rF2 Wednesday August 26th 2009 - Le Mans Series @ Sebring 150

[Ramon van Rijn]

I hope Sander can add some info to my post, as I was going to bed after my stint

Practice was ok, did some driverswap test with Bram and finally did a few laps on the qual setup provided by Sander.

Qual was not ok, only 1 decent lap done. The rest was waste. I though I could do one more lap in starting it before the clock was done, but Bram typed we had to come in without finishing lap, so had to abort it.

Still on pole in my class, which I was pleased for hahahaha, I was also the only car in my class :talktohand:

In warmup I tried the race setup which was ok to me.

Race start was very safe and finally for the first time in LMS I could start without someone else hitting me or spinning right in front of me. On safemode I burned the first fuel tank.
Came into pits and fuel was set to +100L, and for some reason only 70L was put into it by my crew ? They must have thought I was another car. But knew the we had to do a 4th pitstop for about 10-15 mins of racing in the end, so I decided to do an extra stop after 15 mins and again it was filled to 70L, but standing still in pitbox you can actually raise the amount even more, so I could at least exit with 100L (for Sander: could this be due to you had set the initial fuel to 100 and no pitstops planned?)

The last part of my stint was also okay. Did a few mistakes but not that big, and I could hand over the car with 100L, fresh tires and no damage. Watched Sander for some time, and then it was time to get some sleep.
So don't know the final result, but at least we won our class already at the start (being the only one in the class).

I liked the swaps and again the Porsche is such a nice car to drive. Next step is to turn off TC on all tracks for me. On some I drive without, on this one I had it on.

Hope the next longer race will be with more drivers.

PS. the LMPs did a top job in passing me as GT2. No rush passing, all save. Thanks for respecting the slower class appreciated.:th_love:

 

[Daniel Pettit]

Ah cool so you felt hte pressure of our little ECO - Mazda coming up the tail of your beautiful red car?

I was almost empty on fuel at that point but decided to try and play a mindgame with you guys by acting like we had incredible pace and i was pushing max with the boost mapped to level 4 hoping you guys would make a mistake and spin on cold tyres, so we could make our long awaited pitstop and make up some time.

Yes after the half way point yours was the car we were watching, however i was determined to at least do a clean stint to make up for my pace. However the sprint by you at the end was noted by Ric and signalled through to me and i did pick up my pace a bit at the end to respond

 

[Richard Kay]

Thanks for the organisation Bram, RD.

I thoroughly enjoyed it last night, lonely at times but there was always the clock to race and the mystery of other people's pit strategies.

It was quite fun when I took over for the last time to have Bram on hot tyres pressuring me for a couple of laps as I got ours up to temp. Ran a bit deep into a few corners but Dan was excellent in reminding me you were a little longer on fuel and that you may even need two stops to our splash and dash.

Lapping was far easier, as it should have been with a much smaller field and I'd have to say job well done to all those that brought it home, top job.

 

[Mark A Warmington]

final report: qualifying went well, got pole in p2, 2nd overall, only 9 tenths behind Mark's p1 car... at the start, Amir outbraked himself and tapped me, fortunately i saved the car and didn't suffer any damage... from then on, i had 2 good stints, steadily building lead in p2... pace was good, i could even keep up with Mark and Mikael with their p1...

Yeah - I really blew the qualifying. Was almost 2 seconds off my PB .k

next time, we should work out the strategy better, because in our case the switch was basically another pit stop and cost us valuable time...

I wondered where you disappeared to . One minute you are 8/9 seconds back, next minute you are losing time like a falling stone (thought you crashed or something).