iRacing 10h Petit Le Mans - 6th October 2018 | 13:00 GMT (1 Viewer)

grobi0815

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sadly i binned the car a second time. we retired after the wheel had more then 30 degrees.
 

GoDATP

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Well that was... Painful. Oh well. Still some really good racing in that session. It's a shame, we had the pace, too.
 

SillySausage

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A race report from my perspective:

An Austrian, German, American and Aussie drive a Porsche for ten hours sounds like the start of bad joke or high school maths problem but that's exactly what we endeavored to do at the iRacing Petit Le Mans.

Wow, what an experience! After years of watching RSR's iRacing endurance entries from the sideline, thinking it was so cool and dreaming of having the confidence to give it a go myself, I finally got my chance. A new racing platform to learn, a car I hadn't driven before on a circuit I had no idea about - I certainly had my work cut out for me but I was super excited for it and was looking forward to the challenge.

Lucky for me, I had some of the best teammates one could ask for alongside me. With lots of last minute drop-outs, the initial two cars that were planned to enter were condensed into one car with probably the most enthusiastic four drivers of the lot. @grobi0815 was an invaluable help to us first timers, acting almost as the veteran Dad of the team. His work managing the team, getting us registered, answering the many dumb questions of mine and overall making our team a very calm, friendly and welcoming environment was greatly appreciated. @The Wayfaerer was brilliant at keeping things fun within the team and giving us great confidence with his driving. And finally @GoDATP was super helpful keeping us informed of lap times, cars around us on track and keeping us in check with our incident limit.

After all our last minute practice, nerves and "pitstops" the race start in itself was quite calm from my perspective. I only found out this was @The Wayfaerer 's first iRacing endurance event just before the race but he was very confident in his race starts after his experience in rFactor 2 so he was the one given the job. A perfect, clean start by him from P14 of 47 (all GTEs) started our race off in high spirits. He went on to go quicker and quicker, keeping it clean the whole way which meant towards the end of his perfect double stint we were in P8.

With just under ten minutes to go before I jumped into the car for my first laps, I was getting slightly nervous but was surprised I was actually more excited to drive than nervous (thanks to the fantastic supportive and calm teammates). It was at this point that disaster struck. Coming into turn six, @The Wayfaerer was squeezed wide by a backmarker before clipping the inside curb, causing him to understeer wide and torpedo into the side of our car. This gave us massive damage but @The Wayfaerer did his best to crab it back to the pits and it was my turn to get in the car and see if we could still continue to race after thirteen minutes of repairs.

This damage was almost actually a gift in disguise for me (although no one wants this to happen), it meant that a lot of pressure was taken off my shoulders and I was no longer fighting in the top ten but instead had nothing to lose in P40 something so I was able to take my time, try and settle my nerves and put in some consistent laps. After some very tentative initial laps, gauging the condition of the car (with only one off) we were all surprised that the wheel was straight, our top speed and stability were a bit off but overall the car was drivable. By the end of my single stint, I'd managed to put in some consistent, albeit slower laps than @The Wayfaerer (whether this be due to my driving or the damage) and we were up into P35 as @GoDATP jumped into the car for his first stint.

Overall I was happy with my stint. I wasn't as fast as I would like (but who is?) but I was happy with the consistency and cleanliness of my drive and surprised myself how well I kept my nervous under control - I was actually fairly calm because before I could get too nervous I was already thrown out onto the track and too busy to think about it. Road Atlanta is certainly one of the most exhausting tracks as there is no breathing room, just corner after corner, let alone having forty-six other cars lapping with you. After my stint I went straight to bed to try and get some sleep (it now being about 3:30am for me) before my planned double stint at the end of the race.

I woke up a couple of hours later, checked the livestream, all seemed to be going well...

I woke up a bit later on and there was no more car on track with a message from @grobi0815 telling me we'd had another incident and our race was over :( In the end it was disappointing, but regardless, I had such a good time while we were still racing, made some great friends (the vibe within the team was just so good!) and learned sooooooooo much! After this first foray into iRacing endurance racing, I feel so much more comfortable and excited for next time and can't wait for it! Thanks so much to my fantastic teammates and for the support from everyone :)
 

GoDATP

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That pretty much sums it all up. We really did have some great pace, even with a massively bent wing we were pulling moves into the busstop chicane almost every single lap to unlap ourselves. I really enjoyed the driving, although there were some crazies.
 

falcon2081

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@SillySausage Thanks for the race report. Shame about what happened. We didn't have much luck ourselves. I got involved and took out Williams Esport GTE in Top split in my DP after about an hour lol. But our 2 other cars finished at least. Our other DP in top split took 6th place and GTE took 2nd in 4th split. They lost first place on the last lap after leading all race. Heartbreaking for them.

If you guy's are bored here's a little action of me fighting with Radicals for 3rd place for a few laps.
 

Fatih Kursat

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