GTC APAC Challenge Race 3 Monza GP (40 mins)

Asia Pacific Challenge:

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/3346486.page

Race 3 Monza GP (40 minutes):

The first 40 minute race of the season, saw 22 people show for some close but fair racing at Monza. BAM had 3 people in the Mustang battle with Paul finishing the best of us in 3rd, Oliver 4th and Gary 5th. Bryan put in a great effort in the Jetta to finish 2nd.

Results: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=15394704&custid=158878

AWARDS:

CLASS AWARDS:

Mark Webber: Losing most positions from your starting position

Benn Callow (Mustang)
Russell Clark (Jetta)
Manel Segret (Solstice)

Takuma Sato: Gaining most positions from starting position

Keith Wheeler (Mustang)
Phillip Duckworth (Jetta)
Seiichi Kawada (Solstice)

Daniel Riccardo: Most positions finished ahead of number in class

Gary Fishwick (Mustang)
Phillip Duckworth (Jetta)
Craig M Hopkins (Solstice)

OVERALL AWARDS:

Pastor Maldonado: Highest incidents per corner
Benn Callow (7 incidents in 12 laps)

Scott Dixon: Lowest incidents per corner
Jake Moloney, Paul Rogers, Jay Duthie, Craig Hopkins, Brad Fenly, Seiichi Kawada, Thomas Strunk (0 incidents in 19 laps)

Will Power: Scoring negative points

Brad Haigh

GTC APAC Challenge Race 2 Watkins Classic

[size=18][b]Race 2 Watkins Glen Classic:[/b] [/size]

Great race with some close battles throughout all classes.

Results: See 2nd post and here: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=15323552&custid=158878

[b]AWARDS:[/b]

CLASS AWARDS:

[b]Mark Webber: [/b] Losing most positions from your starting position

Anssi Vuori (Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Manuel Gomez Martinez2, Shaun King(Solstice)

[b]Takuma Sato:[/b] Gaining most positions from starting position

Keith Wheeler(Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Seiichi Kawada, Johannes Knaub (Solstice)

[b]Daniel Riccardo:[/b] Most positions finished ahead of number in class

Anssi Vuori (Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Sergio Peña (Solstice)

OVERALL AWARDS:

[b]Pastor Maldonado: [/b]Highest incidents per corner
Jonathan Beikoff (8 incidents in 6 laps)

[b]Scott Dixon:[/b] Lowest incidents per corner

Benn Callow, Keith Wheeler and Jack W Miller (0 incidents in 19 laps)

[b]Will Power:[/b] Scoring negative points

Manuel Gomez Martinez2, Shaun King and Jonathan Beikoff

2015 Season Review - Australian Endurance Championship

AEC is a multi-class team racing championship. During 2015, 8 rounds were schedule although 1 was cancelled due to scheduling issues.

Black Adder initially entered 3 cars in the GT3 class for the series and for the final 2 rounds a Daytona Prototype was added.

The series started at Daytona with an 8 hour night race. Due to drive unavailability, we reduced the entry to 2 cars. #67 was driven by Braith Morrow, Lewis Cugaly and John King. Lewis wasn't available for the 1st 3 hours of the race so the inital plan was for Braith to start but when we came to grid, we realised that because John had set a slightly fastest time in qualifying, he had to start the race. After 20 laps there was a caution period and John was one of the few GT3's to stop for fuel & tyres. When the race went green, John quickly moved back into the leading pack of GT3's and when another caution came out on lap 33, he was the only GT3 to stay out and because the lead protype stopped, John got a wave around the pace car and took the lead of the GT3 class. From that point, it was a case of running consistently and ensuring we covered all the other cars tactically. This worked perfectly and #66 came home comfortable winners of GT3 (and 6th overall!). #66 was driven by Jake Fox, Paul Rogers and Oliver Searles. They had some mishaps and finished 18th.

Round 2 was Bathurst and it turned into a disaster for the whole team. Things initially looked good, with John, in #67 again with Braith and Lewis and Christian Challiner, driving #66 with Jake, Oliver and Tommy Vandergucht running 1-3 in the GT3 class during the 2nd hour. But, a myriad of delays, crashes and damage for both cars dropped them way down the field. #66 eventually finished 18th and Braith somehow managed to drag a very beaten up #66 around for the last 2 hours, finishing 27th.

