Yes. Been quite a long time since we last posted there. 70 days more or less. However we've still been very active lately. This post might look like a huge wall of some sort, in fact this is because I simply decided to pick 5 significative articles dealing of 5 significative leagues or events we took part in recently.
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On a sunny Thursday of late August 2010,
42 cars(
30 GTRs and
12 LRFs) lined-up on the grid of the challenging and feared
Aston Historic circuit, one of the longest track of S2. A two hours race was on, with some of LFS’ most prestigious teams taking part. It was then time to celebrate Tiger Express’ birthday in a long and intense fight for the victory.
The great amount of cars, especially in GTRs, could be explained by the fact that some of the teams came to prepare themselves for the finale of the 2010 season of the
IGTC, held on the same track, 16 days later. Due to LFS’ limited grid size, 2 servers were necessary to orgainise the event. This meant that the race would be hard to follow for all the people involved, as the only way to check the actual standings of the race was to check the tracker. Nevertheless, this should establish this birthday event as the second biggest one-off endurance event of 2010 in LFS in terms of teams, way behind
Racing Minds‘ prestigious annual
16 Hours race.
In the
GTRs class,
Conquest Racing’s
Mateusz Daszkiewicz took the pole. He’d be in server 1 in front of 3rd and 5th place runners
Dennis Lind(
ineX Racing) and
Tomasz Nogieć(
Sonicrealms Racing 2), with the rest of the even finishers of qualifying. In server 2
spdo Racing 2’s
Matias Pikkarainen would be starting in front of the odd quali finishers, with
Sebastian Hutchinson(
Adenoids Racing) and
Bert Knops(
The Danish Racing Team 2) right on his tail.
In server 1
Conquest Racing looked to be the team to beat, with
ineX Racing loosing ground quickly and
Sonicrealms Racing 2 retiring on lap 4 due to a software problem. Finally the danger came from 17th place runner of qualifying
Egon Liibeon from
spdo Racing 1, who quickly made his way through the field. He was already 3rd of his server after 3 laps. He kept pushing, despite he wasn’t that much faster than the leaders. Eventually he managed to catch
Conquest Racing’s
Adrian Tomczyk 14 minutes before the end. The pass was made at Turn 1, and
spdo Racing 1 then cruised to take the overall victory, 6 seconds in front of
Conquest Racing.
The race in server 2 was pretty much evenftul aswell.
Pikkarainen leaded in front of
Hutchinson after the start, until the latter made a move at turn 1 at lap 7, and took the lead. But
Pikkarainen fought back and re-took the lead a lap after, after a fearless outside pass at the sector three hairpin. Positions swapped once again 4 laps later as
Pikkarainen was held up by a backmarker. Then came the main talking point of the race at lap 18.
Sebastian Hutchinson made a mistake in the sweepers, allowing
Matias Pikkarainen to have a go after some door to door action, and a small trip in the grass for the
spdo car. The two cars went side by side again the lap after, in the pitstraight, until
Hutchinson went wide at turn 1 and ended up spinning in the gravel. The Welsh driver recovered and tried to maintain his position against
The Danish Racing Team 2 with
Torben Jessen at the wheel. The two cars contacted in a fairly 50-50 incident, and
Jessen was sent rolling in the grass while
Adenoids‘
Sebastian Hutchinson could carry on without damage. He couldn’t get back on the server lead and finally
Matias Pikkairainen(
spdo Racing 1) and
Sebastian Hutchinson finished 3rd and 4th overall, although it appears that they could have been a serious threat for the battle for the overall victory without all those incidents.
The Danish Racing Team 1(
Fisher) and
4(
Hagner),
meh racing with mustang on top before being fiddled by Eoin(
Ford-
Cattell),
ineX Racing(
Lind-
Iivonen),
Sonicrealms Racing 1(
Lovett-
Rood) and
Hellenic Racing 2(
Chalaris-
Chalaris) are rounding up the GTRs top 10.
If the
LRFs class had less than the half of the cars than the
GTRs class had, the race was probably as much close and as much interresting to follow. Road cars master
Kevin Leu(
Concept Rundfunker) from Switzerland and
nFinity eSports‘ latest recruit
László Kotrocz from Hungary overpowered the rest of the field of qualifying by more than a second. They then had a fantastic battle during the race(unfortunately on two different servers though), swapping their position several times during the 2 hours of racing.
