Finishing A Wild June...

Good Evening! I hope you are all well.

In all honesty, this week has been a bit...weird...a bit...all over the place

Saturday 24th - Sunday 25th June, 2023

Last weekend - simply put...was a bit of a clusterfuck.

The plan was (up to that point) to do Round 1 of the Global Endurance Series at Nurburgring Nordschliefe - a 24 hour series allowing for the Le Mans 24 Hour - I thought it would be a beautiful send-off to the GTE class as they've just had their very last real-life Le Mans 24 Hours and can't say for certain how long they will remain active on the service.

it quickly became apparent that a few problems sprung up. 1) It was the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge week - and this would take priority as the following week, the series would return to IMSA Endurance (GT3)

2) For the past month (almost) I had been saying to myself that I wanted to try the canoeing activity the West Wight Community Centre had been holding every Sunday - I just had constant calendar clashes.

With it being a 24 hour race, and Canoeing happening at 1pm - that would mean we would have to do the first time-slot

3) With one of us driving - the other couldn't sleep as we would have to monitor the race and set-up pit stops and stay for moral support - meaning we'd both be feeling shite at the end of it - especially if we retired in the early hours of Sunday 4) Gumi then told me at 07:52am that he was unwell - VERY close shave there.

Partially the interest for this series was to take advantage of little interest/small grid sizes - but the smallest grid on Saturday was 30 - so all in all, not overly small (I'm a poet and I know it!)

~

I did the 4pm IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race (finished 14th - from 24th on the Grid) however this ended up clashing with an endurance league - but it turned out that both of us weren't around - so it wouldn't have worked even if I had showed up.

On Sunday, I EVENTUALLY got around to doing the canoeing activity and it went swimmingly (pun not intended) and with a little more training, I think I'll be ready to go out on the Solent with the rest of the Isle Of Wight Canoe Club.

Monday 26th June - Thursday 29th June 2023

This week's been a very action-packed week.

Monday 26th June, 2023

At 1pm I had my car booked in for an alignment diagnostic/check.

At first they said the car would take an hour - and I took an hour to find the local McDonalds (I had been walking past it for about an hour but had no clue).

After returning to the garage with my food, the garage informed me that they hadn't been able to find a ramp (very busy that day) - but whilst I was eating, Timon went up on the ramp -before telling me that it would be done at about 5pm.

I had about 2 - 4 hours to kill and this was my first time snooping around Southampton - so, after window shopping a bit, I decided to watch a film.

Upon reviewing the film choices - there was nothing that was particularly screaming out "WATCH ME" - but I eventually settled on "No Hard Feelings", a typical Hollywood Film - with an interesting plot.

Girl needs car for work, dorky guy with rich parents want him to socialise - rich parents sell car online "as long as you "date" our son" - Girl does it for the car - oop, accidentally falls in love, guy finds out about parents plan, angry, angry, they all live happily ever after.

Sorry for spoiling the movie - it was one of those "Phone Films" you can look up from your phone at any point and roughly gauge what's going on.

After this, I return to my car, it's about 4:48pm - and my car is all done (outside the garage) - more work needs to be done - but the car felt a lot "tighter" on driving home.

That evening it was the FRL (Formula Racing League) iMotoring Monday race at Imola - I absolutely love Imola (one of my favourites) and manage to win the Human Competition (there were AI present since numbers were a little low) - it was such a memorable event, there will be a seperate blog.

Tuesday 27th June, 2023

The hectic week continued into Tuesday as I had my induction for the new job I got the previous week.

I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say (legally), but I started work at 10am, finished at 3pm - whilst I didn't "officially" start work, it was a day covering health and safety and filling out forms, ordering my uniform and finding out my shifts.

~

That evening QRT was back at Charlotte - and after ALMOST claiming a win when the GT3/GT4 Battle Tour was at Charlotte - I knew it was going to be a wild old race.

This time, 10 drivers showed up - 8 other GT3's and an LMDH.

It was absolute Porsche-fest - only one other driver beside myself picking something else - Dormand picking the Mercedes.

It wasn't just a Porschefest either - 4/9 of the GT3's were a part of the "ART" (Aspire Racing Team), with Race Spirit Team also entering two entries Could ART grab an ART 1,2,3,4?

In qualifying ART would qualify 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th

Race Spirit Team would qualify 8th and 2nd.

