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I ran the Tokyo Endurance in my 0 mile, fresh oil change, super-hard tired 787B last night and today. I'll keep this brief.
I had never touched my second 787B and decided to throw super hards on it and give it an oil change. I don't know exactly what that brings the horse power to, but it was way more than enough. I was 9 laps ahead of second place at the finish.
I took it relatively easy due to the super hards being rather slippery. The first lap saw lots of bumping while I struggled to get a handle on the car and the JGTC crew was nipping at my heals. I couldn't keep it off the walls on anything sharper than a 45 degree turn.
Second lap was much improved, but I was still sliding around. When will these tires go green!?! Oh, midway through the THIRD lap. I wasn't expecting them to be quite this resiliant to wear, but that just meant I was going to get more laps before my pit cycle was determined.
After the tires went green I was riding the line like a bullet train on fresh rails. I was clipping off laps 1:30 average, and even as low as 1:28. Rarely over 1:32 so I was feeling good about consistancy. Glancing at the pack I was about 1/10 of the track ahead of them and knew it would be several laps before I saw them again. Unless they went crazy with the pit schedule.
At lap 22 - 23 I was figuring I could make it another 10 laps minimum before pitting. Two pits for a 100 lap race? WOW! My average lap time came down another second, as did my fastest lap. I'm not exactly sure what it was - something like a 1:27.2xx. It feels soooo goooood to watch those times come down. I wish there was an onscreen average lap time as well. Something that would update every lap.
I passed the field twice by now - they must have been using that crazy pit schedule.
At lap 32 I didn't know if I could make it to 50 so I decided that I would pit on 33 and 66. But halfway through 33 I decided to take the extra lap in on the first cycle. No big deal as these tires don't change much at all in one lap. So 34 it was. I actually entered the pit right behind the second place car - bumped him as he entered his stall. This is where I went to bed for the night (: The next day he came out with a bigger lead than when we entered and I didn't get to draft him to the corner.
I did get quite a few nice drafts on the straights. Unfortunately that usually came on bad laps and only got me back to my standard times. I had a few that went crazy and ended up in the 1:35 range - playing pin-ball in the third quarter of the track usually puts on the seconds (: Here I went to help a friend move and came back just an hour ago to finish up the race.
I was desperately hoping for a sub 2:30:00.000 finish time and I calculated an average of 1:29.250. I knew I could get those times, but could I get them now. The oil light was on somewhere around lap 72 and I was down an unknown amount of power. Lap after lap I clipped off 1:30s to 1:32s. I couldn't get under 1:30 to save my life. If I got a good start then I'd slam into the guard coming out of the red paint. If I got a poor start I'd be shining clean the rest of the lap - and fast too! Such frustration.
I finished at 2:33:35.143. I know I can do it faster, but there's no way I'm going to sit through two and a half hours of that skreetching rotor motor again.
Tokyo is one of my favorites. And the AI cars for this race are some of my favorite cars too. I might throw together an RX-7 LM for this, or maybe an S2000 LM and see what I can come up with.
Subtracting 20 seconds per pit I come up with 1:31.75x as my lap average. That seems high, but I guess I did have some woppers in there.
I had never touched my second 787B and decided to throw super hards on it and give it an oil change. I don't know exactly what that brings the horse power to, but it was way more than enough. I was 9 laps ahead of second place at the finish.
I took it relatively easy due to the super hards being rather slippery. The first lap saw lots of bumping while I struggled to get a handle on the car and the JGTC crew was nipping at my heals. I couldn't keep it off the walls on anything sharper than a 45 degree turn.
Second lap was much improved, but I was still sliding around. When will these tires go green!?! Oh, midway through the THIRD lap. I wasn't expecting them to be quite this resiliant to wear, but that just meant I was going to get more laps before my pit cycle was determined.
After the tires went green I was riding the line like a bullet train on fresh rails. I was clipping off laps 1:30 average, and even as low as 1:28. Rarely over 1:32 so I was feeling good about consistancy. Glancing at the pack I was about 1/10 of the track ahead of them and knew it would be several laps before I saw them again. Unless they went crazy with the pit schedule.
At lap 22 - 23 I was figuring I could make it another 10 laps minimum before pitting. Two pits for a 100 lap race? WOW! My average lap time came down another second, as did my fastest lap. I'm not exactly sure what it was - something like a 1:27.2xx. It feels soooo goooood to watch those times come down. I wish there was an onscreen average lap time as well. Something that would update every lap.
I passed the field twice by now - they must have been using that crazy pit schedule.
At lap 32 I didn't know if I could make it to 50 so I decided that I would pit on 33 and 66. But halfway through 33 I decided to take the extra lap in on the first cycle. No big deal as these tires don't change much at all in one lap. So 34 it was. I actually entered the pit right behind the second place car - bumped him as he entered his stall. This is where I went to bed for the night (: The next day he came out with a bigger lead than when we entered and I didn't get to draft him to the corner.
I did get quite a few nice drafts on the straights. Unfortunately that usually came on bad laps and only got me back to my standard times. I had a few that went crazy and ended up in the 1:35 range - playing pin-ball in the third quarter of the track usually puts on the seconds (: Here I went to help a friend move and came back just an hour ago to finish up the race.
I was desperately hoping for a sub 2:30:00.000 finish time and I calculated an average of 1:29.250. I knew I could get those times, but could I get them now. The oil light was on somewhere around lap 72 and I was down an unknown amount of power. Lap after lap I clipped off 1:30s to 1:32s. I couldn't get under 1:30 to save my life. If I got a good start then I'd slam into the guard coming out of the red paint. If I got a poor start I'd be shining clean the rest of the lap - and fast too! Such frustration.
I finished at 2:33:35.143. I know I can do it faster, but there's no way I'm going to sit through two and a half hours of that skreetching rotor motor again.
Tokyo is one of my favorites. And the AI cars for this race are some of my favorite cars too. I might throw together an RX-7 LM for this, or maybe an S2000 LM and see what I can come up with.
Subtracting 20 seconds per pit I come up with 1:31.75x as my lap average. That seems high, but I guess I did have some woppers in there.