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’ first 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 Nogiec;(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
This article at www.tigerexpress.net
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 Nogiec;(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
This article at www.tigerexpress.net