USA nGT: Imola

Wooohooo!

Wow, nGT has gotten much more competitive since I last ran it in S4. I used to struggle to stay in the top 10, but tonight I was struggling just not to be last. As you can see, I didn't make it :) You guys are running a fast field, congrats to the podium.

Congrats Kent and Samuel both in the pedal cars so to speak.

The Rain threw me off guard. Made some changes to try to catch up but it made the car worst. Was a fun event though such a tuff track.

Congrats podium!

xNGT has gotten alot faster, wow!

My quali in the rain was very bad so I had to start from 14th. Had a good start and was in 10th or so when I got bumped out of the 2nd chicane and back into 21st. Had to play catch up from there on and was too agressive at some point which cost me a drive through. It was deserved, but I also have to say there are more rules to watch, like blocking for example. Amazing what people do to defend there position. But oke ... Then had a communicationproblem with Garret when I wanted to pit. I was sure you were about to enter the pitlane too Garret but that didn't happen. During the last lap at the last sector I saw Garret was behind me in 6th and 2 seconds in front of 7th. So I slowed down near the finishline to give him the lost spot back only to see not only Garret but Scott and Steve so close behind him that it cost me 2 spots extra :-(. Only good thing is .... out of the top 5. :-) Grats to the podiumfinishers.

Had a shocker with the pitstop,pulled in, and realised I was in the 1st stall. Ended up overshooting, and after reversing a few feet, realised the pit crew would not touch my car at all. I stalled then decided I would have to do another lap and almost ran out of fuel, literally spluttered into the pits.
On a good note, I managed to get the whole race out of a soft/med setup. Which was lucky, afetr my pit incident, I decided to only take fuel, so I would have some hope of a top 10. Alas I re entered in 14th, and decided I could press on. A few laps in I grabbed 1st instead of second under braking for the chicane and looped it. Lost another couple of spots.
Highlights of the race for me were the early battles with Hienz - whom I felt I was holding up, and David Poel. Had a good run with Andrew P. towards the end, and a couple of spun cars in the dying laps ment 14th was the best I could do.
Well done the podium, nice job Rob, you bagged some nice points for the team there.
Thanks to all for making this another great race.

I held my starting position !!!!!!!!

Felt like I was driving Beatle Bomb. :)

Hope everyone saw me wave as you lapped me. :)

Interesting qualifying with flooded track and heavy rain , that was refreshing for a change :).

Had a bad start with lots of wheel spin and lost a couple of places , then some exciting and close racing early on first with Steve and then with Gregg ( i believe). Sorry about the nudge(s) in the double left handers near the end of the lap Gregg , didn't want to take the place like that and flashed you by and back to 3rd place.

Got by few laps later and build a small gap , but Kent and Rob were already gone and 3rd place was looking like the max i could achieve , but then came the pitstops and suddenly i was in 2nd place.
Thought that Rob had decided to take tires too and that's why i got the 2nd place , but then i saw from the replay that he got held in pits because of the shared pitbox thingy :( ,what a rotten luck...

When there was about 5 laps to go i suddenly realized that Rob was closing fast and i needed to push more , had already decided to stay behind the battle what was going on in front of me , but had to change the plan and start to do some overtaking, unfortunately splitting the fights a bit.

Lapped cars were awesome in this race , everyone gave room despite having their own battles to worry about , absolutely a great job from all the drivers ...thank you very much :). Wish i wouldn't have to push that hard at the end but you were just great to make it possible.

Sorry to see Barry and Gregg running out of fuel on last lap , but at least the GTNDC road service could give you guys a push and save you from the DNF :).

Thanks all , this was just what the doctor ordered. A good race with plenty of friendly and fair drivers in it :).

Cya maybe in the next one...

------
Samuel

Yeah, I got really F'd by the pit stop. Hit the pit request and got the OK to pit, then when I arrive there is another car in my pit stall!!! Argh!! I thought this was just a Race07 problem, seems GTR2 has the same problem.

Oh well, I pitted with a 20 second lead and came out 50 seconds behind Kent!! Ugh. Drove like a mad man and got it down to < 20 secs but I knew it just wasn't in the cards tonight.

Oh well, it was great fun doing the catchup, and I agree that most of the traffic was exceptional!! Lots of professional driving out there.

Great job all, and Kent/Samuel.

Qual was interesting with the wet track. I was a bit confused since I did my lap 1 and it showed I was in P2 the entire lap. Then when I crossed the S/F line it stayed at P2 and I thought maybe I was disconnected. Tim confirmed I was still there. Really felt like I was driving slow and figured I would not do very well. Was glad to get P2 but Rob put in a nice lap.

Race was looking just like practice session weather and since Rob was over a second quicker than me my focus was always behind me. I got a decent start and quickly found myself with a nice 1 second lead over P3. I think after another lap or 2 the 3rd place car had an off or something since I was suddenly 6 seconds clear.

With Rob running away I turned my attention to tire conservation very early in the race. While this sacraficed some of my lead I think over all it paid off.

I pitted with an 11 second advantage over Krueger but found that he shaved 3 seconds in the pit stop. I came out and drove hard the first few laps but soon caught a string of lapped cars.

Then I looked up and saw that I was leading? I don't remember seeing Rob leave the server so I figured he must have either crashed or couldn't get service. Turns out he got held up badly at his stop. Really a bummer for Rob since he was clearly on his way to the top spot on teh podium.

As freindly as lapped cars were I was still getting frustrated with where I had to pass, heading down into Rivazza. Kinda scary passing on the outside at the fastest part of the corner and not being able to see the other car. Anyway no real issues and all went well.

Last 10 minutes it was pretty clear that the 2nd place car couldn't catch me unless I made the mistake so I just drove conservative and brought it home.

Grats to Krueger for the GTNDC 1-2 !