As some of you already know, our team was participating in 16h race. The race started on Saturday, 17.10.2009 (18:00 UTC). After a very long night of racing and minimum sleep, our team finally made it to the finish line, with smiles on our face.
It was quite lucky that our team even got to race, because we somehow forgot and missed the qualification, but the admins of 16h race were so kind and let us race without any qualification.
Thomas Vermeire (willem-racer) started the race for 4SRT and drove 1h and 10min, after which he was changed by Jarl Teien (aroX). Jarl Teien had small difficulties in the beginning. He was not able to get use to the race, but when he found his pace, he was able to do good lap times, and also making the fastest lap time for our team.
After that, Kristóf Kerekes and Niko Puntola continued the race by overtaking the driver position.
Later, when K.Kerekes was driving his 2nd stint, he was supposed to be overtaken by J.Teien, but Jarl went to sleep and woke up many hours too late, so there was nobody to change K.Kerekes,. That's why he had to drive 6 hours straight., and just when he was about to retire , Niko came and raced the last 1,5 hour of the race.
Our team almost didn't have any practice, since we only found out that we are racing 4 days before, I practiced no more than 100 laps. That was also the reason for slower lap times and few crashes, but we did what we could and I appreciate the work done by my teammates, since I wouldn't be able to race that long, myself.
We finished 18th from the GT 2 cars, after starting ~ 34th. The overall position was 39th.
We sure had fun, and are planning to participate next year. But next year we will try to organize things earlier and have some practice before the race.
Thanks for the organizers, broadcasting, commentators and drivers. The huge event was organized very well, without any major problems. It was fun, and thanks to all four 4SRT drivers.