UKAC Season 16 Season 16 Ford Vs Alfa - Goodwood - Jun 3

[Syd Drake]

My best race in AC since F1 75 at Glen. Those would be my only two good races
I qualified 10th, which was already good, as I'm usually at the back of the grid, and I could see a few cars ahead of me weren't that much faster.
Got a good start, and with some people spinning out on the first laps, found myself in 7th with Barone close behind. A few laps later Mark spun at Woodcote I think (double right corner) and I was up to 6th. By this point Barone was really pushing me. Thats also when I realized that I way overfueled the car. I had fuel for at least 10 more laps at the end. This was probably the reason why I was losing out on a drag race to Woodcote, I think I was too heavy and Barone would get very close before the braking there. Soon Mark caught us, and picked us of one by one in a few laps. That left Barone and myself in a close fight, and after maybe 12-13 laps he managed to get by me on the Lavant straight, but he couldn't pull away. So when I saw him pitting, on perhaps lap 16, I though I'd use some tactics. I knew you need a couple of laps to get tires up to temperature, so I stayed out for two more laps, and sure enough I got out just ahead of Barone .
By this point Tudor was also there with us. Barone and I continued to fight, with some side by side scraps, and during one of those I think Barone spun. I didn't feel much, but I think there was a little bit of a door to door contact and he fell away.
That left Tudor on my tail now. He didn't seem to have the top speed like barone on Lavant straight, so it was a bit easier to defend, but I still had to make sure I hit every apex to not give him even a chance to attack.
At the very end leaders caught us, and I was starting to get a blue flag warning here and there as they I guess got closer in some braking zones. And then just before the end and on the leaders last lap, but our penultimate lap, at Woodcote Tudor went off, leader (Tim?) passed him, but I was ahead, crossed the line to go into the last lap knowing I had the place sewn up, as Tudor was now lapped. Nice relaxed last lap after race spent fighting with someone from start to finish was a good reward.
Grats podium and great racing Barone and Tudor.

[Barone]

Probably the most shitty race I ever have done (on pc and rl). 
I started on the back of the grid but with a bit of luck, I passed trough the massacre that was in front of me and gained some positions. It was a very hard and clean fight with Syd. As said by Syd I had a better exit from Levant corner and thus more speed in the straight. It was bloody difficult to find a clean pass point on this track.  We had some very close few laps and then Mark arrived eating us one at the time. After he was away I managed to get the right time to pass Syd on the strait.
Then I pitted but I lost quite a few times due to traffic. Syd was in front again, the battle started again. One lap we were side by side at the ending of the strait and so we entered in this position into the corners. We probably had a bit of door to door but no problem, unfortunately, I spun and lost two positions.
After that, I was so angry with myself that my concentration was completely blown off. In the following 4-5 laps, I made so many mistakes that I lost something like 20 seconds. The race was over.
Congrats Syd it was really good fun to battle with you!

And congrats with the champion of the series!

[Stefan aka Postal]

Had good fun in the first few laps. MJ was getting along side into St. Mary's. I was thinking "he surely is not trying to stuff it up the inside here".. Well he did and stayed on track with it. Too bad you had a spin later on. Could have been a good battle.
Not sure what happened to Lorenzo who was just in front of me as he pulled off in lap 5 or so. After that it was a bit of a lonely race to the checkered.

This series was good fun and good driving standards. Thanks to all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTYD1Da1UbQ

[Lorenzo Galluzzi]

For the first time i was quite confident with my car, even if i couldn't match the top three drivers for the podium.
Like an idiot i forgot to put the fuel in before the race, so i tried in my early pit to feed my Alfa enough to end the race, but i didn't know how to do that. Lost a ton of time and decided to retire, such a pity


One thing I understood driving these cars, my approach to setup was completely wrong, unfortunately I discovered it too late 

Wd everyone, it was a pleasure to run this league with you!

[picnic]

Disappointed the series was so short and I had to miss 3/4 of it. Although I was never going to be competitive I did enjoy driving these.

Great work Tim sorting these races out and thank you also to everyone who took part.

[Mark J]

Finally got a clean round in of this mini series after being blighted by Rift and broadband issues lately (thankfully resolved).

Didn’t qualify that brilliantly but still 3rd row. Got a good clean start and went round outside of a few at t1/t2. Then got into a good battle with Stefan for several laps with Lorenzo just ahead. I was really enjoying the scrap and when I got past Stefan cleanly I was elated. That lasted about 2 corners when I got into a half spin at Woodcote that dropped me 8 seconds and behind two other cars 
I re-caught Syd and Barone a few laps later and enjoyed a short sharp fight with both before getting past each in turn. 
After that I had a totally lonely race to the flag  not sure what happened to half the grid  ?? as only other car I saw was GT’s go past while I pitted for tyres but he pitted a lap later.
Started to close on Stefan towards the end but then had to start coasting and short shifting to conserve my low fuel last few laps. Finished 5th 

[goldtop]

Had a decent quali but was then caught up in someone's spin at T1 which put me stone last. Despite that had a nice chase back gaining a few places as others fell off and then a long battle with Syd. Never had the opportunity to attempt a clean pass so sat on his tail waiting for an error which never came...nice driving Syd 

On my last lap I was very tight on fuel and could see Tim approaching to lap me in my mirror so decided to pull over before the chicane, letting him through but also saving me the embarrassment of running out of fuel 

Thanks for the organising Tim, enjoyed this series although a couple of the tracks were hard work. Something fun next week and then onto the Formula Easters?