For Round 3 at Watkins Glen, 3 cars were entered and with strong pairings in both 366 and 367 (the number now reflected the class the car ran in), the team were confident of a good showing. Initially Braith in 367 and Tommy in 366 ran well and were in the led pack of GT3s. There was a caution on lap 27 and both cars pitted and did driver swaps. At the restart they was a huge crash and both cars were badly damaged. In the panic, the 367 car was pitted without having the new optional reset flag set and so had to wait 35 mins while the damage was repaired "normally".  #366 finished 28th and #367 33rd. Meanwhile, proving that the tortoise beats the hare sometimes, the 368 car, driven by Oliver and Joseph Cardamone, drove consistently to finish an excellent 25th.

After 2 poor rounds, the team needed to bounce back at Mosport and Lewis and Braith did just that, taking a great win in #367, beating Shane van Gisbergen and Justin Ruggier in the process. #366 was driven by Jake and Paul and although they had a few problems, they finished a good 7th in class. Oliver and Joseph again did well in #368, finishing 9th.

The next round was the big one - the 24 hours of Spa. The full report of the race is on another post but it was another victory for the team - with #366 winning this time.

Round 7 (the 6th race) was Monza and with the speed difference between the Rufs and BMWs, all we could hope for was a clean, consistent run from the cars and we got exactly that with Braith, Stephan Spantig and Robin Rosenvinge taking 3rd place  in #367. The toher cars also ran well, #366 finishing 8th and #368 10th.

The final round was VIR. Again the Rufs had a bit of an advantage (although not as large as Monza) but the BAM cars ran well with #367 and #366 running in formation for the last few laps of the season to finish 5th & 6th and clinch 2nd spot in the championship for #367. Another solid performance by #368 saw Oliver, Mark Dyall and Sam Harris take 9th place.


Final Championship Standing



Full Race Results

Round 1 - Daytona: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=12806181&custid=50412
Round 2 - Bathurst: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=13046423&custid=50412
Round 3 - Watkins Glen: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=13794059&custid=50412
Round 4 - Mosport: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=14187322&custid=50412
Round 5 - Phillip Island: Cancelled
Round 6: Spa 24 Hours: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=14682868&custid=50412
Round 7 - Monza: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=15148394&custid=50412
Round 8 - VIR: http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=15248456&custid=50412

2015 Season Review - CESCS

The CESCS series is a long establish league on iRacing that mirrors, as closely as possible, the real life series. We entered 2 cars, one focussed on Marco Abbate in a bid to win the drivers championship and a back-up car to help with setups and strategy. Marco was initially partnered by Lewis Cugaly but with Lewis starting to have connection and hardware issues, John King stepped in for a couple of rounds until Christian Challiner took over permanently, with John moving to the 2nd car.

We started the season well, with a great 2nd place at Daytona by Marco/Lewis, a brilliant 3rd at Sebring with Marco driving solo and another 2nd at Laguna with Lewis back in the car with Marco. Laguna provided the lowlight of the season with Marco (very unfairly) penalised for unavoidable contact with an MX-5. The penalty was 10 championship points in the drivers championship and although it turned out to be insignificant, it did make the last 2 rounds more tense than they could have been.

Round 4 was at Watkins and with Lewis again having problems, John stepped into the #66 with Marco. Their race was "interesting" - John was spun at T1, Lap 1 by 49 Motorsports but recovered to hand over to Marco in 5th. Marco then had a slightly slow stop during a caution period and lost positions but then drove a storming race to get the car back to 5th.

The halfway point of the series was Mosport with John again partnering Marco and Christian in #67 with Stephan. Stephan and John started and both drove well to hand over to the faster drivers in good positions. At one stage it looked like the cars could finish 1-2 but Marco was penalised for speeding in the pits (but recovered to finish 4th) and we made a strategy call to not change tyres on #67. It probably wasn't the right move but Christian drove fantastically to keep the car 2nd.

