At this moment in my roller coaster life a few things will remain constant. The British weather will be overcast and dull, Cadbury's crème Eggs will be smaller than last year and GPRO will continue to scupper any plans regarding my social life. The alarming realisation that having not missed a gpro race for nearly two years means I spend way too much time online, which makes me wonder, just what is required to make it to the upper echelons of Elite?
With this in mind, I decided t sacrifice the dramatics of Ama-48 and observe a race from the top. Starting with Qualification. It's said that 0.1 of a second in F1 might as well be a year. Similar can be said for GPRO. So when I checked the start grid I wasn't surprised to see Toygun Senler on Pole,nor Justinas Smysliajevas in second. What did surprise me, however, was the one and a half second time difference........something had to be up. A quick check lead me to discover that Toygun's driver, David McNish had a liking to the Brasilia circuit, surely this meant no one would be able to touch him during the race!
Once the lights went out, my suspicions were correct, Toygun blitzed the start, and wasted no time pulling away from Justinas over the first few laps. Aleksey Odegov would make the first move of what would be an eventful race for the Russian Michelini man avoiding the mess in the first corner to go up three places, while a poor start for Daneks Briatale would see him drop four places one the first lap.
The first few laps saw little action, then on lap 6 a metaphorical spanner was thrown into the works. A tropical thunder storm that had been hard to predict descended on the drivers, a few drivers tried to brave the rain on slick tires, but within two laps all but one of the cars had come in for wet tires. A fantastic pit stop for Nico Zou would see him win out during the pit lane melee, gaining a net eight positions. The main loser was Joaquin Quintana who's mechanics needed additional time to replace a jammed wheel nut, causing to drop from a solid nineteenth to a disastrous Thirtieth.
During the storm, there was chaos on the track, drivers spinning everywhere, in fact lap 9 saw no fewer than 15 driver mistakes. Toygun was still flying though, and when the rain finally stopped on lap 20, he had built a comfortable ten second lead over Justinas, who himself was five seconds ahead of n impressive Mindaugas Sarocka in third. The next two laps saw just about everyone change back to dry tires, with no one really gaining or losing significantly.
With the rain gone, an all dry race remained. Only a random or unscheduled stop would cost Toygun a win. And so it was, Justinas just couldn't match the pace and Toygun cruised home to top spot. Despite leading for eight laps during a pit stop exchange, Justinas finished a crucial second place to retain top spot in the championship. Sarocka's decision to take an extra stop caused him to fall from third to fifth, but a miscalculation of potential brake wear for Aleksey Sutkin saw his brakes give out three laps from the finish, saw him climb above Sutkin and finish fourth, with Sutkin holding off Marek Marchewka for fifth.
Check out the race summary for the full list of positions and finishers.
Justinas still looks like the man to beat though, finishing second only because of Toygun's driver enjoying Brasilia. The next few races will prove just who is where in regards to the overall championship. Remember, you can watch any Elite race unfold, simply click on the group drop down menu from your own race screen, and scroll up to Elite.
This has been Sox, reporting for the GPRO Newspaper.
ROOKIE-303 REVIEW: FREDDIE HIGGS
Pre-Look
This race I will be looking at rookie group 303, in race 1 they had 28 managers on the track, which is a very good amount for a rookie group, at the end of the race, the podium finishes were Vladislav Votisnev in first Antonio Alves in second and Osvaldas Rascuikevicius taking third, could they do it again? Al 3 managers have a fair bit of experience under their belt, so there is no reason why they can’t all take podium again.
Qualifying
This time there are only 26 drivers on the track, still a good amount though, and with 26drivers you expect there to be a large difference in overall qualifying, and indeed there was, with a good size gap of 14.192s between pole sitter Joseph Davids and Back Bencher Jacques Ab. Race 1 Winner Vladislav Votisnev, only manages to get 10th, with Fellow podium sitter Antonio Alves making 9th on the grid. But as we all know Qualifying isn’t everything.
The Race
And there off. And there’s an accident on the first corner. Valdamear Garcia is shunted off track onto the gravel and is foced to retire. Joseph Davids may have started on pole, but doesn’t keep it and drops down to 3rd, being over taken by Ahmet Sonverdi who takes over as race leader and Svetozar Zarchov who takes 2nd. Meanwhile Vladislav shows why he won the first race by jumping a massive 6 places to 4th on the first lap; unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for Antonio who dropped down 6 places to 15th. Jacues may have started at the back but after the first lap he moves straight upto 21st. the best driver by far on that lap by far had to be the Driver of Mick souza, who gains a beautiful 8 places to bring him to 10th.
On lap 2 we find out why Mick had such a quick first lap, he put minimal fuel in and pits on the second lap, I wonder if he chose the right tactics for this race? As we all know on Lap 6 the rain showed up, but only 9 of the 25 cars pitted on the first lap to change tyres. A further 5 change to wets on lap 7 and the rest of the drivers slowly decided to change to wets apart from Sam Crawford, Ferenc Jurschik and Ingo Shwarz who all decided to brave the rain with their dry options but were all losing lap times dramatically. On Lap 12 it goes from bad to worse Ingo as his car starts smoking, on Lap 20 the rain stopped, along with Ingo’s Car as his suspension finally broke, which meant he had to retire . Lap 21 was Ferencs lap to gain some places back seeing as he had never put wets on, he managed to get himself up 6 places back to 10th, but how much tyre wear and fuel would he have left. Sam on the other hand was not so lucky as he had to pit straight away as he ran out of fuel.