[Fred Basset]

Thanks for organising this, I've enjoyed it and would do another series.

Terrible race for me last night, I'm just overdriving this car which I need to get out of.

Good fun though.

Regards
Gary

[IbnSolmyr]

Sorry guys I couldn't show up due to health problems.

But I'll be happy if I can be there for next fun events.


Congrats to championship top 3 and thx for  organising !

[FullMetalGasket]

That was an unbelievably good race to end the season on - I was naughty and yet again didn't really do any practice before race day
This was telling through practice as I was rapidly having to learn the best lines and adjust my setup to suit in about 30 minutes before doing my fuel calcs for the race...

I was pleased to get pole (It turns out I needed that to win the championship, although I didn't know that at the time!), and utterly livid with myself when I then managed to make 3 separate mistakes in the first 2 laps and drop myself back to 4th briefly.

I was fairly lucky in re-passing Lorenzo but guessed Adam would be a different matter once I got back to him. This turned out to be very much the case as none of my attempts to get by succeeded until he made a slight mistake himself and I was able to get a good run.
Once by I was slightly worried Adam might try and re-pass in the first few laps as he was only lapping slightly slower and would have a few opportunities while we remained close.
Eventually I pulled away enough that I could concentrate on lapping at qualifying pace in order to start to reel Darren in - for the first 2 laps this worked nicely but then I think he realised I was pushing and so pushed harder himself.
This resulted in a much slower gain - and even slight drops when I made errors - until there were about 20 minutes left and I decided it was high time to pit before Darren did 

This timed nicely with a stupid error on my part that dropped me back enough to not make it too obvious I was about to pit, although it did drop me back into the field a bit resulting in my having to make some very quick passes to keep my lap speed up.
2 laps later and I was barrelling down the S/F straight just as Darren exited the pits ahead, luckily for me I had some heat in my tires and T1 is very fast - this allowed me to close right up to his bumper while he was still fighting for traction.

The next couple of laps are possibly the hardest fought laps for position I've driven since my GPL days - Darren was fully aware he needed to finish in front of me to take the championship and so did I 
I made (and failed) at a couple of attempts, scared a few backmarkers to Death while charging down the back stretch alongside Darren, and eventually sneaked passed in the same point he'd re-taken the lead from me after my first failed attempt - the short straight leading to the chicane when he ran slightly wide.

By this time my tires had just got to pressure and I'm guessing Darren was still a bit low, as I was able pull out a big enough gap to become 'safe' within a lap. After that Darren hung on for dear life a little over a second back until he made friends with the wall in the chicane.
That dropped him back about 4 seconds and allowed me to stop fretting, with 2 to go I caught the fighting combo of Syd and Goldtop. Initially I thought of passing them but then realised as I was closing the gap that I could leave them to their scrap as Darren was too far back to catch us. I thought this worked right up to the point where GT fell off just before the chicane

Well done to Darren for taking 2nd in the Championship (I found in the rules section that in the event of a tie the winner is first determined by number of events won and then number of Poles - so I got lucky!) and Adam for 3rd. A big thank you to everyone who participated - it would be rubbish without you!
As these were so popular I will be looking at the Fulvia at some point and seeing if anything else can compete, they will be returned to for a longer series at some point in the future.
Best wishes to Pete and Maxime, Hope you'll both be back in the seat soon


Next week will be the Maserati 250F's (6 cylinder). I want to try and get classic Zandvoort to work after our failure last time, if that still doesn't work then I'll use Donnington '36. We should know by Saturday afternoon so keep an eye on the forum and the server
That will be followed by a super-secret highly explosive fun event prior to the first round of the Formula Easter series - If you haven't already, make a point of trying the cars and registering your choice and skin over on the series thread

[nocatu]

Another race with many mistakes for me, got tangled up in the first corner with the others, I wasn't fast enough on the brakes when the cars in front had some contact and I ended up hitting and spinning goldtop. Lost some time there but I had lots of fun in the next laps trying to catch the cars in front. I was somehow more consistent and fast offline than on race day, I guess the fact that I hadn't practised since Sunday affected my laptimes.

This has been a very fun series, many thanks to Tim for making time to put everything together, top job mate!!

[IbnSolmyr]

Guys, did you try the wet version ? I did with a slippery setting and it's a damn fun moment !

I mean, we always run all our events at full grip level, and it's a good thing to compare laptimes of course, but we might think about skidding more..