Track Map
As always, practise for this race started in the week after the previous one (Tunlanta for those who can't remember). I quickly crafted a setup (basically the gear ratios) for clear conditions, and soon modified it for ultra-long lasting. My pace in the first week suprised the top drivers in mye team (Gav and Rich), as I was never more than a few tenths off them in our online practise sessions (Look to the next post for an onboard lap ^). Heck, I was even leading one of them at one point! Unfortunately this is about the time my PC started acting up. Fortunately I got it up and running the Tuesday before the race, and managed to get back into the groove after my (rather miserable) NGPLS race.
By now the rest of the team had pulled away in terms of laptime, but I was still within about a second of the quickest times, and I was consistent! The time sheets in practise showed mainly 1:34s in clear weather and 1:32s in cloudy. All in race trim of course, so I (as well as the rest of the team, were) was more than ready to take on the 6 hours ahead. But I was also due for another team event, on pretty much exactly the same time as the race itself. Namely a floorball match, in wich I had to take part due to our team being rather down on numbers. So I qualified and did the first stint before dashing off to the game, but here's the qualifying, plus the first stint, in a bit more detail:
I put the car in 8th on the 19-car (or so) grid. Quite impressive if I do say so myself. Got away well without losing any positions and settled nicely into a good rythm, with a 2 second buffer down to- and up to the next cars. I passed a handful of spun off cars littered by the roadside every now and then, and could have found myself in 5th had I not hit one of them. That accident resulted in me being thrown up onto the barrier with nothing to do but call the tow truck, and wait the minute it took to bring my car back to the pits. I Re-entered the track, and I was down to 18th and a lap down. Within half an hour I had clambered my way up to 13th before handing the car over to my teammate "Koop", and rushing off to my match.
Well home a few hours later, and we were in 5th, the VTR2 car was in 2nd and the VTR1 car had lost a gear and crashed because of that. Gav, who was originally going to drive in the VTR1 car, had taken over for Koop and thus saved Koop the agony of a huge stint (or the car just sitting in the pits). After 20 or so laps, I re-took the wheel of our black Jaguar XJ9 and set off for what was going to be my best stint ever. I started off pretty slowly, mainly with 1:35s plus a 1:34 here and there, but gradually made myself feel at home in the 1:34s. Because of Gav taking over, we had reached the minimum amount of required driver changeovers. And since a changeover loses us a lap, I wasn't too keen on doing so as the two cars behind (SFH VROC and Hillcrest Racing) were barely two laps down on me. We all knew they were catching slowly, so I stayed in the car until the end. When driving I never felt particularly nervous, although I can't imagine how Koop and Gav felt, only hearing the occasional update from me via radio.
Hillcrest did a driver change, VROC did a driver change, Hillcrest spun. Hillcrest was now 3 laps down on me, and VROC down 2 due to the fact that they needed more pitstops to do. In the end I trundled home to a very respectable third, in formation with the VTR2 car (white) who came home second. A very impressive drive by everyone in the team, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. Good job guys!
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