Presto GP - Pacific Series (RACE 07)

[Mitchell Smith]

I'll be there.

 

[Brendan Crosby]

ugh, very rough race

I had a very busy week and didn't get any practice at all during that time so I knew I wouldn't be very competitive from the start. Set a time that held me in sixth for most of the qualifying session until I banzai'd my last lap, improved by 5 tenths, setting a new personal best and narrowly getting me into p5. The start of the race was an absolute disaster and I take full responsibility. I was right up a ferrari's gearbox (David Noden?) heading for the braking point, I may have taken a peek right when everyone braked so I think I scrubbed the first ferrari and was sent careening toward another ferrari which turned out to be Christian and sent him into the wall with a flaming engine. This made me doubt whether I should continue or not being that I was clearly making a hazard of my self, as I have done before :facepalm: When everyone decided to do a restart I decided that this wasn't going to deter me and I went along with it. I had some pretty good races early on in the race but then during the high speed section I knocked a kerb and got damage so I had to pit. I don't know why but every time you select a different fuel load as you're going in to pit you don't get any fuel on the next pit. The next pitstop after an uneventful stint I didn't get any fuel at all, I tryed to back out of the pit and go back in again but that didn't work so my race ended.

I really got to sort out this problem because it's ended my race at least one other time in Monaco. Not a good feeling when you're forced to retire on a technicality. That said I should be able to do next season at least as a reserve driver.

P.S. watching this battle of admins at the time of writing is great

 

[Mitchell Smith]

Proud that in our first season Panther Racing got a Drivers Championship and 2nd in Team Championshp, dissapointed because with David N dnfing, if the kerb hadn't have caught me we would be Team Champions as well. So close but so far, oh well.

But all in all, good season. Can't wait for the next one, I'm bloody exhausted can you tell? What a race . Gratz Chris and also Gaetano!

 

[Steve Crossland]

Wow, enjoyed that race immensely.

I had another hard weekend full of gigs & only had 3 hours sleep last night so I was worried that my concentration levels were going to be an issue.

I spent the practice session deciding if I was going to 1 stop or 2 and in the end I went for a 2 stopper and a slowly declining fuel level which meant I would have a faster car after each pitstop.

I had a decent run in qualifying but I was able to find at least another 0.5 in sector 1 alone. Couldn't quite stream a complete lap together & so settled for 4th place on the grid next to my co-admin David Noden. In front of me were the very quick Gaetano Zizzo & Christian Ramlow.

I had a good start and made my way into the first tight right hander but just as I turned in I was hit & careered into the barrier. Christian was Dead and there was multiple damage & so the call was made to restart.

For the restart we decided to run a formation lap in our qualifying spots with Zizzo as safety car.
The start was much better & I think we may be looking to use it in future events at FPPS. Everyone got away fine & then it was a case of seeing just how fast everybody was.

Zizzo disappeared out front with Christian chasing him, meanwhile I was right up behind Mr Noden & trying to pressure him into an error. He was going well until I misjudged his braking point at the end of the first big straight and he was forced into a spin while trying to avoid me. No damage & so I waited for him to regather and pass me by. Someone else managed to sneak by too but didn't stay there long - I think it was David McCradic although I may be wrong.

Anyway, I set about catching D. Noden again and was making good progress. I picked him for a 1 stopper as we had a similar pace in the practice race yet I was faster here... so I passed him as he desperately tried to stay in front and then pushed as hard as I could to try to maximize the gap before my 1st pitstop.
I came out in 4th place behind David again and tried to stay as consistent as I possibly could, turning lap after lap with in a few tenths. I had the odd little mistake but managed to keep it all together nicely.
The gap to David was around 30 seconds and I was slowly chipping it down. It was at around 25 when he came in for his pitstop.

I pushed hard because I wanted to be able to pit and then come out either in front or close to David for the final run to the flag.

