Nice work Yann, I love to read those race/league reports, thx for taking the time and keep them coming! 
Great, I've been just told that domain transfer can take up to 10 days 
Great report Yann, shame that im not mentoned in it, problem is that im never able to make full season =//
Why do you need to transfer the domain? Just change the nameservers Shirley?
Want to get completely away of the previous provider and it doesn't matter as the domain is the cheapest thing.
Great report! 
Keep it comming 
Keep it comming c (kars)
DELETED
by kars
Nice report Yann
2010 Kyoto 500: race review
The 3rd annual New Dimension Racing Kyoto 500 took place less than 2 weeks ago, on June, 26th 2010. The Kyoto 500 is with no doubt LFS' most prestigious one-off oval event ever - although counting for the LFSCART championship. This year once again, The "Greatest spectacle in LFS" didn't fail to impress the LFS community by its intensity and its drama.
Tiger Express would be one of the main team to watch, after they managed to fill 4 cars in the top 10 of the 2010 Speedweeks 400 a few weeks ago. Out of the 7 cars signed-up in the Kyoto 500, 6 went through the owerwhelming selection process: Michal Saidl, Yann Laprevotte, Dominik Engel, Vince Verstreken, Lims Chebbi and Niko Puntola. Unfortunately, the latter wouldn't be able to show up for the race due to a trip to Scotland, while his fellow countryman Oskari Rinne wouldn't be able to take part aswell as he couldn't take part to the mandatory practice sessions.
The qualifying session went well for Tiger Express: Mike would start from the 2nd place of the grid, between the 2009 and 2010 pole-sitter Dan Sanger and the 2009 Speedweeks 400 winner Ori Antika. Vince would be placed in 4th, Domi in 8th, Yann in 13th and Lims in 24th.
The green flag would be waived on June 26th at 16:45 UTC. For the first time of the Kyoto 500 history, the start was clean, and no incident were signaled in the first lap of the race. Unfortunately, misfortune would start to struck early for Tiger Express as Vince Verstreken, the Runner-Up of the 2010 Speedweeks 400, would time-out from the server at lap 10. The Belgian driver was clearly one of the favorite of this year's 500, but unfortunately we will never know what he could have done in the race.
The 4 remaining Tigers would all keep themselves on the lead lap for the first half of the race. Unfortunately, Yann, who spent most of his first stint in the back of the queue would have to leave the lead lap after what remains "one of the stupidest move of [his] simracing carreer": the Frenchman was near Domi and decided to weave slightly to try to make the latter understand that he hasn't going to draft with him. Unfortunately, this kind of manoever just cannot work on oval due to the aggressive cambers used, therefore TEM's manager span, had to pit for new tyres and lost a lap.
Bad luck struck Mike a few tens of laps later: the Runner-Up of the 2010 Kyoto 250 would loose connection from the server after a very good beginning of a race. This was Mike's 4th retirement in a row in LFSCART. Tiger Express would get hurt by connection issues once again later in the race, as Yann, who climbed back in 11th place and first of the cars one lap down, would time-out of the server with only 14 laps to go.
Fortunately Domi and Lims were still going strong in the lead lap while coming to the last lap of the race. If the former was in the middle of the pack, ready to spring when the sprint for the podium would be launched, the latter was in the back of the queue, ready to gain positions in an opportunistic fashion in case of problems in front. Sadly things didn't go well for Domi, as he would be taken out by the lapped cars of Joni Törmälä and Klaidas Gasiunas at the worst possible moment, with 4 laps to go. He would recover and finish in 9th place eventually. Meanwhile, Lims went through the troubles and took 7th place, 1,67 second behind the winner of the day, Sonicrealms Racing's Sebastian Hutchinson. Also to be signaled, Lims would be the Highest Climber of the day, after gaining 17 places in a troubleless race.
The 2010 Kyoto 500 would be pretty much frustrating overall for the Tiger Express Motorsports team, as its two most skilled(Mike and Vince) and its most experienced(Yann) oval racers would all get eliminated because of connection issues. Fortunately, the 2 drivers that not so much people were waiting for, Domi and Lims, were there to save the situation, and would both get a top 10 finish after a strong races. Nevertheless, Tiger Express will do its best to come back in the 2011 Kyoto 500, this time for aiming for better results.
Driver quotes:
Lims Chebbi(starting P24, finishing P7, Highest Climber of the race): "I was lucky to have a chance to race this year considering the fact that my qualyfing time wasn't good enough to get in the race, as I had technical problem during the qualyfing day. My teamate Niko couldn't drive so I was promoted to race. I started at the back and had nothing to loose, the race was very good for me and my final result was even better than I expected. Now I'm looking forward the 2011 Kyoto 500, and I hope for a top 5."
