Hello Racers!

What do you need to get a great, close and really nice race? Thirty cars, divided into 2 classes, 6 hours of time and one of the narrowest tracks you can find on the world, South City Long. This weekend the 2nd race of the Masters of Endurance series took place and again Bernd has taken the time to come up with another fantastic and long report about how T7R mastered this event.

I hope you'll enjoy it. 

Well originally planned as the 1000km of South City Long but due to the possible disconnections and the problems that can cause, it was held as a normal 6 hours race.

The track:

To let you know what is meant when talking about the hairpin etc.

The track in general is pretty narrow and having several slow and tight corners connected to each other making it hard to pass someone.

The only real places to pass someone safety are one the start finish straight, followed by the braking zone to the first corner (T1) or at the end of the backstraight.

Qualification:

The first qualification went really well and we ended on the pole. But the other Teams improved a lot over the week and after the 2nd qualification our driver David "Sparkydave" Pope could only reach the 3rd best starting position for the Race. Good enough because we also know that the starting position is not that arbitrative in endurance racing.

The Start (stint 1):

Jan "Three_Jump" Grüner was our first driver and what can I say? "Oh my God", it seems that a lot of drivers have no idea about single file and double file and rolling starts. The last GT1 driver left a gap of over 5 seconds to the rest to then pull away on the back straight.

Then after the green flag the Core Racing driver braked for no real reason on the start finish line causing our driver to hit his back and to slow down. Then we were on the 7th place.

But Jan quickly passed the 2 guys in front and was back on the 5th place but then he was stuck behind the #29 car of Core Racing, after a little while he was able to pass the prodrive Racing Team #26 but theirdriver pushed Jan into the walls right after turn 2. No big damage was taken and our hunt for positions continued. In lap 6 of this stint Jan managed to overtake, again after turn 2, another driver and was back in the 3rd place.

The rest of the stint is quickly told: In lap 15 the first GT1 cars started to overlap and they continued for the next 17 laps. Jan tried to not let the leading Mercury Racing Team Car #22 and the 2nd Core Racing driver get to much seconds away. He was only interrupted by some well let’s say GT1 drivers who didn’t really always had full control of their fast cars. But our driver did a good job and was only 6 seconds behind the 2nd and 9 seconds behind the leader at the end of the first hour.

Then the leader pitted and we were on P2 and soon after that for the first time on P1 of the GT2 class. Unfortunately our car also needed some fuel and fresh tires from time to time and so Jan had to pit at the end of lap 39.

 Stint 2:

Charles "Exodus" McKowen took over after only the Mercury Car passed us while pitting. Due to our strategy we could hold the 2nd position, by 3 seconds, right in front of the #29 Core Racing Team car. Woohoo.

Oh well then another disaster situation happened. Charles was still warming up the tires and right after the last turn of his 2nd lap he disconnected for no reason. No high pings etc. he just lost his connection to the game server.

What that means is clear. The backup driver had to jump into the car and do the next stint and the MoE race tracker then showed +1 lap for our Team. And if this is not enough because the disconnection happened almost at the end of his lap we lost altogether 2 laps in time.

Stint 3:

Over a lap down and on the very last place Bernd "BBO" Weingart took over and was soon surrounded by a lot of GT1 cars that passed right and left and in front of the hairpin etc.

Then after a short while (I told you we were almost 2 laps down) the GT2 leader knocked on the car trunk and BBO had to let him by. A few laps later Bernd had the first positive experience. He passed the #30 Fusion Racing car and re-lapped the Team.

A few laps later he could avoid to crash into a GT1 car that has spun in the infield after T4 and then the GT1 passing continued. Then the next GT2 car was almost passed but went into the pits. The #29 Core Racing Team also had to pit because the flipped their car in the hairpin.  A short while after that BBO passed the #28 car of TEAMSPORT-ONLINE.

In lap 26 of his stint he crashed right after T1 into the back of the iNf!N!tY*Skills Team car that tried to recover after a spin. "It was hard to see and to expect that there was a car standing, thank god I didn’t picked up much damage when I touched him" Bernd said after the race.

One Turn later the iNf!N!tY*Skills driver spun again but this time BBO could avoid the contact by driving into the space between the opponents car and the famous South City walls.

A lap later the #32 DITTO  Team car was passed and in lap 32 of this stint Bernd passed after a longer fight the prodrive Racing  car #26 on the back straight. But the driver tried to close the door where no door was. He almost crashed both but BBO luckily escaped with later braking and finally passed him on the outside of the last turn.

Some minutes later there was another opportunity to re-lap our Team and the Fusion Racing car was passed. Others Teams took some penalties while pitting and we were on a good way again. At the end of lap 41 and with still good looking tires Bernd pitted and gave room for the next driver.

Stint 4:

After 2 hours and 15 minutes Jan clambered into the car again for his 2nd and last stint of the day. A 3rd stint wasn’t planned because we then would have come over the 45% (There’s a MoE rule that says that 1 driver should not do more then 45% of the race time).

