Supercar Challenge - Ferrari Challenge Series - F355 Challenge Season
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Event No 1 - June 20th, 2010 - 20:00 GMT - L'Autodromo Nazionale di Monza - RACE RECAP
I want to thank everybody who participated in the 1st round of the '1996' Ferrari F355 Challenge season from Monza. This first race was slightly delayed to give everybody the opportunity to finish watching today's world cup matches. More than likely, we'll do the same again in two weeks time, when world cup action really becomes interesting.
I normally take this opportunity to thank everybody for the clean racing exhibited and good sportsmanship observed. But in this case, I'll just have to assume that was the case and wait for other people's comments since I never seemed to truly be in the 'mix' of things today. None-the-less, as this group has raced together before, I'm not in any way worried and form the comments after the race, it sounded like there was some good dicing going on throughout the field. One further positive note I should mention, there were absolutely NO lobby problems to speak of. Nobody was booted or kicked from the lobby and the connection remained stable and acceptable with excellent audio quality and generally little lag. Perhaps there was much less PSN activity because of the world cup. Perhaps outages in Ireland meant less people connected. Either way it was nice to see a stable lobby without having to send multiple race invites, and having people dropped, mid race in frustration. The one odd exception to this was hun200kmh never received any of my 3 invites to the Text Chat. Odd indeed.
QUALIFYING: 2 laps - conditions 50% dry/wet chosen at random
I flipped a coin and heads meant it was wet qualifying for the first time. I was able to set a relatively clean lap but unfortunately I missed an apex here or there and it could have been quicker. None-the-less, I think others took it very conservatively or ended up with red laps and I ended up 2nd on the grid, a good distance behind mhm66 in first and only slightly ahead of new_soul in 3rd place.
1) - mhm66 - enzo - 2:02.87
2) - jjaisli - Forza G27 - 2:04.40
3) - new_soul - UKOG - 2:04.45
4) - GTP_Hun - T L Team - 2:06.32
5) - kemp1010 - MX - 2:06.84
6) - FINGERSANDTHUMBS - Creative - 2:08.32
7) - Simcoeace - Mad Dogs - 2:08.87
8) - L449KUX - TheRacingElite - 2:09.30
9) - GTP_bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 2:12.02
10) - Firedshot - TheRacingElite - 2:12.10
11) - turnupdaheat - ScudEire - 2:13.75
12) - Arvore - Mandolin Club Racing - 2:17.88
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RACE 1 (Feature Race): - 20 Laps - Dry
I made a decent start for this race and was contemplating a move on mhm before even shifting into 2nd gear, and as soon as I had a look over my shoulder to make sure nobody had a good run on me. But before the braking zone into the first corner there was some funky lag between Henrik and me and I wasn't exactly sure where he was. Whatever the case, I stuck close to the inside and mhm either gave room or made room and I found myself first, headed into curva grande.
New_soul managed to slot in ahead of Henrik as well and this 1-2-3 order continued into braking for Parabolica, where new_soul was able to draft past me on the inside. When I turned in, I wasn't even fully aware he was there but I had no where else to go and I was bumped a little to the outside of the track but managed to gain control. I'm not sure if new_soul let me regain the position or I just had good enough momentum exiting parabolica but I was able to draft by him again on the main straight to start lap 2.
Rather than give a play-by-play of what happened over the next 10 laps, I'll simply post my video and let it speak for itself. There was some great back and forth racing between the 3 of us, with even Fingersandthumbs sneaking his nose in there a bit in the beginning. The constant close racing was certainly a lot of fun but it was also compromising our ultimate pace and none of us were really able to put in a decent lap until the gap finally opened. Likewise, while fighting for position, I was so nervous about punting somebody off that in many cases I was backing off much too early in the braking zones, or simply running too wide.
This 'good' run and great fun, finally ended for me at the Parabolica on lap 9, when I lost the lead for good by putting a wheel on the grass. At the same time I accidentally hit the 'change view' button which threw me off and I ended up down almost 5 seconds on mhm by the end of the front straight. And I was never able to gain it back, or make any serious inroads into his lead. For several laps I tried to push and the gap remained steady. But around lap 14, I made a slightly mistake and lost a further 4~5 seconds. I had a comfortable margin over the 3rd placed car so at this point, I decided to back off slightly and consolidate 2nd place rather than keep pushing in a futile effort to catch mhm.
I will post 2 videos from this first race: Laps 1-5 and Laps 6-9, + the final few corners of the race. As in between there wasn't much else worth watch other than my driving around by my lonesome. Great racing for the first few laps and I was very happy to come in 2nd, my best result in the Challenge series so far.
