Sunday, December 2, 2018

SRO Alfa Romeo 147 GT-R Challenge - Season Review

After running with F1 cars the last few years, it was a refreshing challenge to race with a FWD GT car. The Alfa Romeo 147 GT-R is great fun to drive, with the sensation of speed and the handling very much closer to the cars I get to drive in the real world. The corners and the braking / throttle points come up slower and are consequently easier to prepare for. Once I found a good procedure around the track, it was easy to replicate my times lap after lap.

I had a good series, even if it was just six events in total. I was clearly in the midfield, with a chance for a podium at every race. My only bad race was at the season closer at Zolder; I was running third for the first half of the race, then I lost my rhythm and got quicksanded with mistakes after my pitstop. The season opener at Magny Cours wasn't ideal either, but that was because I was still learning the car and hadn't yet found the setup that I liked. The best race was at Spa, where I ran confidently and cleanly and got third place. I finished third overall in the final standings. Thank you Racing Gods. Full results can be found here.

Tamas Fodor dominated this series, and his laptimes were usually 2 seconds faster than everybody else. I don't know how he does it. Watching him in practice, it was like he was driving a rear wheel drive car or something. His tail would swing out but somehow he would catch it and his faster turn in and earlier throttle input made all the difference. Congrats to Tamas on his race wins and championship. Csaba Lako was a consistent front runner and his laptimes were very good. There were some races where he would fall behind because of an incident, but by the end he would be back up in the podium places. Philipp Pichler was another consistent runner and if he had not missed two races he certainly would have finished ahead of me in the standings. Jim Giannopoulos was the only driver who could match Tamas Fodor's laptimes, but he joined in the midseason and could not make up the points deficit. Ivo Rodrigues had similar speed to myself, and we often raced each other. Ken Jagger also had good speed and probably would have finished ahead of me too if he had not missed a race. He was also the admin so many thanks to him for hosting this series. And thanks to all participating drivers for an excellent albeit short season. Thanks to Sim Racing Online!

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