UKPnG Season 3 Handicapped - Westwood 1988 - Jul 29

[Sandor M]

Grmbl,

Was doing fine around 10th place with lost of clean action going on.
Then I got on the grass before the start-finsh line and hoped to get the car back on the road.
Unfortunately my front bumper got in the tyres flipping my car in the air and landing somewhere on the tarmac.
Because I had no clue where I was I just pressed escape before I ruined some other persons race.

Oh well , at least I can drive the fast cars for another race

[Mark J]

another early bath for me. Had hoped it would be an exciting close race with such a full grid but seemed off the pace in the actual race and the bottom half of the field was quite strung out. Two costly spins when getting a wheel off left me in the back 4-6 during the first 15 laps or so. The second spin was enough to cease my meagre interest in racing these duff slow saloon cars and i retired as couldnt face another 20 odd laps trundling around the back at cortina speed, with no one to race.

Roll on the GT cars as this ankle biting season isnt doing it for me. Tracks have been good but cars are dull imo.

[Mike Miller]

Heartbreaking "connection lost" with 1 lap to go while running a comfortable 3rd. A bunch of fantastic racing out there. I'll give more of a race report later.

[Legzy]

Good solid race for me yet again in these duff slow saloon cars

Under-rated track that Westwood, I think it offers quite a lot, though certainly favours a car with half an engine over my pedal powered Alfa Jnr! Had many good laps of getting close behind someone in a Full Alfa GTA through the twistys, only to see them lose me on the straight.... repeat... & a similar thing but in reverse & less often against some Abarths

Cracking win PR, well done for breaking the VDA strangle-hold on the podium top step at least! Great to see an English Portuguese man up there instead!  

Hope to see some of you giving Watkins Glen a go on Sunday in UKGTR2

p.s. Another good turn out tonight.

[phspok]

Very enjoyable race for me. I made a tatters of T2 on  the 1st lap, too busy looking sideways to see where I was,
didn't feel any contact so kept tight and raced. Had some fun chasing TT and CLive, Clive must have done a much
quicker pit as I was on his bumper when I pitted, and was 16 secs behind when I came out. Riccardo? fell off
near the end, so I gained a place and hung on to the flag. Gutwrenching to come over the top and see Mike's
car frozen on track, but PR managed to stay connected, and was flying to a well earned win.
Oh, and I rather like the duffers as well, AM happy to race GTs too, all are fun for me.
EDIT: Watched the start and I pushed Geoffers, sorry for that.

[Hotkeys]

T´was great fun making my way from last place to 11 or so. I also had a great fight with a GTA, gaining time im the corners only so watch that son of a ....... catch up on me on the straight 

Made a stupid mistake by using the soft tyres without changing them .... huuu..... went from a 1.19.09 lap ( PB ) to 1.23's on the last laps 

Stig / Hotkeys

PS. Missed my usual dogfight with Legzy, so nxt time I'll try to quali 

[Clive Loynes]

Had some fun chasing TT and CLive, Clive must have done a much
quicker pit as I was on his bumper when I pitted, and was 16 secs behind when I came out.

LOL  I finally managed a decent pit stop but I'm still not sure if there is something that I should do after the fuel has stopped going in.  The bloke still seems to be mincing about in front of me and I have no engine to run him over with.  Apart from the refuelling crew, I did managed to keep all the other mechanics with their hands in their pockets.

I think that I owe you a drink too Matt, for keeping TT off my back in the early stages. 

I was resigned to 4th spot when I came across Mike's abandoned Alfa with a couple of laps to go.  Hard luck Mike. 

[Wiltshire Tony]

Love the cars and the track but I seem to be getting slower every week which is getting tiresome.

Still it was a lovely way to spend an evening but I missed tangling with Bill.

[goldtop]

Results and replay in the usual places

If those drivers without national flags by their names would like to fill in their nationalities in their profiles, we could then all see where you are from and my little charts would look much prettier 

[Tim Robey]

I owe seniordan a huge apology for taking him out on lap 1, I knew I had to brake early at the end of the straight, but with a full tank and cold tyres I misjudged it, just managed to avoid the Cortina I was following but didn't manage to avoid hitting Dan. 

The Mustang was hard work round here, and I couldn't get into any rhythm and lost time when I missed my braking spot playing round with XD pitstop settings when I realised I would have to change my front tyres.

Hmmm, maybe next time I'll take an Alfa like everyone else 

[Geoffers]

Watched the start and I pushed Geoffers, sorry for that.

I forgive you my son!   I think we're even now after Crystal Palace  

First lap wasn't too good for me, after the bump from Matt, I got bumped from behind at the next corner & only narrowly missed being taken out by Tim's Mustang at the end of the straight. In fact the first 10 laps were a bit of a disaster, made countless silly mistakes & was nearly at the back of the field & shortly after got lapped.

Settled down a bit after that, had a good pitstop (hooray!) & made up a few places to finish 12th.

Congrats to PR, Daniele & Clive.  

[Truetom]

Some close laps and chase with Clive and Matt, like they said. Though, I feel I was going backwards most of the time, several drivers overtook that were slower in quali. Not sure why, really, didn't feel slow to me, I was driving rather constant times (apart from one or two smaller offs), so it must be that they were accelerating their race pace.

Just before the race I was trying out new cars for GTR2 Watkins event and I think it was not such a good idea - hard to go back in time, man this cars feel sluggish. And when they finaly go quick you can't stop them.

Anyways, a good choice of the track, I must say, a bit tricky and with these cars you're constantly on the edge - or over it.  

[phspok]

Don't know about others, but I am usually faster in the race than in Qual, as I don;t have time to do a qual setup
as well as a race one. so I either run with race fuel in qual, or I take out some fuel, and maybe run softer tyres
but the cars are less stable like that, so I qual poorly. Is one reason why I am often at the back of the grid in GTR2
and sometimes finish better than my qual times would suggest. I spend most of GTR2 qual doing my race setup...
Same is somewhat true in PG and GTL

[pribeiro]

Very like the same as me Matt, my qualifying sessions are always rubish.

@Legzy, you're not very far for what I feel. I often say to a few portuguese fellows that I should have borned in England for many reasons.  

I made a joly good start which allowed me to attack the lead on the first two laps.
Afterwords was only to stay alert and avoid mistakes to increase the gap to the pursuit drivers.
This was the first time that pit stop went well (finally!).

I'm trully happy (even if I was driving the green group cars) because I didn't practice any lap as usual.
The 12 quali minutes were used to make a setup (2 laps) and qualy (3 laps).

Lovely track for this kind of cars.

Cheers