MoE Season 3, Round 4 - 24hrs of Aston GP

[PaulC2K]

The Masters of Endurance 24hrs of Aston GP finished quite some time ago, however with uncertainty over the results its taken quite a while to be able to post with information as to how we got on.
Qualifying started well with both cars taking 2nd place in their respective classes, and despite looking favorites to win in both classes a collection incidents and bad luck collaborated in our downfall, and we were only able to finish 6th in GT1 despite lapping everyone upto 3rd and almost lapping 2nd in the opening 6hrs, and after leading the GT2 class by 3 laps around the 3/4 mark it was only able to finish 3rd.
Congratulations to everyone who took part in both Mercury cars and to our competitors.

Standings - GT1
1) Mercury Racing - 147pts
2) #low-racing - 146pts
3) F1rst Racing - 123pts

Standings - GT2
1) CoRe Racing - 194pts
2) Mercury Racing - 154pts
3) Teamsport-Online - 125pts

[BREAK ARTICLE]

Weeks before the race had even started there was already more than enough trouble, with the latest patch modifying the GTR class balancing (badly!) as well as clutch damage, slightly modified gearboxes, and the ability to repair engine damage during pitstops was removed making any damage perminant.

Qualifying went well, with both GT1 and GT2 cars taking 2nd place, meaning they'd both be on the front row for the start. Things started positively in both classes when the race lights went green, Bawbag got the GT1 car off to a great start getting the jump over the pole sitters for the first corner and began to stretch a lead. Viper took the GT2 car for the opening stint and played things fairly safe, keeping 2nd place in the process and avoiding some mistakes for the back of the GT1 pack.

Around the 6hr mark with a solid lead established Rooble had a disconnection just a few laps into his stint, this saw Bawbag quickly get back into the game, however as soon as he got on track software running background reduced lfs to desktop and caused him to crash at T1 meaning a forced Shift+P and a -1lap penalty. The total cost of which meant we went from almost being 1 lap up on everyone to being over 1 lap behind the leaders and sitting in 5th place, events which took place in just 90 seconds ended up costing us around 5 minutes, without doubt the most costly minute and a half in our (near) 4 year history.

In the GT2 class things were equally tight, after a steady start the teams second XRR was also pushing forward and closely following the car driven by SpeedCore, after 3 hours a disconnection saw them lose their lead and the Mercury GT2 car was soon pulling quite a gap. Around the 12 hour mark events in the race saw the lead stretch to a full 2 lap lead, and everything was going smoothly as the night time shifts started. All the GT2 drivers had done at least 2 stints at this point, with most drivers expected to do 4x 1h05 stints each, and the first real problem in the GT2 class happened around the 16hr mark with a disconenction to PaulC2K (BSOD), fortunately it came about 5 laps from when a driver change was due and Duck was already practicing and prepared to come in. Thankfully this disconnection wasnt as costly as the GT1 incident as the car was straight back limiting the damage done, and the 2.5 lap lead had only been slightly dented.

Back in the GT1 class, Bawbag & Jonesy went through the night, Bawbag had done pretty much 5 straight stints before Jonesy came online and took over, the decision was made not to use Rooble until enough time had passed that it was considered safe to bring him back in and any ISP issues wouldnt cause us problems. Despite Bawbag and Jonesy being one of the fastest cars on the track it was a case of trying to claw back a full 2min 50 lap, something it'd taken over 6hrs to acheive when nearly lapping the whole pack at the start of the race.

Towards the end of the race things went from bad to worse, with 8hrs to go the GT2 car collided with a crashed GT1 car and LFS's crazy collision detection sent the car flying into the gravel trap just coming onto the start/finish straight, meaning we were forced to lose all that lap (2min50) plus shift+P would cost us a full lap too (another 2m50), this meant 2 full laps were lost, and a similar incident shortly after would see the same thing happen again.

After the race, the controversy still wasnt over, as it became apparent there had been cases teams faking a disconnection right at the beginning of a lap in order to pick up fresh car from the garage (full tank of fuel, fresh rubber and no engine damage) without losing time. With only 1 team admitting to cheating, it was left to the organisers to go through the full 24hr race looking at all the disconnection incidents and look at the circumstances surrounding them and assessing whether any advantage was gained. This long winded investigation took just over 3 weeks in total, mostly due to the fact that you cant jump straight to a specific part of the replay, instead having to ffw to the incident which is extremely time consuming. When the ruling was given, 7 teams in total were penalised, including the Mercury GT1 car due to the disconnect in the last couple of hours, however we were easily able to disprove our disconnection at the end of the race was neither intentional or remotely beneficial as our car wasnt down on power and the timing of the incident meant we needed to refuel just 4 laps from the end of the race, so it was neither beneficial and meant we needed an extra pit-stop, this was agreed by the organisers and the penalty was overturned just 4 days later.

After all this, and a disappointing 24hr race for both cars, the first time neither car has won the race this season despite both looking clear favourites for a long time, the championship standings saw Mercury's lead in the GT1 class slump to just 1pt over #low-racing, and the season run in looking set to be closely contested as we head into the last 2 rounds. In GT2 the gap which stared off looking increadably difficult to pull back just got even further out of reach, with the gap now 30 points.
The results from this round could prove to be very costly, with rivals picking up good results and picking up double points while we've been unlucky and had to settle with whatever we can get, the fight for the GT2 class requires significant amounts of bad luck in the CoRe camp, but in the GT1 class things are still looking positive, easily our worst round of the series yet the lead we have built since the first round has allowed us to have this bad round and keep the challenge going.