UKGPL Season 19 (2010) Amateurs Trophy (65) - Laguna Seca - May 4

[Al Heller]

Got what I deserved here I think - 5th in Q, 5th fastest lap & finished... yes you guessed it 5th. Inherited 4th off the line thanks to Clive's dodgy start & slotted in between my former Novices running mates Goran & Nicky. Was hoping for a repeat of last week's Breast's race but sadly Goran always seems to find an extra half-second or so by the time we do the race proper & he scooted off while I grappled with a rather unwieldy BRM on full fuel. Behind me Nicky kept the pressure on for the first third of the race but luckily the backmarkers worked in my favour (thanks to the guys who were being lapped btw - not easy here) so I found myself in a relatively comfortable 4th by half distance.

An unexpected problem next when my cat appeared in my peripheral vision & looked to be sizing up a leap onto the desk in front of the screen. My laptimes fell off a bit as I was shouting at him to go away & generally flapping around but he just sat there staring which was very off-putting! Once the cat drama was over, I noticed Clive closing rapidly on prib & despite knuckling down to some better times he was reeling me in quickly. Not sure if it was me or the BRM, but all the Brabhams could gain so much time on me during the entry to the corkscrew & following that for the second half of the lap in general. After a bit of sizing up Clive got me at the last corner but then ran wide so I nicked the place back but then a lap or so later I clipped the inside of the penultimate RH corner & Clive swooped in for the kill.

I was concentrating so hard on racing Clive that I hadn't noticed the leaders were behind me & almost made the mother of all cockups. Tried too hard to match Clive's pace through the corkscrew & spun sideways on the exit. I heard a car coming so tried to get off the racing line moving forward & thankfully Tim decided to go behind me - you chose wisely! Was a bit rattled after almost taking out the leader so had a nervy last few laps with Nicky still chasing me down & was relieved to finish. After a bit of a stuttering start to my Am's career, 5th was definitely an improvement.

Saw a lot of good driving here. Congratulations to Tim, Hristo & Goran and a special mention to Evil on an impressive recovery drive too (git! ).

[Hristo Itchov]

Another victory thrown in the bin, but at least I finished 2nd. Tim put up a remarkable lap at the end of Qualifying, though I suspect I helped him a bit by lending a tow! It's a difficult track to pass on, so that meant my job became much harder.

As expected he got away and built up a small gap while I was keeping an eye of Goran in my mirrors, but eventually shrugged him off after a few corners. From there on it was all about putting as much pressure on Tim as possible, but he wouldn't budge so easily and would in fact increase the gap a bit on some occasions.

Eventually I managed to find a bit more speed and with Tim messing up as well I was right behind him on the approach to the Corkscrew on one of the laps. He kinda opened the inside by wobbling to the right so I had no option but to keep my BT7 on the inside and took the lead.

It was very difficult to build any kind of a gap once in front, as he would easily close up again on the straights. It took 5 or so laps and a few backmarkers before Tim finally lost the slipstream effect. Once that happened, I managed to build a 4 seconds gap within the next few laps and all that I had to do was just maintain that gap.

Instead, I kept pushing too much for comfort and made a mistake at T1, damaging the car a bit in the process, which let him close up within a second. Then the car bottomed had an off at the penultimate corner and spun around, so Tim was through. He was still within reach though, so I set after him in hot pursuit.

Another off dropped me some 9 seconds behind with 18 laps to go and by now the car was somewhat uncomfortable to drive. That meant I couldn't reduce the gap to Tim at the pace that I needed, but I kept trying nonetheless, until yet another off increased the gap up to 14 seconds with 7 laps to go.

I kept pushing, just to get the race over with, and amazingly the gap started going down rapidly at some point, eventually dropping to 5 seconds with 3 laps to go. I suppose some backmarkers helped with that. I was impossible to reduce the gap in the remaining laps though and so I had to settle for 2nd which wasn't bad, considering.

See you at The Ring!

[NickyIckx]

 
First big hand to podium ones  !!!!!
Especially to Göran on his fantastic 3rd ,very wd !!


