UKGTR Season 12 Upper Endurance (GT1/GT2) - Suzuka (GP) - Mar 14

[API]

First "Connection Lost" for me. :'(

Qualifying went nicely. I managed to set a new PB and gained the pole position in GT2s. Team Oldie 1,2 and 3, nice. After a few laps, when I was 2nd, other cars disappeared and I knew that was it. I hope no-one hit my car. Hope you have a good one.

[purdie]

Sorry to hear you cant make it Purds 

Bad planning i'd say. I fitted my mum in after the grand prix and shipped her off again before the evenings race  love her really 

haha this is clever planning! Back now, hurts more to miss the start by 15-mins!

[Truetom]

Bad luck, API - you were too quick with your car.

2nd and 3rd - great team result, Legends.   Too bad you missed it Purds.

Lost loads of time letting GT1s by, seemed I got caught through the twisties every time. Thanks for being patient.

Grats podys.

[Mark J]

what a fantastic race on a fantastic track !!    Awesome, best endurance race ive had for ages. am soaked in sweat after 80mins of qually pace racing !

Qually didnt go as well as planned but still nabbed 4th behind the Team Oldie Ferrari express trio.

Race start was great chasing Legzy in front with fezzas in front and behind me. I was really enjoying putting the pressure on Legz and could see his tyres getting some grief when he was getting ragged up through the S bends but he kept it on the black stuff for about 13 laps until i got past him with a better exit out of spoon? and then chased hard after Lazlow. I kept closing the gap then GT1s would lap and the gap would grow slightly each time.
Got a wheel off the kerb in the chicane allowing Legz back past and another battle commenced until he lost it at the same chicane a few laps later. Unlucky mate, but good for me  
Pulled out a 6 second lead over TT chasing me since race start and thought i was already for my stop and then hope to finish at least 2nd, where id been all race, behind Lazlow.
But, with TT in the pits on that very lap i stupidly got drawn in behind a lapping GT1 and left my braking too late at T1, running wide thru the gravel and losing 8 seconds on my bloody in-lap ...Noooo ! My only real error of the whole race but it cost me 2nd as TT jumped me in the pitstops.
I came out 13 seconds behind him with 20odd mins left.
Hammer down, drove like a man possessed and closed the gap to 3 secs by the end   but a gaggle of lapping GT1s on the very last lap denied us a very close photo finish  :'(

Finished 3rd in a legends 2nd and 3rd on the podium

Congrats to Berger and Lazlow for their class wins

[Legzy]

I can't tell you how much I enjoy that track. As good as it gets in my book. (if you like the track too, we're doing ti in PnG in about 3 weeks if you fancy it )

Not as prepared for this one as I'd have liked, but was quite chuffed with a late improvement to my pb in qualli... earning me 3rd behind my lucky teammates .

Race was going alright till about 25mins in, my soft tyre choice was an error . Started making multiple errors & ended up pitting early, but sadly my head had gone & the errors continued. Still had good fun overall, just a bit disappointed with my finishing position.

Hope to be better prepared for Valencia

[picnic]

Replay and provisional results posted

LapChart

[Busi]

I had to race with 1 leg, its not that I'm slow that way, but I'm inconsistent and I can't save some slides... that lead into a couple of huge spins and lost all positions. Later on I had a touch with Jose at the hairpin and then in 130R. Sorry about the second one there mate

[Jayblue]

I wasnt exactly what i would call prepared for last nights race. I had a very important race on saturday night over at Race Department and spent most of my spare time practicing for it. I was under pressure for all of that race and even my thumbs and feet were aching last night from the night before. So i decided to do as little laps as possible in quali for this event and try to save what mental concentration i had left for the race. So P3 in quali was a good result for me.

