Valencia Open

I had very little practice time. I only knew that I could join 15 min before the start. I did not made a setup because I was 3rd in the waiting list.

I downloaded the setup from this page but it was rubisch or not my style. I had a very nice race with very nice battles but engine blew up :(

The start was great. Had fun with Brian and Greg, then it all went down hill after that. The tires just would not hold up.

Better than a DNF I guess.

Good race guys. Congrats to Samuel and Pete. Nice driving.

Good driving on everyones part. Some G2 cars were forcing the issues on some turns. Glad everything worked out for the better.

As for me, well I had no force feed back from the beginning and no power steering from the start. My arms are about to fall of now. I really felt disconnected from the road.

Thanks Barry and Aaron for trying to find a solution. Thought it worked out but no go.

Couldnt work out if a 1 stopper was on or not, my figures last night said it wasnt but still had a doubt that at least some would be on a 1 stopper. Decided it wasnt worth risking putting hards on so went with a 2 stopper with meds but filled the tank to max.

Started 9th (overall), made a mistake on 2nd lap allowing Aaron and Greg past, the 3 of us traded places a few times as our tyres deteriated. I was due to come in with 50 mins to go but i was still keeping up with Johan so kept going unsure how much longer my meds were going to last. They held up to the half way point when the cars around me pitted, in all the drama i forgot to change how much fuel i needed and left the pits with only 90L instead of the required 100L which cost my a couple of places i think as i had to stop again.

Sorry to Aaron. I saw the 2 cars that were in front of you but i didnt see you until late when i was exiting the pitlane which probably caused you to run wide at T1.

No worries Brian, I shouldnt have been there in the first place. I just didnt want to colide with you.

That sucked Johnny, I think the only way to fix it was to restart the computer but you would have missed the race.

Joined in with no practice, chose to stop once but half way through each stint the rear tyres were shot and made 3 very costly mistakes while pushing too much, best i could hope for today was 4th.. top 3 ngt guys were way too quick, even for the g2 guys! apart from pete :P

Not the best race for me. Sam got by after a few laps and two G2's were closing in on me too. I decided to let them pass but in the end they only slowed me down. Lost a lot of time there and with that the chance to get closer to Ari and Samuel again. In the end 3rd is ok regarding the overall standings with two races to go. Grats again to Ari and Pete.

Double yuck. Went out late without enough lock in the steering and ended up in the sand 3 times.

Ran some laps and pitted only to exit under limiter and get flagged for pit speeding after passing the light - again, using the limiter.

Did the Stop and Go only to have it happen again. Either a bug on exit or I was hot coming in and I wasn't about to continue 3 laps down after only 20 minutes or so, very frustrated, and that's not beneficial for anyone in racing.

Race went much better than expected , i had my doubts of the old setup i had from some other event. Set was fast but didn't know how the tires would last with so much oversteer and sliding.

Race started well and managed to overtake George in the early laps , then shadowed Pete and his BMW a long time but didn't want to take any unnecessary risks , so i just kept it in close distance and waited for an opportunity.

Pete did a solid job and didn't make any mistakes , but he was a bit slower than me at that point and after about half a stint he gave me a go ahead by flashing his lights. That was very gentlemanly thing to do and i appreciated that very much , thx Pete :).

On the meanwhile Ari in P1 had build a nice gap and drove very well with that old Porsche , couldn't really catch him before the pitstops and i knew my stop would be longer because the Ferrari uses so much more fuel.

Ari went in a bit earlier and when i was in my pitstop window , i called the crew to prepare for a stop , but my pitcrew weren't even remotely interested of my plans at that time...bastards :/.

Had to do 2 extra laps before they actually acknowledged the pit call , i was franticly hitting the 'pit-in' button while driving with completely worn tires and i lost some precious seconds there :|. Finally when they had served me and i was back into track , the gap was some 11 seconds and Ari was still going strong.

Didn't believe i could catch him anymore , but didn't want to give up since there's always a possibility for something to happen and the traffic was quite dense on the 2nd stint too.

My 2nd stint went very well , didn't overdrive the car so much and preserved my tires a bit better than in 1st stint , lapped cars were extremely good from my point of view and usually they gave clear signals when to pass and gave plenty of room 8).

I think i did pretty well in the traffic this time , not loosing much time in the process and hopefully not disturbing the others to much.

Althou there was one instance where i could have done a better job, i was diving inside on T2 while lapping Ralph Kemmerer.
I should have waited for a better opportunity , but i was eager to get pass him before the twisty part of the circuit since i felt i'm catching Ari faster than before. There was a minor side by side contact when we were already out of the turn but ..well , GTR netcode interpreted that a bit strangely (again) :(. Ralph lost some speed because of that and another driver managed to make a move, taking a position away from him. Apologies for that Ralph , my mistake.

Other than that it went very cleanly and i slowly gained some time to Ari , then something went wrong for him and suddenly the gap was less than 4 seconds. Last few laps Ari's pace was dropping really fast and i thought he is running out of fuel , but it was his tires which fail him.

Mine were quite bad too , but took my time to find an opportunity and finally on 2nd last lap i found a way past him. Ari was really suffering from the tire wear and dropped back a bit so it was just a matter of bringing the car home in one piece after that.

I have to say that Ari did a great job with that RS Porsche and without the sudden problem, he would have prolly won the event... very nice run.

Congratulations to Pete for the G2 win and cheers to other podium finishers too in both classes :).

Thx all for the good clean racing and cya in track somewhere , sometime again...

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Samuel

Qualifying with RS and med-hard tires felt really nice in hot weather. I was a little surprised to get overall pole, though.

Race started with Pete and Samuel tailing me. I was able to keep them far enough to just do my laps. Towards the end of stint 1 Samuel got in front of Pete and started closing as my worn rear tires started giving me headaches.

I pitted a little early, and after stops the gap was up to 11-12 seconds, very nice. I lost only 2 seconds to Samuel in the next 10 laps and it was looking like I had it wrapped up, even with the expected rear tire problems.

But then a backmarker seemed to brake in front of me just as I had prepared to take a corner behind him. I barely managed to avoid him, and during all this I lost enough focus to go off. I rejoined quickly and didn't notice Adrian had come up alongside me. We touched in the next corner and I guess I got the worst of it, some aero damage.

That really ruined the balance of the car, it was around a second slower per lap and with worn tires. Samuel had no trouble closing the gap that was 4 seconds after I got going, and went past.

It's a little frustrating to lose the win due to an incident like that, but I guess they happen sometimes. Congrats to Samuel.