Rd 6 @ the Nurburgring

these races seem to come around that quickly at the moment. Trying to practice for these and fit other racing in is quite a task. The fact it was the Nurburgring was a bit of a relief as it’s somewhat familiar with the PSR bunch, so everyone felt happy to go easy on the practice sessions.

Qualifying

Qualifying for me is a weak point, I can punch out a quick time but it’s more like a fast race pace rather than a low fuel super quick time, but I suppose that’s why I’m the Average Sim Racer. I managed to stick in a relatively good lap which if I can remember correctly, it was a 1:54.6 which put me on the grid in p17 with Tim Weller in 19th just behind. With less than 1 second separating the top 20, this was an extremely close qualifying. Dean managed to put the BMW in 26th, he’ll be glad to get out of the boat with the upcoming RCI league. Dan finished qualy in 30th, with John rounding out qualifying in 4th spot, another great result for john.

Away we go

The race began very early in the morning, so our lights were on for the start of this 2 hour race. We rolled round to the start and the lights went green, I was positioned on the outside going into T1 and narrowly avoided hitting the Ferrari directly infront who I believe tapped Junior in the Mercedes causing him to slowly spin, facing the inside of T1. The Mercedes then carried on trying to turn back to track and collected a couple of cars, one being Dean Allen who was left with heavy damage and dropped back to 33rd. John Clements made a move on 3rd position in T2 / T3 and made it stick. The first few laps were hectic but there wasn’t too many incidents to report. Everyone quickly settled down and the racing began.

Battle

I found myself in an extremely tight battle for the duration of the race, the pitstops did nothing but lessen the number of the bunch whilst we pitted at different intervals. The battle consisted of my Bentley, Ruiz in the Lamborghini, Trulli in another Lamborghini and Fitzpatrick in the Aston Martin. Nurburgring is notoriously hard to pass on, most places a pass arises it leads you into a section of track where two cars together just doesn’t work out well, and in my case usually resulted with me having to back off and give the place back. The first half of the race, the positions just chopped and changed as no one could really hold the place but after the final pitstop things became interesting.

Final stint

On my final pitstop I collected my last set of tyres and topped the fuel up enough to just finish the final 40 minute stint. As I neared the end of the pit straight I saw Trulli, Fitzpatrick and Ruiz come past, fortunately I managed to join onto the back of the train going into T1, and held on whilst my tyres came back up to temp. I’d ran the first ⅔ of the race on a lower TC setting to try get a bit more out the Bentley leading onto the straights but this had resulted in the tyres dropping off quite quick. So once on the back of the other 3 I turned the traction up and played a game of patience. My first chance came against Ruiz where I out braked him into T1. I quickly put the pressure on Fitzpatrick and made a couple of good but failed runs on his Aston. One attempt into T1 saw us neck and neck heading into T2 which left the door open on the inside for Ruiz to sneak through. All this time Trulli was getting an easy time at the front of the bunch. With the clock ticking down I needed to make a move stick and on the following lap to losing my place to Ruiz, he made a move on Fitzpatrick into T5 which I capitalised on and under cut the pair of them into T6. I battled with Fitzpatrick for the following couple of laps where we changed positions a few times before I made a move on T1 and outbraked him. Fitzpatrick went straight on here due to a disconnect of his headset. There was only one car left in the bunch and that was Trulli who I managed to catch up with quite quickly, I applied a lot of pressure here as the time was ticking down fast. Out of T1 I was just ahead and I left a fair bit of room into T2 but there was a bit of paint traded but no crash. I quickly capitalised on the empty track Infront and opened up a bit of a gap whilst Ruiz and Trulli fought it out.

Unfortunately Ruiz and Trulli got tangled and they both dropped back allowing PSR team member Tim Weller to move through into 10th behind myself. Down the road Infront, John had had an intense race battling with the Top 4, unfortunately Niels Van De Koekelt disconnected which left just McAuley, Bosselet and John. On the final stint John left the pits and realised he’d been undercut so was in 3rd, but quickly caught up to 2nd and with the 3 of them making their way through traffic they quickly caught up with 1st. 2nd place made a couple of mistakes which allowed first to pull a lead on them. With only a few laps to go Bosselet made a bad exit on final chicane which John capitalised on and managed to bring home 2nd place. Dean Allen and Dan Wood both had bad starts to their races and carried a bit of damage for the most part but managed to claw back a few places and Dean took 21st with Dan right behind in 22nd.

Stream links

Darrell Upton – Average Sim Racer – Stream

John Clements – JJC Racing – Stream

All our team liveries in the pictures are created by ‘E-Sportdesigns’