The formation lap was actually pretty good IMO, the pace car was fast.

I think doug is having PC issues.. so here are the results of the event:

Results: http://ahmad.gamebrite.com/simhq09_lemans

Replays: http://files.filefront.com/13896765

Things started bad, I joined the server with about 15 mins of qualy left but found I was suffering from that really annoying air gun type sound loop that crops up now and then. Dont know why as everything was fine on Friday and I had changed nothing, not touched rFactor since Friday. I lost any practise, qualy time remembering which file to remove to get rid of that sound as there was no way I could race for 3 hours with it banging through my headphones.

The pace lap was my first lap of the circuit since Friday night so was glad it went at a fast pace, quite a chage for an AI led pace lap.

Unfortunately my lack of track time before the start hurt, I made some stupid errors in the first couple of laps that resulted in my top speed reducing by about 10mph costing boat loads of time down the Mulsanne straight.

I must also apologise to Adlabs for the first lap shunt, your braking point before the Ford chicane really caught me out as it was much earlier than mine.

Couple of things I learnt, I suck in the dark, 3 hours is an awfully long time to sit infront of my PC in a virtual race. I must be mad as I actually enjoned the event..

Was a good tough race. Happy to make it to the end and with the extra bonus of passing a limping Nimrud on the last lap for P1 in class. To be honest though until that point I was never going to challenge, Nimrud was too good, as usual

Congrats to LC for a great win, to Joe who was on fire all through, and to all who finished.

Thanks for organising

Ah was it you who caught my rear left fender heading into the chicane? I was so surprised by the incident and frantic to get the car back on track, I never saw a name tag! So I never knew who to say a quick 'sorry' to.

No worries on that in any case, as you mentioned my early breaking point certainly contributed in a big way.

Tough luck Purolator. Doug was having power problems, and was actually offline when you needed a restart. I tried to call him, but he wouldn't have been able to do a reset anyway.

I really enjoyed the Le Mans experience while it lasted. The camera flashes were pretty cool in the slower turns, but like ktel, I wish that there was someway to kill the mechanic's loop. Maybe replace a file or something.

My setup was really bad. Top speed was 209 MPH, but the car was _way_ too twitchy with oversteer. The slightest mistake sent me into the armco, which was not good for an endurance race. Still, until it got dark I had been lucky enough to do only minimal damage.

In the dark and fairly quickly, I wished that I would have paid more attention to those discussing the headlight mod. How anyone can find themselves daydreaming at 200 mph approaching a braking zone is beyond me. Well, maybe I can because that happened to yours truly a couple of times which result in some unplanned body modifications. Finally I plowed into the wall in T1 hard enough to completely remove the front end. Nakajima would have been proud. If you want to see a car fly, watch around lap 27 and me go over the hump at 204 (car is faster without nose) almost doing the flying Benz act. Once replaced, I could only do 198 and had a now worse handling car.

Like most, I wanted to bring the car home hoping for some attrition, but then my left front brake decided to call it a day. Such is the drama of Le Mans.

Congrats to the class winners. When can we do another LMS type race again?

That would be cool to do another one, maybe when the new endurance mod comes out, we could have a test or something.

Yep - I'm ready for another one. Maybe a well spaced out series of long races? Consecutive weekends would be a bit much for me.

We struggled to get 15 for this one, and we had an endurance series last year .

Thanks for the encouragement and congratulations to all who participated.

I cooled down a bit by now, but I stick to my decision insofar, that for the time being I better refrain from online racing, as I need an attitude change.

Since after weeks of practice I begin to take setbacks like this way too serious (and this is neither healthy nor something I can enjoy then) and practice is something I need, I better practice my general skills in offline mode for the time being, instead of being deeply frustrated if a race goes all wrong like yesterday. Since I stay offline the G25 and rfactor will stay. Next week I can't participate in F1 1988 anyway, as I'll be on a festival.

One day I'll be ready to rejoin and I will look for upcoming races or series and carefully decide then if I really have time, really want to and are generally able to join or not.

Thanks to everyone who supported me on and off track - Ahmad, Vikz, Pierre1, PapaK, Stev8, SpyDoc, LacyCrust, Chipwich, AMK, Andrew1988, and most notably Doug, who always shows tremendous support. And I apologise to everyone else whom I have not included here.

Good luck all and enjoy the races.