Solid performances for Vires at Fern Bay
8th February 2012.
Starting a low 12th place in
GT500, Arco jumped into 10th in dramatic style with serveral bumps at the start of the main race. Arco then in attacking Savage Simsports after a shaky start regained his 10th place at the start of lap 2 only to lose it to the flying 3id car of Holmes. From then on Arco settled into a nice pace and started to close in on the leading pack, taking chunks of time out of them as they faught and picking his way through the GT300 cars nicely. Arco worked his way to 8th after the restart and chased the leaders hard. At just under half way, Arco came in and switched to Pierre who had a clear aggressive strategy in his mind and was focused on a top 5 finish. Peron then charged hard, homing in on the battling leaders quickly demoting Evo of 7th and then SR for 6th. In a frantic struggle with spdoRacing, SonicRealms and Evo Pierre came out with a well earned 6th place, even if he did feel he could have done better!
Vires started an average 5th place in
GT300 after a mixup of communication with GenRacing on the roll up lap lost them their 4th place on the grid. Peace took the inside and seized 3rd in T1 as spdoRacing span out after contact with Vortex. Peace held 3rd and settled into a nice rhythm, easing away from Popa in the GTS car in 4th. Soon though, Peace attacked Wong in the PLZ XR3 car, eager to get past and chase the leader down. As Peace was held up behind the PLZ car, Western Wolves' Friskopps started to add more and more pressure onto the Vires driver. But it all became too much as, stuck in the draft of the PLZ car, Peace drifted wide of his mark and was lucky to escape in the perilous fast right hander in the downhill section. This enabled the chasing Western Wolves car to be all over the back of Peace, and in the chicane Friskopps span, ending the challenge immediately. For the next few laps Peace struggled with overheated rear tyres, losing his 3rd place to CoRe momenterily because of drifting wide before the Safety Car came to the rescue to allow the tyres to cool. The restart commenced on lap 28, and with some strange tactics from Vortex's Juusela causing a huge startline accident which involved front runners spdoRacing again. Subtly and unnoticed by commentators, Peace snuck into 2nd with an impressive double move in T1 and set about catching the leaders. Peace got within touching distance of the Vortex car, however a recovering GT500 car blocked James and scuppered his chances. Peace pitted soon after and Miro Rauti took over the car in 4th place. There was some confusion with the tracker at who had pitted and who hadn't but it was soon apparent Vires GT300 had missed out big time in the pitstop. Nevertheless, a win was still on the cars and Rauti pulled off a series off impressive times to cut the gap again and again to the leader. However, problems with the setup surficed once again and progress was halted due to overheating rear tyres. SpdoRacing easily deposed Vires of their 4th place on lap 52 as a vicious circle ensued with the rear tyres, throwing time away easily. But Rauti's attention now turned to the hard charging PLZ machine with Lombardi at the helm, right at the end of the race an impressive show of defensive skills from Rauti kept Lombardi at bay to take 4th place due to a GTS time out earlier in the race.