Dominik Engel(starting P8, finishing P9): "I never had any high expectations for this race, didn't really want to drive it in the first place to be honest - as I never felt comfortable on ovals, but considering my bad luck in the 2nd and 3rd round of LFSCART, I thought this could be a good chance to make up some of those lost points. For most of the race I was running in the midfield, with people who mostly only held up each other by drafting instead of making any progress. I rather kept out of it, was just hotlapping, and it sort of payed off when I was lying on 6th position when the green flag came out for the penultimate time. Unfortunately there was some sort of incident between Klaidas Gasuinas and Joni Törmälä, I sort of had no choice to avoid that and crashed straight into them. While I was spinning even more cars hit me and I ended up in 9th. During the last lap green flag period I just about managed to keep 9th position from Zdenek Cagas. Not really happy with the race at all, looked far better during it then the result indicates."
Yann Laprevotte(starting P13, did not finish, classified P18): "In fact, I had two aims before the event: 1) Setting a good enough time to be qualified, and 2) finishing the race. Surprisingly enough, I managed to fullfil my first aim rather easily with a 36.9925 and a 13th place on the grid, unlike in the 2009 Kyoto 500 where I was completely off the pace and ended the qualifying day in 38th place. But sadly, I couldn't finish the race due to a time-out at only 13 laps to go. In terms of racing, I had a poor race, probably because I fell apart with the pressure. I caused 2 cautions on my own - fortunately without taking out anyone else though - , while I can't recall having caused any in the various official NDR events or Kyoto 500 practice sessions I took part in! If the second one was consequenceless - hitting the apron at T1 at a restart, which sent me half spinning - , the first one, caused around lap 160, was very stupid and ruined my race, but I am the only one to blame: I was struggling to make my team-mate understand that I didn't want to draft, but he was always waiting me when I was going high. I then decided to waive slightly, which of course ended in a spin... This changed my whole race, as this made me drop one lap down and took away all my chances for a top 10. If I had a very careful race so far, I then decided to take some risks to get on the top of the one lap down cars. I finally succeed to do so after a long fight with people such as Randy Young, Joni Törmälä or Nathan Lamothe, but unfortunately, my internet decided to get a break right after, only a few minutes from the finish of this 3 hours and 30 minutes race. Game over...
Now I can't wait for the 4th annual Kyoto 500. I hope to get in the top 10 this time, and I hope to have many other Tigers to race with me there"
The 3rd annual New Dimension Racing Kyoto 500 took place less than 2 weeks ago, on June, 26th 2010. The Kyoto 500 is with no doubt LFS' most prestigious one-off oval event ever - although counting for the LFSCART championship. This year once again, The "Greatest spectacle in LFS" didn't fail to impress the LFS community by its intensity and its drama.
Tiger Express would be one of the main team to watch, after they managed to fill 4 cars in the top 10 of the 2010 Speedweeks 400 a few weeks ago. Out of the 7 cars signed-up in the Kyoto 500, 6 went through the owerwhelming selection process: Michal Saidl, Yann Laprevotte, Dominik Engel, Vince Verstreken, Lims Chebbi and Niko Puntola. Unfortunately, the latter wouldn't be able to show up for the race due to a trip to Scotland, while his fellow countryman Oskari Rinne wouldn't be able to take part aswell as he couldn't take part to the mandatory practice sessions.
The qualifying session went well for Tiger Express: Mike would start from the 2nd place of the grid, between the 2009 and 2010 pole-sitter Dan Sanger and the 2009 Speedweeks 400 winner Ori Antika. Vince would be placed in 4th, Domi in 8th, Yann in 13th and Lims in 24th.
The green flag would be waived on June 26th at 16:45 UTC. For the first time of the Kyoto 500 history, the start was clean, and no incident were signaled in the first lap of the race. Unfortunately, misfortune would start to struck early for Tiger Express as Vince Verstreken, the Runner-Up of the 2010 Speedweeks 400, would time-out from the server at lap 10. The Belgian driver was clearly one of the favorite of this year's 500, but unfortunately we will never know what he could have done in the race.
The 4 remaining Tigers would all keep themselves on the lead lap for the first half of the race. Unfortunately, Yann, who spent most of his first stint in the back of the queue would have to leave the lead lap after what remains "one of the stupidest move of [his] simracing carreer": the Frenchman was near Domi and decided to weave slightly to try to make the latter understand that he hasn't going to draft with him. Unfortunately, this kind of manoever just cannot work on oval due to the aggressive cambers used, therefore TEM's manager span, had to pit for new tyres and lost a lap.
Bad luck struck Mike a few tens of laps later: the Runner-Up of the 2010 Kyoto 250 would loose connection from the server after a very good beginning of a race. This was Mike's 4th retirement in a row in LFSCART. Tiger Express would get hurt by connection issues once again later in the race, as Yann, who climbed back in 11th place and first of the cars one lap down, would time-out of the server with only 14 laps to go.
