The first 2 races of the Grand Touring Amateur League are over, so it's time to give you guys a brief summary about what happened and how we did. You won't be too disappointed.

Race 1

The first race was held on one of the oldest tracks in Live for Speed, Blackwood, but to spice things up a little bit we drove in the "wrong" direction, including the now very tricky first corner downhill left-right-combination and the tight chicane at the end of the backstraight. And to add even more surprise we decided to have a nice chap from F1RST racing on board for the season to introduce him to the world of endurance racing, Tommy Østgaard (Tomhah).

The Qualifying turned out to be a nice surprise as Tommy beamed himself around the track and was stopped with a freaking fast 1:10.50 (see the lap on youtube) which put us on pole with a +0.27 s gap to the next car.

The Race itself started rather difficult for us. It was supposed to be a simple rolling start where the leaders (us) gave the limited speed of 80 km/h and go full throttle once the green lights go on. But not all seemed to have realized that and so K. O'Keefe staring on 2nd made the first jump start of the season, but he wasn't the only one. Over the first laps we lost some more positions and ended up on xth place. To make it even more difficult for our driver Tommy he had quite a bit of a struggle with the windy conditions making the car slower on the backstraight, but more tricky in the downhill T1-2 complex. But fortuna was on our side for this race and nearly by the end of the first hour there was a Safety Car period which allowed us to make an earlier pitstop and allow Charles to take over while loosing nearly no positions at all but catching up again to the race leaders who didn't pit. Charles was able to keep up with the lighter cars in front and therefore putting us back in the lead while fighting off the attacks from behind. For the last hour Tommy took over again to finish what he started, and boy was he fast while still having Schnieders from n!faculty doing his very best and keeping the gap around 2 seconds.

Race 2

The 2nd race of the season was being held on the longest and probably also most challenging one in LFS, Kyoto Grand Prix Long. For this race also the well known "Boothy chicane" was used to prevent cutting from the fast oval part of the track to the slower last sector while also creating a new possibility for take overs.

For this race we didn't put so much effort into qualify as for the first race as for this kind of track you rather have an epic race set giving you an advantage over the whole distance than something that lasts only 1 lap. Our aim was top 10 and that was fullfilled with an 8th place on the grid.

The race started of not so bad with keeping out position and staying away from any T1 incidents. Then the mess started with a car going off road right after the 5th gear right hander under the brigde and comming back on track causing a rather big crash, putting us high in the sky and most of the field rather damaged in the green.

Luckily the race was restarted after this mess which put us back in the game and a chance for a good finish. Tommy was again being fast and very consistent manageing to sneak up several positions and put us in 2nd place handing the car over to Jan a bit after the hour mark who managed instantly to plow through the gravel trap on his very first lap. After that he got back to speed again fought his way back to 4th place while slowly catching up again to 3rd place. And similar to the first race there was a safety car period allowing us again to catch up with the leading cars and doing the last driver change. At least that was how we planned it. Unfortunatly Jan didn't put the car in neutral during his pit stop and for some reason had the throttle slightly enabled which resulted in him continuing and not Tommy. But with the SC still being on track and the field far from being close together we decided to gamble a bit and so Jan entered the pit again the same lap only for the driver change. After the restart fortuna was again on ourt side and with Tommy being Captain Awesome himself driving we managed to get the 1st position back again and were able to keep it until the end with the help of another SC being sent out on track and finishing the race.

All in all not so bad, eh? ;)