First, thanks to the organizers. Having tried to do this on my own I can say you guys pulled it off much better, everything was so smooth, fair, well documented, and above all fun.
This was a blast. 👍
My DVR only got the 1st 30 laps of the F1 race due to the rain delay, so I just finished watching the end of that. Fantastic day for racing all around. Kept my spirits up while I hydrated and refueled. Still jazzed up, head still feels tingly ...
these long races really make me want a race engineer on a laptop watching the timing screen. My brain was fuzzy after the race; so much to keep track of:
my pit stops, opponents stops, lap times, gaps, managing fuel, all while making ~15-20 clean racing passes and trying to keep a 200mph rocket on the road. I was also being extra crazy by fiddling with the TCS as the tires wore down so I could get one more lap out of them. Must be nice to just drive and have a dude on the pit wall talking in your ear.
...so I'm just going to brain dump before I finish this first pint.
Report
I was nervous as hell during the lead up to the race but half-way through the formation lap that all went away. I inherited a better start with Dom's absence (missed you buddy, you would have been right in the middle of it all race) and we started nice and smooth. The other Tim had a bobble in the early going so I got 4th as a gift. Hung onto Hydro for the first stint while Adam and his friend in blue just tore off. They put a gap on of almost 1s per lap while I was pushing hard for 2'03 pace. By lap 9 the tires were going off and I saw it looked like everyone else was coming in so I popped in for tires in turn.
I knew fuel was going to be interesting with the 99lap count we were never going to get anything but a "fill-er-up" recommendation from the game. So I took note of how much I burned off and put in the free 11L you get on a tire swap. Out for another stint pushing to hang onto 4th and keep Hydro in sight. Got some traffic at awkward times toward the end of the stint but saw Hydro go for tires on 17 so I picked up third while I had another lap to go. In practice I figured 9 laps was good so long as I used TCS at the end to milk the tires.
I came in on 18 as planned and continued to come in on multiples of 9 happy that my competition was doing 8's. Worked out great because my pace wasn't blinding, just steady and quick enough. As a bonus the end of my stint lined up with the 'good part' of Hydro's stint so I could hold him up before going in the pits while his tires were the best.
Overtaking the GT cars here was so mentally stressful as I kept running into them toward the end of my tires. So I rarely had the confidence to go around except where I was 100% good. (Sorry to Ren-Tec, you got the only bad pass of my race on the front stretch. I forgot how wide my car was and we got together under braking... pretty sure I didn't leave enough room, my bad).
I took my 'driver-change' at 1h 1m since it was time for my regularly scheduled stop, and another stint would be pushing it by taking 20min. First time I've ever taken a smoke break during a race. Ran a stop-watch so I'm pretty sure I took 5m 2s. Bonus of going so early is I was first in so I figured I'd get more "clean track" as more cars took theirs.
I plugged away the laps watching the +3L counter until I was finally on the lead lap again and happy to see P3. Hydro looked like he was just coming out from his driver change right behind me. Raced him until my tires quit and came back in on the next 9er. At this point I couldn't take the 'free fuel' anymore as the game was looking for 90+L; tossed in 40 as a guess from stint1, got jumped down 2 spots while filling and came out behind Gravitron.
Raced for position for a while which was fun. Got back up to 4th as cars peeled off to pit. Toward the end of the stint I lost my original goal as the Aderrrm was behind me. I let him through and saw that the other Tim was back there too. Raced til I hit my 9th lap and notice we were just crossing 2hrs so I pushed on for a 10th to make sure I could get to 2:24 on one more stop.
I dropped back to 6th taking 35-ish L of fuel which was plenty to finish up with the 1/8th or so left in the tank. Wasn't worried at this point as I was expecting everyone in front of me to take one more stop. So that got me back up to 4th with only a few laps to go. 👍
Somewhere in the last stint I got a lap down to p2 and never got to catch up to the podium. Hydro stayed a few corners ahead the whole time so my hold-ups weren't good enough.
Meanwhile the other Tim was hunting me.
I just kept motoring cleanly doing 2'05-low over and over again as I watched the last few minutes click away. At 2h 23m I was handed some fortune as me and WRP hit a train of GT traffic. That kept us nice and far apart so I was able to roll across the line in 4th.
GR
👍