Racing at Fern Bay is never easy for two reasons: First, whichever layout you race in, you need to be as careful as possible as there is a high risk of spinning, crashing, flipping and getting stuck, and second, in a venue like Fern Bay it's even more impossible to achieve a good result without proper preparation.
With that in mind, Last Lap Motorsports set off for two weeks of practice, and I can say that those were some of the most annoying times I've ever had while preparing for a race.
The first week was all about developing the setup, and making it faster, and all this while ignoring stability or tyre duration. And we found that out at the second week, which was more destined towards making the tyres last an hour. Sadly, by raceday we only had found out one thing: Going for speed for a whole week and then doing stints for the other week was a stupid idea.

So we still had to do some last-hour tweaks by race day, to make sure we had a stable package come the qualifying heat.

And that brings us to the damn Qualifying race. The luckiest race for LLM. Ever. To the point that we were only granted a Main Race spot AFTER it was finished.
Anyway, it started with Jordan Lavrikov getting a decent start but then going slightly wide at Turn 1, and with that, losing enough momentum to reach the chicane dead last. Throughout the race, the lucky chant started when the Conquest Racing car caused a chain crash at the entry of the bridge, taking Jordan up to 8th out of 12 drivers. Throughout the race, the LLM car did little progress, only gaining one more place at the end which came from the Glowing Pistons' untimely demise, and eventually finishing a somehow disappointing and polemic 6th, in a last corner incident with Scuderia Gas' driver Lobato, who tried a desperate maneuver, nearly ruined both our races, and then decided to blame us for the incident that he caused (not to mention that he showed his poor behaviour after the race by angrily ramming Jordan. Shame on you!). But as I was saying, LLM finished in 6th and it seemed to be all over, but as if this was a film's plot twist, Conquest Racing, who finished ahead of us, were given a time penalty for their bridge mishaps which was severe enough to knock them out of the Top 5 and put Last Lap Motorsports in 5th, and therefore grant the team the entry to the Main Race! Talk about a lucky break, and a wind of change after such a stressful practice period!

But come Qualifying, that wind changed. Maybe literally, too. Last Lap Motorsports' Jordan Lavrikov wasn't helped by Rui Pinto (who was supposed to qualify the car) spending extra time out to relax (I was nervous to the point that I had to leave home for a while), and had to do double duty and qualify the car himself. The best that Jordan could do was to qualify the car in 14th out of 15 cars. We haven't really mastered the art of qualifying yet

Luckily enough, Pinto got home in time for the Main Race to start and took over the wheel. Bad part of this was the fact that Pinto's throttle pedal had a bad spiking problem, and with a turbocharged car it would certainly be a bit of a handicap in some places.
Anyway, the start of the main race was a very good one for LLM, as Pinto got a good getaway and managed to leapfrog a handful of cars into Turn 1, only to lose them and drop to last on the last sector and then all of a sudden on the main straight shortly afterwards, a lag spike that had him crashing head-on into the T1 wall at full speed. LLM's luck was back though, as there was no noticeable suspension damage and Pinto just rejoined as if nothing had happened (not even the stream noticed it!). From then on it was a race that had Pinto charging as much as possible but having to play it safe on some dangerous sections, basically trying as hard as possible to keep the car intact, but some later slip-ups were inevitable. The other lucky wind of change was another event that brought the Safety Car out and bunched up the pack, with Pinto's tyres reaching peak performance after the race was resumed and giving him a real chance at getting back some positions. And right from the restart, where Pinto made the best out of the slowing cars ahead and got yet another handful of spots. From then on it was all about staying ahead of the cars we had passed, but Western Wolves' Robin Friskopps was hot on our tails and was raring to get past us, putting a lot of pressure on us while the GT500 cars were trying to get past as well. Pinto was nearing the hour limit when he gave the car over to Jordan Lavrikov, who had to drive the car to the finish. Not much happened apart from a couple of small mistakes and some hairy moves caused by some clumsy GT500 cars. From this point on, that's when I got to see the whole team working as one, with Joe Letteriello, who was standing in for this round as backup, doing all the spotting and collecting race data, representing the team on IRC; Jordan Lavrikov doing an extended stint with the Qualifying Heat and Qualifying afterwards, on his first mainstream race, and then helping out with his own feedback of racing with wind, and Rui Pinto who started the Main Race and after his stint, went straight to help Joe gather information and help out with any problems. That was the team's mindset when we crossed the finish line: we all worked as one, after the bad practice period, the difficulties we still had come race day and the sheer luck that got us through the whole day, we still managed to work as a team, and that's very important towards the race performance.
And in a race that I thought would be of high attrition (it wasn't), we were still happy enough to cross the finish line in 11th and score some important points towards the Teams' standings, as the aim to finish in the Top 10 still stands. Great job everyone!


Apologies go to: I'll get to that when I see the replays.


And shame on you, Scuderia Gas. Absolutely disgraceful attitude.


P.S: I couldn't watch the Main Race replay so I don't remember the actual positions the car held, the lap that something happened, etc. so some things may be wrong or weren't mentioned at all. I may edit that later. Not to mention it's very late right now and I'd rather get some precious sleep rather than having to redo all of this.