Well, another great night's racing, made even sweeter by Ramon's lobby fix - much kudos to the Wizard for that.
The Elite is a funny old brute, full of contradictory, bad news / good news elements, but I love it, and we rarely have a bad or boring event in it.
It majors on immense chuckability, so I decided to throw together some venues where handling was absolutely key - 3 absolutely blinding tracks IMO - Ahvenisto, Cadwell Park & Le Mas Du Clos.
Race 1 - Ahvenisto
The beginning of this was all a bit scruffy as people were in and out due to various things - implementing Ramon's fix, in my case, Windows Update forcing a reboot and hugely slow startup as the new items were configured...
Once we got going, all the extraneous issues just faded away, and we were into the glorious hilly madness of Ahvenisto. Almost straight away, the Elite gave you a direct choice between short or medium gears, and how you would drive. Short was perfect through about 60% of the lap, giving good pull uphill, better drive through drifted sweeps. Mediums gave you that extra bit of top end through the final straight, and 2nd wasn't so short that dropping down into it for the hairpins immediately threw the arse around. Personally I went for the Shorter gears.
A great battle was shaping up with myself, Amir, Croucher & Avi. There was an especially close piece of driving with Amir & myself through the tighter stuff, the 4 or 5 corners before you pass under the bridge, where we were absolutely neck and neck, side by side, but room being given to keep lines, no more no less - absolutely superb Amir - all the time with Croucher absolutely filling my mirrors. That, right there, is what Elite races are about - the Elite is controllable enough to push it right to the brink without ever worrying that you will hit someone else through unruly behaviour by the car/chassis/engine/tyres.
That 4 way battle slowly dropped off, Avi getting a DQ - not sure what for - and Amir having a moment on (if I recall correctly) that extremely difficult downhill left hander. That left me & Croucher nose to tail (him in front at first I think - correct me if I'm wrong), and we started piling in some very quick laps and reducing the gap between ourselves and Warren, especially with his charity gearbox shenanigans
. Croucher & I were so well matched over the entire lap, I suspect he was also on short gears. I managed to get past as he drifted just a touch wide in one of the slower corners, and so I took up the charge against Warren (and Dave who we could now see in the distance). Now - I could well be wrong here, but it felt like Warren was on the medium gears, because the gaps was fluctuating intra-lap in all the same places.
I closed up through the mid speed 2nd & 3rd gear drifty bits, as my powerband was better set up for them (didn't need to lift off and so didn't unsettle the rear as much), but in more traditional 2nd gear corners, Warren was able to brake less before changing down and get better earlier drive out of them (mine was too short to drop into without worrying about locking and throwing the rear around), and had more top end in the straight. Absolutely brilliant stuff. Finished P3.
WD to David, thanks to Warren & Croucher for such a good battle.
Race 2 - Cadwell Park
Had a bit of a stinker in the uphill chicane in the first lap, slightly pushing David wide, so I waited off the racing line for David to recover, not knowing he was already at almost full speed down the escape road, but by the time I saw him I was dead last. :doh:
Began the slog back - I say slog because everyone's times were so close that virtually no major progress could get made without the help of the people in front having an incident. Went past Kris as he just put a wheel on the grass going up the hill after T1, started closing in on Abdul, who suddenly disappeared (finding out later that his daughter woke up and needed attending to) and i started the long and difficult task of trying to run Warren down. I closed up a bit but didn't really make an impact, getting it down from 6 or sec to just under 2 sec, but wasn't really ever going to catch him. Which didn't really matter that much as it was so satisfying to hammer the elite round here. Finished P5, didn't see who won the race but I understand grats are in order to Amir.
Race 3 - Le Mas Du Clos
A new track to the GTL-ers, but one which I've run a couple of events on in Evo - notably the Minis & the Radicals - and one that I suspected would scale quite well. I think I was right there, the Elites driftability overcoming it's lack of outright pace. Funnily enough, I drove the same sort of lines as the Radical rather than the Mini, even though the Radical was blisteringly much faster than the Mini, and in a completely different league to the little Lotus. The Elite felt superb and I felt pretty comfortable. I expected a top half quali (as I generally do quali with race fuel in), but was surprised (and pleased of course) to snatch a cheeky pole.
Got a good if not spectacular start, good enough to stay in front, though. I could see Warren & David again havign a superb little scrap, but I tuned out and concentrated on trying to drive as neatly as possible, which worked for a change, and soon I had a little breathing space.
After seeing the gap slowly grow over 5 or 6 laps from 0.5 to 3.5, my head started working out what mistake I was going to make, and whereabouts on the track, to undo all the good work.
I managed to keep it going, keeping it neat through the little complex in front of the farmhouse, and not drifting too wide in T1, which just kills the laptimes, and indeed the car if you go too wide, as there are some pretty hard tyres out there ready to inflict damage on the unwary. Suddenly I realised I was on the last lap with a lead, and so I nursed it home for the win.
I absolutely loved the Elite round all these superb tracks, and one thing they all had in common is that brilliant thing where, even though logically you know the laptimes are 1.35-1.45 or whatever, each lap simply doesn't feel that long, it's like seconds, and you glance up at the lapcounter and find out that you're on the 8th lap out of 12. That happened twice to me last night, looking up and thinking "where have all the laps gone?"
A simply brilliant night, thanks to all who took part, it's always good to see an event in the sprintpack skins, and the Elite is such a blast to drive round the undulating and complex tracks.
Magnificent :good: