Nice event guys, had lots of fun…
Although I do know the circuit very well, it had been a few months since I drove a
GTClub class car on the
Nord. As I think this is best class to learn the track (
well balanced cars and not too difficult to master) I was tracking the event subscriptions for a few days just to see I might had a place if I got early home today.
Qualifying (1st)Felt immediately at home once I hear the "scream" of the Z4 engine high reving, did a 08 which isn’t a bad time for a 2 lap setup at the Nordschleife with the Z4.
Race 1 (1st)Not much to talk about, had pole but Aritan got the better of me when starting (I prefer to be 2nd at the Nord’s grid, inside line is safer).
When I was settling to 2nd and thinking where I was going to overtake my illustrious adversary (and his high top speed vehicle) he had a small distraction at the heavy braking Aremberg area.
From there since I had the event fastest pace was a bit of dull race… did a quick 2nd lap (09) just to make sure no one had any "ideas" :wink2: and took it to the finish. :fwd:
Race 2 (4th)Now, this one was a very different “animal”, had lots of fun within the peloton and also did a few mistakes…
Did a so-so start from 8th, managed to climb one position and after an accident in front climbed 2 more positions. From here the things started to spice-up… :smile-big:
Péter (or me, but I think it was him) was lagging badly and his car jumped forward and backwards on the track so I had to do the all flugplatz area slowly and afraid of bumping into him.
Next since with all the hurry of arriving home and connecting to the server in time I forgot to restart my machine… the thing was since
Saturday without a restart :neutral: I only noticed this in the end of the qualify when I started to observe little freezes on certain circuit areas (
Aremberg, the bridge area...). In the first race it wasn’t important as I was 90% of the time alone, but in the second a few of these GPU mem freezes came in very inopportune times
Yet on the 1st lap, when I was 3rd, after one of those, I saw
Philipe's Viper at
Wehrseifen kind of going straight… right there I though, I bumped him, but wasn’t sure (
I asked as soon as I could) continued (
didn’t wait) but was a bit unsettled with the business (
later Philipe confirmed I did touch him slightly and for it I’m very sorry).
Later at the
karussell as I was distracted looking for him in the GC I went too much on top of the
Yves DB9, had to brake and the car did what in an aircraft is called a
yaw turn and bumped the wall and I had to let the full field go by including
Philipe… so, as you can see, there is justice
All this might sound bad but actually it was quite fun, since from the back of the field I now had to do the best I could… it was fun to tackle with many of you guys (
thanks), sorry to
Ivo because of that small touch at
Metzgesfeld but my
Z4 understeer little too much for what I was expecting. Let him go by and return later to my charge forward that in reality could only reach 4th unless some of the front 3 guys had a problem.
With all the bumps, with it the car losing top speed on everyone of them, I only managed a race pace a little slower than in the first race (12-13) and settled for 4th on what was the most fun race of the evening for me.
Conratulation to
Gary for his overall victory, and also grats to many of you who showed a grate pace but just didn’t had all the luck to your side.
Thanks everyone who participated as it was a very good event on one of my favorit circuts and a final thanks to
RD and
Yves for the server and organization.
PS- Some of you (
me included) were talking about lap times around the
Nord and wish car is faster doing it and so on…
The GTclub class is one of the most “unbalanced” car classes in evo, as some cars have clear advantage over others depending on the track type. Overall if we put into equation race duration (endurance) circuit type (slow, fast, tight…) the class is balanced (over a championship for instances). But here at the Nord (and other long straight tracks) on a sprint race there is a clear winner and it’s no secret that is the viper even if it gives less room for error (for instances ask Aritan at this event).A viper coupe can go around here doing about 55’s wish clearly puts him among the GTS class times as it gives about 30 km/h top speed more than the slowest (top speed) car in the class, the Vertigo (who turns the best in the class). A Z4 for instance can do 02 and can more or less regularly go into 05, a Vertigo has really to make up in the tight parts to be able to do a 09… all these times are qualifying lap times (short laps) not time-attack arcade mode….
Conclusion, in a race a GTClub viper is a real monster to contend with as for instance in the tight parts the vertigo is much faster but can’t easily overtake (the Nord has very few overtaking points and is narrow). On the overtaking areas, the big power hill for instances, the vertigo goes about 250km/h top and the viper goes 280+km/h… the vertigo doesn’t have a slight chance of doing a draft passage, so my final appreciation goes to all vertigo drivers today :wink2:
Sorry for the long post.
