UKAC Season 18 Prototype Potluck - 24Hrs of Le Mans/16 - Jan 12

[SimMadPaul]

GT40 please

[Bob]

Is it possible for me to have my third outing in the Ferrari, cant manage two laps in the 917 without destroying it.

[FullMetalGasket]

 

lol, no Probs Bob. The 917 is mental here

[SimMadPaul]

Sorry guys once again my health or lack of gets in the way of enjoying anything in life. Have a great race. I really hope to see you next time.

[Geoffers]

Firstly, apologies to Syd for the first lap incident, I braked a little too late & just could not get the car stopped. It was one of those things where it all seemed to happen in slow motion & there was nothing I could do about it. Luckily I don't think it did any serious damage to either car & probably didn't really change the outcome of the race. Must be more careful in future.

The rest of the race was pretty much uneventful in a car that I just cannot really get to grips with, although I did get a bit more acquainted with its handling as the race progressed. So basically just happy to get it to the finish.

Congrats to Kimi on the win & to Tim & Jari on the podium. 

[Bob]

Poor car choice, sum up my race in one word....solitude. On the plus side, ate two packs of crisps and drank one bottle of juice on the long, long, long boring straight, but I finished.

[Mark J]

Great event last night, cars looked and sounded superb. Those drive by's were something else when sat in the glorious 60's pits.    What a combination of car and track!  

The only pity as ever, was lack of numbers. How an event like this doesnt attract a bigger grid i'll never know, i thought some SRO regulars would be up for this event/series?
In hindsight i wish i'd gone for the 917K as an experience as i ended up racing on my own for 85% of the race anyway, but competing in the GT40 at LM also ticks a lot of boxes so still fun, just wish it wasnt so clumsy in the 90 degree corners.
When Syd got thumped at T1 i think that effectively ended a challenge for position for me as we were on similar race pace i think. Stefan and Max kept me honest in the first 20mins but gradually fell back and then in my distant mirrors i saw Max mounting the sand bank at Mulsanne corner so that was another car down. By the time i pitted i think i had a 20+ sec lead over the nearest car and Tim had long ago disapeared off into the distance.
@Tim, did you use the shortest gear ratio? - you shot away from me each time in the early laps at the tighter corners despite me treating the throttle like a turbo car by getting on the gas mid turn allowing a little for the lag of the longer gear ratios. I only appeared to close on you slightly on the long straights which made me think you were topping out sooner.

Race itself went well, no off's or contacts, just the odd clumsy corner exit, just needed a bit more 'racing'. Did get cramp in my leg on one lap but luckily on the Mulsanne so was able to wiggle my leg about 

My pitstop went smoothly (For once!) and i rejoined behind Syd, which concerned me slightly as he didnt pit for a long time after me and i wondered if i had lost a position when it showed him now 45 secs ahead !  But eventually he stopped and i retook the lead with a 19sec ? gap. I did have another GT40 for company late on but must have been a lapped car, dont know who. I finished the race with over 40L of fuel so somehow cocked my fuel levels up again   but at least it was too much, not too little  

I thought i was on for 3rd overall position but a recovering Jaari in the 917 passed me very late on in the race and i brought the car home in 4th overall, 2nd in class    Happy with that  

[goldtop]

Really enjoyed that although things didn't quite go as planned.

Thought I'd worked out a decent strategy for this. I started with a full tank and split my stop into 2 for fuel and tyres as I was worried about tyre wear and with the pit lane being so short and fill time so long the extra stop seemed like a small penalty for the fresher tyres. I'd even set up for a late splash/dash to account for extra laps if any of the 917s finished without incident.

Had my usual bad start and to my surprise had Max behind me who took a couple of laps to catch me and pass. My plan was to hang onto him and get a good exit onto Mulsanne for some drafting but I messed up the exit of Tetre Rouge and spun. Later that lap I came across Max hitting the armco in front of me and then disappearing over the sandbank at Indianapolis. Reminded me of this.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8VP6Ly9I3k   (at 23:15) 

Sorry mate, but it had me laughing so hard I could hardly drive.

I then had a recovering Syd chasing me down and we had a good few laps together, just about holding my place until I decided to pit for my first stop which went perfectly. Unfortunately I misjudged the lack of grip on my cold tyres on my outlap and went over the sandbank at Tetre Rouge and then damaged the car in my efforts to get back on track. Think I caused Geoffers a bit of a scare rejoining but no harm done thankfully 

I had right front suspension/steering damage and limped around to the pits but must have pressed the wrong buttons and had to crawl around for another lap. This time I made sure I ticked the correct boxes and saw my pitcrew at work with a spanner. Unfortunately in repairing the front right they somehow damaged the front left so I had to limp around again this time with damage on the opposite side!  Pitted again a couple of times for them to finish repairs but they'd obviously given up on me and gone down the pub.

I wanted to finish here.....it's Le Mans. I had to keep one eye on the leaderboard for gaps to lapping cars and another in my mirrors as they approached. I think I managed to keep myself out of the way but apologies to anyone I may have caused a scare.

