Zhuhai Open

Nov 25th , 2007 was the last time Claus had a DNF.... ouch

Replay?
I might not have been able to race but I would still love to see it.

Good Race all!

I about crapped my pants when the 1st third of the field went off at T1...seems like Lap 1 had a bunch of off roading, but in typical fashion i waited until I was in a decent place before I threw it away...

...spent the rest of the race playing catch up as I let about 2/3rds of the field pass me by when i had my off...

Great race - never finished a race in the rain before. Takes a ton of concentration to not screw up here in the rain and when the tires start to go they really get slippery.

thanks fellas.

mogwai

lol really been that long, deem...Can't even remember when I DNF'ed by my own fault :-o

Well 14 laps, monsoon conditions, started from P22 and after 7 laps I was P2 by just tiptoeing and not getting involved in others accidents. Was starting to get comfy with the conditions and setting faster and faster laps trying to reel in whoever was in P1 at that time.
Then got whacked in the side by a backmarker suddenly changing line when I was overtaking him, no biggie but a scary moment for sure.
A couple corners later I wanted to check for damage, guess that didn't work, when I hit the damagestatus button the soundcard froze the PC completely in some noisy sound loop :-S
Damn, time to put that discrete card in again, never works well with onboard soundcard :S
Only positive thing was it happen early which enabled me to atleast get my hunger satisfied and not happen in conjunction with the pit request which would likely have happened but then Id be looking at +40mins instead of some 20mins wasted.

Well that sucked. Had a good set up. Ran consistent 36’s and even squeezed out a 35 in practice. Qualified not bad for me, and then thought I would hop downstairs for a quick smoke. Get back just as warm-up is over, get my race set-up on and go to grid. SHIT!!! It’s freaking raining! Not just any rain, a monsoon! Should have checked the weather. Damn it. All that practicing down the drain. Literally. Was all I could do on the pace lap just to stay on track, which I didn’t do. Spun once so I let the field by knowing I had to pit first lap for wets. Got the wets on, but with no down force and stiff suspension, I just couldn’t drive the thing. I had the wing set at 3, so I was just screwed. Wish I could have this one over because I really do well in the rain. Congrats to all the podiums and to the winners. I think I’ll just go have a few drinks now.

Boyd, the replay can still be found in the files area (files.race2play.com). It is only partially functional right now so I am not linking each specific replay until fully functional again.

Cracking finish for me starting 18th and finishing 5th, shame it was all my class in front of me nearly.

Made great start with the cars running wide into T1 making 7 places on the first lap. Managed to settle in and only have a few sideways moments, picking people off on the way.

Good fun to run in the wet for a change.

Watched the replay. Masterful drive David! When the chips are down, cream rises to the top ... to mix a few metaphors ... :) Well done finishers!

Thank you Boyd :)

Well i didn`t get any practise time for the RSR other that 4 laps but it soon came clear i had a half decent pace :) went to qualy and couldn`t quite beat Johan`s time and hadn`t even had chance to make any setup tweaks i thought it would be one of those races were everything went wrong, then on my final lap i was 0.3 down and thought it was over but i just went for it and somehow got pole by 0.2!!! just goes to show you should never give up :)

So now with only 9 laps under my belt i thought the car felt good and all i needed to do was repeat my qualy pace in the race, but oh no my constant wish of wet racing was announced and i thought crap!! and this is now my run ends :P

So in the warm up i made a recon lap just to see how bad it would be on the current setup - mainly concerned about turn 1 i just got it done in time for the race start :)

As the race got under way i knew i had to just drive sensible and stay ahead of my class as long as possible, i made turn 1 just and at turn 3 kink the cars ahead of me ran wide and i followed in sympathy :P but a few corners later found myself leading :O then came Nolte for a lap or so giving me something to think about until he lost it on the brakes and dropped a lot of positions... after this i had a decent lead as we both pushed hard so i kept pushing and monitoring the gap to the other drivers, i knew Claus would be the biggest threat so my main focus was him and i could see him taking positions and knew my time leading would be up soon but even when he got to 2nd he wasn`t improving the now 18s lead i had built up other than 2s where i had to lap people, then about 20m in i see him drop out :( pity really i really would like to have seen what i could`ve done but that`s racing.
I pushed on every lap and just seen my lead grow and all about me i could see cars spinning and stuck in gravel!! it was quite strange seeing so many people have trouble, ok i had my little oversteer momoents and slides and lock ups etc but i kept it on the track and just tried to drive as smooth and consistently in the 1m44s because i had no idea about other peoples strategies and would they bolt on quicker tyres etc, luckily for me i had a decent lead and made the right tyre choices and just drove to my limit and got a huge reward for it :)

Thanks to all the guys who let me by in tricky conditions :) this is a part of the race believe it or not that can be quite stressful because you have no idea what the car is going to do infront unlike in racing conditions were you are both on it.

Congrats to all who finished this one, 75 mins was a real test of concentration :) and the podium guys in each class :)

This has to be my best drive here, i think all the little pieces are coming together for me lately :) and i drove a perfect race other than getting on the grass at the start so i`m happy i couldn`t have done more, only real mistake was putting 20 extra litres of fuel onboard.

Thx to all, and cya at the next one :)

I had a very bad race here, but that was my own stupid fault for not concentrating enough in the wet conditions. Also the power of my car was too much for the wet conditions, everytime I pushed the throttle over 20% the wheels started spinning and that was still the same when I was in 4th gear. So I couldn't really control the car to the max, I tried playing with the brake settings during the race to see what fitted best to my driving and the conditions but that meant I went off the road a few too many times.

I nearly side-swiped my team-mate Phil 1 time when the car spun out of control, luckily I did not touch him but I think I hit the car behind him (A BMW) I'm not sure and have to check the replay for that.

Furthermore I thought about giving up about half way into the race as I couldn't lift my left arm anymore and it was really hurting, but then I saw people leaving the game and I thought let's try to finish the race eventhough it might be 10 laps down on David.

Hope I didn't screw anybody's race and I wasn't in the way of the lapping cars too much.