Well , my race was much more fun than I expected to be .
Due to real work I didn’t had the time to work out any serious setup .
But  I was lucky to follow the idea to use an  little overworked Adelaide setup , 1hour before the race starts . Did worked quit nice .
Qualified 6th and placed 6th in the end , not bad .

However lap 14 –24 was ruled by an brilliant drive with Clive in my neck .
That was real big fun . Thx Clive for that , very clean racing  and don’t be worried about the lag related contact you mentioned ; I even didn’t noticed in race , just realised while watching the replay . As I said later on in chat ; that moment I decided to let you pass by , as you have been that much quicker and I wasn’t willing to spoil ya chances . That’s why I drove that hard left and slowed down a bit same time .
But anyroads big thanks for let me repass again , very gentleman style !!!!


See ya all at silver

( still thinking off to replace my 4870gfx  with my older 1900xtx ……..did watch the replay on  the older one ; and the armco on  last turn  at Laguna wasn’t flickering at all.
Seams like older gfx can handle some of GPL mips  better .. )

[G Jonsson]

Thanks for the praise guys, I am really pleased with things so far in my first year in Am`s. But I still have a long way to go before I can challenge for race wins. Congrats to Tim and H.

Well, 3rd on the grid and finishing 3rd and not that much happening in between, except some hairy lapping situations.  It looks like all the action took place in front and behind me. But I don`t mind really and I want to thank Nicky,Steve and Al for keeping Clive out of my pit board for so long. Also I like to thank Billy for the setup I used in the race.

Now it`s time to go to Nurbrurg where I will live in my BT11 until the next race, see you all there.

Göran

[bernie]

What a gas ! Got me a nice set up for the Lotus , did the usual arguing over who would be last in quallifying ( think I won that one ) . Come race day , got a blinding start and picked up a whole place on L1  My obvious delight was shortlived however as a lap later I dun it rong , hit th T1 tyre trap and bent the steering . Decided to carry on just for the hell of it,  but with a lotus that didnt want to turn right I decided drastic action was called for . Thought if I can give  the LHS front a clout maybe it will straighten out , so aimed it at the polos on the hairpin . Guess what ? I now had a lotus that only wanted to turn Left 

Spent the rest of the race trying to "tune" the suspension on various polos, cones , pit walls etc . all to no avail , lost count of the  number of times  I was lapped,  but think its a new PB for sure 

Sorry for all those who nearly fell over me and for those that did , blow yer bloody hooter next time 

[Phil Thornton]

..... did the usual arguing over who would be last in quallifying ( think I won that one )

Nope I'm claiming that one Bernie 

[Statmeister]

So far in Am's the winner of every race has also been the most consistent. FMG took the consistency prize with an average deviation of 0.448 but as far as average laptime was concerned, him & Hristo were in a league of their own here as the only runners to manage a race average below the 1:11's :

Average Laptime (42 laps)

1. FMG - 1:10.883
2. Hristo Itchov - 1:10.984
3. Goran Jonsson - 1:12.187
4. Evil Clive - 1:12.436

Another solid drive from Goran Jonsson puts him to the head of the Consistency-Meister table while Phil Thornton leads the climber table. A perfect consistency score here (0.00 variation) would be 210.



* (P) in the Climber-Meister table denotes adjustment due to Moderator Penalty
** 0.00 in Consistency table denotes average laptime deviation > 5 secs cutoff
*** Only best 8 scores count at end of season

[bernie]

It's amazing what you can do with 6 toes 

[G Jonsson]

Still no team points for this Laguna race, why?

Göran

[Phil Thornton]

Still no team points for this Laguna race, why?

Don't know.  I imported the race as I normally do but the team points were not picked up.  The system doesn't let me input team points manually so that team points can't be manipulated retrospectively.  I'll have to ask Giz to try and sort it out for us.

[Turkey Machine]

Don't know if this is related or not, but my registered events appears to be missing Ams. Is this a by-product of the suspension?

[Phil Thornton]

Don't know if this is related or not, but my registered events appears to be missing Ams. Is this a by-product of the suspension?

Yes and now you've served your suspension I've put you back in.  Good luck in the next round Jethro 

[Phil Thornton]

Moderation completed.