[Special Event] 2021 Petit Le Mans

[Deb]

Looks great, thank @Kenadian

 

[Skid_Marc_]

Called and spoke with my ISP this morning. They had a piece of equipment fail twice yesterday, that required manual reset (why one of the outages lasted more than 20 minutes, probably while they tried to first diagnose the issue, while the second outage only lasted 5 minutes, because they knew exactly what to reset), at exactly the same times I had my issues, so it's pretty clear that was my problem. As annoying as it is that it cost me two 2nd place finishes and 143iR, it's always nice just to know the cause of an intermittent issue. Is it fixed? Well.... I got the "We're monitoring the faulty piece of equipment to determine if it needs to be replaced.... if we do replace it, there won't be any interruption in service..." Does that mean that they're waiting for it to fail again in order to replace it? And if it does fail again, there WILL be an interruption to service? Who knows. Electrical gremlins are the worst.

I guess we'll just lick-it and send-it, and hope all the connections are tight on the race car!

 

[Skid_Marc_]

Also @Kenadian Chrome says your links aren't safe, and flat out won't let me download them. Microsoft Edge says "Well, we downloaded these, but we really don't recommend these, as we can't guarantee your safety. We'll even get rid of them for you, if you want us to.... No? You still want them? Well, okay. Your funeral..."

 

[Brainling]

All we can do is cross our fingers and hope! Another great example of why sims don't need random failures

 

[Jes_971]

@Kenadian @Kelley G
I don't know what to do here guys. Started feeling sick last night and now today I'm definitely sick. I'm going to go get a Rona test tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll see when I get home how I'm feeling and possibly run some laps. I was running consistent high 18's.

 

[Kenadian]

@Kenadian @Kelley G
I don't know what to do here guys. Started feeling sick last night and now today I'm definitely sick. I'm going to go get a Rona test tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll see when I get home how I'm feeling and possibly run some laps. I was running consistent high 18's.

Oh man that sux, sorry to hear it.

Do what you gotta do man, your health matters more!

 

[Kenadian]

Also @Kenadian Chrome says your links aren't safe, and flat out won't let me download them. Microsoft Edge says "Well, we downloaded these, but we really don't recommend these, as we can't guarantee your safety. We'll even get rid of them for you, if you want us to.... No? You still want them? Well, okay. Your funeral..."

Do you have childsafe tools enabled or safe search or something? The links are perfectly safe and don't provide any errors in Chrome or Firefox for me.

Haven't tried Edge because what the fuck is that?

Bee tee dub, paint updated with Driver names and IMSA stuff, hopefully it worky.

 

[Jes_971]

@Kenadian @Kelley G This sucks that it had to happen last minute but I'm gonna have to sit this one out. The body aches alone are bad but the fatigue thrown in on top is just too much. After I posted earlier I left work early and got my Covid test. I wish you guys all the best and look forward to joining you on the next one (Suzuka 10hr?).

 

[Kenadian]

@Kenadian @Kelley G This sucks that it had to happen last minute but I'm gonna have to sit this one out. The body aches alone are bad but the fatigue thrown in on top is just too much. After I posted earlier I left work early and got my Covid test. I wish you guys all the best and look forward to joining you on the next one (Suzuka 10hr?).

That sux d00d, sorry.

Take care of yourself and don't worry, I'm pretty sure there's a high percentage @Kelley G may live through this event.

...maybe

 

[Skid_Marc_]

...don't worry, I'm pretty sure there's a high percentage @Kelley G may live through this event.

...maybe

This didn't age well. Sucks for the BMW team, you two had a great run going up to that point!

 

[Deb]

Thanks @Skid_Marc_ and @Brainling for racing with me yesterday in the P217, turned out to be the 14 hours of Petit LeMans craziness race, but a happy ending Never seen so many banged up GTEs but we survived

 

[Kelley G]

How did your second race go? Sorry I didn’t pop back in later in the day. Kept meaning to and just never got back to my rig.

 

[Deb]

How did your second race go? Sorry I didn’t pop back in later in the day. Kept meaning to and just never got back to my rig.

We gridded 7th, had an incident in the first stint that set us back some, but ended up finishing 6th!!!! We were all happy with that result, particularly considering the very dangerous GTEs in that split

 

[Brainling]

The race was carnage, but we mostly kept it together and kept plugging at it. Had a few issues of our own making, and a few of others making, but I'll definitely take a top 10 after that demolition derby

 

[Kenadian]

This didn't age well. Sucks for the BMW team, you two had a great run going up to that point!

Petit LeMans has become my new Sebring as I've yet to complete an Endurance Race here.

For the most part the racing was really good and competitive so there was a lot close action and some light car contact. I had two deferred 4x's by the car next to me making contact with someone else and pushing into me. We had a little front damage on both fenders but not enough to compromise aero that badly.

After 3'ish hours we found ourselves up 10 positions in 1st place.

Had an incident with a GTD and had to pit 10 or so laps early in to affect repairs. @Kelley G, I think the 40 or so seconds meatball repair was front left tire with the remaining 8 minutes being either tweaking castor/camber/toe and/or hood/fender damage, will never know for certain?

We gambled and only took the 40 second required repairs and I'm glad we did as it kept us on the lead lap. The car felt fine and although we were a little affected by aero we were still running down Podium positions approx. a half second/lap.

About the 5 hour mark things started going appreciably wrong. I mistimed Pit Limiter and had to return to serve a penalty and in racing back to the front the racing seemed to get a little dirtier by the lap.

We were still pretty competitive and racing for easy podium when we got into it with a LMP2 in the esses.

I've re-watched the incident a thousand times and could have avoided it by not going for apex but all signs pointed to the LMP waiting which had happened numerous times prior. He just wasn't alongside and his engine note was quiet enough where I thought he was waiting.

As it turns out he was fully committed however a bit late in acting upon it. Honestly I'm not sure why he didn't wait, he was dead last and several laps out away from his nearest competitor?

Anyway, I turned across his nose 40 km/hr slower than he was going, both of us ending up in the tire wall. The rear of our car was destroyed (except wing oddly enough) where we couldn't even hit 6th gear on the straight.

They fully repaired the car bringing it back to speed but by then we were locked in 8th several laps down, racing nobody with nothing to gain/lose.

The only thing that could improve our position at this time was luck and given there was little in the way of luck prior and only 4 hrs left, we called it.

Apologies for the sad sack storytelling but this was a real gut wrenching race to lose. We had a Podium car, likely a race winner but suffered bad luck and bad timing.

@Kelley G it was good driving with you, you did a great job and ran very strong.

 

[Kelley G]

Can’t summarize the race any better then what Ken has already said. I had a blast. Definitely could have finished top 3 I think. But that’s racing. Ken it was an absolute pleasure racing with you. I made it out with my sanity which I wasn’t expecting to lol. Looking forward to Suzuka!