Well that was fun.
Wasn't it?
So 9 racers turned up for this event. Not being a fan of marshalled racing, I was happy to sit out and do the scoring/organizing, but Trigger insisted that he wanted to be paired with me. Reuben elected to run on his own, so we went for 4 teams of 2 and a solo Reuben.
We had a quick sort out of available cars (Ninco NC2 inline GTs) and chose not to use black lane.
Blue lane was a Mercedes CLK LM
Green lane a Porsche 911GT1
Red lane had a Ferrari F50
Yellow lane a McLaren F1 GTR
White lane was a Callaway C12 Corvette
Cars were to stay on lane and every team would run a 20 minute stint with each car. Changeovers were at teams discretion, Reuben had to unplug his controller once during his stint, turn a full 360 and plug back in. Every driver had to do at least 5 minutes on each lane.
Teams were
1 Reuben (R)
2 Wes/Tim (WT)
3 Trigger/Jim (TJ)
4 Dave/Keith (DK)
5 Karl/Peter (KP)
First stint had to be stopped at the four minute mark because somebody (Whoops!
) hadn't set the DS box correctly. Rather than 20 minutes being set as the time to run to, minimum lap time was set at 20 seconds! this meant only every other lap was being counted.
Off we went again and a 16 minute session was run.
At the end of the first session the lap count was;
R - blue lane 84.3
DK - yellow 83.4
TJ - red 82.2
KP - white 79.7
WT - green 77.7
A good performance from Reuben in the Merc, the only time it had the highest lap count, despite it being quite "loose" at the rear. Don't know if that was down to the car or the ongoing issue with blue lane since the infamous banana milkshake incident at the last 9-hour event!
Second stint was also stopped a few minutes in for a rogue screw in one of the lanes. This was only a minimal stoppage and at the end of the stint the lap count was ;
TJ - yellow 101.2
DK- white & WT - red tied on 99.7
R - green 98.0
KP - blue 93.3
This gave a running total of;
TJ - 183.4
DK - 183.1
R - 182.3
WT -177.4
PK - 173.0
It was becoming apparent that the McLaren in yellow lane was the class of the field, the F50 and Callaway were close in performance, the Merc was good if a bit slidey if you powered on too early out of corners and the 911GT1 was a bit of a slug in comparison.
Each team moved to their next lane and finally we had an uninterrupted session of a full 20 minutes to see what lap count was possible.
At the end of this stint the lap count was;
WT- yellow 109.7
R - red 107.2
TJ - white 107.0
DK - blue 105,2
KP - green 98.3
So at the break the totals were;
TJ 290.4
R 289.5
DK 288.3
WT 287.1
KP 271.3
Penultimate session with the top 4 separated by 3 and a bit laps got under way and again went the full distance without problem. this was also the closest stint of all with all 5 teams within 6 laps of each other.
R - yellow 110.9
WT - white 108.5
DK - green 105.8
TJ - blue 105.3
KP - red 105.1
This gave totals going into the last session of;
R - 400.4
TJ - 395.7
WT - 395.6
DK - 394.1
KP - 376.4
So to the last session with the middle order incredibly close, Reuben just had to bring the relatively good Callaway home having built up a good gap to the rest. Karl and Peter, despite having the strong yellow lane McLaren had too much to make up.
Final session counts were;
DK - red 110.3
R - white 109.8
TJ - green 105.9
WT - blue 105.0
KP - yellow 104.9
So a comfortable win for Reuben, though I don't think comfortable would be a good description of his trigger hand.
The excellent run from Dave and Keith in the red Ferrari moved them past the teams of Trigger/Jim and Wes/Tim who were too busy battling each other to notice the places slipping away.
Final lap count;
Reuben 510.2
Dave/Keith 504.4
Trigger/Jim 501.6
Wes/Tim 500.6
Karl/Peter 481.3
