NGT Sprint Cup - Season 1, Round 4, Brno - Aug 2nd

[greg130]

First NGT race for me, havn't driven theF360 for a long time so was a bit rusty to say the least. Qualified 8th which was satisfying, was never going to live with the fast guys.
Had 2 lots of contact on lap 1 with JM, racing incidents in my book. First contact i was on the outside, both survived. 2nd contact I was on the inside, tried to leave enough track for JM but he turned into me and spun off, guess I was in his blindspot, hope he feels the same way as me and considers them both as racing incidents.
Moved up to 6th after a while but Paul was closing fast.  
Then comes my 3rd contact of the race, Paul takes the inside line, I know hes there but cant see him.  He runs a little wide carrying too much speed and takes me out, or did I turn into him ? Either way I visit the gravel and loose a few seconds, no big deal, another racing incident in my book.
Overall a really enjoyable race, finished 7th which was a bargain.

[Mike Wrightson]

Brilliant race for me!!!

New PB in qually to put me 4th, held that round the first lap with Shark sniffing at my heels, saw first Paul then TrueTom make mistakes, leaving me in 2nd place!

Held off Shark for the whole race to make it a dE Racing 1-2 finish woohoo!!  No mistakes along the way which is a welcome change, thankyou to those I lapped, you were very co-operative

Congrats to Matjas for a fine win

[Matjaz Plotajs]

Thanks Mike ! Great result for our team and not so interesting race for me. Starting from the pole I felt some preassure in the first lap from Paul but then saw him making a mistake coming into te first corner. From then on it was all about keeping the concentration and increasing my lead to a safe distance in case I do a mistake or have troubles overtaking the backmarkers. That didn't happened and I just dropped the pace for the last two laps and brought it home without to much stress. Hope you all enjoyed the race and let's hope for a nice fight in Donington as well... a home territory for most of you guys. 

[Aagramn]

Results up here:

http://www.ukgtr.org/lm2-report.php?group=10121&event=22

Drivers and team championships starting to take shape now.

http://www.ukgtr.org/lm2-report.php?group=10121&content=

[Simon Gymer]

A very competitive race, but by the end of it I was sick to death of Mike's rear end. Oof, those exhaust fumes, very smelly.  Start to finish for 30 mins with nothing but the rear of Mike's Ferrari filling my view.

Mike and I were almost identical in lap times both in qualy and race. I never once tried to make a move although I could have pushed a lot harder in the first 1/4 of the race whilst Mike seemed to be taking it a little easy getting up to full speed. After that was never more than 1.5 secs behind, just followed him the entire way hoping for a mistake but it never came. We were too close in raw speed for me to even think about a pass without a big mistake from Mike. Well driven under the pressure.

3rd place was a good result for me and PB in qually too, very satisfied with that.

Well done to Matjaz and Mike for the 1-2. Bloomin heck that was a stunning pole. There is no way whatever setup I make I can make up 2 seconds. Gonna be tough to beat Matjaz in the remaining races but these NGT races are becoming very nicely competitive on the lap times. Shame it's a bit of a F360 fest but there you go.

[Simon Gymer]

All incident reports to Gizmo (Dave Gymer) or Paul Harrington (Paul968) as usual please.

Thanks.

[Wilier]

Bit miffed with that to be honest.

Crappy qual saw me in 17th, got a decent start and was scrapping with PaulW, Don1 and a couple of others, then made an unforced error, dropped back to 18th.
Picnic cought me and passed me, but was dragging me long, then my PC just stopped?? I think it heat siezed cos Id dropped the engine vent to 3 

Anyway, it was fun whilst it lasted.

[fozzmeister]

I have to watch the replay, got a feeling I have some penalties coming my way however, so it all might have been for nothing...

Not from me m8, bit of contact but we both stayed on the road so good hard racing in my book.

Yeh that's my reading too, in the end the penalty doesn't really matter so much to me (I'm not where I'd want to be in the championship anyway). Its the ones where I was going passed slower cars that concerns me, at present my judgement is clouded just because I was going passed a lot, I know there was contact with one or more, but I'm virtually incapable of storing things in my memory while I'm racing, so I can't form a judgement.

So far in all championships, I've not really stayed out of trouble, but IMHO everything has either bit totally not my fault, or nobody but me has paid for my mistakes. This is a viewpoint that I wish to preserve :-)

Fozzmeister

[Don]

I hadn't done a lot of testing with the Porsche 911 GT3-RS(love the 360 but so many people driving it) and set up for the race with soft/medium tires. About half way through the race I thought the tires felt they were starting to go off,(might have got too hot didn't check) so decided to try and ease off a bit and keep some Tire in reserve. The change of rhythm had me spinning off twice and saw me lose a few places, So got myself out of the sand and started going at it again, luckily for me some people in front had problems and I managed to finish picking up a few points in the process. So one happy camper here!
Were any of you other guys in the Porsche's struggling with grip?
Don.

