UKGTR Season 8 Upper Endurance (GT1/GT2) - Monza (GP) - Aug 3 - Super Endurance

[pribeiro]

I just cant believe i qualified among GT2 in 1st with a 3 seconds gap for 2nd with the
conditions i most like (wet), and when only 20 seconds left to begin race, my #$#%$# PC
decided to swap to desktop, i did the ALT+TAB stuff but nothing, despite i still hear
the engine sounds of the people, so,  i am very /(&%$# happy §§§� indeed.

I hope you all had fun.

Cheers

[Busi]

What a shame mate... I didn't have the guts to finish a lap in quali lol so started last. Up to 5th after a few laps, but I wasn't really up for such a long race so I retired.

[Prof]

That was fun.

My repaired Momo wheel held up well and I had a great battle with JPS for lap after lap -- never more than a couple of seconds in it. My first attempt to pass ended in a slight tap - sorry about that  and I rejoined 8s behind. On catching up again I managed to pass cleanly but could not pull out more than a second or so as the lapping vehicles kept appearing. I lost the place at the fast chicane by going wide and again fought to catch up. This time I tried too hard to get a fast exit out of the last chicane and the car snapped left breaking the suspension.

Well raced JPS very consistent laps and fair driving on your part - if you wish to report the tap I hold my hands up, my fault entirely.

[ginsters sponsored]

Not a big fan of cangeable weather as it seems like a lottery after to me. Real shame as I chose wrong tyres (gawd knows how) ruined the race with Picnic for me :'( I know some of you gents like it it but dry or wet races only for me ta.

[Legzy]

increasing fast bump and rebound mainly but also mabe increase the slow ones aswell slightly.

Cheers Spanner, this made such a difference for me in the wet qualifying, I was actually able to do clean laps in the rain 
------------------------------------

Absolutely loved the race tonight but left myself gutted as I felt I was doing great (for me)... then I managed to do a double downshift while accelerating & blew the engine!
Double Doh!!
Still, I felt I progressed tonight. Small steps. 

[Reign Man]

Pants Race....

Car was crap...my driving was crap and the track is crap!

Sorry to Evert, approaching him into the parabolica with the intention of going past on the straight and my rear end just stepped, got into a big slide and the next thing I know Evert is spinning. I didn't feel any contact but im sure i must have mad contact. Really sorry!!

At the end I was struggling to keep the car on the track, i must have and some damage as I was swapping ends on the straights    

Poor, poor race

Grats to Podiums 

RM

[Simon Gymer]

Only just got home in time to get into the server, so no qually and started 2nd from back. Long race though anything can happen. Was glad it didn't start wet as having no time in the car I needed to bed myself in. Soon was into the GT1s, but having started so far down the grid there was a big gap to the front guys and knew it was going to be hard getting onto the podium.

Mid way through had my usual and customary hard, but fair battle with TT's Saleen. Was a good scrap. The Saleen had a bit of a straight line speed advantage over the F575, not a lot, but just a tiny bit and was making it hard to get by and stay ahead. I was running 2-2 tonight, so I guess TT you were 1-1 or something? Anyway, eventually I made a move stick and eased away.

I think I was about 5th then and as the pit stops started to happen I started to climb a little further up as my tyre wear was really low, my lap times were not going down. Stayed out as long as possible in the first stint and was planning to do the same in the 2nd to do a 30 minute dash to the flag.

Well then the clouds came over and I knew what was coming next. Still I needed a few more minutes before making a stop to make it to the end on a full tank, so stayed out on slicks till I got the clock under 50 minutes. Stopped in the pit stall right ahead of Brian making it hard for me to get in and hard for him to get out.

By then I was up to 3rd and the gap to Brian was down to 10 seconds. 3rd stint in the wet took me quite a while to get a good feel for it and during that period I half span twice at the second chicane. This saw the gap to Brian extend to 20 seconds.

