Birmingham Masters

Gote Pole, was extremely happy, T1 i felt like i had enough space on claus when sparks flew and he spun out .. was it my fault yes .. did my car even touch his ?? NO!

took me a lap to decide if i was going to do a drive through or not, but decided i should just follow rules. this made my race pretty intense.. then after pits i put it in the wall, lost 110 seconds, and came out and my engine blew

what a BS disaster race

grats to podium

all I can say is good jump on the start, I went from 11th to 7th then some tough battles with George Pol (paint swapping I might add) and for some ODD reason a Vette applies his brakes on the fast section in mid course just before the "left -right " that sets up for the rising right! Game Over!

Just a reminder for whatever its worth - If you are on the racing line--you are racing, hold you line and race, you don't step on the brakes to let a faster car by, they will find the proper way around you! If you are off the racing line and want to do that, fine, but not on the line.

Was fun while it lasted.

Gregg, guess that was me.

Man I'm sorry that took you out. You were coming at me so fast, my intention was to let you go inside of me going into the fast L/R. Can't even remember if I hit my brakes there but I must say, with the tremendous closing speed you had on me, I think there would have been contact there regardless of what I could have done to stay out of your way.

Can't say sorry enough though Gregg. : (

My terrible race ended with less than 30 seconds on the clock when my PC decided to do a restart! Was really battling with something physical that just sapped me mentally and physically after a few laps. Sorry if I got in anyone else's way during the race.

Dan

What a shame i had almost 30 sec lead and should win this one easily but somehow my mechanics didnt fuel me properly as i planned and 10 min before the end i had to pit damn that put me on 4 position.Before the end i was able to get third from Enis. Congratulation to Claus and Kent!!!

A race full of ups and downs for me, qualifying 5th was pretty good, and it was nice to see Heinz on pole.
The start went terribly though, the car in front of me didn't seem to move at the green and I had to back right off giving a couple of cars a good run round my outside through T1. Going into T2 I had no idea if there was still a car inside me or not so I kept the outside line. Then I saw Heinz and Claus sliding across the track ahead of me and I thought I had nowhere to go, so I ended up taking to the grass. Got back on way down the field and started catching other cars very quickly. So quickly that I got caught out by Kinloch braking earlier than me and had to throw my car off the track again to avoid punting him. So back to the drawing board once again.
Next battle I remember was with Brian, I couldn't set up a pass for quite a few laps but eventually made a small opportunity work out. That was a fun, close battle.
I stayed out 3 laps longer than planned because my pit crew just wouldn't answer my call, when I came out I was 10 seconds behind Enis. It soon looked like I could catch him so I set to it and caught up with about 10 laps to go. My first attempt to pass seemed to work perfectly until I got to the apex and span, as I was spinning I noticed I was in 1st gear and thought wtf? Either I'd double shifted or just lost track of what gear I was in, doh!
Next lap Maciej emerged from the pits right in front of me and I thought "Shit, I could be in 3rd now if I hadn't spun last lap." Maciej pulled away and passed Enis and then I caught Enis for the 2nd time with about 3 laps to go. I was much quicker round the series of uphill right handers and I tried to go inside Enis through the last right turn. First attempt was aborted because I didn't think Enis had seen me coming and I was perhaps not close enough to try it, so I backed off and tried again next lap. Enis still turned in and there was a side-by-side bump but as we were right alongside each other there was no spin, I was really happy I'd managed to come back after my first cock-up.
Grats to Claus, Kent and Maciej. Unlucky Heinz, but great lap for pole.

very frustrating champ for me, this time the brake pedal kept push all time after lap 4.

Qualy was unlucky and lister's guys were very fast, but in the start I get P2 and I was fast enough to keep the gap with P1 but in lap 4 I started to lose a lot of speed in straights.
In this moment I thought the problem were in the trottle pedal, but later I saw in motec that the brake go to 8% all time :( fucking momo

congrats podium

Hey Dan, kind of figured your intentions were good, but really did not think you would slow like that. Hey it wasn't that as much as where I got stuck on the track and Kinloch was next inline and T-boned me to engine annihilation!
better luck next time I Hope!

Congrats to Claus. Good racing.

Qualifying:
Had about half a second more for qualifying, but went off track while looking back and punctured a tire. There was about three and a half minutes left in the session, not enough to limp back to pits and have another go. P8.

Race:
For some reason my car didn't work at all at the end of the stint, especially at the end of the second one, it was understeering like mad. Should have practiced more than just Friday night and might have realized that it will push in the end and correct it with setup tweaks. In addition to that few stutters every lap or two was loosing me precious tenths, so that didn't help either.

Started with full tank and added only about 45 l of fuel, but still somehow lost too much time in the pits...

At the end Darren caught up with me, and overtook me in T14. I didn't turn in on you Darren, you appeared on me right on the apex, there was no time to react.

Ain't very satisfied with the race. See you all next time.

Wow 2nd place! If you could have heard me 10 minutes before qual you would understand why I am so surprised. This track has always been good and bad to me, while I always seem to have top 5 pace I have had horrible luck so wasn't expecting much.

Qual, I ran with soft soft and had to pit after my first flyer, second attempt was a little better but lost it in the final turn and had to settle for 7th on the grid.

Got a decent start and entered t1 in 5th and as I came around t2 I saw 2 listers sliding outward and saw one of them was Claus. Being my teammate I figured I better keep a clean race and maximize team points, exiting t2 in 3rd :)

Chased after Maciej and Pablo into t3 but with cold tires they were both killin me and I wasn't making much time behind. Lap 4 Pablo suddenly slowed quite a bit and soon spun in the corkscrew chicane, his report mentions a stuck brake which would make sense from my view.

Not sure who was behind me but they drove stellar for the first 15 laps as the gap was still only 3-3.5 seconds behind me but Maciej was just running away with this one and TBH I didn't even think about him after about lap 5, my only hope there was for him to make a mistake.

I kept getting glimpses of Enis and Claus running 4th and 5th as I drove the 2md straight they were on the main straight, this gave me some more confidence since that meant I had a nice gap to 4th.

I pitted a bit later than Claus and actually watched him come out of the pit just ahead of me, he was shown as 13th. But my next few laps were really poor as I tried to figure out when to pit. (poor planning)

I pitted at the end of lap 28 and rejoined right in front of Claus. He was clearly faster than I but I drove clean defensive lines and after a few laps we were pretty equal although I suspect I was holding him up. Had I known for sure it was him I woud have made for an easy pass but that came later.

With about 4-5 to go I lost the car in the final right hander nad just slid off into the sand, just enough for CLaus to get by with about 3 seconds advantage. So I got my confirmation that it WAS he behind me and since he is competing for the championship this pass would have been allowed had I know.

Then much to my surprise, with about 2 to go I checked the gap behind and saw that I was running 2nd??? WOW didn't know what happened to Maciej but I pushed hard those last 2 laps but only closed a little on Claus.

Interesting race full of Listers and some very fast company today. Very happy to have finished and to finish in 2nd with a GTNDC 1-2 is just a bonus :)

Sorry for Maciej, grats to Enis great to race with you again, seems like it has been a while.