For round 6 at Lime Rock, Lewis was back but with his connection problems still lurking, Christian drove with Marco in #66 and Lewis partnered Stephan in #67. The strategy looked perfect as Christian took pole and lead for most of the 1st stint. Marco was running well but spun and damaged the car at Lime Rocks imfamous hill. #67 also run fast (Lewis setting the fastest lap of the race) but also got damaged. 8th for #67 and 11th for #66 wasn't a reflection of our pace and was easily the worst result for the team during the season.

Round 7 at Road America was spoilt by an unnecessary caution thrown by the stewards. #66, again driven by Marco and Christian, were in a very strong strategic position but their fuel advantage was given up at the caution. Their 6th place again didn't reflect their pace. Stephan and John finished a solid 7th.

The team bounced back very strongly at VIR with Marco and Christian taking a great win. #67, driven by Lewis and John (Stephan wasn't available) finished 3rd and only a weird connection problem for John that caused him to blink and drive slowly to ensure he didn't crash prevented them from making it a 1-2.

COTA was another strong performance by Christian and Marco but Christian had a disconnect during his stint and they lost a lot of time while the car towed and Marco jumped back in. 4th place was a great recovery. In #67, John drove with the Mr Clean standings in mind so gave Stephan a difficult job to make up ground but he did manage to drag the car up to 6th.

Christian sweeps by Todd Honczarenko as Todd pits for fuel
as the white flag comes out

The final race at Road Atlanta was tense for the team. Marco led the drivers championship but only by a small margin and we were a few points behind Torque Chicken and their guest stars in the team standings. The race turned out to be a strategic rerun of Road America but this time a caution didn't save the other teams and with other cars slowing to save fuel or having to make a last minute splash & Dash, Christian retook the lead he'd given up to save fuel earlier in the stint with 2 laps to go and took another great win for #66 and revenge for the Road America result.

The results were enough to seal the drivers (and rookie) championship for Marco. We narrowly failed to overtook Torque Chicken in the team standings. John, Marco and Christian made it a clean sweep for BAM in the Mr Clean standings.

2015 Season Review - Sim Racers Asia

The SRA series is an individual drivers championship but with a team element. Black Adder competed during Season 1 and 2 during 2015 and had some significant success, particularly during S2 when we ran the Cadillac (with some strategic advantages) against the GT3 cars.

During S1 we ran the BMW and did well with Lewis Cugaly often running near front and winning one round. Lewis ended 3rd overall in that season championship and a string of consistent results saw John King finish inside the top 10, despite missing a couple of rounds.

During S2, Black Adder were the only significant team to recognise that the strategy advantages given to the Caddy (full fuel so no pit stops were required and bonus championship points) would give the Caddy drivers a chance to cause some surprises.

The scene was set nicely in the opening round, with John King and Paul Rogers driving their Caddies from near the back of the grid (34th and 35th places) to 9th & 10th at the end of the race. With John and Paul being joined by Lewis, Christian Challiner and Stephan Spantig in some rounds, the results got better and better and the series organisers were forced to change some rules to prevent the BAM Caddy drivers from running away with the championship. This came to a head when Christian took a fantastic overall win in the Road America round (a feat he later repeated at Monza).

Embarrassing pics of the series - Stephan and Paul collide at the Corkscrew at Laguna

The final round was a team event at Sebring and the BAM team dominated - taking a great 1-2 victory and sealing the overall team championship (we scored more than double the points of the 2nd placed team).

The series also contained a "Clubmans" championship for drivers with lower iratings. Joseph Cardamone and Gary Fishwick ran the BMW in that and contributed valuable points towards the team champion. Joseph won 3 of the Clubmans rounds and could probably have won the championship if he hadn't missed 4 rounds early in the season.

