i7e Endurance Sundays Round 1 - Watkins Glen Classic Boot - 7 August

[Adam Parle]

Right ... back from hols ... I'd best get practicing!!

[Burtoner]

I probably be away as well, doesnt look like a good turnout this week..

[Baz]

Practice server is up now chaps 7.0pm UK time

[fozzmeister]

I probably be away as well, doesnt look like a good turnout this week..

Don't put a downer on it, It's race one, everyone will turn up :-D

[Adam Parle]

I probably be away as well, doesnt look like a good turnout this week..

I think you might be surprised...

I'm really looking forward to tonight, bit apprehensive due to my limited time in the car, but hey - it's meant to be a challenge!!

[mr_oily]

yep i'd say we're on for a great turnout ya negative Nancy!

Had my first experience of the lmp last night in the practice and thanks to some help from Purds seemed to more or less hit the ground running with it - really enjoyable to drive...i was worried it would be on a knife edge but I was pleasantly surprised I have to say!

Really not sure what to expect from the NTM, I drove as usual and it did seem to suddenly lose the ability to turn after 7/8 laps so I suspect I may have spanked it a little hard but hopefully some more practice will help me get my head around it!

Was really nice to see Prodigy boys Raimo and Dimm online as well as some other familiar faces...hope to keep the momentum up this season myself and attend as many as possible. It's got the potential to be epic!

Catch ya tonight...

[Simon Gymer]

UTTERLY STUPID divebomb which I see coming and manage to get out of the way of only to get rear ended by someone else at the same time. So glad I bothered. These races are 90 mins, not 30 mins, dive bombing is for sprint racing not endurance racing.

I'll come back when not hitting each other is more important than beating each other.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

No incident discussions on the forums. Submit a report.
You know the rules and you know why we have them.


I was actually a lot more competitive than I thought I would be given that I'd only driven four laps in the car before practice started, and only two of those at Watkins. Qualifying felt good and to my surprise I ended up as the best placed Shark. It was all downhill from there.

My race started badly and ended worse. Took me four goes to get in the car with a working pit limiter (iRacing's code must be utterly awful for them to be unable to fix such a rudimentary and long standing bug ), by which time the pace lap had started.

Didn't take me too long to pass the GTs - unfortunately picking up a 4x trying to pass Fozz out of the heel when he was busy looking at the car ahead and pulled out to look at a pass himself. I hope Watkins doesn't represent the normal balance of performance between the two classes because I had almost no straight line speed advantage and could only pass GTs by either diving through on the brakes before they turn in, or sitting right on their tails through the corners and passing inside on the exit, the latter being risky and the former very risky.

My first off came passing a GT up out of the Toe - he let me by up the hill but I entered the corner just a car width or two wider than normal, caught the bump wrong and smacked it into the armco. The car was badly bent so I dragged the wreckage back to the pits for my reset. The steering was straight but it didn't feel quite right - almost as if the front tyre pressures had changed. It was still quite drivable though so the second and race-ending off was more of a surprise - again, where the boot section rejoins the old track.

It was probably the same bump as before but this time I wasn't offline and I certainly wasn't expecting the rear to step out there; one overcorrection later and I was in the armco again. Having already used my reset, when I pulled in the crew told me I was too bent to continue so that was that - never even made it to the first of my two stops.

Hopefully I can do some more practice before the next race, though I suspect the next week and a half are going to be crazy at work.

[mr_oily]

Well whatever the cause was that was some knock-on effect! Mike clattered into you as you recovered, I hit him, Dimm hit me and on and on. Gutting to go out so early after feeling like I had some reasonable pace and even moreso to make contact with my team mate even if I was just a passenger.

Got some repairs and enjoyed running around at the tail end of the field but the tiniest slide resulted in me meeting the barrier in any case so I guess i shouldn't be too upset.

Fantastic grid anyway - brilliant to see so many of those evil looking LMP's dicing and I just hope the rest of you have a good one! I think if you make it to the end you'll be on for a reasonable points haul at this rate!

Cheers for organising Adam - fingers crossed for a better result at Sebring although the prospect of those bumps scares me muchly lol.

[Andy Birch]

Erm.....not the most impressive way endear oneself to a new league....

By the way - Hi!

I've not had many laps in the Honda, but once I had a decent setup I felt relatively on top of it. A bit radically in some ways. During practise things were still looking OK - decent pace, and getting through traffic was OK, almost fun at times.

