Well, the first race of the new season is over, and Triple 7 Racing reached the podium after 12 hours of non-stop and close racing. While most of the drivers took their deserved break from LFS yesterday Bernd (BBO) downloaded the whole replay and wrote us a very nice report about how our race went.

I hope you'll enjoy reading a pretty long story. 

Start and 1st Stint

 Jan slowed down a bit to much at the flying start and was soon from 2nd to 3rd Thinking about that some will probably not behave in T1 he was right and two GT2 cars crashed and he was on P1. All in all a clean 1st stint with 27 laps.

In the meantime:
#22 car from Mercury crashed and stranded in the sand and had to pit. The other follower had a tyre blast.

2nd Stint

Jan did a great job and was after some very fast laps soon with 41 seconds in the lead. In Lap 33 he also lapped the first GT2 car # 30 Fusion Racing Team on the track. But in lap 42 the disconnection devil came again and he dropped out. And the dream from the first victory almost ended.
-1 Lap for us, what a pity after such a nice performance by Jan.

3rd Stint

Bernd quickly went online after Jan’s DC
Passed the #25 Zwarte Wind Racing car at T1 after they came out of the pits.  In Lap 13 of the stint he forced the #22 Mercury Car into and error and passed it at T2In Lap 17 he went wide in the left hander right before the oval section and hit the walls a bit but escaped with only little damage.
In Lap 19 of this stint he could catch up with the #29 CoRe Racing car and passed it in the same lap and then #26 Prodrive Racing car was next in the following lap. Unfortunately the passing attempt was in the oval section and the Prodrive Racing car started a counter attack. In the end Bernd almost lost the car while hitting the curb in the chicane at a wrong angle. The tires screamed but he could hold the car on the track but was passed by #26 again. In the last turn of Lap 21 he passed the Prodrive Racing car again.
In the last lap when trying to submit and get some info over the pit radio the worst thing happened. Touching the green and leaving the track after T4. The car spinned around and to not get stuck like the #22 Mercury car did in the very early laps, Bernd panicked, hit the reverse gear in and gave full speed and drove backwards. He escaped the sand pit but went crosswise on the track again and forced the GT1 Mercury car to run wide into the green/sand area.
As if this is not enough while entering the Pits the force feedback on the wheel went off and Bernd crashed into the wall there, not fast so not much more damage was added but another few seconds were gone.

4th Stint

Charles took over and quickly got a DT (Drive Through) penalty for the bad action Bernd had done in the last stint. He completed it in his first lap. In the 6th lap of his stint he could catch the #28 TEAMSPORT-ONLINE car and passed him after some short fighting. In lap 13 of this stint he passed the #30 Fusion Racing Team car. Charles car.
In his 16th lap he also went a bit wide at the same spot Bernd did in his former stint but only minor damage on the car so he could continue his hunt for places. In his 21st lap of the stint he passed again the #30 Fusion Racing car. Unfortunately shortly before the end of this stint Charles was also disconnected from the server.
Again -1 lap for us. What a bad luck.

5th Stint

Bernd quickly jumped on the server and took over the car for the next hour.
The stint was running well and nothing special happened while doing some constant laptimes.
Funny was that the #26 Prodrive Racing car got a DT penalty for accidentally chatting during the race. Then the driver said “I touched F8 by mistake” again with using the ingame chat option. How crazy is that.
In the last laps of this stint I passed some GT2 cars while they pitted or crashed and then after 25 laps I pitted and handed the car over to Charles again.

6th Stint

Charles was passed by the #26 Prodrive Racing car but quickly passed him again. After he was told to not let him by again he was pushing really hard and did some quick laps to get away from him.
A few laps later he passed the #25 Zwarte Wind Racing car steered by one of the guest drivers from the Sim Racing Tonight show. Then after some laps he out braked the other broadcasting star from Game-TV who was driving the #28 car for his TEAMSPORT-ONLINE endurance Team. He ended his stint after finishing the 25th lap with a nice 2:20.xx in the 2nd last lap.

In the meantime:
With all the good driving and passing from our Team in the last 5 and a half hours and seeing that some teams have some, compared to us, slower drivers onboard or they always have to pit earlier then us, and we moved up in the positions list from last to 4th and then to 3rd place we really had the hope we can still reach the first place again.

7th Stint

Jan took the car again and was quickly passed with his full tank by a very light #22 Mercury car. The pit radio said don’t worry they are a lap behind so just go on with your normal speed to save some tires. 6 laps later Jan passed the #29 CoRe Racing car. Then he did some consistent laps only disturbed by lapping GT1 cars and finally he passed the #26 Prodrive Racing car in his last laps of this stint.

