Supercar Challenge - Ferrari Challenge Series - 348 Challenge Season
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Event No 1 : April 11th, 2010 - 20:00 GMT - Homestead Miami Infield - RACE RECAP
I want to thank everybody who participated in the first round of the Ferrari 348 Challenge Series from Homestead Miami. Everybody who showed up for this round deserves a pat on the back for (generally) nice clean racing and good sportsmanship. I had a lot of fun putting this event together and having only one track per weekend is a lot less hectic and dramatic. It's unfortunate for several reasons that my camera wasn't working. But my own race was marred by a lot of driving errors and suffice to say, despite a decent finishing position in both races, it's probably best not to highlight what wasn't one of my finer moments, with many off track excursions and silly errors.
QUALIFYING: 2 laps - conditions 50% dry/wet chosen at random
I flipped a coin and dry qualifying it was. A stupid mistake right at the beginning of my lap meant I had a red qualifying lap and was slated to start at the back of the field. mhm66 also claims he had a red lap. But the grid order by fastest qualifying lap was:
1) new_soul
1:23.80
2) mhm66 1:25.73
3) arvore 1:26.25
4) Simcoeace 1:26.46
5) MannyMoenjack1 1:26.54
6) GTP_Hun 1:26.68
7) GTP_Bullie77 1:26.84
8) frawe 1:27.23
9) drivatar 1:27.37
10) jjaisli (only my first parade lap showed: 2:30.59)
RACE 1 (Feature Race): - 20 Laps - Dry
Without the benefit of watching my videos, and now with several hours having passed, I'm afraid my memory of the races have kind of faded. I remember starting the race and thinking since I was last anyway, I would take it easy into the first few corners as I figured at least 3-4 cars would fly off the track. Wrong. Everybody (save new_soul) kept it together and despite trying to take advantage of an off-line car or late braking here or there, I was still very much in last place going up the first infield straight. It was only then that I realized new_soul was behind me and was confused how he ended up so far back.
Coming around back onto the oval section of track, I managed to get around 3 cars who braked too late and was thrilled with the prospect of making up some time when I saw a lot of smoke, cars spinning and then saw GTP_Hun directly in front of me and facing me. I was full on the brakes but we still made some minor contact. I waited for just a second to make sure there were no other cars coming and then took off after the field, already 5-6 seconds behind the next car. I felt bad for Mario, not quite sure how or why he spun, but was also lamenting the fact that I really had it all to do now and would likely have no chance to catch up to the top guys unless they made some serious mistakes.
From that point on the race was a bit of blur and I was making a lot of unforced errors, partially through frustration but also because I seemed to be having a terrible time getting a rhythm into the first corner and went off the track several times, including once when battling with Arvore. I was quite angry with myself because I braked in plenty of time but I was just off line and the car just got away from me.
That said, I did mange to slightly better my fastest lap at this track by about .2, although I put this mainly down to the increased speed I picked up from drafting other cars. Overall, I made too many unforced errors to capitalize on my pace and that's unfortunate.
On lap 6 there was an incident when I was following drivatar and frawe down the 2nd infield straight. I braked early because I knew I would be caught in the draft behind both cars. Drivatar was at least 30 meters ahead of me and suddenly I watched his car and frawe's car latch onto each other and lurch forward, as if there was some strange lag issue between them. I remember thinking, I wonder what those two will have to say about the incident--probably Frawe thought drivatar hit him and drivatar probably thought frawe braked too early. I was too far behind to really tell for certain. And I was shocked after the race to hear that from drivatar's perspective, I hit him and smashed him into Frawe.
So there are still some unfortunate lag issues with this game. Although for the most part, they seem few and far between.
I know I had some tangles with Arvore and also with Bullie, who put up a great fight and went on to finish a very impressive 5th. The man clearly went to the Enrique Bernoldi school of defensive driving. I had hoped to catch Manny but by the time I was clear of the Bullie/Simcoeace/GTP_Hun battle, he was simply too far away and frankly, I was just making too many errors to cut into his enormous lead.
Over all, a great race for both mhm66 & new_soul who at one point, on their own or through error, were both regulated to the back of the field and managed to work their way back up to the front of the pack. Well done both. Good job also to Manny who proved his speed and consistency in his very first outing. And well done to Bullie who managed to hold off some stiff competition for 20 laps!