Started to get a bit sloppy during qualifying, but managed a decent enough lap to get on the front row (always good for the ol' framerate). I didn't have a plan as such, but I knew I would be having to take it easy to manage 90 minutes with few enough mistakes to get to the end. I steadily dropped back over the first few laps, before - predictably - getting it wrong at turn 9 (I think - the bit where the boot rejoins the circuit). This corner had repeatedly caught me out in practise, and pushing to keep a reasonable pace cost me. A lap later, same thing, this time with damage. After all that, I was a lap down, and was just starting to get back in a rhythm when we came across a spinning Darren, and a bit of a bottleneck. I knocked into Barry (sorry - hope no damage), and then got tapped by Andy whilst rejoining (again, sorry - hope not too much damage). After that, the car was too damaged to continue, and race over.

Not exactly as I'd planned, and I hope my actions did not compromise anyone's races. From what I saw on track though, it all looks promising - generally the driving looked good from what I saw. I guess we're all learning as we go with the new cars, so things can only get better. No? Hopefully for me anyway.

[Darren Seal]

I'm stumped!

I spent all of practise and most of quallifying driving around with a full tank of fuel.  No dramas!

But once the race started my car felt different.    The back end became very twitchy under braking.  I tried pushing the brake balance forward, but that didn't help.  In the end I eventually spun under braking, and then again 2 laps later...

After another half spin I decided it was best to park the car for everyones safety.

Sorry to those I caused problems for.  

Back to the drawing board....

[Adam Parle]

Spin spin disco spin spin retire.

Just not had enough time in the car yet ....

Started well, but lost the back end under braking and damaged the car, the disco didn't help ... and neither did not being able to change my fuel when I rejoined so I then had to pit ...

Being a couple of laps down and still making mistakes ... time to get back to practicing and getting a proper feel for the car.

Not the best start for the season, but hopefully it will get better.

[Mike Wrightson]

Two races, two retirements

The car felt better than at Suzuka, but I must be getting something wrong here to be that far off the pace.  It looked like drivers were trying all three downforce setups, which didn't always end well.

Qualifying was pretty hopeless, but the race started even worse, with a huge clump of cars going round together.  Then came Simons incident.  I was already defending from another car and went to brake late, locked the left front and found a very slow Simon right in front of me

Dug the car out of the gravel, but it had lost loads of speed, so it was a pitstop for repairs.  The fuel run went OK and pace seemed pretty good, then after my second stop I had a brainfade, bounced a kerb and wrecked the car on the barriers.  Reset and it seems to want to let me continue, but I had run out of motivation

I like the car a lot more, but you can't relax for a moment with it, unless it's something in my setup.

[Jamie Wilson]

I was having a great race with Richard and Karsten, until I made a bad decision. Of course, what I should've done was do an emergency stop causing the two cars 0.3 or so seconds behind me to pile into me, causing an even bigger accident than the one that actually took place....naturally.

So, HPD chaps, lesson learnt: If a GT umms and ahhs when it's too late, employ "Cashier number three please!" mode regardless of what's behind you.

[BorchersDK]

Excellent turnout. Was it 33 or 34, in any case, great to see so many cars on the grid again.

Had all day been telling my self, to take it easy, to not being sucked into hopes for a win and thereby take risks. But that didnt last much further than 2-3 laps, cause I was easily keeping up with the top 3, so I suddenly had hopes. We were bunched together for a long time. Richard, Jamie and me, and with Amos further ahead getting way - didnt want to play with us I guess . This spawned some hairy situations when lapping, cause no matter how hard I tried to not take risks, there is constantly this, dont loose too much time in the back of the head. I didnt have the top speed to try anything down the straights, so I had to stay close and wait for a chance. It basicly stayed like this all race. Only a small breather in the 2nd stint where I constantly got cought in traffic, so Richard had opened a 6 sec gap, and I was slowly settling for 3rd.
But then after the last pistop, I was suddenly right back at sniffing Richards exaust, and now the heat was back on. Trying hard to keep the pressure on Richards, in hope of him making a small mistake. I was the one making one though, and sadly I took Adam Kell with me. I misread the situation and went for a opening I thought was being made. It was a nano second decision, and a very bad one. Once again, Im terribly sorry Adam Kell.

It was a fantastic race though, incredibly intense. Grats Richard, great drive.
Im sorry if I caused some scary moments for the GT's. Besides the Adam incident, I think I scraped you Raimo, in the begging of the race. Sorry for that one, I held it a little to tight there.

See you all on Sebring - is that night or day btw?

MW: I used a dummed down WG Fixed setup, using high downforce, softer rollbars (60 and 5, metric I think it was), softer front springs (2 clicks), brakebias on 60% and an altered gearing to suit the high downforce better. The only times I was in danger of loosing it, was when running over curbs or braking to deep into a corner. Out of the 2nd gear corners, I just feed the throttle slowly, no on/off. Was very comfortable - but then, I like it when the car is a little bit lazy . I'll most likely ruse that for Sebring, will have to see. Might need to run it softer still, cause of all the bumps.