GTN: Oschersleben

Was a good race, but a disappointment at the same time. I had a good start, but managed to spin it on lap 3, losing second place. Came back and had a good run, passing from 5th to 3rd. Went in to pit, took too much time in the pits and came out in 6th.

There is an invisible bump when you go over the white lines before the 3 apex left turns. I feared I would eventually hit it, and I did.

Thanks to all the people I passed, most of you gave me no problems. Thank you.

Congrats to podium, and to Peter, who managed to keep up his pace as I took after him on new tires.

Until next race!

Thanks for my welcome to Race2Play initiation. Sure didn't need the rain though. I qualified 8th and finished 10th, so the result was probably what it should have been.

Congrats to everyone. Great job Ryan. No offs for 40 laps. That's impressive.

Hope I didn't hold anyone up when I was being passed. I tried to find a spot to let people by and flashed my lights when I could.

I have never run a race in the rain and it showed. I didn't know what to do when I saw rain after qualifying. I jumped into the garage and switched to Hard Rain tires. I also increased my rev limiter, because I figured fuel would no longer be an issue. It wasn't but I had bigger issues.

Unfortunately, since I never bothered to test rain tires, I didn't reallize my 200kpa setup would turn into a burning hot 225kpa setup. I spun on the 1st turn of the race and dropped from 8th to 20th in about 10 seconds. Nice start.

Struggled through the next 5 laps and said, "screw it" and pitted to switch to intermediates. I figured since I couldn't adjust tire pressures, they might work. There went my "no pit stop" strategy. Like Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face!" LOL.

It turns out they worked ok. I ran 1:31/32's when I ran clean laps.

See everyone at the next race. Fun stuff. Pray for sun!

A wet race on a track that I don't like in a sim I haven't been playing for 1.5 years..LOL. This was a tuff one.

Things were going well and I managed to qualify in 12th which was acceptable for me.
Then suddenly the weather changes going into the warmup session and it's raining ! w00t.

Guess I've been playing rfactor for to long,so obviously I hadn't practiced in the rain at all. Had to quickly make a couple of adjustments to my setup. Had no idea which tires to chose ,so I went for intermediate.

With my driving style that seemed like a good choice. And my braking were surprisingly good as well.

Got a small punt on lap 1 and dropped a couple of places,but the damage was minor and the car handled fine.

Managed to get up to 7th before I pitted. Unfortunately I pressed the clutch button a bit to early and my car stopped just before the pit stall .DOH. Some minor repairs as well.

Got back out in 10th or so (can't remember) and had some good battles. Ended up with Ralph on my tail. And he stayed there the remainder of the race.I made some small mistakes along the way,but I managed to hold on to my position.

Finished in 7th so it's all good. I was hoping to just finish the race and maybe in top 10.

3rd time lucky :)

Missed pole by 0.3 and was on a pole lap until the session ended whilst i was coming out of the final corner :P (would`ve been close!)

2nd wasn`t too shabby though :)

I felt good with the fuel load and strategy until it was announced at the warm up that it would be damp! (decision time) had no idea what to put on, so sat on grid and seen the rain on the screen - so decided to put wet hards on.

Took the lead from Ryan von Steinen in very tricky conditions, but on lap 2 just lost it coming out turn 2 right hander when the traction broke, dropped to 7th and fought hard upto 2nd but by the time i got there i was 25s down on Ryan. I even managed to set fastest lap in this half of the race.
Made my pitstop and though it would be a good idea to change to wet softs - very bad idea!!! was like ice for the longest 20 minutes of my life :P very happy with my driving, had to really find a pace that didn`t heat the tyres above 150 which was hard to do with Andrew only 6s off my tail, eventually got third behind Claudiu Ciocanau and Ryan von Steinen due to them not stopping!!

Great race, fair driving and ppl being lapped were observant :)

GT's in the Rain!! Whoa it was a little tricky especially never seeing more than 30 fps.

Qualifying went ok I went out for 2 laps and the car smoked so I had to pit and switch to radiator opening of 4.

In the race David out launched me for sure and I was content with being patient behind him, but like he said he had a small spin. From there I just tried to stay on track and not push too hard. Conserved fuel like crazy and it seemed my strategy of just staying on track paid off as I wasn't really faster than 2nd place but they would drop a second or so every couple laps maybe due to an off.

The traffic went well and I was very careful passing. Stayed on my hard wets and just cruised, I can't believe it was not only wet but raining the whole race it was tuff and really tested my patience with the car.

Well, I jumped in this race because I'd been practicing with GT for Sepang and gotten pretty comfortable. After some testing (not to mention 3 hours of nGT last week) I felt like I knew the car and the track well enough to be consistent for an hour. Even set a PB in qual, closer to the front of the pack than any of my nGT efforts. Picked a car and a setup I thought could go without a stop.

Then it started raining. I've read other post-race from other tracks where they tried slicks in the damp and it worked. So I tried it, and for the first 2 laps they actually seemed to work ok. I was up to sixth when I looped it coming out of the left hand hairpin, nosed into the wall, and stuck there for what seemed like forever. Dropped back to 13th.

The car was really hard to handle but I wanted to soldier on anyway, i was running 1:33s when I could keep it on the track so I tried just concentrating. Wound up hitting the tires in the last turn, flattening the left front, so came in after a horridly long lap with a flat (the crew will be vacuuming gravel out for days), put on intermediates, and slogged around for the last 20 minutes or so.

If it weren't a "throw away" race I'd be really upset, since I think I had a top 8 or 10 race in me if it were dry. But I can't make many of the GTNs so Oh well. See most of you at Sepang next weekend.

I tried intermediates and they worked OK for four or five laps. But Damp = pretty darn wet in GTR2 at least here at Oschersleben.

In hindsight, around the time I started hydroplaning, I came to the conclusion that wets with enough fuel for a no-stop was the way to go.

Grats to Ryan for figuring that out before the race and for being pretty fast....