On my last lap I understeered over the sandbank at Mulsanne corner landing on my roof and was teleported back to the pits. I think I must have lost a lap because my display now said "Final Lap". I set off from the pits expecting to have to crawl around again but my car was now miraculously fixed. Like new 

Well done to pody and finishers 

[MaxVeloce]

Later that lap I came across Max hitting the armco in front of me and then disappearing over the sandbank at Indianapolis. Reminded me of this.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8VP6Ly9I3k   (at 23:15)  

LOL, it felt like that too.

I was already trying to limp it back to the pits but failed as you saw - because I had also decided playing with the sandbank at mulsanne corner would be fun,  but it turns out the price for that is a car that steers like the average shopping trolley at tescos (you know - the ones with 1 wheel off the ground half the time).

I did pre-race testing and had a lovely setup (similar times to Tims qually lap), so I know its going to sound crazy but last night in qually it was suddenly like a different car, and then the same in the race  .  I'd swear that sometimes AC just effs up online and you get some weird alternate universe physics. Its not the first time it happened to me but it is rare.  I dont believe its track grip because at most races I can feel and adjust to that after a couple of corners, this seems like something else [/excuse #86856 from the race drivers handbook].   Or I just sucked last night

[FullMetalGasket]

Conversely I thought the track was faster last night - especially by the end of qually when I dipped into the 26's

Because you had suspiciously not posted any laps on the server I worked on an alternate strategy in practice, and used my qualifying gearset with a normal rev limit for some extra oomph and top speed (once the tires were warm and the fuel had dropped a little I was generally doing 198-200mph at the end of the Musanne).
As a result I had better laptimes than I had originally banked on, and after your disaster of a qualifying run I had a very lonely race - I didn't even get to be passed by a 917 on the circuit as I was in the pits when Kimi lapped me (WD on the win Kimi!).

To Mark - I was still accelerating at the end of the straights and only puling about 6,500RPM so no, I wasn't on the shortest gears
The straights and your exits onto them are critical here, they are all late apex and epically early throttle - so If I pulled away you were going in too deep and getting on the power too late or just getting sideways

I've only got one run left in the GT40 and have to say I'm going to miss in once that's done with, she's a heavy boat but once you have the balance sorted she's a great drive

Well done to the guys who had disasters but pressed on to finish anyway - that's exactly what Le Mans is all about

[MaxVeloce]

Conversely I thought the track was faster last night - especially by the end of qually when I dipped into the 26's

Because you had suspiciously not posted any laps on the server I worked on an alternate strategy in practice, and used my qualifying gearset with a normal rev limit for some extra oomph and top speed (once the tires were warm and the fuel had dropped a little I was generally doing 198-200mph at the end of the Musanne).

Exactly,  I dont believe it was a track grip thing but some odd bug as I did a bunch of offline testing and was doing consistent laps, not throwing it into the scenery every lap like last night.  Wasn't trying to hide anything by not going on the server - I was messing about for hours on tuesday trying to make the 908 competitive (had debug apps on checking ride height and testing ride height / aero for speed differences etc and just didn't want to be doing that and continually stop/starting while other people were doing full laps), and also wasted a bunch of time seeing how hard I could get that 330 to run LOL. By the time I'd done all that it was too late to do any real server test in the GT40.

Would have been fun to race that 908 just to see what stupid result I could get with it, but in the end the ford was just too much quicker down the mulsanne where you'd get swamped by the GT40 pack on lap1 and waste time fighting them, so it wasn't worth doing...

[KDiesel]

Nothing to report here, after other 917's were out or far behind I just went to grandma-mode and cruise it home. Last lap I was too lazy to drive another lap so I waited 20 secs 'till clock hits zero and finish the race.

[Syd Drake]

Firstly, apologies to Syd for the first lap incident, I braked a little too late & just could not get the car stopped. It was one of those things where it all seemed to happen in slow motion & there was nothing I could do about it. Luckily I don't think it did any serious damage to either car & probably didn't really change the outcome of the race. Must be more careful in future.

The rest of the race was pretty much uneventful in a car that I just cannot really get to grips with, although I did get a bit more acquainted with its handling as the race progressed. So basically just happy to get it to the finish.

Congrats to Kimi on the win & to Tim & Jari on the podium.  

Actually that hit put me into the wall and damaged my aerodynamics. I was around 5-6kph down on the straights, which was costing me around 1-1.5 seconds a lap, besides 15 or so seconds  lost getting going again. I was pretty mad about it the first half hour or so of the race. After I pitted I selected to fix body damage so at least I got the top speed back for the last 30 minutes. As Mark J said, we probably could have  had a race long battle if it wasn't for the t2. We should really drive more carefully on lap 1 of a 90 minute race.
Other than that, right after my stop Stefan was behind me, and we had a long drag on the straight. I was on the inside for the kink, and I think we were side by side. I lifted a bit through the kink to stay on the inside. I'm not sure what happened, I didn't feel contact, but Stefan was gone, and I think I saw a dust of cloud in the distance in my mirror.