Ok, after 2 days of rest, and watching the replay, I now have the time (and energy) to post my race report.
Room A.
As most of you know, I was aiming to take part in the GT class from the very beginning, but surcuimstances made me submit an LMP time that seemed to be decent, so decided to go with the LMP instead, cause I had never raced such fast cars in GT5, so I saw it as a great opportunity to try something new. But I have to say that the thought of racing against Adam, PASM, and the rest of the A-room LMP's was kind of frightening to be honest.
But since my LMP quali was deemed (rightfully so) illegal, I had the option of going in to the B race, or quali "from scratch" in for the GT class. It was a simple decition for me since I was aiming for the GT's in the first place.
So, during practice, I had some really good runs, with my best beeing a 2:12.1XX.. So it felt really good prior my quali.
But during warm up prior my quali, I could'nt for my life hit the 12's.. And since I was short on time for the GT quali deadline, I had to get my lap in right there and then. I had just got home from my night shift at work, and was really tired.
So I had no choice but to go straight away.
So I was pretty happy with hitting a 2:12.970 on my first flyer. 👍
A really fun feature was that no quali times was published before the deadline.. It made me really curious, and I even stayed awake until the deadline was reached just to see the times get published in the thread.
So surprisingly, I found myself in pole, which was ofc soemthing I was extremely happy with.
Pre race procedures went flawless, and formationlap as well.
I was supposed to keep a distance to the LMP's so that they should be around the end of Kemmel Straight when I started the GT race, but I was'nt that successful in the timing of that. IIRC, the last LMP was just exiting Eau Rouge when we started, so it was a bit short between the classes, but no harm done really. It was'nt like we'd catch the LMP's at Les Cambes.
The start went really well for me, cause Biffy (in 3rd) got a good jump on Ren-Tec (2nd) prior Eau Rouge, and both lost time there, with me getting on a safe distance instantly. Biffy had a spin, and Ren-Tec was out of my slip.
I reached Les Combes without any threat from behind which is not usual obviously.
So after the start, I could pretty much focus on my own race.
Ren-Tec was about 2 seconds behind, and it was like that pretty constant for the first 4-5 laps. Then, I started to benefit from my early braking, short shiftis and genle steering wheel input which saved me some tyres. So started to pull away.
So around lap 7-8 I was really struggeling to estimate the number of laps we'd race, and how to plan my pit strategy.
I decided to push it really far, just to be on the safe side.
So my first stint was 11 laps iirc, which felt decent since all drivers pitted before me.
But I was a bit worried that my stint was too long.. Really hard to do the math while racing.. 5 minutes stop, the extra fule and all.. It was simply impossible for me to fighure out how many laps we'd end up at around while driving.
I should defenetly have done this prior the race.. But nooo...
I threw in 12 liters of fuel (the amount that comes "free" with each pit), and went out to track again, and because I stayed out so long, Ren-Tec was ahead of me by now.
He was on 3-4 laps old tyres when I entered track, so I cought up to him pretty fast.
And I was thinking that I should stay behind him instead of passing to save tyres and stretch my 2nd stint in to another 11-12 lap stint. Said and done, so when Ren-Tec pitted a few laps later, my rubber was still in good shape, and I was puling 15's on lap 8-10, which was much better compared to the 16-18's duiring my first stint.
So in to the pits for the 2nd time, and this time I fuled up 25 liters, so sat in the pits for an extra 7ish seconds.
And when I came out from the pits this time around (lap 24), Biffy was the one who was ahead of me, and no sign of Ren-Tec (mistake?). So same procedure as the previous stint, but Biffy to chase down instead of Ren-Tec.
It was pretty much the same story, I cought up to Biffy after a few laps, but this time, I decided to not stay behind for too long, cause in the previous stint, following Ren-Tec, I had come to the decition that even tho I was faster in the end of the stint, I lost time overall.. It was a pretty epic pass in all aspects.
It started prior pohoun, and was complete before stavelot.. And the cool part is that me and Biffy was side to side all the way, racing hard, but still no bumps or dirty driving. Super performance there Biffy. 👍
And because I was on better tyres, I quickly pulled a gap, and just kept on pushing.
At this time of the race, I was starting to get an idea of how many laps it was turing up to take to reach the 2:24h limit.
But decided to stretch this 3rd stint as far as possible, so that I could do shorter stints in the last part of the race after the driver change.
I went in to the pits for the 3rd time, and I fueled up a lot more than I really needed to. Perhaps 25 liters too much. So the stop was really long.
5 minutes plus the actual pit (30 seconds), and also 13 seconds too long due to the insane amount of fuel I decided to put in, so it was almost a 6 minute stop.
When I came out on track, I was now behind Biffy and to my surprise, Ren-Tec who had arised form the back. Paul also joined the party from a distance at this point iirc.
At this point, I was pretty sure that we'd do 60 laps before the race was complete, so decided to shorten my pit strategy, cause going from 35 to maybee 61 was to push it too far. Since I still had the advantage, I decided to do 3 more stints of 8-9 laps intesd of 2 13-lap stints.
This hurt me a bit, cause the longer stints I was running in the beginning of the race was now costing me time instead of gaining me a stop.
Doing 8-9 lap stints ensured me to keep a good pace at least, and that was as good as it could get at this point.
I chased down Ren-Tec and Biffy, and exactly when I cought them, they dove in to the pits, so at this point we was pretty much at the same strategy again. So from here, the distance down to Biffy who ran in 2nd was pretty constant. Around 20 seconds.
When I went in for my last pit, I was worried again over my fuel level and decided to put in an extra 25 liters for som reason..
But from this point, I knew I had enough fuel, and that my tyres should be in good enough shape not yo jepordize my position.
All in all, a super good and clean race.
Had only one issue over the entire rce, and that was when Gravitron was about to lap me. We was approaching Blanchemont, and that's probably the worst place to catch up to a GT car if you're in an LMP, casue I'm at 250ish kph there, while the LMP's go thru there well over 300 kph.. Huge difference.
So my guess is that I thought that Gravitron should wait until after, but he did not want to loose that amount of time.. So he went for my outside. I noticed that a tad late, but iirc, I managed to leave enough space, but he was ofc scared of my initial move to the outside, so he just went straight out, hich cost him a good amount of time (15ish sec). Sorry for that.
And it was in general tough to plan when and how to let LMP's past. It was my first race in a mixed class where I was in the slower class, so it was defenetly a new experiance to me. A good one ofc.
I had some moments with Adam, but he quick saw my intentions and passed quick. So no problem really.. Just that I was perhaps a tad insecure since as I said, it was my first time.
Cheers
those are seriously nice shots, Adam! 
uch :
), nice work pal! And finally, congrats to all who took part. Truly a great night for the WRS and solidified it's reputation as a hive of clean, respectable racers 👍
), but as a result of that distraction I really had to hammer down on the brakes to make the corner, almost kept on going right into the wall.