When I pitted, I sat & watched as David came past & by the time I got out I was around 18 seconds behind. I was a little disappointed as there was 19 laps to go, which meant I needed to make up at least a second per lap.
As luck would have it, David lost time at least twice in the ensuing laps & I found myself within grasp of his exhaust fumes. I could see his car and it was all I needed to push harder. Once I got to the back of his car I just wanted to pressure & try to make him force his own mistake. Once I went for a pass but an Wide & spun. He took back the position. Christian had a problem somewhere & all of a sudden we were fighting for 2nd position.
Then, in the final 5 or six laps I was right up behind David when he got it wrong in one of the tight right handers, taking to the rumble strip. I slipped by & put my head down.

Watching the time gap open, I decided to ease up a little and settle for the 2nd position. Just wanted to make it to the line without incident,.

I was very happy to finish this on the podium & very thankful to avid for such a monumental chase. This was the highlight of my season.
Very happy. Also surprised to see my team mate behind me.

So, another season out of the way & lot more memories for the mental photo album.

Looking forward to some more racing next season & also for some fun races in between.

Thanks to all for being a part of Formula Pro Pacific this season, and especially to David Noden who stepped up & took the reins midway through. David will be more at the forefront again next season I hope and I can take more of a backseat role perhaps.

Congratulations to our new Champion and also to Zizzo who took his maiden win today.

 

[Steve Crossland]

Yeah it's ok to say that but the rules are black & white. It is only tricky when you are going for extra tenths.
If we allow one corner to slip through the net then it opens the door for almost any track.

 

[Steve Crossland]

Ok Guys,

It's time to get some ideas for FPPS off season fun races to keep our community in touch & add a bit of flavour to the racing.

So, post your ideas and we'll check em out.

Tracks and mods must be legal - Generally anything available from RD should be fine.

 

[David Noden]

I thought I would let myself collect myself together before writting the race report

I went into the race with a bit of practice but not as much as I'd like due to busy time of year with work and christmas parties etc... I was feeling pretty confident leading upto the race with a solid practice race on the Wednesday night before, trying a 1 stop strategy on hard tyres, I had good pace and won the race, so I thought I was set for the Sunday race..

Qual - 3rd
Qual started well for me, my 3rd or 4th lap around I managed a PB of 1.32.2 which I was extremely happy with.

Race - DNF
I went into race with the mind set of doing my 1 stop strategy, keeping off the kurbs, wall and making the car last the distance with brakes.. I knew this track was very demanding on front brakes as in the practice race 3 out of 5 people had brake failure - the other 2 crashed out..

I had my brake ducts set to 7 which is the max, I also found out during the week that you could adjust the brake disc and pad thickness, this may have been my downfall though.. as thinking about it after the race thicker discs would take longer to cool down

I was sort of hoping that a couple of the quicker guys hadn't done long practice races and didn't know the brake situation as this would give me an edge over then come later in the race..

The first race I was all pumped to have a good race, got off the line well and came up to turn 1 and all of a sudden Bredan Crosby came flying up the inside and took out Christian Ramlow and I thought wow, theres the championship all I need to do is finish... But then I saw the words restart being typed and even though I wasn't for the descission at the time, it was the right choice and I'd hate it if it was me being taken out on the first corner..

So restart 2 and we'd agreed on a rolling start, the restart put me out of sync especially with the formation lap - I hate trying to heat up tyres so I would've prefered a proper start but it wasn't to be...

At the end of the first lap I was sitting behind Christian and he went wide coming out of the last corner leading into the restart, I had a glimmour of hope to get past but he collected himself and pulled away. Straight away Gaetano and Christian started pulling away, Steve was right on my arse keeping me on edge, I wasn't feeling comfortable in the car and didn't have the grip I was used to... My lap times were 1 second slower than usual and the 2 front runners were pulling away incredibly quick to my amazement, alot quicker than I antisipated.

I made a slight error coming out of a turn had to go across the kurbing and that was enough for Steve to take 3rd position, I was trying to keep up with me but I soon realised he must have been on a 2 stop strategy instead of his 1 stopper from the practice race.. I pushed on tyring to minimise the gap between myself and the front 3, by about lap 10 the front guys were about 30 seconds in front of me and I was quite worried as a 1 stop was not going to work with their pace..

