles. Now consider Mabel, and double that weight. Arnold's nose never stood a chance nor did the 3 teeth that he swallowed instantly ( more pain was to come from those later, but I will leave you dear reader to imagine that particular scenario). Whether it was the handbag or the return to the tarmac like a felled tree, nose first ( already unconcious) that did the damage ,we will never know.
It was to be many hours before Arnold saw daylight again and by that time our somewhat scorched and blackened transport was hiding under some trees at the back of the paddock inside the A1ring where we were keeping an extremely low profile.
Mabel was by now genuinely concerned with Arnold's health and was doing her best to nurse him in the small bunk bed behind the cab. His face had been bandaged and he looked like something from an old Hammer horror film about The Mummy's Curse. She had used just about every item in the trucks first aid kit as we had scuttled through Germany and into Austria, travelling mostly at night and hiding in remote woodland during daylight hours.

[EvilClive]

Chapter 2
Arnold returned to consciousness and opened his eyes only to be confronted by  Mabel's face only inches from his in the confined space of the bunk. It was only Mabel's weight that pinned him down and prevented his panic attack from causing him more serious injury until he relaxed and allowed us to assure him that he should rest.

We had 24 hrs before the race and I had managed to make enough repairs to the rear ramp to allow the mini to be rolled onto the grass where I examined it for damage. Although there were some bits of molten fibreglass from the roof and a few patches of scorched paint the car was untouched, although from a distance the truck looked more like a mobile council incinerator that had got out of hand.
When Arnold eventually emerged very carefully from the cab, being helped by Mabel who clucked around him like a mother hen, a very large mother hen, he wobbled a few paces away from the door then slowly turned and took in the damage before him.
“Bloody Nora with bells on!” he spluttered,”how did we live through that??”
“Oh that was the easy bit “ said Mabel before I could stop her.
I had hoped that we would give Arnold time to recover some more strength before he learned the awful truth , but Mabel could never keep a secret and in her enthusiasm she blurted out what I had hoped to feed to Arnold in small manageable chunks as and when he looked able to cope with it.
“ What you never saw because you tripped and banged your sweet head....” began Mabel as she launched into a graphic description of events.

The red tanker with which we had danced was apparently carrying Hydrogen gas and although it missed our truck by the thickness of a coat of paint ( which evidence I had found along the near side of the horsebox) the crowded service stop with family picnic area and barbeques,( which we had just passed and into which the tanker found itself entering at high speed), had not fared so well.
It seems churlish and a little opportunist to say that everyone was lucky that it was a tank full of Hydrogen, but in truth it was that fact that avoided any fatalities. Although I can see that from the perspective of the victims it probably did not look that way.
It was only after I had talked Mabel down to a gentle simmer after her assault on Arnold (and before she could vent her vengeance upon me as well!) at the accident site and we had looked around that we became aware of a dreadful groaning and moaning coming from the picnic area.

Emerging from the smoke haze and debris was what looked like scene from “Rise of the Zombies”. Dozens of people, men women and children,  blackened and reddened faces with not a single hair or eyebrow between them were staggering towards us arms oustretched and making grasping motions that looked none too friendly.
Some of them had scraps of clothing hanging from shoulder or arms, which only added to the horror. They stumbled past the smoking remains of the tanker that looked like a baked bean tin that had split open towards us and we both just stared at this surreal scene, fascinated and unable to move.
As I watched the crowd grow to maybe 100 souls I was taking in what had happened. The tanker had fortunately swerved the opposite way to Arnold and had missed us. It looked like the driver had managed to slow enough before the truck hit the first row of trees around the edge of the picnic area. The impact had ruptured the tank of Hydrogen and the BBQ's had provided the source of ignition. The fireball, being hydrogen had merely flashed across at ground level and raised into the air doing more damage to the upper levels of the trees than it had to those sat beneath.
It was these poor depilated zombies who were now intent on ensuring that we also suffered a similar trauma...a realisation that came to me when they were only 50 mtrs away!!