Three_Jump knowed it was the last chance for him to do his job that day and he did. He had quickly a real hard fight with the #24 car from Team XFR but he was still on fresh and cold tires so he had to fight with him for another 2 laps and all he was hearing over the radio was "Go pass him as quickly as you can mate". In the end he did it and without ruining the racing tyres.

A few laps later Jan almost lost the car because the #14 iNf!N!tY*Skills car did not leave enough room while passing and forced him into the walls. Well they got at least a drive through for that after our protest against such action.

 Shortly after that he also passed the next one and in lap 30 of this stint he caught again the driver from Team XFR  #24. After some hard fighting Jan out-braked him at the hairpin and drove quickly away.

At then end of his turn he was thankful for some laps where he had no traffic or passing GT1 cars and he then showed his potential with some constantly fast 1.35.xx lap times and he could bring the Team a few places up in the position list.

Stint 5:

After 3 hours and 20 minutes BBO took the car again for his 2nd and last stint (you remember the 45% rule). An unspectacular stint except in lap 20 where right after T2 a crashed driver was trying to bring his car in the right position and then there wasn’t much room between the walls, his car and our Teams FXR.

A few laps later BBO passed the #29 Core Racing car and he quickly got away from them.

At the end of the stint, now in the 4th place, right after telling the pit crew over the radio when he had planned to pit, another strange thing happened. Bernd lost the connection to the Teamspeak server and without auto reconnect enabled there were some moments of confusion. The next driver didn’t joined the server and so BBO had to do another lap and while driving on the back straight with 200km/h he pressed shift+F4 to leave the full screen mode and the game, then he started Teamspeak again and joined the server and jumped back to LFS (during all that he still gave full pedal to the metal). He only touched the wall a little bit and slowed down but finally he was able to  talk again to the Team. They told him the next driver was ready and that he could enter the pits after the end of the next lap.

Stint 6:

Finally David "Sparkydave" Pope took over for the last one and a half hour of racing.After he warmed up his tyres in the first 3 laps he was hit at the hairpin by the leading GT1 car from Cyber Racing but he could hold the car on the track and only suffered some minor body damage.

A few laps later Dave got used to the passing GT1 cars and managed to do some quick 1.35.xx laps like it was planned but at the end of lap 13 of this stint he was again pushed at T1 by the #03 Mercury GT1 car that misjudged the situation and was way to fast hitting the back of the T7R car. Again with only minor damage to the cars body he escaped there.

A lap later he passed the #26 prodrive Racing car another lap later we noticed that the last accident he was involved did more damage to the car then we saw at first. It looked like that Dave, exactly in the moment he braked and downshifted, was hit by the other car and that caused a little problem with the engine and the gearbox. After discussing it in the Team and seeing that his lap times are almost 2 seconds slower then normal we decided to call him in after only 25 laps.

Stint 7:

After repairing the car and with fresh tires and enough fuel to finish the race Sparkydave left the pits still on 3rd place. We calculated that the Core Racing Team has to pit also another time and now it was a race against the clock. After warming up the tyres and passing some blue flagged GT2 cars Dave was doing his quick 1.35.xx laps again and he closed the gap to the direct opponent seconds by second and lap by lap.

In lap 15 of his stint the Clownpaint Racing car #11 "they said after the race it was caused by lag" misjudged the situation in front of the hairpin and rammed David’s car into the wall.

He then stood transverse on the track in the hairpin and he had to let a lot of drivers pass him till he could hit the reverse gear in and start his race again. The Clownpaint Team got a 30 seconds time penalty after the race but in the end we lost there over 10 seconds. And that with only 50 seconds behind the Core Racing team on P2 in front.

Then Core Racing made a short pit stop and Dave pushed as hard as he could and did one low 1:35.xx after another. He ran into a group of battling blue flagged GT2 cars and lost again 2 seconds but after he passed them the track was clear for another quick fast laps.

And all we could do was telling him over the radio was "Go on and push push push". It was amazing to see how hard he pushed the car then and also that he did a 1:34.xx lap during that time. He was only interrupted by some of the slower GT1 drivers which costed us again some seconds because they were holding him up in the infield section of the track.

In the last lap there was an accident in the last turn and the #29 Core driver was lucky to not get involved then it was clear we will finish on 3rd. And David crossed the finish line exactly 10 seconds behind the Core Racing team. If you now count 1 and 1 together then we lost the 2nd place without any fault. The pace was good and the strategy too.

Final words:

The incident with Team Clownpaint in lap 15 of the last stint were we lost over 10 seconds was a key position and without that the 2nd place would have been more then possible. But it was still great Teamwork to get the 3rd place and we wish to thank everyone in the Team who helped with testing the setups and doing test runs with the drivers.

We also wish to thank our sponsor "500 Servers" for the Game server and for the Teamspeak server they provided us. They worked perfectly like always.

Congratulations to the Mercury Racing Team who won the GT2 class this time and also to Core Racing on the 2nd place. Thank you for another interesting and thrilling race.

We hope to see you at Westhill were in late November of this year the next race will be held. There will be hopefully again some TV broadcasts available.