[FIA GT Race] FIA GT Championship, Round One, Silverstone, April (18th) 19th-20th

[minimangler]

They were unlucky with the safety car! Didn't they lose a 30 second lead?

[Satorian]

No, they benefited immensely from the safety car:

For one, they lost less time on the other cars during their pit stop. Secondly, taking several non-tyre-wearing laps behind the SC into account they could go without changing tyres, saving some more time on the stop.

Without the SC they would have fallen way back.

[Larsen]

They just went into the pits when the safety car came out, so i assumed that the Jetalliance Aston and Corvettes were fighting for the lead.

I believe thats the reason why they had a 35sec lead or so, they hadnt done a second pitstop yet.

Mind you, i might be confusing myself lol

[Robin_D]

And the safety car was needed as the wheel was more or less in the middle of the circuit. I wouldn't fancy going out there.

I think the GT4 has potential. the Coppa Shell and Trofeo are just pants.

[Joe Taylor]

I've just about thawed out now, spent most of the time shouting at my camera when not watching the fantastic racing. Here are a few of my photos:


Early fog running


British Scuderias


Sean's Reliant Robin


Lead Battle GT1 style


Gollin chasing Maassen


Gollin chasing Maassen again


Gollin still chasing Maasen


Too much first lap exuberance?


Jag


Best sounding car in the field


Lead battle GT3 style


And the award for least appropriate sponsor given the ambient weather conditions goes to:


Lead Battle GT4 style. A calendar was used to time the gap between these 3 and 4th place.

[rich07]

Great race by the sounds of it, My pick Peters/Simonsen didn't win but they got a podium,well done to Simonsen in his first GT1 race in FIA GT, he drove quite well.

[kingkai]

Great photos there Joe!! Thank you for sharing

[Dani Filth]

Originally Posted by rich07

Great race by the sounds of it, My pick Peters/Simonsen didn't win but they got a podium,well done to Simonsen in his first GT1 race in FIA GT, he drove quite well.

i wasn't expecting anything else from Simonsen . he can drive anything fast Gt3 Gt2 or GT1

[Jimbob-18]

Great race, watched it after coming home from Grand Passione. Lots of action and the ITV4 coverage was very well done. What was the random saftey car for anyway? Good battle for the lead anyway, and great finish. Glad my favourite team Jet Alliance won!

[MikeH]

Why call it random if you haven't checked what it was for - it's been stated a couple of times in the thread that the Saleen's wheel was in the middle of the road.

[chunterer]

Bet the drivers woke up yesterday morning and thought; 'Fog, what the.....'

Yes, was a slightly strange to call the SC for that errant wheel, but what the heck it was still a tremendous race!

Simonsen drove a stromer in his long first stint hauling that car almost into contention. He merceilessly reeled in the MC12's which only really came alive when it started to dry out properly in the second half of the race?

Early on did the Vitaphone's suffer with tyres when it was damp like I presume the Saleens did. I was surprised how far off the Larbre and PK S7s were to be honest. Guess it sort of shows how you need the Zakspeed's and ORECA's of this world to get the best out of those cars?

But honestly what a nailbiting finish - the way Bartels was motoring I was sure he was gonna gobble up both Sharp and Peter towards the end but Ryan was superb.

Shame for Fassler/Deltraz though - Marcel was clear and gone early on but did he have some sort of time losing altercation with one of the Ferrari's before JDD ended their chances in his contact with no 2 Vitaphone?

With all the excitement at the front, I completely lost track of the GT2 battle!!!

But I absolutely love all the cars, shame we're going to lose them soon - they're big, flash, make all the right sounds, move around a lot - ideal recipe for racing spectacle

[dj4monie]

Excellent Race!

Couldn't have asked for a better result, could you?

I though Gigawave made the call of the race and about to run away with it. That Pace/Safety car was a bit strange but I guess, yes The Saleen's wheel was somewhere on course.

They are happy I am sure with 3rd first race out and they have the outright speed as well.

Why is there a month between races? Some how in this great world of Sportscar Racing we need to be able to have series go at least every 2 weeks with an event and a few back to back, to keep the excitement level up.

That is the problem big gaps in time between events and then you have NeckCAR in the States and F1 in Europe dominating headlines until the next event weekend. Its easy to build up to the next event if its only 10-14 days away and not 20-25 days, yikes, work on that Ratel!

Again Great Race, fun to watch and I didn't post earlier as I wanted to see it first.

AF Corse once again, but CR looked strong, its going to be a serious fight in GT2 just between the Ferrari squads, Porsche is in TROUBLE.

[TheNewBob]

Originally Posted by minimangler

i preferred ferraris to gt4...

that series is a JOKE.

Did you see Saturday's Coppa Shell race? That was a real joke. At least GT4 was quicker than the safety car...

[CUT 7]

Missed it this year , just dont enjoy it in that cold.
But that Mustang? Its music.Why does it sound so good ?

