UKGTR Season 7 GTC Sprint - Zolder - Mar 18

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

(is there a way to default to use the last ballast amount in that series Dave?).

Not at present.

Sorry to the guys behind, Evert, Dave maybe... but what can you do when you get spun around. Hit escape before any one else got caught up.

Slight clip but don't think it damaged me at all.

Nightmare race for me. Car felt dreadful all through practice and qually - I've never been to a track before where I couldn't take a previous 350Z setup and tweak it, it just felt totally wrong everywhere. Also had a CTD in Practice 2 which was a worry.

Made a final setup adjustment in desperation, and started the race on mediums all round as softs didn't appear to be able to last the distance. Worked very hard on the pace lap to get heat in the tyres and made up a large number of places over the first couple of laps as people spun and crashed. For about 3 laps after that the car felt absolutely spot on.

Pity it didn't last. I just couldn't see what changed - tyre and brake temperatures all seemed perfect and yet everything was back to how it was, the car understeered in most places and then wanted to spin at the end of every heavy braking zone.

Had a battle of mistakes with MJ which was amusing, and then Pops caught me rather quickly, before accidently running into me at the final hairpin. He waited  for me which was nice but my race was already turning into porridge and to be honest you might as well have just got on with your own race and apologised afterwards.

After that it was mostly a long and lonely run to the flag, with Evert ahead slowly pulling away and nobody in sight behind.

Never really found a good braking marker for T1 - always felt like I was braking far too early, yet whenever I moved the braking point back by just a few metres I ran wide.

Did a quick lap in the Falcon in GTL afterwards and it was (a) much slower! and (b) more fun.

[picnic]

Backo, click on profile in the forum menu above, then driver details. You can set your country there

[DynoDaz]

Considering I only downloaded the track at 7:30pm and had to learn the track as I went, I'm very happy with 8th.  

Qualified in 7th with only Aliens in front.  

I had a few good battles on the way, but as soon as I got close to people they would make mistakes at the chicanes, get a bit sideways, I would then have to back off to avoid contact and nearly lose it myself.  :'(

It's a great track for hot lapping, but not for close racing....

Oh well, Happy with 8th and my fastest lap wasn't bad too.  

Congrats Backo, unlucky TT.  Well done Steve, great driving.

P.S..  I had 2 CTDs during practise..

[Ade]

Ended up having a coming together with Ade into T2, racing incident I think - I never saw him and turned in, but I don't think he was fully alongside  - but no worries either way.

Sorry about that Kidzer  my fault one of those moves where you rely on the other driver doing the same as he did the laps before unfortunately you got the corner just right, i knew you had to brake earlier than me coz i touched you up the trumpet in turn 1  when i saw how early you had to brake  also a very big SORRY to JPV for messing your race up by being in your line of fire  couldn't go forwards to get out of the way coz  Kidzer was in front of me, just as he reversed out of the way and i got it in to first  gear to get on my way well you know the outcome  " selfishly" i didn't want to hit escape after all the practice and as you know time you have to put in to  even become race worthy.

[David M]

No worries, had I put mediums on the front we could've had a decent race the last 15mins, alas...my tyres were boned!

[jpv]

also a very big SORRY to JPV for messing your race up by being in your line of fire

Don't worry, nothing you could have done there. I should have taken the corner easier and I probably could have passed you on the inside. Punctured my front tyre there, and as I pulled in for a quick stop to change just the fronts I managed to order my pit crew to put softs on the rear instead of leaving them as they were, you can imagine the understeer after that. Gave up after I was almost a lap behind and run into the sand trap in T1, no point just running around in everyone's way. Great fun as long as it lasted though!

[Adam Parle]

With very limited practice/setup I was somewhat apprehensive about how the race was going to go to be honest.  I was pleasantly surprised by the pace I finally found in qualifying, hitting 1:35.5.  Looking at the times around me in qualifying I thought that I'd be fighting to keep in touch with the 3 gents infront of me who were "fairlly close" in the times they set .... 1 thousandth of a second between you wasnt' it?