László Kotrocz in his light
LX6 eventually finished in front of
Kevin Leu in his heavy
FZ5, and took the overall LRF victory for only 3 seconds! The rest of the field was deem to battle for the remaining podium slot since the top 2 was un-reachable today;
Sven Plutta(
XCite Racing) got it, 15 seconds in front of the
E-Team LRF entry of the ex-
TEM driver,
Jonas Baksys. The 100% finnish
Vodka Express Motorsports squad with
Oskari Rinne and
Harri Kurronen at the wheel of the Finnish
Raceabout sportcar round the top 5.
At last but not least, we’d like to thank everyone who gave their help in this fabulous event:
- The Danish Racing Team and Sonicrealms Racing for providing the servers
- Jonathan Palmer and Michael Booth for providing the tracker and helping to run it.
- Michal Saidl, Michael Booth and Valentin Adrienssens for race marshalling.
Official results |
Replays and servers results on spdo Database
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The 2010 season of the
International GT Championship was one of
Tiger Express‘ main priorities of the year. Despite being on the reserve list before the season start,
TEM could get a drive since round 1 after some early withdrawals, including 3rd and 10th place runners of the 2009 season,
F1RST Racing and
nFinity eSports…
The first season half was absolutely awful for
Tiger Express though: two retirements at round 2(
Kyoto National) and round 4(
Westhill International), and a 21st place at round 1(
Blackwood GP) after time-out, mistakes and technical problems. The only decent resuly was to be found at round 3, finished at 10th place. This made
TEM lie 23th at the standings at half way point, a disappointing situation especially since pace has been shown in some rounds, especially in qualifying as
Mike got in 2nd row at round 3 and 3rd row at round 4.
Round 5(
Kyoto GP) was a big turning point though. A 100% Czech line-up was to be seen with
Mike driving alongside Inferno’s ringer
Radek Muller. The gamble paid off as
Tiger Express managed to get the pole and a well earned second place behind
Conquest Racing after a very eventful race(you can see its full report here).
TEM then proved to not be a one man team after
Oskari Rinne and
Vince Lombardi took a well deserved 8th place after having to start from the back of the grid. This made
TEM climb from 23th to 10th in 2 races at the championship! Although
TEM would remain eligible for the title for the last round(aswell as 16 other teams!), the aim would be just to finish the season in the top 10 after the 8 Hours finale with double points at
Aston Historic. Unfortunately it would be no good for
Tiger Express, after a certain lack of preparation leading into several mistakes. Result: 17th place, with a few places lost due to a time-out. This would make
Tiger Express Motorsports drop to 12th in the final standings.
A second
Tiger Express related car drove the 3 remaining rounds of the season, as
Yann Laprevotte and
Lims Chebbi entered the league in FXR in order to get more experience. They got a 14th place at round 5, a 17th place at round 6(after loosing 5 positions because of a time-out in the final hour), and a 20th place at round 7(where they raced with ex-MoE driver
Valentin Adrienssens). They eventually finished the season in 28th place, being the 3rd classified team of those who did 3 races or less in the season.
Of course
TEM is already waiting for the start of the 2011 season to fight again, but will be kept busy in the next few months with the other upcoming endurance leagues: the
Grand Touring Amateur League coming back for its 3rd annual season, the 5th season of the
LFS Endurance Series, and perhaps the prestigious
Masters of Endurance.
Full standings | IGTC on spdo Database
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The 2nd ever season of the bi-annual
LFSCART Light series ended not so long ago. It consisted of 21 races spreaded in 11 rounds, on both road and oval courses, visiting all venues of
Live For Speed S2. Although it is supposed to be a support series of
LFSCART, it isn’t really in terms of standards, as grids of up to 30 cars are to be seen, and some big names are involved.
This season was a success for
Tiger Express, with 4 titles taken out of 5 availbale: the drivers’ championship(won by
Sascha Riegler), the teams’ championship, the owners’ cup(won by car 11, driven by
Sascha Riegler and
Laurynas Matonis) and the qualifying trophy(won by
Sascha Riegler).
One of the turning point of the season was of course the move of
Sascha Riegler from
Sonicrealms to
Tiger Express Motorsports before round 4(the
Speedweeks 250). The German overpowered the season, and secured the drivers’ title 4 races before the end of the season. He also gave to
TEM very precious points towards the teams’ championship.
This season was quite controversy-filled though. A lot of incidents were to be signalised, including an insane >20 cars pile-up at the
Speedweeks 250. Controversy, also, as
Sascha Riegler got a 2 rounds exclusion for wrongly being suspected to have enterred in contact on purpose with
Something Awful’s
Dennis Lind in the cool down lap of Round 9(GP of Boothy at ky3)’s feature race. A very strange decision, but fortunately all sanctions were lifted after an appeal was made.
