UKGTR Season 6 Lower Endurance - Monza (GP) - Sep 23

[Mark J]

B'ah Monza is still unkind to me even when i take one of its homelands finest in a 360  :'(

Was having a great race for first 25 minutes, having got past Mo, Backo and DeSilva? and running 9th close behind my teamie Don as we closed on Zacari. All was shaping up well, but a few laps later Don must have spotted some sexy Finnish bird in the crowd and appeared to slow right down at 2nd variante...i had to slam the anchors on more than needed and the car slid into an understeer slide into the inside armco :'(
It was the worst place to slide off as i couldnt rejoin on the blind inside corner of that fast complex and had to sit there whilst most of the rest of the field came through, losing 35 seconds in the process That is basically 'race over' at Monza. I had bad aero damage to the front too and seriously considered parking up for the night there and then as no way to make up that time loss.
I stuck to it and fought my way back up through the GTC field until i was showing 8th with 35-40 mins to go but after i pitted i came out 14th   and just cruised around until the finish.
Shame as the Ferrari felt great here and could have been top 8 finish but the smash ferked my race completely.
Well done to the front runners and podium, great pace up front.

[will16v]

That was a tiring race, but had a few good battles along the way.
Got a stop and go with 7 mins to go  but my car/setup/driving skills (or lack of) seem to be still way off the pace from the rest of class.
Did anyone else experience any low framerate issues at the beginning of the race?
Normally Monza is fine on my system, but it was pretty bad for the first few laps...
Gotta get a shower now
Grats to all who entered, and podiums also.

[Kerr]

Qualified 3rd to which I was rather pleased.

The start of the race was great fun with Robert Midderhoff, door handle to door handle around corner after corner and pulling off a few passes on each other. I'm sure Simon was just staying behind to watch the action. Must have looked good?

Finally pulled off a pass and made it stick. Got in to my routine and pulled out a decent gap between me and now 3rd pace Simon.

Started off with a full load and only needed small top up. Made pit stop near on half way, which was a costly mistake. I found myself in the thick of it with loads of cars now fighting me for position down the field. Most of the front runners jumped me at the pit stop which I'm not happy about!

Made a number of passes then my game started to freeze causing me to run off the track an find myself behind them all again.

After some different strategies I found myself back in 4th chasing Robert yet again

Lap after lap it was a great battle again, swapping positions and fighting to hold off each other. Really was superb and a great standard of driving.

A little mix up with a backmarker resulted in 170mph tank slappers for all of us and I was only too happy to steal the position.

Got a few seconds away and could relax and happy to finish 3rd.

Backmarkers were again excellent. There was two very big moments during the race. The one about and another where I found a car almost stationary on the racing line and looked to be stopped. Maybe his game froze, but I had to swerve and rammed the barrier hard.

Well done all especially Jeff and John for their wins and Robert for the battle

[Madd-RIP]

Well this race was all about damage limitation, I too was greatly hindered by my ballast, just as it should be!

The race started off badly with a quite silly formation lap tbh, the 2 cars behind me were miles away, most unfair. As for the race I had a great ding dong with sbg for an age, that ballast was killing my exit speed, I slowed down for him after someone baulked us at the 1st chicane and we both spun, seemed churlish to take the place as at the time i wasn't sure if I'd tapped him mid spin.

He finally made a mistake in the 2nd Lesmo and from there on I just tried to stay out of the way of the leaders.

A good result for RVS and about the best we could have hoped for on this track against the Vipers.

[picnic]

Replay available, provisional results above and round 2 provisional standings here

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

All went tits up in the pits.  No tyres nor fuel were added and even emptied my fuel to prevent me doing another lap to pit.

:'( That was shaping up to be a great second half - in the end it was a very lonely cruise to the class win.

Was surprised to be way down in 4th in qualifying but despite the cwazy pace lap I made the expected Viper rocket attack on Ginsters' 811 and flew by long before the first turn. Managed to get onto Pseueueudo's tail quickly and we ran through the Lesmos side by side, unfortunately he must've dipped a wheel off and he turned sharp right across the track, collecting the 811 behind - Minton I think.

After that it was push, push, push trying to keep Ossie behind - I don't remember now how he got there! - which got tricky after about 30 minutes as the left rear was a bit toasty, but the gap stayed fairly constant so I guess he had the same problem. I realised just before the stop that I hadn't set any stop fuel in the garage so I wasted a few seconds getting it back up to a nice safe 95 litres; other than that it was a pretty slick stop.

