GTx Valencia

well it happen again did a ton of laps in practise then qualifying then the race 4th turn this time my pc locked up hard again had to hit reset sorry if it messed anyone up. I wont race until i figure out whats going on.

Well, good race for you all. I was doing well, pit and ran directly into the small kink at the end of pit lane, car fell apart, SAm K ran into me screwing him up. I went off twice before thinking about how to let Sam by safely. That's what happened there, I was going to let him go past before I rejoined, and just went directly into the wall, what a nerd!
Sorry for pummeling your probable podium finish Sam, just a careless mistake that you got caught up in.
Good Race Kent and Scott, you lapped the rest of the field.

Well in the statistics this race will show me qualifying 4th and finishing 3rd, big deal right. I wish it would have been as easy as it sounded. On the starting grid I seen the car to my right lunge forward just before the green, than when the light does turn green I get a false start resulting in a stop and go penalty :( So much for my nice starting spot. I held 4th through lap 1 and quickly pulled into the pits where my crew was nice enough to hold me up for 10 seconds before I could rejoin. I came out of the pits 20 seconds behind the entire field. Time to put my head down and drive my ass off and hope for the best. By lap 20 I had worked my way back close to the top 10, by pitstops 4th, and sometime around lap 50 maybe I passed Sam and found myself in a podium postition. From there I did my best to lap cleanly and try and open up some breathing room back to 4th which I did.
So in the end I get my 4th straight 3rd in this series and hopefully Sam continues to drive blindfolded so I can try and give him a run for the title ;p I can't see myself winning too many (or any) of these but maybe I can kill 'em with consistency.
Can't wait for next round.
Congrats Kent and Scott, you guys were fast.

Came into this room thinking I needed the 550 to be competitive and did some practice laps with full fuel. It soon became appearant that with the 550 I would quickly have a huge advantage. Wanting to keep things fair and seeing all the other cars lapping in the 1:10 range I decided to rejoin with the 575.

Qual was pretty good with a 1:09.1 and thought I had the pole until my final lap when someone took it from me :( Turns out it was Krueger in his Saleen.

Krueger and I got pretty equal starts and even tho I was inside him and up to his door I thought better of challenging so early and droppin in behind. We cautously did lap 1 and I could see alrady that I had a good car and in the final turn Krueger got real wide and then loose and spun it right in front of me. With knowhere to go I clouted his rear and spun him back straight. But Scott Novotny took advantage and grabbed the lead.

It didn't take long to catch Scott but with him in the 550 I had no way to challenge on the straight for any pass. We drove around mostly nose to tail until we came upon some tail end cars and we had some moments to say the least. One unnammed driver in a Vette was real aggressive about not letting us by and in the end I lost about 3 seconds to Scott. Finally late in stint one Scott tires must have been going away and I was able to close right up again and start pressuring him. Then around lap 30 he must have gotten loose in T1 becase on the exit he was real slow and I got inside him without a challenge in T2.

The rest of stint 1 was me putting as much gap between us as possible before my pit. When he went in I had about 6 seconds, but I ran about 7 laps longer on my stint and came out of my pit stop with 13 seconds. After passing some lapped cars I stretched out my lead to about 30 seconds cruising the last 5 laps of the race.

Nice drive Scott and congrats on second. Sorry to my teammate who had a very rough race with several contacts.

Many thanks to Steve and Mark for the use of thier T car, the ECCI 575 was flawless for the most part, just a minor hardware issue with my Momo Pedals not knowing how to act.

My appologies to George. About 1/2 way through the race he was lapping me and made two attempts to pass...the first one his front bumper pulled even with my rear bumper, but because I couldn't see that I didn't back down...I held the racing line as usual.

His next attempt was on the back straight...I flashed my lights to let him know I knew he was going to make a move, but as I approached curva 7...that not actually a corner turn on the back straight...I didn't get on the throttle like I usually do in that section and was preparing to keep to the inside and brake early for curva 8 to let him get by me and back on the race line. Unfortunately, he just didn't have enough power to sweep by me and he didn't stay to the outside around curva 7 like I expected him to, plus he couldn't see me and thus moved back onto the race line as I suppose he expected that I had already slowed down a great deal to let him take curva 7 on the inside. Thus, he moves to the inside for curva 7 and I'm still there which means he runs into my rear quarter panel and spins.