GoT 2015/6 Round 3 - Watkins Glen 3 Hours

Christian takes the lead at the (re)start. We suspect Core Sim
and Heusinkveld d"did the right thing" and let him go 

After strong showings in the practice sessions leading up to the race, things looked good for the BAM #166 Daytona Prototype and the strong driver pairing of Christian Challiner and Tommy Vandergucht didn't disappoint with a nearly flawless performance, taking pole position, setting fastest lap, leading the most laps, having the fewest incident in the DPs and winning by a fairly comfortable 20 seconds. The victory wasn't straightforward. with a close fight during the race with CoreSimRacing who were

Having made his last stop, Tommy is overtaken  briefly by the Heusinkveld car

going longer on each stint and led whenever #166 pitted but ultimately the slightly better consistency of the BAM drivers and the even spacing of the fuel/tyre stops was decisive. After the poor result at COTA, it was good to see the car competitive again and with Heasinkveld only finishing 4th, the championship race has tightened up considerably.

In GT3, Braith Morrow and Stephan Spantig drove

Stephan in some heavy traffic

the #269 car. They had a fairly quiet and consistent race with Stephan starting and finishing and Braith doing the middle stint. The final finishing position of 7th is the 3rd race in a row that a BAM GT3 has finished in that position - it seems to be our position in the races!

#222 decides that going 3 wide into the bus stop is a good idea
Marco is spun into the barrier, effectively ending #267's race

The major disappointment was the #267 car. With Marco Abbate and John King both showing good speed in practice, we expected the car to run well. The early stages of the race looked promising, with Marco qualifying 5th and moving up to 4th. But, disaster struck on lap 23 when Marco was slowed by a crash in the Esses and then spun into the barriers by a ridiculous piece of driving by another GT3. Marco managed to continue with the badly damaged car for a few laps and then John took over after a lengthy pit stop and managed to bring the car home 9th.

APAC CHALLENGE
Race 1 Lime Rock Park:

Was a great race with the 3 Mustangs and Jetta having to constantly make there way through traffic.



The BAM members racing were Oliver Searles and Paul Rogers.

Results: members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=15262425&custid=158878

AWARDS:

CLASS AWARDS:

Mark Webber: Losing most positions from your starting position

N/A (Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Thomas Martuski, Michael Dubree(Solstice)

Takuma Sato: Gaining most positions from starting position

N/A (Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Kevin McGilvray, Seiichi Kawada (Solstice)

Daniel Riccardo: Most positions finished ahead of number in class

Benn Callow and Paul Rogers (Mustang)
N/A (Jetta)
Nikolay Vasilyev (Solstice)

OVERALL AWARDS:

Pastor Maldonado: Highest incidents per corner
Alexandru Ghitan (7 incidents in 24 laps)

Scott Dixon: Lowest incidents per corner

Benn Callow (0 incidents in 26 laps)

Will Power: Scoring negative points

Not awarded

BES Round 1 - Road Atlanta

With the BES series rebooted after the technical issues in Round 1, the team took the difficult decision to switch cars for this series and run the Ruf Track. Hard work during the week leading up to the race by Christian saw us with a good race setup but clashes with other events (and real life) meant that the driver line-ups were a little compromised.

Car #66

Christian chases the field on Lap 1.

Christian and John drove the car in the Saturday 9:00am race. Christian qualified 33rd and made a careful start. He drove excellently throughout his double stint, running a strong pace and keeping up with the train of cars ahead of him. He gain a few places on pace but mainly his climb through the field to 12th at the end of the 2nd hour was through attrition.



For the final hour, John took over. He started very nervously and came very close to crashing on his out lap and was at the head of a train of very fast cars and so found it really difficult to get into any kind of rhythm for the 1st 10-15 laps of his spell. But, once he was clear of the very busy traffic, he settled into a decent pace and although he lost a few places to faster cars, the race attrition continued and he brought the car home in 12th - an awesome result for the team.

Former BAM team member Marco Mogren passes John.
Marco's team Friction Racing went on to finish 7th

Due to other commitments, #66 didn't run in the Saturday 19:00 race. Christian and Juha entered the Sunday 17:00 race, qualified 31st but were involved in an incident early in the race and had to retire. The result from the 1st race means that No. 66 sits 40th in the standings - exactly the position to qualify for next years World Series.