The start of the race went pretty well, no "senior" moments on the opening laps and I settled into a decent rhythm pretty quickly, hitting a PB early on which was way up on the race-setup times I'd been doing in practice.  However, it was already evident that without some cock-ups passing was going to be nigh on impossible with a group of us running at such a similar pace.

I was a little surprised to see SBG off the track, but the reason behind that's become apparent!  I followed Steve around for ages, but then we moved towards the second half of the race ...  and with that multiple brain-farts began.

Screwing up the fast chicane, spinning, running wide .... I had them all.  My concentration and pace vanished, and the mistakes were big enough to let people by.  Each cockup cost me time, and position, and got me more frustrated which didn't help.  I should have been comfortably in the top 10, but I guess 11th will have to do.

I'm still struggling a little with the flu, although I think it's on the way out now, but how much that contributed to last nights problems I don't know.  The first half of the race was great, the second .... not so much.



That said, it was great racing with Darren and Steve, the 3 Legends RS in formation no doubt look GOOOOOOD in the replay, but racing "teamies" is always a bonus in my book.

[popabawa]

Gosh, that was horrible

I admit I hadn't had a lot of practice but I was doing 1:35's offline before the race and the car felt good so I was optimistic for good midfield scrap. Dunno what I was doing differently, the car just felt terrible once I'd joined the server, I was 2s+ off my offline pace.

I managed to run into a spinning Psuedo right at the start, sorry I couldn't avoid you, which dropped me to last place then picked up a few places as others dropped away and I started to feel more comfortable.

Then I closed in on MJ & Dave battling it out and stupidly managed to run into the back of Dave under heavy braking and span him. I'm really sorry about that Dave, it probably ruined a good fight with MJ for you :'(

A night to forget.

[spanner]

Well i enjoyed that one

After some help from TT i was feeling comfortable running around after only a short time when practising before hand and felt i'd be nearer where i should be (i.e not quite last ) But i'd agree its a good hot lap track but realised it was going to be frantic during the race.

After pushing it a bit too much on the outlaps (must calm down) i finally got a reasonable lap in for qualy and was shocked to see a few 'names' nearer the back than they should have been.

Now i should have remembered the car isnt good on the first lap but oh well I should have just let you through Dave and left it, but then forgot how bumpy that corner was! I'm sorry for the people behind if i caused anything but that dropped me back a few places then I calmed down and manged to catch a few people up slowly, whilst trying to avoid the people rejoining after falling off. Thanks to Ade for giving me room on the final chicane

Sadly it didnt quite end well as i realised I was going to run out of fuel so tried to slow down but it didnt help andwith two laps to go had to pit. I' sure the tyres were down as no change but the tyres were still changed which i needed like a hole in the head

Grrr those pesky Vertigo's, quicker through corners, but i'm slightly faster on the straights but not really enough in last few races. Might have to try them out, if you cant beat them join them!

[Stewprovo]

A night to forget. A good quali performance for me, took 1.5 secs off my PB to qualify 8th. Then screwed the race for myself, and sadly, for some others as well I think. Car felt completely different from qual. Loads of understeer in corners, and even more oversteer under braking & even light acceleration

Seems I'm not the only one to suffer this problem?

So sorry to anyone I had contact with, hope I did'nt mess people up too much.

May have a break for a while as I'm a bit fed-up with my driving earning nothing but Mod reports, and up-setting people. 

Grats to podium though.

[Steve Holmes]

Yay hey, I actually scored points for the first time.      It was good close racing, but Zolder is pretty hopeless for overtaking.

I was completely unable to match the consistent low 35s in race trim I'd been doing at the weekend, just too tired, about a second a lap slower, could have been right up there with the top 5. But never mind, kept it on the track, although I was close to losing it so many times.  Had fun in the close racing with sbg (until his cat intervened), Darren and Adam from the start, I certainly cost Adam some time with mistakes entering corners, he had to slam the anchors on and vanish backwards. 

Then Mark Mc closed up, kept him behind for quite a while until I messed up the entry to the hairpin and had to cut the corner to keep the car going, so I slowed to let him through, would have been keeping position by cutting otherwise. 

Somehow managed to keep up the concentration and not spin, which was nice.   

Nice driving by TT, and grats to all the podium guys.