Fortunately Domi and Lims were still going strong in the lead lap while coming to the last lap of the race. If the former was in the middle of the pack, ready to spring when the sprint for the podium would be launched, the latter was in the back of the queue, ready to gain positions in an opportunistic fashion in case of problems in front. Sadly things didn't go well for Domi, as he would be taken out by the lapped cars of Joni Törmälä and Klaidas Gasiunas at the worst possible moment, with 4 laps to go. He would recover and finish in 9th place eventually. Meanwhile, Lims went through the troubles and took 7th place, 1,67 second behind the winner of the day, Sonicrealms Racing's Sebastian Hutchinson. Also to be signaled, Lims would be the Highest Climber of the day, after gaining 17 places in a troubleless race.
The 2010 Kyoto 500 would be pretty much frustrating overall for the Tiger Express Motorsports team, as its two most skilled(Mike and Vince) and its most experienced(Yann) oval racers would all get eliminated because of connection issues. Fortunately, the 2 drivers that not so much people were waiting for, Domi and Lims, were there to save the situation, and would both get a top 10 finish after a strong races. Nevertheless, Tiger Express will do its best to come back in the 2011 Kyoto 500, this time for aiming for better results.
Driver quotes:
Lims Chebbi(starting P24, finishing P7, Highest Climber of the race): "I was lucky to have a chance to race this year considering the fact that my qualyfing time wasn't good enough to get in the race, as I had technical problem during the qualyfing day. My teamate Niko couldn't drive so I was promoted to race. I started at the back and had nothing to loose, the race was very good for me and my final result was even better than I expected. Now I'm looking forward the 2011 Kyoto 500, and I hope for a top 5."
Dominik Engel(starting P8, finishing P9): "I never had any high expectations for this race, didn't really want to drive it in the first place to be honest - as I never felt comfortable on ovals, but considering my bad luck in the 2nd and 3rd round of LFSCART, I thought this could be a good chance to make up some of those lost points. For most of the race I was running in the midfield, with people who mostly only held up each other by drafting instead of making any progress. I rather kept out of it, was just hotlapping, and it sort of payed off when I was lying on 6th position when the green flag came out for the penultimate time. Unfortunately there was some sort of incident between Klaidas Gasuinas and Joni Törmälä, I sort of had no choice to avoid that and crashed straight into them. While I was spinning even more cars hit me and I ended up in 9th. During the last lap green flag period I just about managed to keep 9th position from Zdenek Cagas. Not really happy with the race at all, looked far better during it then the result indicates."
Yann Laprevotte(starting P13, did not finish, classified P18): "In fact, I had two aims before the event: 1) Setting a good enough time to be qualified, and 2) finishing the race. Surprisingly enough, I managed to fullfil my first aim rather easily with a 36.9925 and a 13th place on the grid, unlike in the 2009 Kyoto 500 where I was completely off the pace and ended the qualifying day in 38th place. But sadly, I couldn't finish the race due to a time-out at only 13 laps to go. In terms of racing, I had a poor race, probably because I fell apart with the pressure. I caused 2 cautions on my own - fortunately without taking out anyone else though - , while I can't recall having caused any in the various official NDR events or Kyoto 500 practice sessions I took part in! If the second one was consequenceless - hitting the apron at T1 at a restart, which sent me half spinning - , the first one, caused around lap 160, was very stupid and ruined my race, but I am the only one to blame: I was struggling to make my team-mate understand that I didn't want to draft, but he was always waiting me when I was going high. I then decided to waive slightly, which of course ended in a spin... This changed my whole race, as this made me drop one lap down and took away all my chances for a top 10. If I had a very careful race so far, I then decided to take some risks to get on the top of the one lap down cars. I finally succeed to do so after a long fight with people such as Randy Young, Joni Törmälä or Nathan Lamothe, but unfortunately, my internet decided to get a break right after, only a few minutes from the finish of this 3 hours and 30 minutes race. Game over...
Now I can't wait for the 4th annual Kyoto 500. I hope to get in the top 10 this time, and I hope to have many other Tigers to race with me there"
\o/
Nice report!
Nice report!
I'm Dominik Engel, and finishing behind Safety Car Steve was my idea.
If I wasn't taken out that wouldn't have been the case :|
Nice report and nice race TEM guys.
Yes, 2 guys crashed together in a front of him a few laps before the finish.
And also, sorry Yann, for not giving you my report, but can't be really arsed. Was running strong, then I made a little mistake in pit stop strategy, but was working on to get back in top... I think I was somewhere in the middle of grid when I timed out.
Nice report Yann, thx very mucht for you re hard work doing it
Woot ! Nice report Yann ! 