8th Stint

Unfortunately Basem forgot that it takes some time to enter the server (because of the auto download of the skins) and so he was entering the race too late and Jan couldn’t change the driving seat with him so he had to do another hour of driving.
But being on the overall 2nd place at this time he had no problems to do some extra laps.
With passing the #25 Zwarte Wind Racing car and others we finally reached the 1st place again after 7 hours of hard fighting.
Jan quickly gained second by second and led the field in the end by 1 minute and 6 seconds.
After some short time on the grass the #28 TEAMSPORT-ONLINE car was back on his tail but he could stand the pressure and didn’t let him by.
After 24 laps he went into the pits to not risk a tire blast and because we already calculated that we still stay on P1 after the pit stop.

9th Stint

Basem went onto the server in time and was still over 30 seconds in front. After warming up his cold tires and doing two laps the disaster happened. He hitted the chicane curb and the car were uncontrollable followed by two complete rolls then he landed on the roof. The only way now was entering the pits to get another -1 lap.
The lead was gone and we were back in 5th then.
After starting the stint again and doing some laps he was soon back doing some good times around the track but then again in the corner after the chicane he lost the car and hit the wall. Almost 25%  damage on the left side of the car made the driving then not easier. But he decided to stay out and drive on.
He needed a few laps to get used to the damaged car and to do some 2:22.xx and also a 2:21.xx lap time again. In lap 16 of this stint he also got into trouble because some GT1 car tried to pass him in T1 where he already was. But he could hold the car on the track after that.
In lap 18 he passed #28 TEAMSPORT-ONLINE car and then he tried his best but it was not really his day. In the very last lap of his stint he had tyre failure and the left front tyre blasted. He managed it to make his way back into the pits and now Bernd had the pleasure to do another 25 laps.

10th Stint

Only 3hours and 20 minutes left and on the 5th place.
Bernd started his driving with some kind of temper because he was disappointed about all the bad luck we had. He was passed by 3 GT2 cars while leaving the pits and immediately started to hunt them. In the first lap he passed the #30 Fusion Racing Team car again and the other car pitted after another few laps he got the #28 TEAMSPORT-ONLINE car in front and passed him but in the chicane he was passed again and then the position fight started again.
Followed by three (not amused) GT1 drivers that couldn’t pass because both GT2 cars were fighting side by side through the T2/T3/T4 section. Then Bernd let them by and started another attack after the chicane and passed the TEAMSPORT-ONLINE car again.
The rest of this stint is quickly told: Nothing special happened except that Bernd passed a car in the pits and almost missed the very last pitting place.

11th Stint

Our MoE Manager Jan decided to let Charles do another stint and so he entered the car and the pit stop was short enough and he came out of the pits in front of the other car that was doing his pit stop.
After some normal lap Charles started to do some very early fast laps with a full tank till he had a little ride through one of the sand bunkers. But no suspension damage was made. Then Charles drove on with that car body damage and started to do one fastest lap after another. Holy Cow Jan and Bernd couldn’t believe it. Charles did half of this stint or better 13 laps with 2:21.low.
This man really had the pace

12th Stint

Jan decided to let Charles do another hour and after some radio talk it was clear.
He felt fit and was hot enough to do another 25 laps. Another firework of good lap times later in the 11th hours of the race T7R was back into the 3rd position and tried to reach the Team on P2. They were to far away but maybe they will have to pit again or have a crash or a tyre blast.Charles did everything (including the 2nd best fastest GT2 lap time) to reach them.
One fantastic lap after another, so many 2:21.xx in a row and some 2.20.xx also. What a brilliant job mate.
At the end of his stint he was only a car length behind the #24 car from Team XFR and while trying to pass him there was some paint changing going on. After trying for another 2 laps to pass him and he closed the door wherever he could Charles went wide in T1 but could catch the car before hitting a wall.We knowed we had to pit for another time and so he decided to choose the save way and don’t risk the save 3rd place. A few laps later he had to pit for the last time.

13th Stint

Only 37 minutes of the 12 hours left and Bernd took the car over for the last few laps.
Jan calculated in his famous excel sheets the remaining fuel load and told the pit crew how much was needed.
Bernd started to push from the very first lap and the tires almost overheated then he noticed that we maybe will run out of fuel (looks like Jan er I mean Excel miscalculated there something).
He then tried to do some slow laps to save some fuel but the saving was not enough and the others calculated if he can go for a splash 'n dash. And the advantage was big enough and so he went into the pits 2 minutes before the race was over grabbed another 3 litre of fuel and finished in front of the follower on the 3rd place for the Team.

CoRe Racing won, Team XFR was 2nd and TEAMSPORT-ONLINE 4th.

Last but not least:

It was another nice LFS experience not only the driving and reaching the 3rd place but also the Team spirit that was on in the weeks before the race.
And also the communication via TS worked very well. I really liked how the info was communicated over the radio.And there was also during the race a good Teamwork going on. One checked the distances, the other one was calculating fuel stops or compared the lap times with other drivers etc. etc. That was great and worked very well.

Good job everyone.