USA FT: Brands Hatch

Mixed feelings about this race. I was doing good in practice, being second fastest with a 51:7xx. Qualifying wasn't as good as I had a small out on my flying lap, and five minutes is not too long so no time to get back... Anyway, qualified 8th.

For the race I made a dumb mistake and upped the tire pressures thinking they might not last the race. I know I would be sacrificing grip, but I didn't know it would be that much! I was slow and I deserve 12th, BLAH!

Had some excellent racing with some of you (I think Steve and Kevin), so it was all good in the end!

Congrats to the winners!

Crazy race Gary, very nice! :)
I almost got Tolga, what's he doing here anyways? Shouldn't you be asleep? :P

Congrats to Steve, he was untouchable. Who's your crew chief?

Awesome race guys! I forgot how much fun it is to race here. The racing is the cleanest of any place I have ever raced. I'm signing up for a paying membership ASAP so I can start racing here again...

Struggled in practice, I had a race set capable of mid 51's last night but during practice I couldn't get below 52. I think I wasn't pushing it hard enough in practice. Had a great fight for 2nd place, he tried to keep from getting around but was very clean about it, kudos to whoever that was for clean racing. With 4 to go my fuel light came on, I slowed down a bit to conserve fuel, a mistake, I would have had enough to at least get to 1st place and challenge for the spot. Steve was fast though so I don't know if I could have got around him.

I went no aids this race trying to learn how to heal toe shift, I think I may be doing something wrong as it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Congrats on the win Steve!

JJ

Yeah Tommy - that was close the whole time. I really enjoyed it.

I think we might have a locked wheels there once or twice, but no touches. Great job! I was hoping that we could have run down the guys in second/third and made it a four-way fight, but we weren't quite able to get up there.

That was some fun racing guys. Very, very clean from my very slow perspective.

Hopefully I didn't cause too much troubles for anyone.

I cannot figure out the power band on these things to save my life. Nearly everyone was so much quicker accelerating through the gears, and I could never get it quite sorted.

Anyways, had fun, and hope to see you all again next time. Perhaps I can become a little more competitive.

tks,

I self spun when I hit the rumble strips off 3 and went into the wall. I thought I saw some parts come off. Oh Oh...Wing is usually the first to go. I thought about going into the pits and getting it fixed but decided to take a lap and see how it handled. Not to bad....maybe it's there....better not look...might scare me. I really enjoy the low HP racing here at R2P the most. Who has more fun than we do?

My first wire to wire - a nice surprise!

Almost blew it by not carrying enough fuel, which would've been doubly bad since I ran out the last time at Brands in the FT's. Of course I didn't remember that until about midway through the race, which made the recollection somewhat inconvenient... ;-)

Was surprised to get pole, since I hadn't practiced at all. Sort of remembered having decent pace the last time at Brands, plus these cars are so slow you can relearn them in a hurry. Anyway, got in a lucky lap that had me up front.

Almost tossed that away when I bogged my long gear off the line, but re-clutched it and still got away well. I'm thinking Tolga must have just waked up or maybe just got back from the pub before nappy... I built a few seconds' gap in the first few laps, and then saw that Tolga and Tommy were contending 2nd. Took heart that that would probably buy me some time until they got that sorted, so I just tried to settle in and run around 51.9 or so. Figured that would do it given the gap I had, and from there the biggest challenge was resisting the urge to push harder. With as little power as these cars have, any mistakes or sliding around will just kill you.

Was going OK until I started worrying about fuel, and it really didn't look like I was going to make it. In fact I nearly pulled in for a splash 3 laps from the end, but got distracted trying to get around Jim clean and missed the pit! Then on the next lap, it started looking maybe just possible if I eased off and short-shifted a lot. So I did, fingers crossed and trying to manage the gap back to Jimmy. Went a little too slow though, and he caught me before the last turn; no choice then but to floor it and hope. I'd been showing 1 liter of fuel for over half a lap and I was expecting it to start sputtering any second, but it kept going and I crossed the line on fumes with Jimmy right in tow. Close!

So a pretty dramatic race for me, although it probably didn't look it. What did look it was the race Jimmy and Tolga were having behind - I kept thinking "they look like they're having fun back there!" My finish really just came down to a good start and then those two fighting between themselves. If they hadn't been dicing I'm 100% sure I'd have DNF'ed since there was no way I'd have made it on fuel if I'd been forced to run wide open the whole race.

But I'll take it just the same... ;-)