The final results:
1) - mhm66 - Enzo - 1:23.61 - 25 points
2) - new_soul - UKOG - 1:22.80 - 21 points
3) - MannyMoenjack1 - Jackrabit Racing - 1:24.43 - 16 points
4) - jjaisli - Forza G25 - 1:23.63 - 13 points
5) - GTP_Bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 1:25.90 - 11 points
6) - SimcoeAce - Mad Dogs - 1:25.31 - 10 points
7) - GTP_Hun - T & L Team - 1:24.33 - 9 points
8) - arvore - team tgv - 1:25.25 - 8 points
9) - frawe - frawe - 1:26.13 - 7 points
10) - drivatar - team forza - RTD - 6 points
Total Race Time: 28 minutes, 32 seconds
RACE 2 (Sprint Race): 15 Laps - Wet
Supercar Challenge does not allow you to run 12 lap races on-line. I made this error during one of my classic car events and I did it here yet again. So the sprint race was unfortunately run for 15 laps rather than the posted 12. Most likely, I will keep it this way, except for extremely long tracks where I may put it down to 9.
The starting grid for race two was reverse finishing order of race one. This time I said to myself I needed to be slightly more aggressive than the laid back approach I had at the beginning of the last race. But less than a minute after the race began, we had a three way tangle when Biggles had a sudden urge to look down at his Mandolin (
) and caused a brief chain reaction. Both Arvore and Simcoeace were kind enough to wait but I let out a sigh of exasperation when I realized once again, the entire field was tearing away and I would have to struggle from the back of the pack. In fact, I would have to work hard just to catch up to the guys immediately in front of me.
In the end, I seemed to have much less difficulty running in the wet than I did in the dry. And while my race was far from perfect, compared to the feature race, I did much better overall, with far fewer self inflicted driving errors, finishing in 3rd, 14 seconds back from mhm in 2nd. I was pushing, pushing, pushing during the final 3 laps, after having slowing caught a consistent Manny, and was hoping, just maybe, mhm and new_soul might have a coming together and I would be close enough to capitalize on their trouble. But no such luck and the thought of shadenfreude came back to bite me when I went off the track myself on the Final Lap and Manny was able to close the gap down to a few seconds. From there until the finish line, I took it easy, least I throw away a podium position for Team Orange.
This race was unfortunately marred by disconnects and retirements from Bullie and Hun, a real shame since point accumulations matter and Bullie had put in such a great effort during the feature race.
Mario left without a word so I'm assuming and hoping he was simply frustrated with the situation.
The Final Results:
1) - new_soul - UKOG - 1:26.16 - 13 points
2) - mhm66 - Enzo - 1:26.45 - 10 points
3) - jjaisli - Forza G25 - 1:26.82 - 8 points
4) - Manny - Moenjack1 - Jackrabit Racing - 1:27.58 - 6 points
5) - drivatar - team forza - 1:28.75 - 5 - points
6) - SimcoeAce - Mad Dogs - 1:28.00 - 4 points
7) - frawe - frawe - 1:28.73 - 3 points
8) - arvore - team tgv - 1:29.09 - 2 points
9) - GTP_Bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - RTD - 1 points
10) - GTP_Hun - T & L Team - RTD - 0 points
Total Race Time: 22 minutes, 39 seconds
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Final (combined) Results from Round 1:
1) - mhm66 - Enzo - 35
2) - new_soul - UKOG - 34
3) - MannyMoenjack1 - Jackrabit Racing - 22
4) - jjaisli Forza - G25 - 21
5) - SimcoeAce - Mad Dogs - 14
6) - GTP_Bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 12
7) - drivatar - team forza - 11
8) - arvore - team tgv - 10
8) - frawe - frawe - 10
10) - GTP_Hun - T & L Team - 9
Remember, points are accumulated through this series, so I hope to see you all back at Montreal in two weeks time. Great racing with the lot of you and I hope you all had as much fun as I did!
EDIT: Thanks to Henrik for posting video on page 6. If you haven't already done so, watch at least the first half of the 2nd video. Great battle between Henrick and new_soul!👍
I even maneged to do worst than Iwas doing in the pratices during the week
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and we were talking about nationality issues the other day:idea:
Avoiding Mario I completed the race in 6th place.
Letting the remaining cars past me, I continued on in last place. Over a number of laps I caught up & overtook a couple of cars & with 5 laps to go was 3 seconds behind frawe. This was probably the most fun of the event for me: I gradually, painstakingly chipped away at frawe's lead & coming out of the last hairpin had narrowed the gap to about .5 second. As we came around the last banked turn I just managed to draft past him, finishing less than a car-length in front. A pretty exciting finish for me 👍
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- participants are more focussed on doing the best they can & competing with their actual (human) competition.
