For the CoRe team this round was both a good team performance and a lucky escape.
Corey (rcpilot) put us on the pole in GT2 with a great lap in the second qual session, which was a big relief following my pretty mediocre performance in the first session. Our prep time for this race wasn't as extensive as it could have been, thanks to the penultimate LOTA GTC race falling on Thursday, but we did manage to get quite a bit of practice in on Friday.
Race day, Corey and I both woke up by 5:30am to be there for the start. The plan was for him to be in the car for the green, and I'd be there as backup/spotter/crew chief/etc. The pace lap was sort of a mess, with a GT1 car spinning and bunching up the rear half of the field. The trailing cars never had a chance to get in formation before the green flew, and our own start was seriously hampered by the #21 GT1 car (SERT, I think) lagging back from the rest of the GT1 field. We got seriously jumped at the start, as we dropped from first in class to about fourth or fifth. Corey was screaming obscenities on the radio, and I did my best to calm him and remind him that there were 6 hours to go.
It took Corey a few laps to get around the cars between him and Pecker (in the Merc car). Fusion's #30 had gotten a brilliant jump on the field, but didn't have the pace to hang with Merc and ended up being something of a roadblock for a while. Once he got in clean air, Corey set about trying to stabilize/reduce the gap. Of course, the battle with Fusion et al had used up most of the clean, pre-lapping laps, so this was easier said than done. Nevertheless, he managed to set several 34sec laps toward the end of the first stint, less than half a second off his pole pace. By the end of the stint, he was slowly reeling Mercury back in.
At the 1hr mark Corey came in and I took over. Our problems picked up again here, as in my haste to remove my F-key binds, I had somehow set my controls to keyboard (probably in my quest to find the menu where the F-key binds are buried). It took me a good 20-30 seconds to figure out what I'd done and get them set back correctly. Once out on track I did my best to get up to my own pace, which was already somewhat slower than Corey's. I saw that Pecker was staying in for another stint in the Merc car, so I knew we'd be losing time there on top of the time I lost in the pit. I eventually managed to get into the low 36s range (when I wasn't running 38s thanks to traffic), but we were losing time hand over fist to the leaders.
Toward the end of my stint (probably around my 30th lap), I momentarily lost focus and took too shallow of an entry into the righthand hairpin, clipping the curb and sending our car onto its roof. I shift-P'd as quickly as possible and jumped back on track. I wasn't planning on running two stints in a row, and my girlfriend was less than pleased when she came downstairs to leave and found me still driving, but what can you do? Anyway, I finished out my second stint without much drama and handed the car back to Corey, who set about trying to make up for lost time (he's good at that).
At this point we were still in 2nd place on the tracker, as the 1-lap penalty for the telepitting hadn't been applied. XFR and T7R were close behind, but we weren't exactly sure how close, thanks to the tracker confusion. Corey, of course, just ran as hard as he could. About midway through this stint (I think) the penalty was applied. Thanks to troubles of their own, we managed to stay ahead of XFR and T7R, but they were both now on the same lap with us and not very far behind. Time to put the hammer down! Corey cranked out some more 34s, including the GT2 fast lap of the race, and came in to hand the car over to Brian.
Brian was less practiced than the rest of us in terms of dealing with lapping traffic, and initially had some issues with being a bit TOO kind to the GT1s. Thanks to some coaching via radio, he stopped giving quite so much room and his pace quickly improved into the high 35s range. He finished his stint without incident and handed it over to Nolan (BigTime) for the home stretch.
Around this time it was clear that XFR's continuing troubles would take them out of the podium fight and make it a scrap between us and T7R, so we focused on staying ahead of them. Mercury were now 2 laps up and out of reach. I stayed on the radio pretty much constantly, using the tracker and Spectator to give Nolan updates on how far back the T7R car was, etc. For most of his first stint, the gap was stable around 15 seconds. Toward the end, it seemed as though their tires went off (cold, maybe, a common problem with the FXR) and we started to gain a little time.
After the final pit stop, we had a 22 second gap and 35 minutes to go. We knew that barring a major catastrophe, the pace difference between our car and the T7R car wasn't large enough to give them a real chance, so I coached Nolan to drive smoothly and not to worry too much about the car behind. Little by little, Dave started to chip away at Nolan's gap, turning faster and faster laps until he too was in the 34s range. Nolan, meanwhile was fighting suspension damage that gave him a little too much oversteer in righthand corners, and was running in the low-mid 36s range. The gap started to fall. With 20 minutes to go there was a 19 second gap. With 10 minutes to go there was a 15 second gap. With 5 minutes to go, there was a 12 second gap. I urged Nolan to put it on cruise control and preserve the car, but it's hard to pen up a race car driver, and he just went for it as always.
In the end, despite Jan's pleading on IRC, there just wasn't enough time left for T7R to get to our bumper (and they certainly would have in a longer race). It's a shame, because I'm sure it would have been a good battle, but on the other hand we're quite pleased to walk away with 2nd.
A big thanks from all of us to all of the GT1 cars for being quite respectful under lapping conditions, and to all the GT2 cars for very good track awareness. We can't wait for Westhill.
