Thanks guys, sorry I couldnt make it yesterday, this party I went to lasted alot longer than I planned. My first series win in SimHQ

Sorry about the screwy championship results. That'll teach me not to do that right before I go to bed. Poker's double entry has been removed, and guod's and Weasel's names have been added into the list in the appropriate positions. Should be alright now.

ktel, I scored SpyDoc the same way (i.e. 0 points) for his DQ at Spa. I think the reason you got caught out yesterday is that at this track you cross the start/finish line as you enter the pits. Obviously at most tracks the start/finish line is somewhere in the middle of pitlane.

Le Mans was an interesting race for me. Qualifying was pretty bad; I came in late as I expected I would and promptly slid the car off the road at Terte Rouge, damaging it. I didn't have time to start over, though, so I just made do. In the end I scored a lap over 4 seconds slower than my PB, which was pretty dreadful. It still got me P2, though, and I'm not sure I couldn't have bested Chunx's 3:29.9x anyway. I had run that laptime once before, but not in the dark.

When the race started I followed Chunx closely (but not too closely) into the esses, and I noticed he slipped up. I pounced at that point and was very close to him into and through Terte Rouge. I got a huge draft on the straight and got up to 201 mph to take the GT lead. However, it was short lived, as I completely missed my braking point at Arnage on the same lap and hit the wall fairly hard. I messed up here completely from the stress and poor concentration caused by the adrenalin of the start and of two cars close behind me. I think that hit took away about 2 mph of my top speed and didn't help my efforts at catching Chunx later in the race.

Chunx and SteV8 got by when I went off, but a few laps later I got by SteV8 entering the first Ford chicane. Steve gave me a lot of room, which surprised me, so I took the opportunity and went crashing over the curbs like I usually do. At this point I was 6 seconds or so from Chunx, who had been creeping away while Steve and I were battling.

As I set about closing the gap to Chunx, it began to get dark and I found that I really couldn't see very well. I had practiced a lot in the dark, so I was puzzled. Eventually I figured out that a lot of sun was coming in my window, which in and of itself isn't abnormal. My monitors face away from the window and thus there should be no problem. However, I was wearing a white T-shirt, and the sun was reflecting off of my arm and my torso and causing a pretty significant glare on my center screen. There wasn't much I could do about this, and it made me very off-pace through the night; I had a lot of small offs and half-spins and ran a bunch of 3:38 and 3:39 laps. At my first pit stop I leaped and closed the blinds, but still a lot of light came through I my driving didn't feel good until it got lighter. The car felt unsteady under braking for Indianapolis, too, and I think the damage I had picked up was hurting me there (where the suspension is already loaded when you get on the brakes).

By the time dawn broke Chunx had a 30+ second lead on me, but once I could see I began pushing really hard. This was my fastest time in the race and I managed to close the gap down to 22 or 23 seconds by the next round of pitstops. I had pitted one lap earlier than Chunx after the first stint and we seemed to be maintaining this offset as the race went on. Most times I would seem to have a faster outlap than Chunx would, and make up a tiny bit of time on the pit rotation.

However, as the race wore on the gap began to open up again as Chunx worked through his slow period, and the gap hovered between 27 and 29 seconds for a long time. I was pushing as hard as I safely could for lap after lap and wasn't getting any closer, so I knew I had to hope for a big off from Chunx. It never happened as he drove a very consistent race.

Late in the game I got out of shape exiting Indianapolis and managed to hang the front and rear of the car up over the inside apex shoulder without any rear wheels touching the ground. However, the torque of revving the engine rotates the DBR9, so I was able to wiggle the car bit by bit to just touch one of the rear tires, and eventually got myself unstuck. That cost me 30 seconds, though, so any hope of catching Chunx was now long gone.

In the end LazyC passed me for the first time with 1 or 2 laps to go when I spun at the Ford chicanes. It was a good thing he did, as it turned out I didn't have enough gas for the additional lap that I would have had to run had LC finished the race without lapping me. The extra lap that Chunx had run in the first stint would have won him the race even if I had had a 28-second lead with 2 laps to go.

My left arm is sore from hanging onto the wheel too tightly for 2+ hours, but this race was a lot of fun, as was this series. I picked up my first win since the Indy 500 a few years ago and it was a blast. Had I not destroyed my car at Spa on the opening lap I would have won the GT class easily. Oh well.

Congrats to the winners and racers.

I was seriously going to try and be there yesterday, but "the boss" informed me we had a BBQ to attend and that I WOULD be there and on time. Ah well, glad you guys had fun.

I was really sorry to miss this race. I love the Le Mans course. Plus I could have relatively easily taken the GT championship with a even a mediocre finish.

Congratulations to both series winners. It will be a long time until all the freaky circumstances that saw me out front will be in conjunction again!

Pitty you missed the race goon it was a great track and car combination with the DBR.

I got my new wheel Friday and managed to get some decent practice in on Saturday but only in Daylight. Sunday morning i was going to do an hour in the dark but as Joe warned it was very dark i couldn't see anything, i thought the time would be better spent trying to get the lights to work better, i succeeded in this and had the lights working so well it was like driving with a huge floodlight overhead. I think i would have been DQ'd so i went back to LC's settings.

Things were going well a few seconds behind Joe until it got dark and that was when i realised i didn't know the track as well as i thought, missing braking points and the race line most of the time. I got tangled up with a spinning LMP at one point and ended up stuck between some polls near the last chicane, immediately pitting to fix any damage. By that time i was along way behind Joe so i decided to have a toilet brake which cost me a couple of minutes. About 20 mins before the end of the race my PC decided to shut down so that was the end of that.


Chunx did a very impressive 3.29 in the dark in qual and drove consistently fast through the race and took a well deserved win and GT championship. Joe seems to have found some more speed lately and drove very well at lemans.

It's mostly practice time. Since I was in charge of this series and knew I would be at all of the races, I was practicing a lot, and that's something I don't normally have the time to do. One would hope I could be this competitive whenever I get to practice enough, but I know there are certain car types that do and do not suit me. I guess the DBR9 is one that does.

I don't suppose it hurt that a lot of drivers were using a variation of a setup I developed.

Yeah, I really need to learn how to setup a car to suit my driving style - heavy right foot