From then on in, I got the groove back and started chipping away at Brian's lead on me. By the end I had it down to 3.5 seconds, but it wasn't quite enough and he held on for 2nd position. Were you taking it easy Brian making sure of the 2nd place?

I'm really really pleased with 3rd from starting 2nd from the back. Never saw RoadRunner in the lead, must have been a great drive at the front, so very well done.

Also well done to Pete, Andy and Dave in the GT2 podium. Good stuff and a great win for Pete!

That was a really tough race with really challenging conditions especially coming in late, running up the stairs getting everything on and just going straight out into the race with no warmup or anything. I really love the changeable conditions as you add so much strategy to the equation deciding what to do about tyres etc it really adds another dimension to the racing.

[Kerr]

Got back with a few minutes of qualification to go.

I just used my lemans set up for the Vette in the wet. It was no good for here as kept grounding out very badly which I thought was odd. I was up on H@l9000 pole time but made a mistake and ended up 4th on the grid.

I decided to risk soft tyres from the start. Something said it would be a gamble worth taking. I did not have a race set up and was doing the fuel calculations on the warm up lap. Maybe should have thought about doing more than 10 laps practice on Friday.

Car was fast to begin with and I was up into 2nd after a couple of laps.

I was quicker than H@L but he had the speed at the right bits and I could not find a move, nor was he making any mistakes.
We had moved away from the rest of the field and had a 10 second gap back to RR.

I finally got the run out of the last bend and with a good slipstream I got through. It was a last ditch braking effort and this caused me to scrub all my speed and I received a little tap and I was sent spinning. Purely a racing incident.

That gave RR the lead and brought Gazza right back into things. My tyres were suddenly feeling very tired and Gazza was all over me. I made a few mistakes but Gazza could not make the position stick with the Lambos lack of speed.

It's been a while since I've made a pit stop and it showed. I lost position to Gazza and H@L, whilst RR gained about 10 seconds from me.

After a few laps again I was 2nd and the gap with RR was very consistent.

I stopped when the rain became heavy and my car was becoming very difficult to drive. RR went another lap and I was thinking that was one too many and I would be able to catch if he had poor lap.

I'm baffled how I suddenly lost another 20 seconds as I quickly scrolled up and changed over to hard wets and fuel was enough to the end. I did nothing wrong that time. I thought RR maybe underfueled but he did not.

Sorry for the tap in the pits Simon. It's the computer that steers anyway, but I had full lock on and it still kissed your car coming out of my bay.

My car was shocking in the wet. With 1-1 wing the car would not stop, steer or accelerate. It was such an effort to keep the car on the road.

RR was over 30 seconds up the road after pit stops and Simon 10 seconds the other way. The gap to RR steadily increased a little by little and Simon ended up 20 seconds behind.

Come the end of the race Simon was catching as I was making more and more mistakes.

Grats RR on the win and whoever won the GT2 class

[picnic]

Replay & provisional results available

Lapchart

[psuedo]

Another cwappy one for me.

Didn't expect such a big change in the conditions..(weather has been stable in Monza today  ) so went with the full dry configuration on the car.

Lost a couple of places early on to RM and Kerr after a slow exit from the 2nd chicane....then on lap 3 RM spun in Ascari and I just clipped the side of his car whilst passing and ended up head on with a wall.   (so appologies to the GT2's that flashed me passed and I didn't flash a thank you....I had no lights)

Took some front aero damage with that and try as I would I couldn't get round in under 1:45's.
Started improving after the first pits after getting repairs but then the tropical storm hit. 1-2 wing config and very stiff suspension + wet weather doesn't work. Everytime I tried to pass a gt2 (Purdie) started aquaplaning over the bumps and ended up with a block of concrete on my knee from yet another wall

I do like the changable conditions, seeded from the real world current conditions....I do wish the game had some way of mimicking it more realistically though....changing from 34 deg dry and sunny to 18 deg flooded is perhaps a little beyond believable imo.

Grats to all winners and podiums.

