LLWS 2010 Round 6: We Take the Lead
FOX at Blackwood GP for 1 hour | February 12, 2010
This race was a very important one for the squad. After it was all said and done we were finally ahead of Concept Racing in the team championship. Simon Murphy, the drivers championship leader, qualified 7th, Randy Young 12th, Travis Mehlinger 15th and Spencer Rose a low 22nd. In the race we all climbed up, some more than others. Simon finished 4th, Randy and Travis finished 7th and 8th, and Spencer 15th.
Our main rivals, CR, had a very poor race by contrast, with Roger Salama finishing 17th and Reint-Jan Hoiting and Adam Pettigrew both DNFing. This allowed us to jump from a 9 point deficit to a 26 point lead going into the final race of the season.
Simon Murphy leads the championship with a 47 point advantage over closest rival Adam Pettigrew. To quote Jonathan Palmer, "Simon Murphy only needs to set a qualifying lap of any time to clinch the title and not earn an DQ. If Murphy does not attend or gets a DQ, Adam Pettigrew must win."
Bring on the Kyoto 200!!
To read Travis's personal race report for this round,
click here.
GTAL 2010 Round 4: Our First Podium!
GT2 Class at Westhill International Reverse for 6 hours | February 27th, 2010
This was also a quite important race for us, but we only knew this after it was finished! After some rather poor luck at South City with a disconnect on lap 9 right after a safety car, we put a lot of effort into this race. Eric Smith did over 1000 laps of practice!
Eric earned 6th place on the grid with a 1:35.01, but was gifted 5th when CoRe's Ken O'Keefe showed up late for the grid, and was yet again gifted 4th when Xcite-LRT-Racing's M. Garbolewski had an unfortunate disconnect before the pace car was pulled in. In Eric's stint he spent much of his time following Sonicrealms and T7R in 2nd to 4th place. He eventually caught T7R towards the end and spun Tommy Østgaard in the first chicane earning us a drive through penalty. Eric handed over the car in 3rd after the pit stops filtered through, though with the DT that would have to be earned back.
New Dimension Racing's Chris Wilkinson inherited the DT after he took over, but only dropped to 5th after the pit stop and DT were complete. Chris joined our squad after doing well in the second test event and realizing how much he missed GTAL. We're quite happy he chose to drive with us as he drove two brilliant stints, handing the car to Travis Mehlinger in 2nd after the pit stops were all sorted.
Travis Mehlinger's stint started out with some brake problems. His brake pedal had uncalibrated itself caused him to drop a few places before he could adapt to his new braking sensitivity. After that trouble our podium dreams looked a bit slim, but some poor luck to other teams put us back up in 3rd. E-Team had a run-in (literally!) with International Team CAPO, and EER had a late disconnect from 2nd.
We finished 3rd! Our first podium in GTAL and a far better result than we had achieved in any of the previous rounds. In the end we led 24 of the 218 laps, with each driver leading at least five laps, never dropped below 6th, and to quote Eric, "It was fun."