LFSCART, IGTC & LFSCART Light Summer Series: mid-season review
LFSCART & LFSCART Light Summer Series: mid-season review
The LFSCART and LFSCART Light Series passed half-way point 10 days ago. Both league are held by New Dimension Racing, and are following the same schedule: LFSCART Light is held on Friday nights and is a support series of LFSCART, run on Saturday nights. As Tiger Express has had a huge involvement in both leagues, with more than 6 cars entered in most events, we decided it would be worth to publish an article about the team's situation with 5 rounds to go.
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LFSCART
Tiger Express would start the season with Yann Laprevotte, Mike Saidl and Dominik Engel at Tiger Express Motorsports, and at White Tiger Express Motorsports, Lims Chebbi, Vince Verstreken, and sometimes Niko Puntola and Oskari Rinne. The season could hardly start better, with TEM grabbing the teams' championship lead at round 1 at Kyoto National, as Mike won the first race of the season after an overwhelming fight with Sonicrealms' Sebastian Hutchinson.
Sadly nothing would work correctly afterwards. The second round, the Jamaïca 200, saw a triple retirement for TEM(time-out for Mike and Yann, crash for Domi) while the two WTEM cars of Lims and Vince Verstreken would both finish outside of the top 10. It would be the 1st retirement in a serial of 4 for Mike: the Czech driver would retire at round 3(at Westill International Reversed), would get crashed out at round 4(Speedweeks 400), and would get a time-out in the round 5, the famous Kyoto 500. Meantime the rest of the team would be struggling to get decent enough results to make TEM and WTEM stay in contention for the final podium positions in the teams' championship. It worked well in the Speedweeks 400 as Vince Verstreken would fight for the victory with the oval master Dan Sanger, before an unfortunate mistake in the penultimate lap putting him out of contention for the victory - but the Belgian driver could save the 2nd place, in front of Domi. The 2010 Kyoto 500, 5th round of the season, wasn't that much good for Tiger Express on the other hand, you can see the report here.
Fortunately Tiger Express was back to business for the come back of road courses in the 6th round at South City Town Reversed, with a double podium: Mike winning and Domi 3rd. This was partly thanks to the absence of the two championship leaders, Sebastian Hutchinson and Liane Solfrank.
At the championship we now have Domi 4th, 85 points behind Seb Hutchinson, but only 7 points from Simon Cattell in 2nd place. Mike is 5th, 3 points behind Domi. Lims is 6th, mainly thanks to his regularity and his Kyoto 500 top 10; he can still contend to a championship podium. Yann and Vince are further down, in 8th and 12th places.
At the teams' championship, TEM is now in 2nd place, 97 points behind Sonicrealms(1 win=50 points), which means that TEM is still in contention for the title, but would probably have to rely on a few weak rounds from Sonicrealms. In 3rd place comes WTEM after getting in front of Epic Racing, mainly thanks to Epic's Liane Solfrank taking an LFS wide break before round 6.
Drivers' quotes:
Dominik Engel(currently 4th at the championship, 2 podiums): "LFSCART started off rather well for me, with a 5th place at Kyoto National and even a chance for the fastest lap of the race. Fern Bay was more of a struggle for me. I had controller problems, my force feedback just went away completely and I spent the whole race spinning and crashing in almost every place, so instead of disturbing all others on track I decided that it would be better to retire from the race. Westhill was by far the worst round though. I had a very good start, was 5th, but then desaster, I put a wheel on the grass and crashed into the wall, luckily I could catch up during a SC period after I repaired damage. Then, after the SC, when I was trying to make my way back up, I had a rather odd incident with Matt Kings, which put me into the walls in the same turn I crashed in before, which meant again a pitstop for repairs. Then, just before I was gonna go a lap down I had a powercut and was sitting in darkness for about 5 minutes or so. The Speedweeks 400 went rather well for me I must say, although I am not sure whether I should be happy or sad about achieving my best result so far on a oval track. A 4th place is something I really didn't expect before the race, and it even became a 3rd place Simon's penalty, but I still couldn't be happy about it really. The Kyoto 500 was another one of these oval adventures which I'm really not fond of. If you wanna know more from me about that, take a look at the Kyoto 500 report. Anyways, I'm hoping for good results in the coming road course rounds."
Lims Chebbi(currently 6th at the championship): "Not a too bad season for me, it could of been better if my LFS hasn't minimized at least once in every single race between round 1 and 4. Due to this issue I've lost opportunity to score more points. Anyway, I've fixed this issue for the next part of the season, so im looking foword to fight hard and remain in the top 5. It's a good thing for me that the Kyoto 500 has double points, without this I wouldn't be in that brilliant position."