I'd qualify 4th/9th and only dropped to 5th in the opening laps.

With a big gap behind, and a larger gap in front - I just had to drive in circles for 45 minutes and bring her home.

On Lap 7, I noticed one of the ART cars stranded by the side of the circuit - it later turned out that after an intense fight for multiple laps, P2 and P3 had tangled after a three-way fight for 2nd place

Whilst the Race Spirit Team boys were racing hard, luckily for the team, only one car was wiped out - having had a bit of a lonely race up to this point, I was glad to be promoted to 4th.

With about 10 laps to go, I began to notice the Porsche behind inch closer, lap by lap - and on the start/finish straight, starting lap 28, he passed - but I was okay with it as he had much greater pace than I did - by the end of the race, he pulled out an 8-second gap from me - so fully deserved.

So, after 45 minutes of flat-out racing, the results of the QRT Mixed Class Championship race at Charlotte Roval was:

LMDH

1st - LMDH - J. Sjöberg (40 L)

GT3

1st - Porsche GT3 (ART) - B. Dahlgren (37 L)

2nd - Porsche GT3 (RST) - D. Vue (37 L)

3rd - Porsche GT3 (RST) - Q. Guérout (37 L)

4th - Porsche GT3 (Privateer) - J. Storey (37 L)

5th - Ferrari 488 GT3 (KBM) - R. Truswell (37 L)

6th - Mercedes AMG GT GT3 (Privateer) - L. Dormand (36 L)

7th - Porsche GT3 (ART) - R. Pink (36 L)

8th - Porsche GT3 (ART) - J. Van Bakel (36 L)

DNF - Porsche GT3 (ART) - D. Baulcomb (11 L)

With 23 drivers in the GT3 class and only 9 showing up - hopefully I'll be able to leapfrog a few and get myself out of 13th and into the Top 10.

Wednesday

The madness yet still continued into the next race on my schedule - this being my weekly official race in the FalkenTyre Sports Car Challenge.

This week's race was at Long Beach - and in all honesty, it was absolutely one to forget - there were only two splits - the first was an all-LMDH split, and the second (I was in) was all 28 GT4's that registered to race in the 12:00 race.

Whilst I had dreamt about being in top-split (racing against the best of the best) - at my current skill-level, it's not everything I hoped it would be.

From 14th on the grid (class), I finished 15th - second to last of the runners - I was absolutely out of my depth - in fact, my fastest lap was 3 seconds slower than the AVERAGE lap of the winner - and my average was about 10 seconds slower than his.

I had the 20th lowest iRating out of a 28-car field - over half the field had more than 2000 iRating (only 13 had less than 2000 iR)

Here are the Top 10 finishers' iRatings

1st - 6832

3rd - 3949

2nd - 2878

4th - 2422 (Car #13 overall)

9th - 2398

5th - 2368

7th - 1884

6th - 1866

12th - 1819

8th - 1681

10th - 1279

It was also the DML (Delta Motorsport League) GT4 Showdown Finale.

With the QRT GT3/GT4 Battle wrapped up in May and VRG Season Cancelled before the final round - this was my last GT4 League still running.

It absolutely ended on a high - and a very exciting race at Oulton Park.

GT4 League Results

TUE | QRT GT3/GT4 Battle Tour

3rd (GT4 Class)

WED | DML GT4 Showdown

5th (Overall)

THUR | VRG GT4 Tour

1st/2nd AM Class*

*Results say 2nd, but there was discussion about including points for those who showed up at Suzuka, which was eventually cancelled due to lack of numbers.

My new work shifts are on Saturday, Sunday and Monday - which means that both IMSA Endurance and IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge are no longer compatible - neither are two endurance leagues I was due to take part in.

Where does this leave me?

Despite missing practice, FRL (Formula Racing League) will still go ahead - although I will have to see how I feel after a long day of work - but as I'm currently leading the championship - I'm not quite ready to give up quite yet.

My weekly race on Wednesday will still go on as planned as I'm LOVING the series - as will QRT (Tues) and DML (Weds) which are unaffected by my shifts - DML's new league starts in mid/late July, so a few empty Wednesday nights first though.

Today (Thursday 29th June) was supposed to be the VRG GT4 Tour finale at Donington Park, however this series has been since canned.

This weekend will be my first shift.