What an awesome weekend of racing!
A big thanks to Aza for all his help on Sunday morning and during my pitstop. We nearly missed the start as I didn't expect our race to be so early, we made it to dummy grid just on the 2 minute siren! lol! And Aza saved the day with the rear view camera, I forgot to put the memory card in so he made a last minute dash back to the garage to get his and had it all back in and on just as we started pulling out of dummy grid! Well done mate. And yes the 1GB card did record also, so we have the whole race both front and rear view
We got a pretty good start and could have passed one of the MX5's in front, but I decided to play it cool and tuck in behind into turn 2. I haven't raced with these guys before so I don't know how good they are or how well they check their mirrors. With a 1 hour race I didn't want to get knocked out on the first lap. I passed him on the straight next time around, then a second MX5, then the Lotus was on our tails already (after only 5 laps!) and while letting him past I snuck in behind him and passed another MX5. So I'm now up 3 places and pulling away!
Time to settle into a rythm. Nope, there's a GT40 in my mirrors, then several Porsches, then another Lotus, then more Porsches, then the leading Lotus again, then... lol! I spent more time looking in my mirrors than I did focusing on my apex points. I managed to keep pulling away from the MX5's though, but my tyres were starting to go off already. We started with too much pressure, was perfect for the first 5 or 6 laps but after that they were too 'hot'. We pitted at about the 35 min mark and I decided to drop 2psi out of each tyre. I didn't realise how long this would take and we dropped 2 laps as a result. In hindsight I should have just lived with it. Immediately I was 1 to 2 seconds faster, but this no way made up for the 3 mins lost in the pits...
I didn't get anywhere near my target laptime, the best I did was a 1:27.3, still faster than yesterday though, and most of the cars were 1 to 2 seconds down on their Saturday laptimes. It must have been 40 degrees on track (it was 30 in the shade in the garage) and there was bits of rubber everywhere being ripped off tyres (u can actually see chunks of rubber being thrown up constantly in my rear view cam!). So track condition was... interesting... lol.
I had 2 big moments, one braking into the esses, I turned a little too sharp and the back stepped out big time. Luckily the FTO is fwd - I just floored the accelerator and pulled her out. If it had been a rwd I would have been toast, would have gone spinning into the infield lol!
The other big moment was going into turn 3 at about the 20min mark. A white porsche had just exited the pits, I had another Porsche and several other cars closing fast into turn 2. Coming out of turn 2 I got stuck in the middle of the road with one porsche passing on the outside and the white porsche fresh out of the pits trying to pass down the inside. Of course he spun, right in front of me! How the porsche on the outside missed him is a miracle. I'm on the anchors trying not to t-bone him in the drivers door, while praying with everything I had that the 3 cars behind wouldn't clean me up! Thankfully I pulled up enough and he rolled off the track so I was able to pull forward and not get hit from behind! Big moment but we survived.
It's a huge achievement just to finish one of these races, there were 9 cars that dnf'd, including some of the best prepared cars including the GT40 & the Ferrari. So to finish and finish intact was a big relief, especially in the conditions. Not bad for a mostly stock FTO! Overall though it was a surprisingly incident free race, several porsches and lotus's spinning out, but no major crashes and no safety cars. Always a good thing!
I'll be posting up video highlights in the next week or so, just need to find some cheap software that does picture in picture, so watch this space
PS: A big thanks also to Glen and all the boys at Kmart Tyre and Auto in North Rocks for all their support. If u need tyres this is the place to go