One really scarey moment lapping Bill who was meandering down the main straight, I only just made it by into turn 1 without going off or running into him. One other hairy moment lapping a slower car when Backo was exiting the pits, somehow we squeeked down towards the Retiffilio three abreast.

Mostly lonely race but pleased to have kept my concentration up so well again. Hard work letting everything but the M3 past as the Viper is so very quick in a straight line.

[Simon Gymer]

Well that worked out nicely in the end. Netted a 2nd place to add to my win from the first round.

Was worried about the extra ballast, but felt reasonably confident going in after doing some practice (quite a novelty for me in recent times). As expected with my extra success ballast I was about 0.8 down on what I could have done in qualifying and sure enough the negative ballasted drivers were ahead of me.

I had a really nice strategy worked out for the race, but that was thrown into confusion with the prediction of damp and cold conditions. With it being so cold I switched to softs for the first stint, instead of mediums. I intended to run a long first stint and then switch to softs for a fast car at the end, so I was a bit worried about how the softs would last compared to the mediums I had tested on. I switched my to 2 equal length stints instead of my original plan, but if the tyres lasted I was still ready to use plan A and do a long first stint.

Pace lap was driven at warp speed and I could see with the field stretched out so far that there was going to be a concertina pile-up. We came round the last bend and still not going slow, wondered whether John had forgotten about limiter at all. Sure enough sudden slow down and poor Darren behind me was caught out and gave me a Legends "hello". Dunno who else hit who else, but that was due to the pace lap being too fast and spread out. Have to remember with multi-class that lower classes can't keep up so you need the limiter by the last corner and also need a steady slow pace anyway so everyone can keep close-ish together, not be spread out and not have sudden slow down at end.

Into the race and to my surprise the softs were great, getting me to 50 minutes without a big problem. Had a good battle with RobM for a while near the start, but eventually I had a comfortable gap. Pit stop went smoothly, although I had some extra fiddling to tell them not to repair and put in slightly different fuel due to me changing back to original strategy. Came out and had gained a position on Brian .

Then I set to chasing down TrueTom who my team told me had already pitted. Was doing personal race best times catching him only for him to pit in again (stop go?) with me 3.5 seconds behind. Shame as that would have been an interesting finale.

Congrats to John, Jeff and Gizmo on their wins. Success ballast next race will hopefully bring John back into my clutches at the next race.

[John]

Big apology's for the pace lap,i haven't much experience with them as I'm usually mid grid.
If you were in my room watching me,you'd see pure pannick in my eyes
As for the race,it completely knackered me out,so I'll do the post tomorrow as i haven't got the energy at the moment.

[Truetom]

Then I set to chasing down TrueTom who my team told me had already pitted. Was doing personal race best times catching him only for him to pit in again (stop go?) with me 3.5 seconds behind. Shame as that would have been an interesting finale.

Was a bit optimistic with the fuel, Simon.    I drove sparingly all the race but in the end I'd still be 3 litres short (1 lap and two strides  ).    Should have been wringing that engine to the last drop of power instead.    Maybe next time. 

TT

[Jeffrey]

Unofficial Lapchart

[psuedo]

That was probably the best race I have had so far. still too many little mistakes but no major ones for a change.

Quali was good..got close to my pb and was pole up to the last few mins when Ossie blitzzed my time. Great lap mate

I was shouting at John to slow down on TS2 during the warmup lap....It was a little fast for us back markers....but I'm sure he will have gained some experience from it and will be better next week when he has pole again

Managed to get onto Pseueueudo's tail quickly and we ran through the Lesmos side by side, unfortunately he must've dipped a wheel off and he turned sharp right across the track, collecting the 811 behind - Minton I think.

  You dissapeared Dave  ...I saw that you had got an overlap approaching lesmo 1 so stayed wide to give you room expecting you to pull ahead...but when we got to lesmo 2 there was still no sign of you so I stayed wide again assuming you were in my blind spot....still no sign of you so I quickly pressed look behind to try and spot you and got a shock to find I still couldn't see you... . Doing this though made me catch the gravel with the front left and started to spin me....the only car visible to me during all this was SBG I think   Sorry if I took anyone out. I didn't know anything about it untill reading the above from Dave  

After that though I recovered quite well and steadily made headway up to 18th I think, and chasing Dan, a couple of seconds behind for a good few laps but slowly gaining....but I was in a Viper so had no choice but to pit around half distance for fuel and tyres. I peeled off and entered the pit lane, engaged the limiter (pressed the button anyway) slowed to below the limit and then floored the gas pedal in first to cruise to the garage. I must have either missed the limiter button or pressed it twice though as I rapidy accelerated to 70 odd mph....This cost me a stop 'n' go which probably cost me 2 or 3 places.