In the race Berger was faster than me but i was able to just about stay with him. Later in the stint he had an accident with a backmarker i think and i was able to overtake him. His car seemed to be damaged and his pace dropped right off. At that point normally i would have really pushed on to take advantage but last night i made the mistake of easing off a bit and not building the gap enough before Berger learned to deal with his problem. At the end of the stint my car was understeering more than i like and i also didn't plan my pit strategy well. I had a 6 second lead before Berger pitted but i pitted 2 laps later than him and didnt cover off his renewed pace with his aero fix and new tyres. I hadn't even done the pit entry before and engaged the limiter in totally the wrong pace, loosing more valuable time. To top it off despite having my pit light on the crew were not ready for me and did the usual stand around doing nothing for a few seconds thing before servicing my car. Berger obviously retook the lead and after that i was more than happy to stay second.

Right at the end Berger hit traffic and i had a little look at the final turn but TBH if someone had offered me second before the race began i would have gladly taken it! Congrats Berger and Jeffrey (in the difficult Marcos) on podiums and Lazlow and the GTC podium too! This was a great track and car combo and even with little time to optimise my race it still presented an event full of fun. 

[spanner]

Just came away from that a bit dissapointed. Cant get near the 430 or 997 in the veteran BMW and just qualified behind Matt whos always been handy in it. I'm sure i could have gone a few tenths quicker but messed the final chicane up then on my final lap i was 50 yards from the line when i clicked over to race.

Just couldnt get passed Matt so seemed to spend most of the first stint behind him. I guess you were running a lower wing as i could close up through certain sections but had nothing down the straights. Was starting to get frustrated, the GT1's were lapping, so i made a few mistakes dropping me back as you never quite knew what the GT1's were going to do as they tended to close rather too rapidly at times. Sorry To H@L for misjudging it. Came out from my stop with TT and MJ a lap ahead which annoyed me and with Matt about 15secs up the road but even though it felt like qually laps i was barely making an impression until Legz and Matt were racing then it closed to about 7 secs but couldnt do anything.

I certainly wasnt expecting to be this far off the pace. I even looked back while on the grid and thought I couldnt see some cars until i realise i really was 3rd from the back! If the Beemer is this far off the pace then i might have to reconsider it.

[Truetom]

I guess the Beemer was at a disadvantage here, just as F430 was at Monza, Spanner.   I feel I can't get anywhere near RSR's pace, even though Lazlow's pace shows differently. I hope my wheel works ok. Car surely felt on the verge of getting off but the laptime doesn't show it.
What wing were you guys running in GT2? Legzy, Lazlow - if you could send your F430 setups to [email protected] I'd be most thankful.

[phspok]

Had done some practice in the 550, Fancied a bit of GT1 this season, had run the 550 at Monza, and would have been ok
cept I had no setup time, and couldn;t drive the car once the tyres had got hot. So was going to run 550 here as well
was not stunningly quick at 55.5 in race trim, but was ok for me. Realised that most of my "peers" were in GT2, so decided
to switch in practice, consequently had little setup time, ran my donnington setup with some minor tweaks to brakes, one less on front roll. otherwise it felt ok so I went for it. (Rear wing was 6) Surprised to qual in front of anyone, but did quite well.

As noted - had a green Spanner shadow for the 1st few laps until he lost it in the final chicane, was almost keeping up
with TT and Legz after MJ moved up. The speed with which SPanner was catching in the curves suggested I had quite a bit
less front grip, but managed to hold him off on the straights, and I think I had better traction as I usually got a better run
out of the final chicane. Being lapped by GT1s was I think frustrating for both, I was racing Legz after the stops, and would spend 5 laps catching by 2 tenths a lap only to have to throw it all away while a GT1 muscled through. It became "see who
is going to fall off trying to make room next" as Legz and I swapped places as one after the other went onto the gravel letting people by.

Lots of extended curvy bits to make lapping hard. Courageous pass in the last few laps Chris, didn't quite have enough
pace to keep up after that. Then into T1 the dreaded black screen hang for a long time, no point in hitting esc as it does nothing
so blindly steered left and braked (hopefully off track) then had to sit there while it finally returned, having let Spanner through and Legzy was now way too far ahead, so just drove round to finish last.