I didn't know what to do, so I just kept on pushing and decided to stay on my 1 stop strategy and just try and finish the race. Pit stops came around for the front runners, to my surprise Christian pitted very early and ended up doing a 3 stop strategy, Gaetano and Steve both pitted on the same lap, this put me back in 3rd position in front of Steve after his pit stop, I was alot closer to Christian and Gaetano but again the just pulled a gap so quickly which was smashing my confidence on a good result and taking out the drivers championship.

I eventually pitted on lap 29 and filled my car to finish the race, a new set of hard tyres and imediately I did my quickest lap for the race, dunno what happend to my pace in the first stint, I was hit in the rear by Steve but there was no damage reported so not sure why the slower pace.. Finally I was hitting some decent lap times in the 2nd stint, I was starting to maintain the gap to the front runners while they pitted again. Once again Steve and I were close and I took back 3rd position while he was in pits but with his pace it didn't take him long to catch up to me.

It was starting to get late into the race around lap 45 and I was started to expect (hope) for some guys to have break failure, I thought Gaetano and Christian for sure as they would've been pushing their brakes really hard doing the pace they were setting.. On lap 50 Christian slowed right down and I passed him, I could see him slipping down the order and he eventually said he'd had brake failure on the front and was in the pits watching the rest of the race, at this stage I was in front of Steve but he was catching me quickly and my tyres had gone off a bit..

15 laps or so to go and I was sitting in 2nd position, all I needed to do was keep Steve behind me and I would've taken out the drivers championship, Steve and I had great battles eventually I made a mistake and he passed, then he made a mistake and I passed him back, finally it was my brakes on about lap 60 that started to fail, I could see the temps of them rising above 2000 degrees and cooling down so quickly, I knew this was a bad sign as my brakes were on their way out. I had to start braking really early every corner and still I sometimes couldn't pull up in time to take the corner, this allowed Steve back past and motor off ahead pulling a very quick gap between us.. I was now praying for Gaetano or Steve (sorry guys) to have brake failure and hit the wall, all I was trying to do is stay on track and finish the race as I was more than 1 lap in front of Noel behind me..

I moved the brake bias as far rear as I could to help me slow down, but eventually my front brakes completely failed, I over shot a corner and tried getting back on with not enough pace and got wedged on top of a kerb, I was so furious and couldn't believe what was happening... I ended up cooking my engine trying to get off and that was it...

I don't know what is worse not finishing a race to take the championship or finishing in 3rd and loosing the championship by 1 point...

So that was the end of that, I was quite annoyed at myself at the time but soon realised that there is always next season..

Well done to Christian Ramlow on taking out the FPPS Drivers Championship, we had an amazing battle against each other all season whether he was racing for Spygate Racing or Panther Racing...

Congrats to Mitchell Chapman, David Street and myself on taking out the Constructors Championship.

Thanks to all who participated in the season and making a great league, thanks to Steve Crossland for running the show and a huge thanks to Nicolai from the Euro league who is the guy behind the scenes for us that setups up all our practice and race servers.

See you all over the xmas break and next season no doubt.

 

[David Noden]

Season Thanks

Post up if you want to thank anybody.

I'll start


Just want to make a special thanks to Nicolai Nicholson from the FPES league, he runs all the PrestoGP servers at his work and setup all our practice races and race events all year long, he's been a great help putting up with me emailing him 3 times a week to setup servers, add weather files, change passwords etc all without any issues or anything.

If it wasn't for Nicolai we wouldn't have a server to be racing on, so please show your thanks towards him.

Thanks for Steve to start up the season and allow me to come on board to help out as its tough doing all this work by yourself, even with 2 of us its still quite busy and alot to organise..

Thanks to Dave Stephenson for sending out all my practice race PM's it helps to get that support to allow more drivers know of practice races and it did boost our numbers slightly for them, so thanks again mate.

Thanks to all the drivers for turning up to the races week in week out, I know its hard sometimes with RL commitments etc but we all stuck at it and had a great time doing it, you guys are the ones that make this league.

Finally thanks to RaceDepartment for allowing our community to be apart of RD and use there forums as a means of communication and organisation between all of us.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, I'll see you in the off season for some fun races and next season for FPPS.