[Roadrunner]

I stopped when the rain became heavy and my car was becoming very difficult to drive. RR went another lap and I was thinking that was one too many and I would be able to catch if he had poor lap.

I'm baffled how I suddenly lost another 20 seconds as I quickly scrolled up and changed over to hard wets and fuel was enough to the end. I did nothing wrong that time. I thought RR maybe underfueled but he did not.

Im prob as suprised as you were tbh..i cant describe how bad that inlap was..all i can think is i had about 25-26l fuel left when i stopped...

Nothing to special on the whole...had someone try a botched overtake on me under yellow flags into ascari...so just got away with that...an was 8-9 secs back from first 2 when that all settled down...then something obviosuly went wrong between em into first chicane...got the lead an never really looked back...slight moment of interest entering the pits at about twice the limit but no penalty for it   and Evert had slight moment infront of me..guessed wrong which was he was gonna go..but no harm done...

Gotta say rain saved me i think...really was struggling with brakes for most of the dry spell..and forgot to lower rev limit..so was wondering which was gonna give up first...brakes or engine up to that point...

Grats to rest of podium guys

RR

[H@L9000]

Hard race

I cant believe that I got the pole

Possibly put the limiter on too late at the end of the warm up lap and some how got an advantage out of it. Sorry about that.

Have been practising allot in the wet at Monz@ and when it was dry for so long I ended up going back into public server mode and cutting corners :'(. Ended up with 4 stop and gos and made a few mistakes. Sorry Kerr and Purdie and Gazza and possibly others too (will check replay). The battles were fun before I made mistakes. Ended up with 0.9 L of fuel at the end.

Glad to get the finish in the end.

H@L9000

[Truetom]

Mid way through had my usual and customary hard, but fair battle with TT's Saleen. Was a good scrap. The Saleen had a bit of a straight line speed advantage over the F575, not a lot, but just a tiny bit and was making it hard to get by and stay ahead. I was running 2-2 tonight, so I guess TT you were 1-1 or something? Anyway, eventually I made a move stick and eased away.

Lol no, I had 2-6. I guess I got a good exit out of Parabolica. But yes, I saw the advantage. It all went to naught during braking, though.    Car was a bit better than in Sprint but not very much. In rain it was a bit better than I expected. Towards the end when tyre wear was above 20 I was sliding even while driving straight, lol. 

I hope this car and this track and me are just unlucky combo. If I don't feel more comfortable on the next track I'm ditching Saleen.

TT 

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Not sure what happened to Jan at the start but I sailed past him like he missed a gear! From then on it was all downhill during the first part of the race, as I had poor pace in the dry, not helped when, just 40 minutes in, I checked my engine health and it had dropped 10% already!

After that I had to start preserving the engine; the gap to Evert's RSR ahead was fairly stable at around 6 seconds and having started on medium fronts and hard rears I had relatively little tyre wear. I watched tyre temperatures slowly drop so I switched to soft fronts and medium rears at my stop which were better, but then the skies darkened and the rain started falling; I pitted as soon as the tyre temperatures dropped below 60, taking on soft wet fronts and hard wet rears, which were perfect for the conditions.

I could've done with another 5mm of ride height and more wing than the 1-4 I was running but it as handling okay except for Ascari, where it had bad oversteer on the way out, which caused to me to spin and lose 15 seconds, allowing Purdie (who I'd past in the tyre stop) back past. It slowly dawned on me that I had 3rd in class so I kept plugging away with a big gap to the car behind and Andy slowly pulling away ahead.

Towards the end of the race I had more rear tyre wear than front and that was making like quite difficult in all the big stops, especially the first two chicanes.

Big thumbs up to Picnic for chalking up his first win of the season with a virtually faultless drive - Monza was always going to suit the M3 but you still have to push it hard for over 2 hours to win a Super Endurance race!

[Simon Gymer]

Lapchart

Yey! starting second from back gave me the highest number of overtakes in the race, 5 more than anyone else!