Totally enjoyed it though...it was nice to be on a similar pace to the rest of the class runners and maybe one day, I'll be able to stay on the track too

Grats to all class podiums and winners....with a special   for John for gaining team Pseudo's first win....great pace and great racing mate

[pribeiro]

Well done to the winners, congrats to all 
Thats how i felt during all race : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8xOMg6ca0U 
unless when i meet Bill    dont know what to tell you mate. 
You just almost stop in the midlle, i know your intention was the best, but at the S/F straight,
its a bit danger brake like that, to first chicane, i was very scared 
hit you and got a stop and go  i guess your car were bad, as you left race.
I knew that Z3 couldnt follow the other GT3 cars pace at Monza, but who cares?
I will race with it untill the final race 
Cheers

[psuedo]

I knew that Z3 couldnt follow the other GT3 cars pace at Monza, but who cares?
I will race with it untill the final race

Good on ya mate...I don't like to change cars either, but I had to drop the vertigo in upper enduro though as nobody else was using it and I'm slow enough without that handicap

I was shocked when i caught you into the paribolica, I thought the Viper turned slow ...it was about all I could do to slam everything on to avoid rear ending you....sorry if there was any contact (didn't feel any myself but I was in a  )

[ginsters sponsored]

I slowed down for him after someone baulked us at the 1st chicane and we both spun, seemed churlish to take the place as at the time i wasn't sure if I'd tapped him mid spin.

Top drawer that No contact between us but thanks for waiting.

a mistake in the 2nd Lesmo and from there on I just tried to stay out of the way of the leaders.

How I laughed as I hit pit limiter instead of pit in button and spun around . Real shame as I our mini battle was great fun. Not my best race though as my car was a horror, couldn't get enough heat in my med/med combo. Shame as I had good pace in quali and was desperate to put one over those nasty Vipers

Congrats to John, Ruskus, Paul and Dave for top performances. Also lapping was very good, apart from one misunderstanding :'(
Stick with it PR, I'm guessing the bimmer will be far more competitive at Adria.

[Paul968]

Well thank God that I don't have to do that for another couple of seasons! Monza is just a horrible place, and in my case decided more often or not by how long I can stay 'awake'. First half of the race went pretty well, with my high downforce setup and soft tyres all round (thx to Mo for spotting the very low temps at the race start) giving me good pace, although not enough to stay in touch with Ruskus. As the pitstops approached though the tyres were starting to wilt, and Zacari was biting at my heels. In the end he made a clean pass into T1, and i was just thinking about pitting when he broke earlier than I expected at the 2nd chicance and I had to go off track to avoid rear-ending him. After extracting myself from the gravel I then compounded things by overshooting Lesmo 2, purely because I was chuntering away about the daft mistake a few corners before  By the time I was up to speed, Zacari was long gone and I was fighting for 3rd at best.

I pitted and then a few laps later found Backo exiting the pits in front of me. I closed in over the next lap, and then we went side by side into T1, where he went far too deep on the inside, I cut back to the outside as we left the chicane and that left us approaching the 2nd chicane side by side again. I was fairly conservative but he went in a bit hot and claimed the place, but couldn't control the car on the exit and spun. Shame it didn't last longer really - fun fun fun 

Near the end I saw Picnic ahead in 8th, and I didn't know if he'd pitted. I was closing rapidly, but the minutes were ticking away and it was going to be touch and go to get past. I was right behind with about 3 minutes left, but got caught out as he braked for Ascari, spinning and losing 3-4 seconds. I was just gearing up for a big final push when thankfully he pitted, which surprised me as I though he would have let me go before rather than risk a pass for position (not a problem Pete, just assumed you must be fighting for the place). That just left me to fend off a late charge from TT, who must have been frustrated to see me slip over the line just in front.

Quite happy to end up 3rd in the end. It would have been nice to beat Zacari or even Ruskus, but on my worst track and with a heap of extra weight the odds were always against it. Congrats to John, Jeff and Dave for the class wins and thx to those I lapped for being so accommodating