Yann Laprevotte(currently 8th at the championship): "I'm a bit frustrated that I have had 2 time-outs in 6 races, including one in the Kyoto 500, while I'm not often concerned by this issue. But that's life I guess. I lacked from pace in general anyway, so this 8th position at the championship is quite representative to my season so far. I hope to gain a few places later, and help TEM in its quest at the teams' championship. I must also say that I'm very happy by my team-mates' results and motivation so far"
LFSCART Light Summer Series
In LFSCART Light, Tiger Express' main weapon is called Sascha Riegler. CoRe Racing's latest sign agreed in switching to TEM after the 3 first rounds of the season driven for Sonicrealms. With 6 wins and 9 podiums in 11 races, Sascha is in an extremely comfotable lead in the drivers' championship, 130 points in front of the runner-up, meh Racing's Simon Cattell. Domi and Mike are part of a big chasing group between 2nd and 7th place, grouped in 26 points: they will try their best to fight for the podium positions. The 3rd place runner of the inaugural season, Yann, is only 12th after a very disappointing season start. Niko is 14th despite he has taken part to only 3 rounds so far; he probably would have had the opportunity to do well if he competed to the whole season, with 80 points earned in a fantastic 2nd place in the SpeedWeeks 250, a double-points round.
The teams' standings are currently very tight, with three teams able to clinch the graal: Sonicrealms Racing, meh Racing and Tiger Express, all grouped in 27 points. The latters should be clearly advantaged by the presence of Sascha Riegler in their roster, especially since the 3 next rounds are on road courses. Also, small mention to WTEM, currently in a very satisfacting 4th position, 92 points behind the leaders, Sonicrealms: a final podium position could be possible in case of weak results for one of the 3 leaders.
Drivers' quotes:
Sascha Riegler(championship leader, 6 wins, 9 podiums, 4 poles): "Except for the first round at Kyoto National, I managed to reach the best result I could do in every round so far. And since there wasn't a consistent opponent in the league, I have a confortable lead in drivers championship allowing me to focus on the team championship with Tiger Express Motorsports. We made a great progress in the last races and closed the gap to Sonicrealms Racing in the standings after already being more than 100 points behind them. With now 6 road course and 3 oval course races ahead, we have a realistic chance to overtake them in the standings and I'm optimistic that we can do so."
Dominik Engel(4th at the championship, 1 podium): "Well, had a rather good start into the season, even got a podium at the feature race at Fern Bay Black. However, my luck changed dramatically after that. Qualifying for Westhill was rather bad for me, I didn't manage to get any good time on R1 tyres, so I went out on raceset which put me outside the top 10 on the grid. Then when the race started in T1 I got hit by Ori Antika, and ended up on 30th and deadlast position after I recovered. After that I made up 20 places, finishing in 10th place. The feature race wasn't incident free for me either. I had a collision with Kaique Piropo which sent me into the air in the chicane. I got some suspension damage on the left rear due to that, but because there was a safety car and I couldn't test how badly the damage was affecting me, I just continued on racing. Not pitting turned out as a mistake and I crawled to a 15th position in the feature race. The race after that, the Speedweeks 250 was probably my low point of the season thus far. Not far into the race, being on 7th place, Mike had an incident in T2, went over the grass and put alot of dust into the air. And because of that dust I wasn't able to see where his car was. When I finally saw it I swerved to the right to avoid him, but with that I crashed into the buggy T2 wall and went airborne. Because I couldn't get my car back to the pits on my own I lost 2 laps. Later on in the race, I had an incident with Liane Solfrank and Oscar, which sent both of us, Liane and me into a DNF. The round before the 500 was nothing special for me really. I had a good position in both, the qualifying and the feature race, but failed completely in the feature race and could only manage a 16th position yet again. Luckily there won't be any oval rounds for some time now, quite looking forward to the roadcourses again and hoping for some good results there."
Yann Laprevotte(12th at the championship): "The 5 first rounds have been really disastrous for me, with 4 retirements in feature because of 4 different incidents, including once in Fern Bay when I flied in the airs from 5th place in the last lap after a weird lag. Anyway I think I'm now going in the right direction with 23 points gained in the last round in date at South City. I hope to carry on like that for the next road course rounds. Once again, I mainly focus on the teams' championship, because I think we have a clear chance to get the title."
Lims Chebbi(25th at the championship): "I've started the season with some incidents and also that i haven't attended to one round, this means that I haven't scored many points so far, so I decided not to worry about the driver standings anymore, and concentrate on scoring as many points as possible for WTEM to try and get the team in the podium alongside TEM for the final teams' standing."
International GT Championship: mid-season review
The IGTC was one of Tiger Express' priority in 2010, but unfortunately, it turned to be a nightmare, with bad luck, track incidents, pace and consistance problems all together. For those who are uncommon with the endurance side of LFS, the IGTC is a league that features 4 hours race in GTR on LFS' widest tracks, with a 8 hours race at Aston Historic as a finale. It is probably LFS' current most prestigious league, far behind the Masters Of Endurance of course.