I'm sorry George, the replay certainly shows that I should have slowed down for you...I'll have to adjust my driving to remember that when I'm being lapped and can't see the car lapping me then I should figure that they have at least pulled up so that their front bumper is on my rear and that they have expected me to slow down and let them have the racing line...even if it's on a straight or especially on straights with a slight curve like curva 7 on Valencia.

Well.. After qualifying it all went downhill. Spinned on 1st lap with cold tires and allmost took my team mate with me , after some laps i was challenging George P for 3rd place and went inside on T8 braking.

I thought that i left enough room for both of us , but when George fought back and retake the inside line on T9 we had a contact and i spinned again.

Didn't really like that and the way George let me through later on when i catched him , i think he thought it was his fault too.

After seeing the replay , i have to admit that it was me who turned into George and i have to take a blame for that. Glad that i didn't take you with me George.

I was still looking for a podium finish , but then there was the freak accident on pitlane exit what Ryan A allready mentioned , suspension was badly damaged after that and it took a while to limp back to pits.

Took 100L fuel and new set of mediums and after 100 second stop i was moving again , amazingly my crew did a great job and car was allmost as good as new.

Less fortunate was that since i had to pit so early , i had to save fuel the whole 2nd stint with a lot of shortshifting and running in high gears. Pitlane in Valencia is so long that 2nd stop was not an option , so i settled for running laptimes in about 1:11 range.

This ment that i couldn't really challenge other cars in track and it was a bit frustrating to watch the gap to 4th place car dropping slowly , but i knew that i'll run out of fuel or laps before i can catch him :| .

Kind of glad that i was a lap down , since otherwise i couldn't have made it into finish line. I can honestly say that this wasn't my race , did some mistakes and had really bad luck otherwise too . Getting through with even some points was a miracle and i have to settle for that this time.

Rough race but it's behind now and im looking forward to next one , cya there... ;)

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Samuel

Not to be offensive but to comment on your perspective Steve, being lapped and making George work that hard for it is very frustrating and unnecessary, and ultimately caused him a spin. IMO if your intention was to let him pass then totally back out until he is clear. I comment on this because I too had some situations in this race where guys waited until the last second to back out letting me pass. This really costs both drivers much more time than to allow the pass earlier before the corner. Just my thoughts is all.

Thanks for your comment Kent...it is well taken. I do admit to being new to sim racing...this is the 7th month since purchasing a MoMo racing wheel, and am making some mistakes, not only in my driving but in judgement. It is not my intent to make anyone work hard to lap me. I will in time become more aware of what is going on outside of my visible window and better judge when a passing car has reached a point where I should back down. As I indicated...the replay clearly shows that I should have backed down when George made his first attempted pass as he did manage to pull his car's nose even with my rear.

I'm glad I waited till the next day to write my report. This one will be different now. That was an eventfull race. Was not sure if I should do it after all the discussion about cutting in the euro-race some weeks ago, but I'm glad I did. No problems at all to adjust the lines a bit to stay within the white lines. Quali and start were oke and I was in 3rd quite fast after the troubles Kent and Samuel had.

@ Sam: I haven't seen the replay yet (just got up :-)) but I was happy to read you think it wasn't my fault what happend before the chicane. I recall seeing you at my bumper coming on to that backstraight with more exitspeed from the last corner. Knew you had me with that so I kept wide approaching the chicane to make a clean pass possible. Sorry that didn't work out. Letting you pass quite easy later on was the only sensible thing to do because for some stupid reason I started the race on soft/meds and had almost no right front left at that point.

@ Steve: Thanks for you words Steve. But man ... I was pissed after the race. :-) Not going to spend too much words on it because I've read your report and accept your apologies. Would like to say two things as a tip for next races. First, the acceleration of your 550 out of a corner is better than my Saleen's. So you really have to lift some more if you want to make a clean pass possible. Second, have a look at the replay and watch how John Onofrey is letting cars pass. My compliments on that John.

Don't really know if I could have kept Dennis behind me and keep 3rd. Sure would have been nice to find out but I settle for 4th. Grats to Kent and Scott for lapping the whole field and to Dennis for a good recovery and finishing on the podium.

George I had the same problems with passing the 550's, and only had a couple issue's the first time passing some guys but after about 50 laps everyone was very gracious. The reason I am reluctant to even mention this is because this is a Extreme race and the 550 is available and it was my choice to NOT use it. In the end I am real happy about that decision, it also made me a more patient driver tonight.