[popabawa]

Were any of you other guys in the Porsche's struggling with grip?

Not hugely, but from what I can tell, heavy tyre wear is a feature at Brno.

I didn't really push too hard at any point through the race so I was trying to not to put too much strain on the tyres hoping I'd pick up a few easy places as others span out towards the end - that didn't happen!

I was lapping fairly consistently around 2:06.0 - 2:06.5 if that helps.

[EDIT] I was running Soft/Meds.

As Matjas said in an earlier post, this track is all about staying on the driving line, I can totally see what he means now!

Cheers, Pops

[picnic]

I had no real lose of grip throughout the 30 mins but had meds front and rear. I'm not happy running a soft/med mixture except as a qual setup as I find the tyres wear at different rates and then I usually end up with a very oversteery car. And once I start spinning it compounds the issue.

[PaulW]

Were any of you other guys in the Porsche's struggling with grip?

Couldn't find any decent grip in learning the track in the usual GT3RS. Had to break the habit of a lifetime and take a 360 last night and it had substantially more grip 'out of the box'. Having put a lot of laps in in the 360 I think it just edges the GT3RS overall with slightly more grip and slightly better exits in corners. Really disappointing because NGT is like a single make series at the moment. Hoping the GT3RS feels faster for Donnington!

[Paul968]

The rollercoaster continued with a pretty good qual (except who let Mat in the backdoor!), a close first lap on Mat's heels and then a stupid error at turn 1 dropping me to 10th  Spent the next lap riht behind Colin, who was not easy to pass and in trying I almost let JM Racing past into the last chicane. Finally got by Colin at T1 and chased down Popa, who I caught a couple of laps later. He clearly didn't want to dispute the position, giving in up the hill at the end of the lap. In 8th now and Greg is the next car, several seconds away. Took a few laps to get on terms, in the meantime Ruf had spun out (so close to taking Greg with him!). Made a silly slip and lost a coupe of seconds, which added to the time to get back to Greg. Got a run out of T1, outbraked down the inside into T2 and ran a touch wide, so that when Greg turned in (I was ahead at ths point) he bounced off me into the gravel. This was a tricky one, as he couldn't see me at all until turn in, whereas in real life he would have had more peripheral vision and waited. Anyway, sorry you lost out Greg. In 6th now and Bernie was well up the road in the Millenium Falcon. Luckily his warp drive wasn't working too well, as I caught up a few laps later. He was by then starting to reel in TrueTom, and as I made another small slip and dropped back a touch, Bernie made an audacious move up the hill right between Tom and a backmarker - great stuff! Tom did his best to stay in touch but lost a bit of ground out of T1, giving me a bit of a run into T2. I was looking to outbrake but prepared to back out if necessary, but Tom turned in earlier than usual which took me by surprise. The was slight contact as I slid down the inside and took the place, but I felt that it wasn't legit so backed off and gave it back. The last few laps I spent chasing Tom hard on worn tyres, with little slides putting paid to my efforts to pass, and so ended in 6th.

Can't really complain, as the race was a lot of fun and the mistake was all my fault. My lack of race practice realy shows atm, but I feel it's getting better. Frame rate wasn't a big problem but it still affects my driving - I am at least half a sec quicker offline and had a 2.00.4 in practice. Overall I enjoyed it tho, but with a tinge of disappointment not be fighting at the front.

Paul

[Rob Bywater "Kerb Crawlers"]

Well I really enjoyed that. The 1st race since race 1 that I didnt get 1fps. Tried to drive a consistent line and speed ( ), hoping that I`d pick up a couple of places with fall offs. This happened, and after 3 or 4 laps I`d jumped 4 places, however this didnt last  . I spun under no pressure and let Jam and someone else thru, then on the last corner, after letting all the leaders thru, I let As-Here thru thinking he was ahead of me, but he wasnt, and then he was - d`oh!!!

Cheers

Rob

[popabawa]

Finally got by Colin at T1 and chased down Popa, who I caught a couple of laps later. He clearly didn't want to dispute the position, giving in up the hill at the end of the lap.

Guilty as charged. I guess it's not really 100% in the spirit of things but as you chased me down SO quickly (I'm guessing you were 2-3s a lap faster) I decided I didn't an awful lot to gain by potentially blocking you for 20 mins (which wasn't going to happen!) and not to mess with my conservative driving strategy as I had a decent gap over 10th place at that time.

Maybe one day I'll be able to take you on Paul