Season 44 - 1955GP (Works) - Round 4 – East London
The fourth race in the 1955 Grand Prix series finds us in South Africa. The race will be on the Prince George Circuit at East London. Opened in the 1930s, it hosted the South African Grand Prix in 1934, and again from 1936 to 1939 when racing was halted due to World War II. The original 23.4 km circuit was shortened to 17.7 km in 1936. It was further modified to meet the Formula One regulations in 1959 when the track was shortened again and built into a seaside amphitheatre. East London hosted three rounds of the F1 South African Grand Prix in the 1960s until the increasing power and speed of the cars meant that it became too small for Formula One. The race was moved to Kyalami. Tonight we will be using the 3.9 km long 1959 layout.

Race list	=	iGOR
Server	=	UKGPL05_60fps
IP address	=	146.199.1.65:32666
Password	=	see above
GPL Mod	=	55GP
Damage model	=	PRO
60fps Patch	=	60fpsV2newmod
Track download	=	East London 1967
Track directory	=	eastlndn
Qualifying starts	=	20:45 UK time - 45 minutes
Race starts	=	~ 21:30 UK time
Race length	=	26 laps
Replay	=	HERE

Please do NOT post chat messages during qualifying or racing until ALL drivers still qualifying or racing have crossed the line.

Driver lists and division specific rules can be found on the championship standings page.

A great race with Dimi. We swapped places numerous times in the early laps. I got too close at the Esses (on about lap 9 I think) with the brakes red so I had to take to the grass to avoid rear ending Dimi. That dropped me back a few hundred yards and I spent the rest of the race trying to catch up. I didn't quite manage it but I'm happy with a solid points finish and a few more tokens in the bank.

I was really wanting to run the Vanwell here with its better brakes, but decided earlier today to save the koins and run the Gordini. I managed in practice to turn a very low 27.3, so I was extremely happy with m :thumbup1:y pace.

In Qually, I managed to repeat my pace, then I had a very nice draft on one lap which could have potentially got into the 36's, but I overshot the last corner.

I got a decent start next to Hristo, I was using a shorter 1st gear, so I just managed to get past him on the outside of T1 I was truly expecting a battle for the ages with him, as our pace was similar, but sadly he over shot the hairpin on lap 2. This gave me a comfortable gap, and I could focus on keeping  up with Clive in his Vanwell. I was able to gain on him in T1, which kept me just barely in the draft, but eventually he managed to gain some speed and pulled away from me. It was a lonely race from there on out.

With about 8 to go I got a horrible cramp in my right leg, and it was really hard to drive hard so I took it easy to the finish.

I am very happy to finish in 5th, being the best of the rest for the Gordinis.. LoL

Great race up front! Very impressive battle!

Great race report Hristo and very impressive how you have understood the essence of 55mod racing in just so few outings.

My race was just how I like them, a few pixels to chase and nobody breathing down my neck.

I had done four or five race distance runs before Sunday and was much quicker in them than I was last night! In the end I came to the conclusion that being in "careful" mode didn't heat my rear tyres and give the slightly looser rear end that I needed, especially at T1. Don't think that I got that right until the last lap.

Anyway, a slightly better result than my usual 6th.

Well done to Evil, Jonny and Enrique.

Looking forward to Indianapolis.

A terrific race with Jonny!!!  and grats to Enrique for 3rd and all finishers. I noticed a lot of Gordinis on the grid...people all with the same plan?  saving tokens lol.
I was fortunate to post a PB in the Maserati that just secured pole by 0.2 sec, but I was very concerned about Jonny and his Merc sitting right behind me. I was certain that the extra horsepower of the W196 would just blow past my Maserati on the straight. It was just a matter of when he would do that.

So, the first job was to get a good start and at least make him work for it  . I almost got that wrong as the flag dropped so quickly I barely had time to get the revs up, but maybe Jonny hit the same prob. Anyway I led into T1 and down to the hairpin. At the end of Lap 1 I pushed really hard on cold tyres to get onto the S/F straight with as big a gap as I could find. 2nd lap and into the hairpin I was still in front but Jonny was just 50mtrs behind. ... and lap 3....and lap4 etc etc.
TBH I was in danger of either blowing the engine or running out of brakes on every lap, such was the pressure from Jonny and his Merc. The only advantage that I seemed to have was out of that final corner, where I could get the power down just a little earlier than the Merc and pull an extra 10-15 mtrs that protected me from an attack at the hairpin. Huge respect to Jonny as he never once tried anything risky even though there were a couple of occasions when he had a half chance  .
The pace was frighteningly quick and I was glad that I had tweaked the setup and diff to protect the rear tyres from overheating, because they were getting some serious abuse. At about half distance I glanced at the fuel...then I looked again and again. My prerace calculations indicated that I should finish with about 5 litres left in the tank, I had calculated on about 3 litres per lap but with 15 laps to go I only had 40litres left  We had been racing so hard that I was using 3.5 litres per lap!!
It took me a few laps to change upshift points and some lift and coast to start saving fuel and still keep that Merc behind. The engine in the Maserati hs great torque so I started using 2nd out of corners instead of 1st and slowly the ratio of fuel to laps got better. The lift and coast gave me a few scary moments when I had to throw the car sideways to avoid running off the road.
Jonny did not know about my fuel problems or how close he came to the win. Exiting the last corner on the final lap the engine started to mis fire on the run to the flag and I was certain that his Merc would just cruise past. He did close the gap but I had just enough juice and just enough of a lead to crawl across the line, I might have had 6 cylinders, but only 4 were working lol........PHEW!!!!!
Thanks to Jonny for a tremendous race 

Thanks for the kind words above H, and for some of your comments on the live stream. Despite you saying that you are not comfortable with these cars, you still lead the championship!!!  lol

   Congratulations Evil!!!! He was the winner and deserved it!

  Frankly, I've never had the chance to overtake, I never dive without first being side by side at the braking point, diving when you're behind means catching the blind spot of the person in front and colliding at the entrance to the curve. And within this rule of mine, I never was side by side with Evil.
 Evil won even with an inferior car and that was very impressive! Congratulations .
 My idea was to try the attack on the last lap, but I made a mistake there and this hypothesis can never be tested!!! GRRRR....
  But I think I lost any chance when I noticed the great difficulty I had in my car in accelerating around the penultimate curve of the race, there I always lost an infinite 50 meters on the way back to the stainless Evil.
 But happy still to have such a fun race!!!
 Happy to see my friend Farina on the podium! Impressed by Gordini's rhythm!!!!
 Sad about Doni's absence

I watched your stream, very entertaining and informative. I now know where I was going wrong . It is the usual case of "slow in fast out" is better then "fast in slow out". I couldn't match you on the straights because you had better traction out of the corners, my only chance to attack was on the brakes which made me even slower on corner exit. I think your advantage was down to either superior throttle control or a better setup. I'll have to work on both.

The next round is at Indianapolis. The brakes are of no consequence there! I won't be able to rely on out-braking you, I'll need a different strategy