i6e Endurance Sundays Round Two - NOW AT VIR FULL

[Jove]

This has to go into my top ten best races, great driving from Gary.

Completely foo bar'd myself after a couple of laps by missing my brake marker by a country mile and found myself on the grass watching Ian & Darren go passed 

I caught up with Darren in the next couple of laps and made a firm but fair pass after out braking him on the first corner, sorry about the contact Darren it was x0 and was not intentional, sorry mate.

I then caught Ian and made the same move, next up was Gary but it wasn't going to be that easy and he looked like he was having a hard time with traffic as he was catching the Mustangs in the worst possible places. We both pushed hard and on lap 25 I decided it was time to make a pit stop.

When I came out the pits I found my self way down the order but i knew everyone in-front would have to pit in the next few laps at least. As I drove pasted the pits on the next lap to my surprise Gary was just getting up to speed and after Jamie had made his pitstop I found myself leading the race. I later found out he had been caught up in traffic and this had allowed me to leap frog him.

Now it was a case of holding on to the first place, with Gary breathing down my neck! For the next 25 laps it was a noise to tail battle. knowing VIR is very hard to pass all i need to do was hold my nerve with Gary piling on the pressuring I held my line to take the win.

What a great battle with Gary some awesome driving mate Well done Simon on bringing the Mustang home in first place.

Great driving from everyone today

[picnic]

Dreadful performance from me last night, my usual sort of pace but this track just catches me out again and again, so far too many incident points for my liking I was lucky that none of my offs resulted in trying to make friends with the tyre walls.

The closing speeds, especially on the 2 long straights, were just plain mad. Best part of 60mph resulting in a couple of interesting passes and probably a few disgruntled DP drivers when a door got unintentionally shut quite late. All in all I think the standard of driving by the DPs was pretty good.

Don't think I've even driven Homestead so that should be interesting too! Well done to everyone who survived this one.

[Fred Basset]

This was the first ever race I've done with cars of such mixed performance, it was a learning exercise and I've realised some strategy changes I need to make.

Interestingly on lap 9 I got a hefty rear end shunt from Simon's Mustang as I passed him just before the esses. It was a 0x contact but the car would not turn right quite right after this, looking at the replay we never touched so it must have been warp.

I'd worked up a good lead part way through the race but I seemed to have a mare with traffic catching people in the wrong places and I think this cost me 20 seconds in total, for the most part this was just bad timing but there were a couple of moments that I think were unnecessary with very rude door shutting when people weren't battling for position.

As David has already said he stopped two laps before me and after catching Mustangs again in awkward places I emerged 5 secs or so behind him. Catching was fairly easy but you can't pass at VIR so we had 20 odd laps of me running less than a second behind him. I think there was only one real chance for me to pass David when he tripped over a Mustang as we both had to slam our brakes on, unfortunately I'd not changed down in the confusion so lost any advantage.

It was a great race though, pleasure racing with you David and as I said afterwards I don't really care about positions I do this for just that kind of battle.

Also nice to be the only driver with zero incident points, you're slipping Dave

Regards
Gary

[picnic]

I'd worked up a good lead part way through the race but I seemed to have a mare with traffic catching people in the wrong places and I think this cost me 20 seconds in total, for the most part this was just bad timing but there were a couple of moments that I think were unnecessary with very rude door shutting when people weren't battling for position.

It's endurance racing Gary, although you may not be close the the car(s) you think you are battling there are often battles going on. For example I was racing to beat Robert. He was stopping later than me so until that stop happens it's hard to know if you've done a good enough job or not. The closing speeds here were so high that by the time a blue flag was shown you'd be committed to the braking and entry. Sadly limited talent means I don't have enough reserves to alter things while that close to the limit.

[Simon Gymer]

Interestingly on lap 9 I got a hefty rear end shunt from Simon's Mustang as I passed him just before the esses. It was a 0x contact but the car would not turn right quite right after this, looking at the replay we never touched so it must have been warp.

Are you sure it was me? There is no contact 0x or otherwise listed on the lap chart for you or me and looking at the replay I can't see you are close enough to any of us as you lap us to have had any warp contact either as there are large gaps at all times. Which bit is the esses?