The 2010 season began at Blackwood GP, but unfortunately it was no good for TEM. An unfortunate time-out from Mike ruined all hopes for a good result. Then it was all about Vince Verstreken unconsistancy, crashing several times... TEM finished 21st in what remain a very difficult batism of fire. Round 2 at Kyoto National was not better though: TEM ended the race in the first hour after an incident with Smoking Team in a race to forget. Round 3 saw a good performance for Mike in qualifying, with the 3rd time of the session. Mike then did a good job in his stints, battling for top 5, but Domi couldn't match his pace during his stint unfortunately, but TEM still managed to get its first proper result of the season with a 10th place. Round 4 at Westhill saw once again Mike doing a good qualifying session for the second time in a row, with a 5th place. There was an opportunity to do well as Mikedid a good first stint and made the good choice while pitting under SC, but an incident with the lapped car of E-Team ruined everything. Tiger Express then decided to retire from the race several tens of minutes later after Domi felt too much bad on that track and crashed on his own several times. All hopes for a top 15 were gone after the collision with E-Team anyway. The position at the standing is pretty much representative of TEM's first season half:23th.
With 3 rounds to go, TEM hopes to have a fresh start on new bases. Inferno's Radek Muller has been called to help the team to get at least a few top 10 before the end of the season.
The next round at Kyoto GP will also see Tiger Express getting a second car under the name of White Tiger Express Motorsports. It will be driven by the very experienced Frenchmen Yann Laprevotte and Lims Chebbi, who represent 718 race starts on spdo Database on their own. If Yann already has had a small taste from the IGTC after two races driven with Chris Wilkinson in 2009, Lims has never driven GTRs in a high level. Yann and Lims will be driving the FXR, and will be running with the Earthdreams livery used for Tiger Express' first ever official endurance race, the 3 Hours of Kyoto GP, counting for the GTAL championship. "Our aim is just to drive for fun in a competitive environment" said Yann. "We know that driving the FXR means that we will be off the pace at Kyoto and Aston, but we hope to enter in the top 15 at least once."
The LFSCART and LFSCART Light Series passed half-way point 10 days ago. Both league are held by New Dimension Racing, and are following the same schedule: LFSCART Light is held on Friday nights and is a support series of LFSCART, run on Saturday nights. As Tiger Express has had a huge involvement in both leagues, with more than 6 cars entered in most events, we decided it would be worth to publish an article about the team's situation with 5 rounds to go.
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LFSCART
Tiger Express would start the season with Yann Laprevotte, Mike Saidl and Dominik Engel at Tiger Express Motorsports, and at White Tiger Express Motorsports, Lims Chebbi, Vince Verstreken, and sometimes Niko Puntola and Oskari Rinne. The season could hardly start better, with TEM grabbing the teams' championship lead at round 1 at Kyoto National, as Mike won the first race of the season after an overwhelming fight with Sonicrealms' Sebastian Hutchinson.
Sadly nothing would work correctly afterwards. The second round, the Jamaïca 200, saw a triple retirement for TEM(time-out for Mike and Yann, crash for Domi) while the two WTEM cars of Lims and Vince Verstreken would both finish outside of the top 10. It would be the 1st retirement in a serial of 4 for Mike: the Czech driver would retire at round 3(at Westill International Reversed), would get crashed out at round 4(Speedweeks 400), and would get a time-out in the round 5, the famous Kyoto 500. Meantime the rest of the team would be struggling to get decent enough results to make TEM and WTEM stay in contention for the final podium positions in the teams' championship. It worked well in the Speedweeks 400 as Vince Verstreken would fight for the victory with the oval master Dan Sanger, before an unfortunate mistake in the penultimate lap putting him out of contention for the victory - but the Belgian driver could save the 2nd place, in front of Domi. The 2010 Kyoto 500, 5th round of the season, wasn't that much good for Tiger Express on the other hand, you can see the report here.
Fortunately Tiger Express was back to business for the come back of road courses in the 6th round at South City Town Reversed, with a double podium: Mike winning and Domi 3rd. This was partly thanks to the absence of the two championship leaders, Sebastian Hutchinson and Liane Solfrank.
At the championship we now have Domi 4th, 85 points behind Seb Hutchinson, but only 7 points from Simon Cattell in 2nd place. Mike is 5th, 3 points behind Domi. Lims is 6th, mainly thanks to his regularity and his Kyoto 500 top 10; he can still contend to a championship podium. Yann and Vince are further down, in 8th and 12th places.
