Euro nGT: Dubai

Congrats to podium.

I have to admint that I'm not too fond of Dubai track, but I managed to keep my qualy position (16th) "in extremis" right at the end of the race.

I did a decent start not giving any position (I even gained a few spots) but going wide in some L2 turn made me have to wait for the rest of the field to pass.

I was cruising 17th and got to 13th when the guys in front made their pitstop. I took a late pitstop strategy and was doubting whether to change tires as my med/hard were doing still fine after 40 minutes race, but I finally decided to put soft/med for the rest of the race.

In the end the F360 that was in front of me went wide when being overlapped and I could gain 16th spot that I kept till the end of the race.

See you next track.

Thanks for the race guys,

Grats to Ari for a pole to flag win! I started second and could not follow Ari and lost a few tenths every lap. Tolga was behind me around 1.5 sec all the time. After 20-25 minutes when Ari was 5 seconds in front i got to a backmarker who was blocking me. It resulted in a collision and Tolga catched up with me. In a fierce battle with tolga he managed to overtake me for second. A few corners later i tried to stay as close as possible to him for the backstraight, but unfortunately with a very light tab i put him into a spin,, Sorry m8 my fault! I was planning to wait on him there and give the position back, but knew I had to repair some damage in the pit and do the 4 set of tyres too, so i ended up well behind him over 10 seconds after the pit.

After the pit I noticed almost nobody done his tyres on the pit stops. So i had to fight my way back from position 7 to 4. Again thanks to a backmarker me and Borut Plecnik (I think it was him) we 3 collided as the backmarker brake hard in front of us out of a corner. I waited for Borut and give him the position back, another 5 seconds or more lost. Later i managed to overtake Borut again on the backstraight for P4.

Samuel in third at that moment was well in front and I could not catch up 14 seconds within 13 minutes. With 7 minutes to go or so, he made a mistake or had a buggy incident and I managed to get back on the podium position. Because I had done my tyres I could catch Tolga in P2 a bit, as he was also stuck in traffic. With only 2-1 lap to go the gap was down to 2-3 seconds and dropping quick until Virt did a great job blocking me while i was lapping him and almost hit me off in my side. I'm sure he didn't do that on purpose, but it sure was not friendly too. I was near my climax with back markers now. Some are great and let you pass. Others just block way to long... and they are a lot slower in corners..

Anyway because of that incident the gap was 5 seconds again, and I could not catch up to Tolga anymore. After the race i see i spend 30 seconds longer in pit than Samuel and Ari, and 14 seconds longer than Tolga. So i learned a good lesson for next race, don't do the tyres :D I was on medium, but seems hard for a hour is the way to go.

Still besides all the frustration, a nice result and fine racing for the rest. Thanks all and congrats to all finishers!

I was recommended by a steward to watch the replay before commenting more about the accident in late moments of the race, i did and i recommend to watch it too since my statement stays the same.I can't imagine what i could have done differently there except pressing ESC or run out of the track voluntary.

Well...anyways..race was very exciting to that point and i enjoyed it very much , had a good start and then a big fight with Tom , who was more than fair after we had a small contact and he let me take the place back what i lost there.

TBH i think it was not really necessary Tom, but i figured that if you're going to get another chance to overtake , i will not fight and i'll let you take the position but then i started to pull away slowly and the chance to payback was kind of lost after that. Anyways , i'll remember that move and hopefully i can someday pay it back to you somehow :).

Plan was to take only fuel and i had a full tank when we started , came in on lap 18 and to my surprise most of the front runners took fuel and tires , so i got several places there. Things were looking good , except Tolga was coming fast with his new tires and i knew it's prolly not possible to defend my 2nd position to the end , but i tried anyway.

We had a big fight for several laps and somehow i could hang on there on 2nd place , but my tires were really giving me a hard time and i started to overshoot my braking here and there. Finally i went wide after trying to hold the inside line into T1 and thought that there goes the 2nd place , but unfortunately there was a contact after the situation was already over from my POV.

I went into the wall hard and lost one more position to Timon before getting back to speed ,then barely held the 4th place while limping around the track the last laps , but managed to hold on to that and it's not a bad position in this company with a F360 Modena. Things didn't go as well as they could have gone at the end, but i'm still somehow pleased with the 4th place.

@ Tolga: I know you didn't do that on purpose and i'll calm down prolly by tomorrow , but i will not take a blame for this incident. I agree that we have had some good fights and we prolly will have in the future too , this one was a tough one thou and i hope it could have ended a bit differently , but i guess that's racing and stuff happens sometimes :).

Well , that was that this time. Maybe i've said already too much , but i think i have a right to say my side of the story and i did my best to make it as polite as i could.

Cya all on track somewhere and thx for the race... :)

edit: Of course congratulations to Ari for a dominating win.. :)

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Samuel

@Samuel: it's not my style to gain places by any contact which was not provoked - yours wasn't, it was clearly my mistake. I missed the braking point and the result was a pushy move. There was another reason: you drove cleanly, didn't lift off through the corners before exit as some do. So it was a pleasure chasing you and looking for a chance to cleanly overtake. I think I learned some new things this way. I like this track but if I'd be alone here hotlapping it would be boring anyway. This way it was an evening, spent in the best possible way.

Dunno why I chased Borut so stubbornly - now I have to race at Imola with the RS, lol.

Tom Ostry

I didnt watch the replay Sam, but if u say so i apologize again :(

For race, as Timon said first stint was very close between us and i caught him in the end of the stint but, that ended up with a collision. I was a bit frustrated at that point, because when u go for no tyre change plan u want everything go smooth :), but thats racing. In pits i seen that i have damage, so i decided to take tires, coz crew can repair it while others setting fresh tires.

For 2nd stint, with fresh tires i was too fast for other guys and easily gained some positions till i caught Sam. His effort with modena was awesome, but with better car and fresh tires i was clearly faster. He held me for a couple of laps on his back and i was really taking it easy for not to hurt any of us. His turning speeds was too low for my car as his tires got worn and it was sometimes very unpredictable for me. This was not his fault surely and while we entering 3rd turn i think we were side by side (i might be wrong i didnt watch the replay) he got pushed by my car and for my opinion gtr2s physics sometimes be very exaggerated and he crashed the wall that hard. I didnt wait for him because i thought that we were side by side and actually i even didnt feel the crash on my car only a touch, so i thought he made a mistake and i went on racing, but unluckily he hit the wall :(

After i passed Sam i realized that my fuel might not be enough and i took it easy by dropping the laptimes like 3-4 seconds. In the end i had 6 liters fuel left :)

Anyways it was a tense and a good race for me, hoping to make new great fights with u Sam :)

Congrats to Ari on a clean win

@Tolga:

It was T1 i believe but anyway :), it's yesterdays news already and i've gotten over it :D. I just felt there would have been enough room for you to make the move without coming in close contact with my car , but i have to agree with you that GTR's net code can really suck sometimes (well , most of the time actually). Even the slightest contacts can result a ridiculous results like it did this time.

Anyways it was fun to try to keep you behind , we must do it again sometime :).

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Samuel