Its been a busy weekend/start of the week for Team Buschfink Racing, and since I’m old and lazy (and slow… and short etc etc) I decided I would do a roundup version of the league races we have done over the weekend and the first couple of days of the week.
First up would be the European Majors Round 13 – Bathurst 500, where Teemu “Fat Tesnaukki #46” Toikka and James “Sir W**ksalot” King would tackle 81 laps of the fearsome Mount Panorama circuit near Sydney in Australia. Driving the mighty V8 Supercar, qualifying went well with Teemu in P1 and James in P5 of 33 drivers on the grid.
Teemu would lead from start to finish of the race, never really coming under any major pressure with 2nd placed driver Nikki “Aston Martin Factory driver” Thiim nearly 40 seconds back. On the other hand, James’s race didn’t go quite to plan. Getting a good start and grabbing 3rd on the first lap before an incident on L2 saw him tumble back to 18th place. From here it was a case of recovery for James, who in fairness, drove a great race finishing just inside the top 10 in P9.
Teemu is currently sitting in 2nd in the table 38 points back from Pete Harrod, however with just 1 round left, its going to be a tough challenge for Teemu to take the European Masters Championships.
Results are here.
Coverage is here.
Monday night was Round 6 of the AOR GTE League, to be held at the Circuit Gilles Villenueve in Canada. Ben “Wheres my bucket” Warren and Phil “so old…& so slow” Bedford would face 80 minutes of concrete walls and kerbs in this GTE race comprised of Pro, Pro/Am and Am class drivers.
Ben actually decided he would do a bit of practice for this one, and it payed off in spades, qualifying P6 in his Ferrari 488 Ben was feeling quietly confident for a decent result. I was feeling the total opposite. Im not a fan of the circuit, and the circuits isn’t a fan of the Porsche RSR that I had chosen to drive for the season. Consequently I qualified in P25 of 26 cars.
The start went well for Ben, quickly finding his way in to 4th place before an unfortunate internet issue meant he got disconnected on L7. Tell you what, if he didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all :o( For me, the race went as expected… no pace and no confidence does not make a happy Philip. The fact that others seemed to be having so many issues with either disconnects or crashes meant that my final result of 12th came without me having passed a single car on track! So 2nd AM for me and with the winner (in class) of the last 2 rounds, Sam Blackwood emerging as a new rival in the AM cup.
Results are here.
Tuesday night and on different sides of the virtual world, we have the Swedish Iracing League in Sweden (duh….) and the Precision Racing League in the US.
Round 6 of the Swedish iRacing League to be held at Belle Isle. The format of this round was slightly different to the usual with a 25 lap feature race and a 14 lap sprint. 3 TBR Swedes took part in the feature race, with Joachim “Hadouken” Ljunggren qualifying P9, Magnus “Wsankstain” Vallstrom in 11th and Mikael “SRD” Engstroem in 14th of 33 cars on the grid. Issues on lap 7 saw Jocke crashing out and while Magnus was able to take advantage of the Jocke’s issues, leaping from 9th to 6th, he would clip a wall on lap 20, eventually slipping back to 11th. Mikael made steady progress through the race, eventually finishing 7th.
In the sprint race, a standing start was the order of the day….a brave choice by the organisers when you consider how close the walls are at Detroit. Too close in fact as a multi-car pile up on lap 1 took Magnus out of the race, mainly due to Jocke “Never Lift” Ljunggren somehow entering Magnus’s RSR through the back door, and leaving out the front! Jocke continued to plough his was through the chaos and after starting 22nd, finished up in a respectable 9th place.
Results are here (feature) and here (sprint)
Jocke’s view is here and here.
PRL Round 6 where Ben “Mexiben” Perez and Cristian “Iceman” Eissler had to face 45 minutes (pfft, 45 minutes?? WIMPS!) of the Canadian Circuit Gilles Villenueve. After the open qualifying session, Cristian qualified P3 in his 488 and Ben in P4 in the RSR from a grid of 29 cars. From the get go Cristian was pushing hard, passing for 2nd place at the final chicane on L1, a position he would maintain through to the finish of the race. By Contrast Ben had a nightmare opening 10 minutes. Contact at the hairpin on L3 would see him drop to 5th before more contact, again at the hairpin, spun Ben around and dropped him back to 6th. From here, it was a recovery drive for Ben, eventually coming in to finish in 4th.
In the overall championship standings, with the leader Carl Modoff finishing 6th at Montreal, the gap back to second placed Ben is down to just 5 points, with Cristian a further 12 points back in 3rd, but with 4 rounds still to run, there’s still plenty to play for.
Team Buschfink Racing are leading the Team Championships by a massive 144 points from 2nd placed Andes iRacing Puma.
Results are here
GSRC coverage is here