At the teams' championship, TEM is now in 2nd place, 97 points behind Sonicrealms(1 win=50 points), which means that TEM is still in contention for the title, but would probably have to rely on a few weak rounds from Sonicrealms. In 3rd place comes WTEM after getting in front of Epic Racing, mainly thanks to Epic's Liane Solfrank taking an LFS wide break before round 6.
Drivers' quotes:
Dominik Engel(currently 4th at the championship, 2 podiums): "LFSCART started off rather well for me, with a 5th place at Kyoto National and even a chance for the fastest lap of the race. Fern Bay was more of a struggle for me. I had controller problems, my force feedback just went away completely and I spent the whole race spinning and crashing in almost every place, so instead of disturbing all others on track I decided that it would be better to retire from the race. Westhill was by far the worst round though. I had a very good start, was 5th, but then desaster, I put a wheel on the grass and crashed into the wall, luckily I could catch up during a SC period after I repaired damage. Then, after the SC, when I was trying to make my way back up, I had a rather odd incident with Matt Kings, which put me into the walls in the same turn I crashed in before, which meant again a pitstop for repairs. Then, just before I was gonna go a lap down I had a powercut and was sitting in darkness for about 5 minutes or so. The Speedweeks 400 went rather well for me I must say, although I am not sure whether I should be happy or sad about achieving my best result so far on a oval track. A 4th place is something I really didn't expect before the race, and it even became a 3rd place Simon's penalty, but I still couldn't be happy about it really. The Kyoto 500 was another one of these oval adventures which I'm really not fond of. If you wanna know more from me about that, take a look at the Kyoto 500 report. Anyways, I'm hoping for good results in the coming road course rounds."
Lims Chebbi(currently 6th at the championship): "Not a too bad season for me, it could of been better if my LFS hasn't minimized at least once in every single race between round 1 and 4. Due to this issue I've lost opportunity to score more points. Anyway, I've fixed this issue for the next part of the season, so im looking foword to fight hard and remain in the top 5. It's a good thing for me that the Kyoto 500 has double points, without this I wouldn't be in that brilliant position."
Yann Laprevotte(currently 8th at the championship): "I'm a bit frustrated that I have had 2 time-outs in 6 races, including one in the Kyoto 500, while I'm not often concerned by this issue. But that's life I guess. I lacked from pace in general anyway, so this 8th position at the championship is quite representative to my season so far. I hope to gain a few places later, and help TEM in its quest at the teams' championship. I must also say that I'm very happy by my team-mates' results and motivation so far"
LFSCART Light Summer Series
In LFSCART Light, Tiger Express' main weapon is called Sascha Riegler. CoRe Racing's latest sign agreed in switching to TEM after the 3 first rounds of the season driven for Sonicrealms. With 6 wins and 9 podiums in 11 races, Sascha is in an extremely comfotable lead in the drivers' championship, 130 points in front of the runner-up, meh Racing's Simon Cattell. Domi and Mike are part of a big chasing group between 2nd and 7th place, grouped in 26 points: they will try their best to fight for the podium positions. The 3rd place runner of the inaugural season, Yann, is only 12th after a very disappointing season start. Niko is 14th despite he has taken part to only 3 rounds so far; he probably would have had the opportunity to do well if he competed to the whole season, with 80 points earned in a fantastic 2nd place in the SpeedWeeks 250, a double-points round.
The teams' standings are currently very tight, with three teams able to clinch the graal: Sonicrealms Racing, meh Racing and Tiger Express, all grouped in 27 points. The latters should be clearly advantaged by the presence of Sascha Riegler in their roster, especially since the 3 next rounds are on road courses. Also, small mention to WTEM, currently in a very satisfacting 4th position, 92 points behind the leaders, Sonicrealms: a final podium position could be possible in case of weak results for one of the 3 leaders.
Drivers' quotes:
Sascha Riegler(championship leader, 6 wins, 9 podiums, 4 poles): "Except for the first round at Kyoto National, I managed to reach the best result I could do in every round so far. And since there wasn't a consistent opponent in the league, I have a confortable lead in drivers championship allowing me to focus on the team championship with Tiger Express Motorsports. We made a great progress in the last races and closed the gap to Sonicrealms Racing in the standings after already being more than 100 points behind them. With now 6 road course and 3 oval course races ahead, we have a realistic chance to overtake them in the standings and I'm optimistic that we can do so."