 

[Mitchell Smith]

Already sent my PM. We just need to work on tracks now, Steve. But the format is simple.

I'm actually thinking about what David said, the 911 is 4 seconds quicker then the Audi GT. So maybe we can run an entire Porche race seperately.

 

[Mitchell Smith]

Those kerbs were ridiculous mate, I got wedged on the same one. Not your fault.

 

[Mitchell Smith]

The diffence is, I posted the fastest S1 time of all the Pacific guys and I did it legally, if i went over the kerbing I lost time and the Marshalls went nuts at me. On another track maybe you'd make a gain of it but not at Hockenheim.

 

[Mitchell Smith]

Great idea Dave, I'd like to thank my teammates, David and Chris, for being part of such a good working unit, Steve, your just a legend. I don't know where I'd be if you weren't driving that slow little tin top that day, .

Dave N, for all your hard work and fantastic driving thank you, Brendan, again in the 2nd half of the season you drove absoloutely incredibly, especially at Interlagos, well done mate and thank you.

Nicolai was very helpful and informative to me personally, so thank you for that, also thank you to everything you've done for the series. Also it's sister FPES.

I should give a special mention to Gaetano Zizzo... To my knowledge he is the only person to race at all 9 events. VERY well done, this is the sort of consistancy and a role model we should take into next season!

Well done everyone, I'll see you next, most likely driving a Radical..

 

[Noel Spence]

A big thanks to nicolia and all the other admins for supporting the presto league , these men must be made of steel to do all there tasks to keep us happy , And to steve and dave for all there work to keep the pacific going , hopefully we will have a few more people next year . And lastly to all the members of all leagues , good racing men and girls:eek:

 

[Steve Crossland]

I would like to Extend Thank you's to Nicolai & RD Admins who have helped us over the past two seasons since we switched to F1.
Also A huge thanks to David Noden for taking over FPPS at the crucial time in order to keep the league running smoothly. Without him it would have probably not been much fun at all for anybody, so David, big thanks to you mate.

Thanks to my Faithful Team Mate Noel for having a great attendance record again & just for being a good bugger
Also to all Presto members, especially the ol' boys who've hung around since it's early creation way back when... It still is the best community for racing and we are really becoming an extended family rather than bunch of boys who play racing games.

 

[Günthar Rowe]

good to see the mod is still working out. Looked like an exciting season from start to finish!

 

[Steve Crossland]

Yes Gunthar, and of course to you mate for helping to make the MOD we all love so much...

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

Thanks for the thanks, and thanks to Gunthar, Steve, David, Daimian and all the racers who together breath life in our leagues.

As mentioned earlier being part of Presto GP is free of cost, but I noticed that Daimian need some help to keep the PrestoGP Updater going (he has been paying for this out of his own pocket for much more than a year).

According to Daimian one does not need to donate much, even 5$ is helpful. I usually do not donate anything (as I pay the bills for the Presto Servers), but I think I'll make an exception for Daimian, as I have been impressed by his generousity (he isn't active in our league but still provides us with the PrestoGP Updater).

I would have done the same with Gunthar if he asked, he like Daimian is "a giver", again I am touched by these acts of unselfishnes

Here is a link to Daimians post about this:
http://www.racedepartment.com/formula-pro-series/30260-prestogp-updater-5.html#post691563

 

[Steve Crossland]

OK Guys, I have sent a PM to Nico requesting a server for our first fun race to be held this sunday, December 19.
QUALIFYING STARTS AT 22.30PM gmt WHIC IS 1 HOUR EARLIER THAN normal FPPS race.

Download Mod here = http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/race-series-cars-5/porsche-911-gt1-1998-2572/
Track = Valencia
Qual = 30 mins
Race = 30 laps x2
Weather = standard

Who wants in?

1. Steve Crossland
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[Mitchell Smith]

I'm there.. Of course I'll be there..

 

[David Noden]

not sure if i'll be able to make it... gotta take the misses out, may be able to make the start of it though..

I recon the Ford Escort mod would be alright??...