EDIT:
No idea what wing Legzy was running, but I could very slightly gain on a straight if I had a good corner exit, but was a lot slower in the
tight twisties, witness Legz's awesome door to door pass
BMW was slow last season as well, but I like it, I can sort of drive the 430 cant live with any other rear engines without neutering the handling
so much they understeer like milk floats. Had a stab at the Seat at the Puy de Dome place, it shoud be faster than Beemer, but I struggled with it.

[Jayblue]

I must also add a thank you to the GTC guys, lapping here was really tough as the GT1's are so quick in sector ones sweeping curves but there is only one line. I think other than one occasion with Mark (why is it always me and you nearly hitting when we are around on track lol  ) everything went as well as could be expected with lapping. When i lapped Mark we nearly had a repeat of last week at Nogaro... I had to laugh about it afterward, luckily we had no contact!

[H@L9000]

Good race.

Suzuka is one of my all time favourite tracks. I had fun trying to keep the aliens in view for the first 4 - 5 mins. I was able to do a bit of racing with FreQ after he made a couple of mistakes in the early stages. A while before the half way point, I had a 20 ish second gap in front and about the same behind.

From that point on it was all about maintaining the lead over nsfast behind.

I messed up my pit stop a bit and the gap to FreQ increased to 40 seconds. I seemed to need allot of fuel, started with 100L, filled up to 100L in the pit, left the pit with 38mins remaining and finished with 11L left.

No worries about the contact Spanner. As we were both on TS I should have suggested a side to stick too rather than say nothing and hope for the best.

Well done podiums. Fair play Jeff for sticking with the Marcos. Incredible times from the front runners in both classes.

[goldtop]

Bit of a non race for me. I only made it to Spoon on the first lap going off on the inside - a real newbie mistake Worse still I came up against an invisible rut while trying to rejoin which beached me. By the time I got back on track I was 40+ secs down. Started pushing with the inevitable results and decided to call it a night.

Seem to be going backwards at the moment with GTR2. Might give it a rest for a while and concentrate on GTL/PnG.

[Berger R - 74]

i was happy to have pole and more happy that ruskus with marcos was not behind me, i do fear? scary? about this car if he is behind me in a straight, but with a slow high speed lister behind me i did feel better

after 1 or 2 laps i saw that freq was suddently not second and jayblue was 2nd, we were nearly same fast the first 10 or 11 laps, but then i had a accident with a GT2 car and i had BIG aero damage, 15.9sec. in XD (and of course the dump 95 sec. suspension bug), after this the car did drive always in straight on right side and i always must move the wheel a little in left to drive, this was hard in fast corners, especialy the fast left corner after long straight (perhaps 130r??), jayblue did overtake me after this corner before chicane and i did nothing against it, i was thinking i do hit ESC, i was not happy.
then my laptimes dropped much and jayblue did drive away quickly and ruskus was suddently only 8 sec. behind, i was thinking i never can stay in front of him the next laps.
but each lap i did feel ok with move wheel in left side a little and i suddently saw that i can nearly be same fast then jayblue, so i did make my pitstop early in lap 21 (normal 25), lower fuel in xd and do suspension repair out in xd and i did hope that with only earo damage fix my car was ok again - and it was-
2 laps later after jayblue did pitstop i was suddently 3 or 4 sec. in front of him, i was very much surprised about this and i was in lead, then lead was 5 sec. and this was any laps i think, but then i did make a little mistake in a corner and he was 2-2.5 behind.
this gap stay to end of race, only the last 3 laps he did come little closer and closer and in last lap he was under 2sec. behind and i did not trust my eyes....i saw 2 or 3 gt2 car in front of me in last lap, i was very nervous then, in the 2 left corners before long straight i come behind a car and here it was not possible to overtake and i have to wait to the straight and jayblue was now very close behind, but i did no mistake and he did not overtake me in the last corners.
it was a hard race, suzuka is realy hard for 2 class races, but track is great.