Dominik Engel(4th at the championship, 1 podium): "Well, had a rather good start into the season, even got a podium at the feature race at Fern Bay Black. However, my luck changed dramatically after that. Qualifying for Westhill was rather bad for me, I didn't manage to get any good time on R1 tyres, so I went out on raceset which put me outside the top 10 on the grid. Then when the race started in T1 I got hit by Ori Antika, and ended up on 30th and deadlast position after I recovered. After that I made up 20 places, finishing in 10th place. The feature race wasn't incident free for me either. I had a collision with Kaique Piropo which sent me into the air in the chicane. I got some suspension damage on the left rear due to that, but because there was a safety car and I couldn't test how badly the damage was affecting me, I just continued on racing. Not pitting turned out as a mistake and I crawled to a 15th position in the feature race. The race after that, the Speedweeks 250 was probably my low point of the season thus far. Not far into the race, being on 7th place, Mike had an incident in T2, went over the grass and put alot of dust into the air. And because of that dust I wasn't able to see where his car was. When I finally saw it I swerved to the right to avoid him, but with that I crashed into the buggy T2 wall and went airborne. Because I couldn't get my car back to the pits on my own I lost 2 laps. Later on in the race, I had an incident with Liane Solfrank and Oscar, which sent both of us, Liane and me into a DNF. The round before the 500 was nothing special for me really. I had a good position in both, the qualifying and the feature race, but failed completely in the feature race and could only manage a 16th position yet again. Luckily there won't be any oval rounds for some time now, quite looking forward to the roadcourses again and hoping for some good results there."
Yann Laprevotte(12th at the championship): "The 5 first rounds have been really disastrous for me, with 4 retirements in feature because of 4 different incidents, including once in Fern Bay when I flied in the airs from 5th place in the last lap after a weird lag. Anyway I think I'm now going in the right direction with 23 points gained in the last round in date at South City. I hope to carry on like that for the next road course rounds. Once again, I mainly focus on the teams' championship, because I think we have a clear chance to get the title."
Lims Chebbi(25th at the championship): "I've started the season with some incidents and also that i haven't attended to one round, this means that I haven't scored many points so far, so I decided not to worry about the driver standings anymore, and concentrate on scoring as many points as possible for WTEM to try and get the team in the podium alongside TEM for the final teams' standing."
International GT Championship: mid-season review
The IGTC was one of Tiger Express' priority in 2010, but unfortunately, it turned to be a nightmare, with bad luck, track incidents, pace and consistance problems all together. For those who are uncommon with the endurance side of LFS, the IGTC is a league that features 4 hours race in GTR on LFS' widest tracks, with a 8 hours race at Aston Historic as a finale. It is probably LFS' current most prestigious league, far behind the Masters Of Endurance of course.
The 2010 season began at Blackwood GP, but unfortunately it was no good for TEM. An unfortunate time-out from Mike ruined all hopes for a good result. Then it was all about Vince Verstreken unconsistancy, crashing several times... TEM finished 21st in what remain a very difficult batism of fire. Round 2 at Kyoto National was not better though: TEM ended the race in the first hour after an incident with Smoking Team in a race to forget. Round 3 saw a good performance for Mike in qualifying, with the 3rd time of the session. Mike then did a good job in his stints, battling for top 5, but Domi couldn't match his pace during his stint unfortunately, but TEM still managed to get its first proper result of the season with a 10th place. Round 4 at Westhill saw once again Mike doing a good qualifying session for the second time in a row, with a 5th place. There was an opportunity to do well as Mikedid a good first stint and made the good choice while pitting under SC, but an incident with the lapped car of E-Team ruined everything. Tiger Express then decided to retire from the race several tens of minutes later after Domi felt too much bad on that track and crashed on his own several times. All hopes for a top 15 were gone after the collision with E-Team anyway. The position at the standing is pretty much representative of TEM's first season half:23th.
With 3 rounds to go, TEM hopes to have a fresh start on new bases. Inferno's Radek Muller has been called to help the team to get at least a few top 10 before the end of the season.
The next round at Kyoto GP will also see Tiger Express getting a second car under the name of White Tiger Express Motorsports. It will be driven by the very experienced Frenchmen Yann Laprevotte and Lims Chebbi, who represent 718 race starts on spdo Database on their own. If Yann already has had a small taste from the IGTC after two races driven with Chris Wilkinson in 2009, Lims has never driven GTRs in a high level. Yann and Lims will be driving the FXR, and will be running with the Earthdreams livery used for Tiger Express' first ever official endurance race, the 3 Hours of Kyoto GP, counting for the GTAL championship. "Our aim is just to drive for fun in a competitive environment" said Yann. "We know that driving the FXR means that we will be off the pace at Kyoto and Aston, but we hope to enter in the top 15 at least once."
Glad to hear from you folks and good luck this saturday for both cars
nice report has always mate
nice, better report than real life racing team Keep it up TEM!
Keep it up TEM! (SCA-F1)
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by SCA-F1
Nicely done Yann, keep it up fellas
The website is back and we can announce the great news soon ';..;' !
Dom's negativity wore off on you and you are shutting down because everything is sheet.
Sad day.
Sad day.
I'm not negative, I'm only realistic :|
Son you seem to have stolen my sig idea.
Tiger Express Motorsports
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