UKGTR Season 5 Endurance Masters - Imola - Jul 29

[Jeffrey]

Unofficial Lapchart

Can't upload at FTP

[picnic]

After qually I thought my first venture in GT3 could be fun but both Dave and Jonzo had obviously been sand bagging in qually and the vipers blew passed me and that was that. After then it was just watch the gap get larger and try and stay out of the way for those in real competition. At one stage in qually SbG stormed passed me in his GT3 Porka so hopefully I was so slow due to a substandard setup That'll help me sleep tonight at any rate 

I'll probably be racing as Peter Allnutt from now on as having one profile makes life easier and R2P dictate you use your real name.


Major  to the guys who moderate, schedule the events and work behind the scenes. Another successful 4 series season has been completed and the racing and sportsmanship are generally top notch. I hope I will have the pleasure of racing you all again in S6

[Madd-RIP]

  I had a CTD as well, really narked about it, I reckon Reign Man and myself would have had a right old fight. I got a pb as well , absolutely fuming 

[tarec]

Nice race, in the qualify i made two muth mistakes and canot go to the pole, ate race i started with 100lt´s , so i can go behing Shark, ate the pitstops i was 5s behing shark, but two many mastakes , when the GT1 passed me, i try to get off theyr front but i go sometime to the grass , 2º Place not bad.

Thx all for this great championship, this is my firts time that i participate in so many races

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

I wish I knew why I'm so utterly pants at qualifying - I always seem to start 3 or more places behind my proper race pace.

Once the race got underway it was pretty easy to pick my way past Picnic's GT3 Cup using the Viper's truck engine - though he made me work for it for a couple of corners until I stretched out a few car lengths gap.

After that I could almost but not quite peg the gap to SbG's 911, but knew he would probably be able to pit for just tyres, whereas I would need 60 or more litres of fuel too. By mid distance my tyres were really starting to go off and I decided to pit a couple of laps ahead of schedule, knowing that SbG had already pitted, in order to avoid losing track position to MJ's colourful Leg Ends VCC on my worn tyres.

Almost missed my pit box, which I'd forgotten was outside the first garage, but just got in and my crew did their usual slick job, spending an extra 5 seconds to repair some mystery damage. Added 5 litres more than planned given my early stop and took on more hard rears and medium fronts. Came out to find myself 40 seconds behind SbG and only about 20 ahead of Picnic/MJ behind.

Kept pushing pretty hard - car felt good and slow, slowly the gap ahead was coming down... 30 seconds... 20 seconds... 16... then... SbG's car stationary just before Variante Bassa. A disco! Terrible bad luck, and not the way I wanted to get the GT3 lead - especially not as it was looking increasingly like I might just catch you before the end. I called it to the other Sharks over TeamSpeak so it didn't come as a complete surprise.

After that I backed off a fraction, but with 15 or so minutes to go it was obvious that MJ was starting to catch me at nearly a second a lap... With my tyres starting to go off again, time looked to be just about on my side... but with 4 minutes to go my fuel was getting low and I was getting really concerned about whether I would make it to the flag, so I started short shifting and taking corners one gear higher than normal. With 2 minutes to go MJ was right on my tail; I was using 3.5 litres a lap and had just 7 left - I needed the leader to lap us on this lap to avoid finishing on fumes... and thank goodness Backo appeared like a red and black angel to release me to use all my V10 again to stay ahead to the flag.

A good way to end Season 5... pity it was at Ginsters' undeserved expense.

[Luis Branco]

Congrats to the winners and to UKGTR for a very entertaining championship with very nice fights. 
I was looking forward to racing at Imola since day 1 but today all the family was celebrating my 6 years old son birthday and I surely wouldn't trade that for anything else.

I'm already waiting for Season 6 which I believe will be (again) a great championship...although with some other names in the first place 

[BACKO]

THX again for amazing race!!! ;DI really enjoyed it! ;)I didn't have in the race any chalenge with GT1 guys wich I expected for example from Ruskus. ???Congratulation winners bouth class for victory in season 5 and I hope that will come season 6 !!!!I'd like to thanks everyone for amazing season 5!!!!!!!

[Zacari]

That was a hard end to the season, massively annoying to have FreQ get a disco as it looked like it would've been a great battle on the track.   Managed a mid-41 in quali to get 3rd, which in the Lister I was very happy with

The race was not quite as positive, I started on soft fronts and medium rears and after 10 laps the balance was not good.  I came into the pits a couple of laps early to change to med fronts but they were at the wrong pressure and never got hot enough, so I spent most of the race battling the car.  What I'd also neglected to change was the fuel amount in my stop, and going into the last lap I had '0' laps of fuel left (less than 3L ) but I managed to roll round most of the lap to finish with 0.6L

Grats to JR on the championship, and TS on the team title.. narrowly followed by TS Junior woot!

Also apologies to a couple of the NGT guys for squeezing through under braking a couple of times normally I'm a little more patient!  Everyone was generally super-cooperative

[Jeffrey]

First off sorry to Paul968 for taking him out  . 2nd Fok up in 2 races from me 
We went three wide and I couldn't brake anymore on that part of teh track and got onto the grass ans lost contro...again  .
After that my concentration was shot. Forgot to turn ignition on in pits etc. Still won 7 s with stops  .

Eventually finished 2nd but with a very bad taste in my mouth 

grats Backo

[Paul968]

Thx for the apology Jeff. Not sure that was necessarily your fault anyway. That certainly wasn't the way I wanted to end the season, especially having qualified 2nd, but it rather sums up the whole season. Had a bit of fun trying to catch up, but passing GT1s at Imola is very tricky and my bad mood made me overdrive the car. Not sure whether I want another season like that.