AC RDEC Round 4 @ Le Mans - Sunday 11th June 2023

[Douglas Aird]

I'm glad I did it without pissing my pants. I drank a little today especially for the race. Twenty minutes before the end my left foot fell asleep. I'm so glad it's over!

About the race: My mission to leave a Corvette behind worked today. Two retirements in front of me somehow put me in third position. It got exciting again at the end because Douglas caught up a lot.

Now I need a break until September.

Great event!

Great racing with you Henke. Caught you up after the pitstop but messed up the second chicane following you, lost about 10 seconds and had to catch you up all over again. But ran out of laps so finish a second behind. I didn't realise it was for P3, well done.

I had a messy start and thought I'd maybe compromised someone so ended up letting everyone past and had to fight back through. Made another error in my first stint that cost me 10 seconds..

Epic racing over 2 hours.

Thanks to everyone who raced and Brian for organising.

 

[Shed 17]

I'm glad I did it without pissing my pants.

Well, those of us of a certain vintage do have to think about these things, so I had planned for that possibility by locating a bucket next to my rig and practiced pit stop timings, just like in F1.
Now we are not talking Red Bull 1.8 seconds here but with a pit stop taking about 30 seconds I could get headphones, gloves and belts off, out of my rig, do the necessary and back behind the wheel in 28.5 seconds!!!
But thankfully I didn’t need to use that time and stayed put behind the wheel while the crew got to work.
Qualifying second, I had a good start and lead into T1. I thought I would be mugged by those quicker drivers behind but managed to hang on and lead for six laps on mediums, much to my surprise.
Eventually Thomas, Joel and Brian stopped fighting amongst themselves and went by.
I went for a second set of mediums at the first stop as the car had a nice balance and I had a good battle with Laurent for several laps.
With thirty minutes to go I stopped for softs and not only left Laurent behind but managed to close the gap to Brian.
With two laps to go I got a good drive out of the Porsche curves and passed into the final chicanes. But Brian came back out of Tetre Rouge and lead onto the last lap. I had more grip out of Mulsanne corner and challenged Brian up the hill. An error by Brian at Indianapolis gifted me the podium after what was an eventful race.
Well done all for making this an enjoyable race, thanks to the GTE drivers for the clean and predictable passing ( I always seemed to get traffic at the Porsche curves) thanks Brian for setting it up and for the clean battles towards the end.

 

[Kek700]

Every thing that could go wrong did go wrong, in the end got fed up with constantly locking the brakes.
I will give up on cars that do not have abs, or just use circuits that are not so brake dependant.

 

[Alfred Wayne]

Finished today with a couple free places due to a couple dropouts (hope you're feeling better fulvio & thanks for the gearing tip). Didn't have the pace to keep up with the fastest, but kept enough of a gap for a "comfortable" race (as comfortable as a 2 hr stint can be ). Almost saw a glimmer of hope at the end w/Weston's tires going off before mine, but he held on to an 11s lead to finish. Enjoy the trophy

After binging the real race yesterday, I was ready for my 2hr stint and it didn't disappoint. Watching those "vintage" skins on the Audi and Toyota fly by down the straight was very cool

Another great event in the championship. Really fun we can trust each class while driving our own race. Thanks for putting it together Brian and everyone for showing up. See you in the fall at Monza!

 

[davejevons]

That was fun despite many things going wrong for me and ending up last.

Having stayed up way too late watching the real thing over the weekend it was really fun to have an endurance race on the track.

I completely misjudged the strategy and opted for 2 stops on mediums when it was really a one stop race for the GTEs. In practice the ‘vette had felt awful on full fuel and destroyed its tyres very fast but it would have been a lot quicker. starting on 60l did mean I got a flying start as I had half the fuel of everyone else but then I made three mistakes on lap 1 which killed my race. Will I ever learn?!

