GTPC: Laguna Seca

Congratulations to Justin Rebelo on his first win! Well deserved! You put in alot of practice and it paid off!

Great battle at the end til I looped it, losing my splitter. lol Glad you were able to get by with minimal damage, and I was happy to just keep 2nd and hold off Pete!

Congrats to Rob Ainscough and the GT podium!

Thanks to everyone for showing up and showing patience on an otherwise narrow track!

Chaz finished! WOOOOOOOOOOT! :)

*High five* Finn! :)

congrats justin! you earned that win.
you too charles, this should spice up the points race a bit.

Congrats Justin and Rob for a great win.

First half of the race went great. Second half, not so good. I was calling for pits for two laps, pit light never came on so I pitted anyways. Nope nobody was home so I came out and was black flagged. Did another lap and when I came in, I had .8L of gas left. So I stopped and instead of them filling me up, they did the stop and go penalty stop. So I came out of pits with .8L of gas and knowing I use 1.6L of gas to get around in one lap. I was screwed big time. Some how, some way I made it with .8L of gas in one lap. Anyways. Like my broken record goes, Pit stops ALWYS ruin my race. I could have been so far ahead.

Congrats Justin and Rob for a win and congrats to NGT and GT podium .

Hi All!!
First, GRATS to winners, Rob and Justin!!! hell of a track to win at!!!
Second, Thanks to all nGt's for giving it easy, but, remember, you don't have to, just keep your line and we will go through!!!
Ok, for qual, the track is short and narrow, and lots of turn, so i couldn't get a clean lap, i tought i could have had my first pole cause i did a 1.20,125 in practice this morning but 5th was ok. First stint went well and better as the fuel would go down, was on Rob's ass for a while and did my best to put the pressure to see him make a mistake cause i knew it would be very risky to overpass, but it never came, good job Rob, i'm the one who made one :(, so Paul went by and i started chassing him but to my surprise, i saw Paul's engine going in flame, it's a bummer cause i tought we were going to have a battle, but i had a flashback, and started to short shift a bit to conserve engine even if it was cool, then screwed up my pit, they never responded that they were waiting for me, hit the button 3 times, to finally came in and they were stairing at the car for like 5 sec. or so, then went back with 12 sec behind Rob, this time i had a hard time to come back in touch with him and eventually made all sorts of tiny mistake which almost took me out, one of them with Johnny G. and Tom R. just before the cork, i didn't chose the right spot to overpass...sorry guys that i almost took you both out, but, the great drivers that you are stayed on tarmac and saved it, me too(going to watch replay, it must be nice to watch)so i calm down and settled for 2nd, good enough to climb up in the standings!!!
Fun race in all!!:)
Seeya next one

Not fond of this track and didn't put as much practice in as I should have. However I was pleased to finish as I had hurt my finger earlier in the week which came up like a balloon and was quite sore, so I was chuffed just to finish.

I had a race long battle with Darren, I would make a mistake and he would take advantage and the other way round. I finally passed him while he was looking for something :) in that PIT on the inside of the Corkscrew I nearly went there a few times myself. In the last few laps my finger was giving me terrible jip and I was all over the place and if Darren hadn't ran out of juice I think he would have caught me.

Well done Rob and Justin and well done Chaz for finishing the race ;-)

Srry,couldn't unregister or race with internet still down.

Thanks for the comments, fellas. I am incredibly overjoyed with my first pole ever and first win ever at Laguna Seca. Growing up watching CART, I always regarded Laguna Seca as one of the most exciting tracks, until I started practicing driving it for this race and realized it's incredibly unforgiving, and the passing options are very narrow. As such, I did put in at least 2 or 3 good solid practice sessions which paid off mass dividends. I raced my most consistent race ever without a doubt.

The first half of the race went just as planned. I built my lead on Charles slowly but surely. I had approximately 5-7 second gap on the next man back when I went in to pit. I decided to pit very late to avoid any pit nonsense. I waited until 50:00 and had only a few litres of fuel left. The pit went perfect for the first time ever. I didn't forget to shut off the car or anything. ;) Unfortunately, my strategy of pitting very late cost me the lead because Charles, who pitted earlier, was making fast laps while I was riding around on bald tires trying to wait it out. I came out of the pits 2 seconds behind Charles and so began an intense 40 minute battle to the finish.

I don't know how many times Charles and I changed leads, but it was at least 3, possibly 4 times. He was racing on rails and we were constantly within 1-2 seconds of eachother and it was only the tiny little errors that caused the other to take the lead. With approximately 5 or 6 laps remaining, Charles swung his ass-end around in T6 before going up to the corkscrew. He was sliding around right in front of me but I just kept my cool and got off the gas and steered toward his backside in hopes that he would be moved by the time I passed. Unfortunately, he had lost a lot of momentum in the spin and I clipped his rear end trying to get through but I avoided any serious damage, which was a blessing. I looked at the gap times and it steadily increased over the next lap to about 30 seconds. Seeing this, I eased up a little on the throttle and just tried to bring it home safely. I was braking super early into the corkscrew to avoid any last-minute incidents which would ruin my day. I was very fortunate to have very little traffic around for the later stages of the race after Charles fell back and everything went perfectly.

Didn't have any issues getting tagged at all, this race. All the lapping and being lapped went relatively smoothly, considering the degree of difficulty of the track.

I dedicate that one to Elke. See you guys at Mexico.