“ Quick grab his ankles Mabel and get him into the cab” I yelled. With that the seriousness of our plight dawned on Mabel too and without waiting for me to grab Arnold's arms she whisked him up and over her shoulder in a single smooth movement and sprinted to the cab, bounding into the passenger side in a single stride. She was in fact into the cab and had Arnold on the bunk before I had got to the drivers door, all the while praying that the truck would start. If not I felt that our looks would not improve in the next 10 minutes if the living dead had their way.
The key turned and the starter cranked...and cranked...and cranked. I looked in the distorted door mirror and what was an already terrifying vista took on a really macabre twist as the outline of those lumbering within 15 metres of the back of our truck were now strectched and contorted by the fire damaged mirrors.
I confess I screamed! Which prompted Mabel to do the same and made me instantly regret my lack of self control as my ear drums started to bleed.
Again I cranked the engine but it would not start, at least not until Mabel screamed “Start you useless piece of man made machinery, or else I will perform a full service on you that you will never forget!!!”
I guess we will never know if it was coincidence that the engine fired into life at that moment.??

The rest is history as they say and we kept to the side roads and avoided towns and habitation all the way to the circuit. I stole a tarpaulin and some nails from a farmers shed and disguised the worst of the damage by making our transport look like a canvas covered truck..a very tatty canvas covered truck. Fortunately the fireball had removed the rear number plate and the Blue Moose logo from the truck so the police had no idea who or what they were looking for..


After the journey to A1ring the race would be a doddle...wouldn't it???

[Erling G-P]

Holy smokes Clive...    Amusing as ever; thanks for taking the time and effort!

Somehow the morbid part of my curiosity is dying to see a picture of the mythical Mabel, but I'm not sure how traumatizing it might be... 

Cheers,
Erling

[Wiltshire Tony]

Thoroughly enjoyable read as ever, Epic!. But in my minds eye I would have had the horse transporters radio being knocked into life when the hapless trio were making good their escape from the zombie hordes and having MJ's Thriller blast through the cabs stereo.
BTW what is the relationship between Arnold and Mabel?

[EvilClive]

Apologies for clogging up the forum with that long saga, maybe I should find somewhere else to post these episodes.

Thanks for the comments guys, I actually quite enjoy the process of writing these farcical situations. I guess it reveals something about the way that my mind works ??

As for Mabel, I think that to produce an actual picture of the mythical beast would somehow detract from what each readers mind can conjure up 

Arnold and Mabel's relationship falls into the same category. Some think that they are simply "in a relationship", whereas others believe that Arnold is just too scared to try and end things. And besides, Arnold is no oil painting and appreciates the times when Mabel's "needs" translate into non violent physical contact. 

I keep thinking that I should develop a longer story around these characters, but as with all things it is finding time and inclination. 

[Wiltshire Tony]

You can clog up this forum as long as you like as far as I'm concerned. Looking forward to the gang's next road trip.

[Erling G-P]

I had minimize in race 1, not happened before.

That is strange Bill.  This seems to suggest it was coming from the server, since we both had this problem, but the server couldn't have been involved when it happened to me offline, watching a replay.

On the other hand, that a problem I'm having could somehow travel through the server, and affect other players in the same way, sounds farfetched too.

Tony: Are there any logs on the server that might shed some light on exactly what happened ?

Cheers,
Erling

[Wiltshire Tony]

@ Erling. I will have a look tonight but I'm scratching my head too.

[Wiltshire Tony]

No progress made on updating the Championship table for this event so I have added in PP points (shown in Red). These are not penalties but points (x2) to be added on to the individuals overall score.
We have to times by two as the system still thinks that these are penalties so deducts then from the overall drivers tally. Hence as we need to add them (not deduct them) we need to times by two. Hope that's clear  

EDIT: This post now superseded

[Erling G-P]

No progress made on updating the Championship table for this event so I have added in PP points (shown in Red). These are not penalties but points (x2) to be added on to the individuals overall score.
We have to times by two as the system still thinks that these are penalties so deducts then from the overall drivers tally. Hence as we need to add them (not deduct them) we need to times by two. Hope that's clear  

I take it it's not possible to add negative penalty points ?

Cheers,
Erling