At t3 I just touched @Douglas Aird going under the Dunlop bridge and we both waited for the pack to go through before rejoining. Then i spun on my own at the first chicane and finally i had a silly crash with @pattikins going into the second lap. Sorry Pat! It could have been a fun race with Pat but sadly my strategy call meant I was 30s off when I did the second stop

I need to get more comfortable with the lack of abs on the GTEs and find a setup or driving style which is more predictable. I was locking up the fronts regularly and I found the ‘vette to be snapping as soon as I went off line. I crashed several times trying to let lmp1s past there - all my own fault. The longer track worked well with the multi class though as there was plenty of space for lmp1s to get past.

Thank you for organising it Brian.

 

[eN1xes]

Finished today with a couple free places due to a couple dropouts (hope you're feeling better fulvio & thanks for the gearing tip). Didn't have the pace to keep up with the fastest, but kept enough of a gap for a "comfortable" race (as comfortable as a 2 hr stint can be ). Almost saw a glimmer of hope at the end w/Weston's tires going off before mine, but he held on to an 11s lead to finish. Enjoy the trophy

After binging the real race yesterday, I was ready for my 2hr stint and it didn't disappoint. Watching those "vintage" skins on the Audi and Toyota fly by down the straight was very cool

Another great event in the championship. Really fun we can trust each class while driving our own race. Thanks for putting it together Brian and everyone for showing up. See you in the fall at Monza!

yes all good ty . my race was only 40m of the 2h in the time i was able to stay ahead of the corvetto's , unexpected as i was thinkin 75% of the performance in the porsche was no way close fight against them in lemans with long straights and 90' degrees corners, i was on the limit , Congratz to the winners and ty Brian as always for hosting Edit : for the rest of the players was a pleasure everyone was keeping the fights clean

 

[Medilloni]

Are the results on Simresults.net lads? (if so, link appreciated)
Congrats to the podium guys, wish I could have made it for this one, looks like a great event

 

[Interslice]

Enjoyed that even if it was tough, particularly the last half hour. First 40 minute stint was really enjoyable. It was really tight battling. Middle 40 was quiet enough.

Paul pitted with 30 to go. I think it was a 20 second lead I had. Usually it would be a case of managing the gap to the end but he was closing fast.. I could tell he would catch me near the end and I would be a sitting duck through the porsche curves if he did. And that's what happened. Tried to push super hard but couldn't get enough of a gap. Not much i could do with him being 2-3 seconds faster. A few mistakes earlier in the race probably cost me that podium. Needed at least one of them not to happen!

Such is racing! Great to have so many battles over a 2 hour race!

Thanks to everyone for racing. A very high standard of driving again from what I could see going around.. See you all for Monzaa!

 

[Allan Ramsbottom]

Had a bitch of a night with a blown tyre to deal with and then found out my Membership had run out,had pretty good praccy times,would have been fun,well on to the next 1,congrats to podiums and finishers...Ohhh @Kek700 brake a bit earlier,your not in your roller skate you know..

 

[Taj Johal]

First of all many thanks to Brian for getting me into the race at such short notice

My plan was to practice over the weekend, but a mate flew in on Friday and well lot's of alcohol was involved
Sunday Evening I wasn't sure if I wanted to race or if my body would let me. But having watched the race on TV got me motivated. I quickly bodged a setup together in 10 minutes offline, Brian did the magic to get me in the race and I lined up at the back on softs.
Everyone else was on mediums.
And then I realised the race was 2 hours.
This was going to be worse than I thought it would be, started to think of excuses to bail, but Brian had made an effort for me so I had to as well.

In the end the 2 hours flew by, I was miles off the pace but enjoyed the challenge of managing the softs for the first stint, really did fell like an endurance race. Just need a day night transition .

The LMP all lapped with consideration, I hope i wasn't too much of a hinderance. On the last lap, Tom and Joel were nose to tail coming into lap me into the second chicane. I didn't want to interfer so just drove onto the side and let them both fly by.

Great racing by everyone, see you at Monza!!

 

[shugsgirls]

Excellent racing all!
I'm pumped to have won, but I know Fulvio and Aki were way faster!
Softs lasted and I was able to stay ahead of Robert, (probably for not much longer)

Bigtime thanks again Brian and see you all at Monza!