Friday 18 September 2009

G1:GP LeMans - Nurburgring Report

The LeMans LMP900 series is proving to be incredibly tight. Coming to the GP circuit in Germany it was impossible to predict who would win. I was confident, however, I wouldn't as lack of time to practice and new wheel meant I expected to be damage limitation mode.

Jafo Tendaze put his car on pole ahead of Sulla Looming and led off the start. Unfortunatly I lost it big time when my car spun under breaking due to a break balance error and the red flags came out to clear up the kitty litter.

At the second time of asking Rattra, 6th on the grid, jumped the start and Suzy was slow away. Looming made her best, non-LC, getaway so far but still lost ground as Crippy skirted past her and tucked in behind Yuriko and Jafo up front. 

I managed to outdrag Sulla to T1 but, having caused a crash at start one, took it easy into the corner rather than trying to outbrake Crippy. Into T1 Suku made a mistake and punted Sulla into a spin.

The result was also a spin for Rattra as the AI GT cars arrived at the corner. These were added to add something different to the racing and this was their first impact in the race.

The front three settled down but behind, on lap 2, I made a mistake at the bottom of the hill and ran wide through the kitty litter and came out behind Sulla. Meanwhile Rattra was struggling serving his jumped start penalty and was forced to retired.

Sulla got past Suku on the next lap only for Suku to use the speed of the Panoz to regain the place. Sulla regained the place through the 'twiddly bits' but into T1 on the next lap Suku made her second mistake at that point and again punted Sulla.

This cost sulla a rear wing and she had to pit for repairs. Meanwhile I tried to chase Suku down but she had the edge on speed so I just had to hope the pitstops would allow me to pass her.

Up front Yuriko and Crippy were engaged in a furious battle for position. They past each other on several occasions as the pitstops approached. Jafo and Suku pitted first at the end of lap 9 with many others pitting on lap 11. 

These second pitstops were chaos. First Crippy ran out of fuel in the pitlane. As her pitcrew pushed her down the lane I arrived, just as an AI car was alongside her. This delayed me slightly so when I arrived at my pitbox Yuriko was just leaving. I had to adjust my line to avoid her and overshot.

The end result was a long pitstop for me and Crippy, with me just beating her out. We then battled hard for the rest of the race, both making mistakes around AI traffic causing us to swap places a couple of times. Crippy spun again into T1 on the last lap and I crossed the line with just 0.1l in my tank.

Jafo won comfortably from Suzy after another consistant troublefree run that took her to the head of the championship. Suku was next ahead of me, Crippy and Sulla.

Sadly the field was a bit depleted but still a very good race and a tight championship.



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