Lap 25 has the top 4 cars all within 5.709s these managers being Svetozar Zarchov, Ahmet Sonverdi, Joseph Davids and Antonio Alves, with Vladislav Votisnev in 5th but an extra 20s behind 4th place Antonio. Lap 39 sees the 3rd retirement of the race Marckuz Viniciuz who also has his suspension break. 7 laps later Mick Souza loses control of his car and smashes into the tyre wall. Lap 50 Only 5 laps to go with ahmet in the lead by 17.1s infront of Antonio who is only 3s infront of vladislav, who is also only 2s infront of Svetozar, First currently seems to be Ahmets comfortably but the other podium positions are well up for grabs. Lap 53 sees Ahmet enter the pits, what seemed to be so comfortably his suddenly taken away from him. Lap 54 Antonio has the lead on Vladislav by 3.984s is it enough to earn Antonio the win. Lap 55 Antonios driver overcooks a corner and ends up riding the grass for a bit, which was all that Vladislav needed to steal first place from him on the last lap.
After the race I was able to catch up with Vlad, and when asked about that final lap he was thrilled and could only manage to describe it as. Last lap be so wonderful, so magic
So after that thrilling end to the race, the final results ca be found on the race summary
This race I will be looking at rookie group 303, in race 1 they had 28 managers on the track, which is a very good amount for a rookie group, at the end of the race, the podium finishes were Vladislav Votisnev in first Antonio Alves in second and Osvaldas Rascuikevicius taking third, could they do it again? Al 3 managers have a fair bit of experience under their belt, so there is no reason why they can’t all take podium again.
Qualifying
This time there are only 26 drivers on the track, still a good amount though, and with 26drivers you expect there to be a large difference in overall qualifying, and indeed there was, with a good size gap of 14.192s between pole sitter Joseph Davids and Back Bencher Jacques Ab. Race 1 Winner Vladislav Votisnev, only manages to get 10th, with Fellow podium sitter Antonio Alves making 9th on the grid. But as we all know Qualifying isn’t everything.
The Race
And there off. And there’s an accident on the first corner. Valdamear Garcia is shunted off track onto the gravel and is foced to retire. Joseph Davids may have started on pole, but doesn’t keep it and drops down to 3rd, being over taken by Ahmet Sonverdi who takes over as race leader and Svetozar Zarchov who takes 2nd. Meanwhile Vladislav shows why he won the first race by jumping a massive 6 places to 4th on the first lap; unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for Antonio who dropped down 6 places to 15th. Jacues may have started at the back but after the first lap he moves straight upto 21st. the best driver by far on that lap by far had to be the Driver of Mick souza, who gains a beautiful 8 places to bring him to 10th.
On lap 2 we find out why Mick had such a quick first lap, he put minimal fuel in and pits on the second lap, I wonder if he chose the right tactics for this race? As we all know on Lap 6 the rain showed up, but only 9 of the 25 cars pitted on the first lap to change tyres. A further 5 change to wets on lap 7 and the rest of the drivers slowly decided to change to wets apart from Sam Crawford, Ferenc Jurschik and Ingo Shwarz who all decided to brave the rain with their dry options but were all losing lap times dramatically. On Lap 12 it goes from bad to worse Ingo as his car starts smoking, on Lap 20 the rain stopped, along with Ingo’s Car as his suspension finally broke, which meant he had to retire . Lap 21 was Ferencs lap to gain some places back seeing as he had never put wets on, he managed to get himself up 6 places back to 10th, but how much tyre wear and fuel would he have left. Sam on the other hand was not so lucky as he had to pit straight away as he ran out of fuel.
Lap 25 has the top 4 cars all within 5.709s these managers being Svetozar Zarchov, Ahmet Sonverdi, Joseph Davids and Antonio Alves, with Vladislav Votisnev in 5th but an extra 20s behind 4th place Antonio. Lap 39 sees the 3rd retirement of the race Marckuz Viniciuz who also has his suspension break. 7 laps later Mick Souza loses control of his car and smashes into the tyre wall. Lap 50 Only 5 laps to go with ahmet in the lead by 17.1s infront of Antonio who is only 3s infront of vladislav, who is also only 2s infront of Svetozar, First currently seems to be Ahmets comfortably but the other podium positions are well up for grabs. Lap 53 sees Ahmet enter the pits, what seemed to be so comfortably his suddenly taken away from him. Lap 54 Antonio has the lead on Vladislav by 3.984s is it enough to earn Antonio the win. Lap 55 Antonios driver overcooks a corner and ends up riding the grass for a bit, which was all that Vladislav needed to steal first place from him on the last lap.
After the race I was able to catch up with Vlad, and when asked about that final lap he was thrilled and could only manage to describe it as. Last lap be so wonderful, so magic
So after that thrilling end to the race, the final results ca be found on the race summary
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