This seasons race around the twists of the Laguna Seca track with it's famous 'corkscrew' turn would have the additional challenge of some of the race being run at night. In fact such was the time sped up, during the 26 lap event we would have around 9 laps in the middle in the night with daylight at the start and end of the race.
Crippy also tried a new start procedure aimed at making things quicker and instead of a 'recce lap' the drivers went straight to grid. Unfortunatly this caused a red flag and restart with one driver not being quick enough to get to grid then leaving the pitlane too early and getting DQ'd.
The second start wasn't much better when a feline interruption caused a second restart. At the third time of asking, however, the field got away well and streamed towards turn 1. Jafo, second on the grid, made the best start as the uphill start made Sulla's, non-LC start awkward.
The first lap, however, was action packed. Into T1 Sulla recovered from her poor start and took advantage of Reitveld and Yuriko running wide to run second. Suzi made a good start to slot into 5th ahead.
Crippy, unfortunately, was running last after being slightly slow away a collision, that I didn't even register had happened, took off her rear wing. Very bad luck for Oh and a classic case of the modelling being very wrong. The collision was very slight and between the lowest RF corner part of my nose and Crippy's LR - in RL I doubt anything would have happened but at worse a puncture might have occured.
The next incident occured at the corkscrew. Yuri locked up her RF tyre and cannoned into the back of Looming. Looming ended up in the kitty litter while, for some reason, Yuri's car stopped on the apex of the corkscrew. The corkscrew is a corner where the drivers approach it blind and the incident occured out of sight of myself and Suzy.
Thus we braked normally as we crested the rise and I couldn't avoid the read of the stranded R8. Suzy took the place only to run wide two corners late and hand the place back to me.
For some reason I was struggling at this stage to find pace and Suku was soon all over the back of me with Sulla recovering just behind. Jafo was way down the road and at this stage looked to have the race 'in the bag'.
Rattra was up to 4th briefly before being passed by the charging Reynard. Suku took second shortly after with a NASCAR style ( as Suku put it when apologising after the race) nudge. I don't believe the incedent was deliberate, just a case of me being slightly slow in the corner.
Kiboe retired on lap 8 and a lap later the intended pitstops started. I had elected to gamble on a two stop race as front tyre wear was a concern. On my outlap I almost took Jafo out of the race. He had spun in the corkscrew while lapping Kiboe shortly before the latter retired. I arrived over the crest of the corner ( above ) faced with him and just squeaked past.
The stop dropped me briefly to 6th as night fell but I repassed Looming when she stopped a lap later. I also worked my way past Suku on the drag up to the corkscrew.
So approaching half way the field had settled down, Rattra, who had run second for a time, was now 5th behind Looming, Suku, myself and Jafo.
Jafo still looked fairly secure but when he pitted I found myself beating him out of the pits. While he had spun once, he didn't lose that much time so the reason for the loss of the lead wasn't immediatly obvious.
I knew it was only a temporary thing, however, so pushed as hard as I could and pitted a second time on lap 19.
Sulla had been pushing hard also, trying to pass me believing the race to be for position and burnt her front tyres out. This would ultimately pay into Jafo's hands as he had also been past by the Reynard after his stop. By lap 20 Jafo was back in front and able to cruise to victory ahead of Looming.
My second stop had dropped me nearly 30s behind Suku and also behind Rattra. I was 1.5 to 2s quicker than the latter so most likely would have past him, however we'll never know as 6 laps from the end he became the 5th person to suffer brake failure in a race.
So Jafo won from Sulla, Suku, Myself and Suzy. Suzy losing the championship lead after only her second comparatively poor performance so far this season.
Afte the race Suku had this to say about an eventful event. "Going into the race, before we went racing and practiced and all that, I thought I had a shot at the win. Practice started up, and well.. suddenly I'm sitting 8th, and I thought that maybe that's where I'd finish... I got a little bit faster in practice on race day itself and then when they race came up, through those restarts, I realize I had a shot at a podium. So all in all it was a rollercoaster, it was a blast, I had fun
"I don't think I've ever seen that many wrecks like... ever. It was like a tornado hit the first two starts XD Totally insane!"
No comments:
Post a Comment