Feature Race Results:
1) - mhm66 - enzo - 1:57.01 - 26
2) - jjaisli - Forza G27 - 1.58.62 - 20
3) - GTP_Hun - T L Team - 1:58.67 - 16
4) - FINGERSANDTHUMBS - Creative - 2:00.25 - 13
5) - new_soul - UKOG - 1:58.82 - 11
6) - kemp1010 - MX - 1:59.64 - 10
7) - arvore - Mandolin Club Racing - 1:59.27 - 9
8) - tunrupdaheat - ScudEire - 2:00.12 - 8
9) - GTP_bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 2:00.65 - 7
10) - Simcoeace - Mad Dogs - 2:01.71 - 6
11) - L449KUX - TheRacingElite - 2:01.41 - 5
12) - Firedshot - TheRacingElite - RTD - 4
Total Race Time - 39 minutes 53 seconds
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RACE 2 (Sprint Race): 15 Laps - Wet
Going into the Sprint Race, I never in my wildest imagination, thought it would turn out to be my first victory and a very dominant one at that. I'm under no illusions by what happened. The loss of some very fast competitors: Vompatti (YLOD), MHailwood (unknown) and AlanG (suffering form PSN problems), along with a good bit of luck and misfortune for my nearest competitor was what made this possible rather than an incredible performance on my part. None-the-less, from a few practice runs during the week, I knew I had good pace in the wet and was able to put in several laps in the high 2:02 range. And the only other person in the field who I knew for a fact that was running a similar pace was the guy starting right behind me.
As such, my strategy was to be conservative enough as not to get myself tangled up in a big pile up, while working my way through the field, but to be aggressive enough to take advantage of any mishaps. And like magic, that seemed to be exactly what happened. By the start of lap 2, I was in 2nd place and drafting the first place car into the braking zone for the first chicane.
Lady luck was really shining on me today. What's more, Henrik was nowhere in sight. For the first few laps, I tried hard to maintain a quick pace and build up a gap. And it wasn't until lap 6-7 that I saw mhm appear in 2nd place, but about 15 seconds behind me. There was some dicing going on with Arvore, for which I was quite greatful!
But from around lap 8, Henrik was solidly in the lead (behind me). I was able to maintain a steady gap to mhm for several laps, running in the high 2:02s (they must have been all red but I know I had 2) or low 2:03s. But when I reached lap 10, I began to relax my pace. I knew if I could run solid high 2:03s or low 2:04s, it would be safer and it was unlikely Henrik would catch me by the end of the race. And so, that's what I did and the final 1/3 of the race became very strategic.
For video of the wet race, I will only show the first 2 laps, my fastest white lap of the race (lap 6?) and the final lap.
Sprint Race Results:
1) - jjaisli - Forza G27 - 2:03.02 - 12
2) - mhm66 - enzo - 2:02.22 - 11
3) - arvore - Mandolin Club Racing - 2:03.89 - 8
4) - FINGERSANDTHUMBS - Creative - 2:04.57 - 6
5) - L449KUX - TheRacingElite - 2:05.44 - 5
6) - kemp1010 - MX - 2:05.53 - 4
7) - new_soul - UKOG - 2:04.32 - 3
8) - GTP_Hun - T L Team - 2:03.91 - 2
9) - GTP_bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 2:06.39 - 1
10) - Simcoeace - Mad Dogs - 2:06.61 - 0
11) - tunrupdaheat - ScudEire - 2:05.20 - 0
12) - Firedshot - TheRacingElite - 2:07.38 - 0
Total Race Time - 31 minutes, 20 seconds
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Final (combined) Results from Round 1:
1) - mhm66 - enzo - 37
2) - jjaisli - Forza G27 - 32
3) - FINGERSANDTHUMBS - Creative - 19
4) - GTP_Hun - T L Team - 18
5) - arvore - Mandolin Club Racing - 17
6) - new_soul - UKOG - 14
6) - kemp1010 - MX - 14
8) - L449KUX - TheRacingElite - 10
9) - tunrupdaheat - ScudEire - 8
9) - GTP_bullie77 - Lusitania Racing - 8
11) - Simcoeace - Mad Dogs - 6
12) - Firedshot - TheRacingElite - 4
From some of the grumblings and rumblings taking place after the event, it seems like the transition from the 348 Challenge to the 355 Challenge has not been a happy one. But for me, it's as comfortable as an old leather glove. And I'm not just saying that because of my rather lucky points position. The car has always been one of my favorites. And I'm sure before long, others will come to grips with it and it will soon seem like a victory for me, just stepping onto the podium.
That said, I was a bit dismayed to find the car behaved and felt a bit differently than it had in practice, despite not making any setup changes. I wonder sometimes if it's really just me or there's something going on there.
Either way, congratulations are in order for last season's winner, mhm66, already off to a great start with a firm lead after round one. His superior pace was clear, although in neither race did I really try and put up a fight for ultimate lap times, beyond what I needed to do or what I thought reasonably capable of achieving. I'm guessing I could have gone slightly quicker in both rounds but fighting for those few tenths might have left me in the gravel. And I don't think I could have matched Henrik's fastest lap in any case.
New_soul was obviously struggling with his lack of practice. GTP_Hun showing the speed and consistency I knew all along he had and a great showing from Fingersandthumbs, tied with arvore in the final standings.
All-in-all, a very enjoyable event for me, although a bit boring at times considering how many laps I ran on my own. I hope to see you all back for the next round in two weeks, and hope to see a few notable missing people back in the lobby as well.
I had spent a lot of time and put such detailed work in the Patron wording with black lines and shadow. But it took up over 40 layers.
So I had to get rid of most of it. I was under the misguided impression that if you grouped content together it would be treated as 1 layer.
Awesome livery! And very life like. Granted, the shadows and textures are no match for GT5. 
) but never happened... The difference from them was always between 1,5 - 5 seconds. So close, yet so far...