Sascha wasn’t the only one to show up from
Tiger Express to show up well:
Dominik Engel took the 3rd place of the drivers’ championship after taking race top 5 on very regular basis.
Yann Laprevotte is also in the championship top 10, although his season was made of disappointement, after he got involved in many incidents. He eventually finished in 7th, although being 3rd place runner of the opening season. Nevertheless he managed with his contryman
Lims Chebbi to put TEM’s B Team,
White Tiger Express Motorsports, in 4th position of the teams’ championship.
Tiger Express will try to defend his title in the 3rd season of the
LFSCART Series, which should begin in November 2010. Things will be a lot harder though, with
Dominik Engel moving to
Sonicrealms Racing and
Sascha Riegler unsure to defend his driver title.
Drivers’ quotes:
Sascha Riegler(1st at the drivers’ championship and qualifying trophy winner): “
First of all, I want to thank TEM for giving me a seat to drive after the third round at Westhill Int. reversed. It was great fun to drive with all the guys and get known to you.
However, I’m happy to win the Driver’s championship with 3 round to go, but there wasn’t really a consistent opponent during the whole season and noone could take advantage of my many mistakes. We also achieved a great result in the team championship, although we first thought that we can maybe win it after the first two oval rounds. In the end, we won it after a hard fight with meh Racing and Sonicrealms Racing. Over the whole season, I enjoyed most the Blackwood GP round and the SC filled round at Fernbay Black.
Last but not least, I want to congratulate Simon for his runner-up and Domi for his 3rd place in the championship. And thanks to the NDR team for running this league.”
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The 3rd annual season of the
LFSCART season organised by
New Dimension Racing was one of
Tiger Express’ priorities this year. This league remains over the years one of LFS’ hardest single seaters league, featuring road courses aswell as ovals, including the very prestigious annual
Kyoto 500. It was a pleasant surprise to see its two squad takng 2nd and 3rd at the teams’ championship, with
Dominik Engel taking 3rd of the drivers’ championship, although they couldn’t do anything to stop the big winners of this season,
Sebastian Hutchinson and
Sonicrealms Racing.
As a bonus Dominik Engel took the Qualifying Trophy, and Yann Laprevotte was back-to-back Chase Cup winner after taking it in 2009 already.
The most important race of the season, the 3rd annual
Kyoto 500, wasn’t a success for
TEM, with its 3 of its drivers –
Michal Saidl,
Vince Verstreken,
Yann Laprevotte - timing-out from the server during the race. Fortunately the remaining 2 managed to get in the top 10, with
Lims Chebbi taking 7th and
Dominik Engel taking 9th of the closest Kyoto 500 of history. You can see its full report
here.
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Last week-end saw the most prestigious and biggest LFS endurance single event of the year: the annual
16 Hours Race, held by the German
Racing Minds team. For its 4th edition since its creation in 2007, the admins decided to spice the things up a little bit, holding the event at LFS’ “Green Hell”:
Fern Bay Black Reversed.
Out of the traditional
GT1,
GT2 and
NGT car classes,
Tiger Express decided not to choose, for it’s first ever attendance in this classic race: it was the only team with
CoRe Racing and
Absolute-Beginners.nl to have one car in each class.
In GT1, a 2 ringers line-up was to be found in the
#100 FZR-GT1 with
My3id Gaming’s famous Dutchman
Rik de Jong teaming-up with
CoRe Racing latest recruit and ex-
TEM member, Prague’s
Michal Saidl. The
#200 FXR-GT2 would be driven by the Finns
Oskari Rinne and
Niko Puntola, alongside
Vince Lombardi from Turkey. Meanwhile the
#300 UFR was shared by Tiger Express’ manager
Yann Laprevotte and his fellow countryman
Alexis Georg from
French Street Racers.
Things didn’t go well for the
GT1 car.
Mike qualified himself in server 1(out of 2) in 7th position, and was aiming with
Rik for an overall podium, but the racers were struck by a few technical problems during the race and had to retire just before the 2 hours mark.
The
#200 GT2 car was starting in server 2 but had an excellent start, as
Osku quickly made his way through the field to take the server lead, and managed to held with
Vince Lombardi a brilliant overall 3rd position for a few hours. Sadly a few incidents during the night made it drop to midfield. All chances for a good result faded totally when
Niko Puntola lost electricity around the 10 Hours mark, with no one else to take over during a few dozens of minutes. the
#200 car eventually finished
17th out of 22 in
GT2, as last finisher of its class.
