Kyoto 400 inaugural event

Tomorrow night at 18h00 GMT until 20h30 GMT the inaugural Kyoto 400 (400 miles, 216 laps) with the XRR takes place. Info on lfsforum under leagues and event 'Realistic Nascar'. Field currently consists of 22 drivers.

Qualification took place a week ago. I had an okay qualification run (38:68, due to an error I could not get the best posssible time of 38:65 on R3 tyres), unfortunately sharing second place which did not give me pole row for race day and I had to take part in one of the two duel races for final qualification (check out Gatorade Duel on wikepedia to see how it works). Had a bad start after being bumped a few times and then causing a massive pile-up on the rolling start. Got back to 3rd place, but while fighting in the final laps with 4 cars had a slight slide in turn 3, hit the wall, giving me a final qualification position in 13th place.

The event will be livestreamed on http://www.livestream.com/realisticnascar.

Bad luck in qualification
Better luck for the race

Report back...

Do a search on Youtube for 2012 Kyoto 400 race, great video.

The Kyoto 400 was exciting and well organised, a field of 22 started, I started in 13th place. First lap (always a mess on oval) went well with first caution on about lap 10. I was well positioned at 7th until lap 33 when I slided slightly on turn 1 and touched #93, we both spun and hit the wall, lcukily the field avoided us, no caution or yellow flag. This cost me the race as I lost draft and slowly fell behind until I got lapped on lap 65, on lap 67 LFS minimised on me, I hit the wall on turn 3 brutally and got thrown into the pits, pitted well, thought car was repaired until I did a messy pit exit when I realised the car was not repaired and I had extensive damage. Had to pit again 2 laps later so that this fiasco cost me 3 laps, combined with 1 lap down, I was 4 laps down.

By this time the field was whittled down to 12, I was in 10th, later on #93 flipped twice, was spectated on second flip, I lost one more position during the fight for 10th place in the final laps. Ended dead last at 11th, with official position 11th out of 22 as documented in the spdo database.

Was a good race, barring the few mistakes.

The youtube is very exciting with good commentary, weird how slow everything feels from the driver's perspective and how fast from a spectators.

Oval racing is actually great for a spectator especially, great crashes, exciting continuous fights.

I wish we can sign up another enthusiastic oval racer in SCCC, I know it isn't everyone's thing, but I really miss having a driving mate in oval events - is the only way to do well on the oval circuit. Had my eye on one guy, but as you all know, younger guys, pffft, no commitment and they get bored so easily...

Well, tonight is the final practise race of the Gentleman Driver's Club, unfortunately, for the time being, no new racers will be signed up for the season's races - GDC expanded rapdily once some OLFSL members started to join. But, we had a great open club evening last Wednesday night, good races, testing of cars. Feel free to drop by any time on the server, and on an unofficial note, when you get known by the GDC admins you have a good chance of being invited to future events. You will find that SCCC, GDC and OLFSL have very similar values, driver attitudes, rules and maturity.

Regards
- Gerrit

Nice report here, i also enjoy nascar a lot, it is so intense with all those cars so close to each others.
I also had a great race yesterday, see iracing section

Very nice report Gerrit
Sounds like you had fun despite the bad luck that seems to be following you. That's the most important thing. Better luck in future