NGPLS Autumn 2006 summary

For me, the NGPLS Autumn season started at the second round at Monaco, having missed the first race at Kyalami due to reasons explained in the "summer holiday" post. Due to my awesome memory I forgot to tone down the graphical add-ons for the Monaco race and I found myself having to retire due to the horrendous framerate I was getting. Quite a disappointment after my last NGPLS race here where I romped home to a superb and controlled finish. It went slightly better next time round at Spa-Francorchamps, where I finished a brilliant second only seven seconds behind the winner, from seventh on the grid. I had a similar performance in the next round at the fast and twisty Solitude track, finishing third from fifth on the grid. At Silversone I was faced with the largest grid of the season, with 19 drivers squeezing onto just one server this time (we usually split into two servers due to 19 drivers being the maximum server capacity for GPL). It was an average race, nothing special, and I finished pretty much in mid-pack in eleventh after starting fourteenth.

Then we moved on to Le Mans Sarthe, a race I was very excited about because I love the track. Unfortunately I suffered a catastrophic mechanical failiure (unvoluntary disconnect) and was forced to retire, salt in my wound after being involved in a crash early on the first lap. Then it was my favourite track of them all, the Nürburgring, the Green Hell. For the first time in my NGPLS career I managed to pre-qualify for the top server (more than 19 drivers, remember) but in hindsight it wasn't any fun at all. I was all on my own near the back of the 11-car field and came home in eighth after starting ninth. The NGPLS circus then made a stop at the Snetterton circuit where I had yet another mediocre race where I both started and finished in seventh. For the final race of the season at Watkins Glen we had another full fielded single server where, considering that, I did rather well to finish tenth from fourteenth on the grid!

My three non-finishes (one of them being the DNS at Kyalami) were my three results scratched from my total points. I ended up in fifteenth overall, not bad at all and pretty much where I'd expected to be. On the whole, not counting the retirements, I had a pretty stable season with a few good results which I am quite proud of.