[dxk1]

Why is that the Ferrari 430 GTs seem to dominate in FIA-GT much more so than they do in ALMS or LMS. Is it just the number of cars or do they have some type of rules advantage in FIA-GT that they do not enjoy in ALMS or LMS? Seems they've won the majority of races in 1-2-3 fashion in FIA-GT while at least getting some competition in LMS and ALMS.

DK

[Spyderman]

It's the Porsche teams that are far off those that participate in the ALMS

[minimangler]

On the subject of the safety car, i spoke to the marshalls at vale and they said that the safety car was needed to at least slow the mentality of the drivers down so they could retrieve the wheel a little more safely.

Another person i spoke to was chris niarchos- a top bloke, by all accounts, i doubt you can find many team managers that can make time for anyone and chat in the pitlane or the garage.

The photos I have uploaded so far are at the usual address, can't remember if i uploaded it but the url is in my profile thing.

Hello by the way to the two marshalls outside copse- I'll remember my pork pies next time.

[RedHunter]

What a great race, in the end there were 7 GT1 cars within just a few seconds. Too bad that Ramos slipped in the end there, but that was a real race accident, no one to be blamed for that. But Bertolini/Bartels going from a 15th qualifing to 2nd on the Podium, that's just amazing. Noone expected Vitaphone to be at the top of the board this season, but this is a good start
Just sad to see that noone cares to show up at a Saterday still, there were like 20 people watching from different locations around the paddock. Than on Sunday you couldn't cross the bridge leading from the paddock to the outer side of the track...

[minimangler]

Well it was certainly pretty busy sunday, and there were a few saturday, but me and about 2 others on friday.

welcome to the forum mate.

[Marcel ten Caat]

And then there are forummers that decide to give you a ride back to the paddock from Club Corner (as the media shuttle did not show up...) Thanks!

Btw, it wasn't that cold to wear that silly hat

[rayburn]

Well I was one of the few there on Saturday, and very cold it was too... Warmest place to watch from that I found was the BRDC grandstand in the paddock, the wind was coming from behind it and so it was reatively sheltered.

Great race though, and enjoyed seeing the GT3 races also - great Morgans!

[Jimbob-18]

Originally Posted by MikeH

Why call it random if you haven't checked what it was for - it's been stated a couple of times in the thread that the Saleen's wheel was in the middle of the road.

Well i am sorry! Forgive me for not reading the last 7 pages since i posted!

[Kidzer]

Thats me just back from Silverstone now - that was a hell of a weekend for me!

Arrived at the hotel on Friday night at 2130 after a 9.5hr drive (I had an assesment on Friday, so we left Aberdeen at around midday).

Got to the track at 0825 and got picked up by Ryan in a Nissan 350Z and taken into the paddock and headed into the Jetalliance garage - I imagine this is true of all team in that paddock, but I have no frame of reference - the mechanics/crew are a nice bunch of folks!

Having been in the Garage for ~5mins, we'd already been offered tea/coffee and been spoken to by a number of guys, thoroughly nice chaps!

The Ferrari races across both days were a bit rubbish, I have to agree with that - we watched from a few palces, and the cars never looked that exciting - with the exception of going into bridge during the Saturday race - there were a few drift-y moments there! The Sunday race of theirs wasn't great at all, we watched at the inside of Copse, down towards turns 2/3/4 and on lap 1 a heap of drivers had comical looking spins going round T1 - the 'talent' spread in the series is a bit huge aswell from my POV.

The GT4 races were quite good, but I'm biased, and Jetalliance won both of those aswell!

As for the main event, that was brilliant!

Watched the first stint from the same vantage point as the Ferrari races, got a good view of Karl passing Sean Edwards into T2, I dont think he put up to much of a fight - which was a wise choice!

Went into 'aiming for a podium' mode after he spun the car, and headed back to the JAR garage to video the first pitstop - with the idea of putting it on Ryan's site, but the bloody camera decided to throw a fit and only recorded 2s of footage!

After the stop we went to the Hospitality suite we were in at Woodcote, and watched from there - it gave a decent view of the cars after coming out of Luffield, and most of the way down to T1 - it also had TVs in it, so we could follow the cars round whole laps.

I'm going to sound biased saying this, and I am, but K.W has said it too - Ryan won that race for that car without a doubt - some quality driving there, IMO its up there with the best races he's ever driven!

Now, I'm no photographer, but I did have a camera with me, the best photos I've got can be found here.

mini, I saw Chris Niarchos walking down the pitlane aswell, and was going to talk to him - I should have done if hes that nice a guy - Lukas L-H is a nice chap too, he was elated with both cars results given that they both had spins! (He said Alex M spun the #36, the Circuit Commentator never mentioned it that I heard (but I didn't hear much!)), oh, that Lambo makes a nice noise!

[MikeH]

Originally Posted by Jimbob-18

Well i am sorry! Forgive me for not reading the last 7 pages since i posted!

A post explaining it fully was only four above your own.

[rdjones]

I have just uploaded my photos from yesterday and they can be found at http://www.rdj-pics.co.uk/Photos/200...one/index.html