Fortunately the NGT squad was there to have a clean and good race. Without having an exceptional pace,
Yann Laprevotte and
Alexis Georg managed to make their way in server 2 to take 5th out of 9. No real problems in their race despite they were only 2 in the squad: only a few tangles with
GT1 and
GT2 cars, a time-out, a puncture at the 6 Hours mark, and a shift+P in the last hour.
Drivers quotes:
Yann Laprevotte(5th/9 in NGT):
“After my first attempt at this classic LFS race in 2009, where I could only drove 2 hours in a car that wasn’t fitting my driving style at all(the XRR-GT2) with SimRacing Lithuania Team(we finished 10th nevertheless), I really wanted to get track time in good conditions for the 2010 edition. I’m really glad I managed to keep an NGT entry for the race, thanks to my team-mate and countryman Alexis Georg who didn’t let me down on that one. In the end I drove 9 hours and 20 minutes in total, between 4pm UTC and 3am. I think it’s useless to say that it was a really intense business! In the end I’m really pleased that we managed to finish the race without too much problems, and that 5th place come as a bonus. Now, bring on 2011 please.“
Alexis Georg(5th/9 in NGT): “
It was only my 2nd race with a UFR after the FR League at FE4, but I can say I did a pretty good race. My first stint was epic. The front left cambers was damaged and it was being felt in the FFB. The car was hard to drive for me at this point, and I made tyres jam. But during my next stints, after 2:40 am(UTC), I began to progress. I also learned from my mistakes. This allowed me to get the best time of the UFR #300. And to finish the race in P5.”
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If you managed to make your way through that mess without skipping a few parts at least, you earned all my respect, well done. That said, we're not all done yet.
I'd like say thank you to two members who left recently,
Dominik Engel and
Michal Saidl. Both of them are very well known in the international community, and gave a lot to
TEM since they got involved in the project back in early 2010. They both moved to very respected teams,
Sonicrealms Racing for
Dominik and
CoRe Racing for
Michal, and we sincerly hope they'll have fun and carry on improving themselves out there.
On other hand, we are glad to announce the return of
Karl “TypeRacing” Raudsepp at
Tiger Express Motorsports.
Karl was part of the TEM members group since its creation in Februaru 2010, but decided to take-up a new challenge joining in May 2010 countryman Reno Kööts’
StarLite Racing. This appeared to be a mistake in his mind, and after 5 month we are pleased to see
Karl back home.
Karl, 16, coming from Estonia, hasn’t had many achievements in LFS league racing yet. However he has shown up in real life racing quite a lot so far, driving an
Honda Civic Type-R in many racing events in Estonia and Lithuania. In LFS Karl hopes to proves himself in the next
GTAL season, and possibly more in the future.
In the end we'd like to make small mentions to other leagues we're involved in:
- Grand Touring Amateur League: "MoE's feeder series" are back for their 3rd season. Tiger Express will be there for another season and will try to improve the 15th overall position they earned last year. They were given the #10 entry, and will keep their FXR for one more season.
- LFS Endurance Series: the French based endurance league is back for its 5th season. In the 2009-2010 season TEM managed to get 3rd overall despite missing the 2 first rounds, they are hoping for another podium result in 2010-2011. However the pressure for results is quite absent, the league will be mainly used as a way to get more experience in GTR cars.
- Masters of Endurance: LFS' pinacle is back after all sort of rumours going this summer. Even if the league is TEM's long time dream, we feel it's not our time yet, though we will try our chance, "just in case"...
- OWRL FBM Trophy 2010: Oskari Rinne and Yann Laprevotte managed to get 2nd in 3rd in the 2nd annual FBM Trophy, behind the unbeatable Jarno Leikkonen from My3id. You can read more about it onwww.tigerexpress.net.
- FSR Championship: After 5 rounds out of 10, Yann Laprevotte is holding the lead of the second season of the FSR Championship, a semi-international FXR championship organised by French Street Racers. If he can keep it, the drivers' championship would be kept to TEM after Tommy Ostgaard took the opening season for the orange and black team as a ringer. Chances for TEM to defend their teams' title are very small though, as the team only has one entry in most rounds. It is currently in 4th place of the standings, behind E-Team, FSR and Tech3R.
Getting this 