Car #67
Tommy and Fokke entered the Saturday 9:00am race. They qualified 21st in split 3 but crashed on the 1st lap. The car was too badly damaged to continue.
Fokke and Braith ran in the 19:00 race. They were in split 4 and qualified 16th. Fokke drove an excellent 1st stint, moving up to 8th before the pit stop cycle begun. Braith took over and drove steadily and maintained a good position, handing back to Fokke in 10th. Fokke pushed hard during the last hour and managed to get the car up to 7th place - a really great effort by both drivers.
After the 1st week, car #67 sits 113th in the standings. Some work to dobut at least it's on the board with a decent score.

AEC 24 Hours of Spa - BAM takes GT3 Honours

This was the 5th round of the series after the cancellation of the Phillip Island race. BAM #367 had won 2 of the 4 rounds held so far and with a strong line-up in #366 as well and good speed shown during practice, the team was confident of a good result.

Jason gets a bit too close to an HPD at La Source

#368 was led by Joseph but scheduling conflicts meant that a lot of drivers would need to be used - Oliver, Matt N, Daniel, Ernie, Jason and Josh would all need to do a stint or 2. The objective for this car was to keep it as clean as possible, ran reliable and consistent laps and see where that got to car at the end.  All the guys did a great job and, despite a few bumps and bruises along the way, brought the car home in 12th place - more than achieving the objectives. For many of the drivers, this was their 1st 24 hour race so the experience will be invaluable for future races.

Robin moves past John in #366 at the Bus Stop  to take 3rd place

#367 had a bit of a nightmare. Lewis was missing due to internet problems so a lot of rescheduling of stints needed to be done.  Braith, as car leader, did a huge number of laps - 186 - and Stephan also did additional spells. The other drivers - Robin, Juha & Christian were limited in the spells they could do due to other commitments but they did as much as they could with Robin rejoining late in the race to relieve some of the pressure from Braith. The car ran really well for the 1st 4 hours and was in 2nd place at one stage but an incident dropped the car down the field and the pressure of trying to recover plus the tiredness caused by the rescheduling meant that the car had a few more incidents and lost more time. But, the drivers did well to recover back to 10th place.

Jake set the tone in #366  from the start - moving up to 2nd by lap 6

#366 ran pretty much a perfect race. It was always near the front - it's worst position throughout the race was 4th and only needed to use 1 reset during the whole race - and that was at a point where the car was 3 laps ahead of all it's competitors. It led briefly during the pit stop cycle after the 2nd hour but took the lead properly after 4 hours and never lost it again. A huge advantage this car had was that Tommy, Jake and John have raced together a lot and with Fokke slotting in easily, the team felt very comfortable with each other and this made a big difference. Sam struggled early in his stint but settled down to a good consistent pace and held the car in position during his stints.

So, 24 hours, 582 laps, 126 incidents and 1 reset (actually 2 but the final one was a "spit and polish" at the last stop) after Jake took the green flag in the car, Fokke took the chequered flag to record BAM's 3rd win of the series. Tommy and John had both won big league races before but it's a 1st big win for Jake, Fokke and Sam - and both Fokke and Sam now have perfect records in 24 hour races :-)

Jake moves up to 2nd

John had a scary moment with an HPD but survived OK

Tommy takes the end on lap 101. #366 never lost it again

Christian in #367, leads a big group of cars into Rivage at one of the restarts

Matt N leads one of the McLarens through Eau Rouge

SEK S4 2015 Round 2 - Monza

Monza has always been a difficult track for the BMW teams and with the recent unBalance of Performance changes made by iRacing, particularly to the Ruf, things have got worse and so expectations for this race were pretty low.

In the race, the top 9 positions were all taken by Rufs so we were feasting on scraps in the BMWs. Paul and Robin drove a faultless race to finish 12th (2nd place in the non-Ruf Cup), Jake and John 17th, Fokke and Braith 20th and Stephan & Matt N 23rd.

We'll have better and more competitive weekends...

SEK S4 2015 Round 1

Round 1 of the new SEK season was at Mid-Ohio, with the sprint format being used.

With this being the 1st week after a new build, we haven't had much chance to test the car and were still testing and changing setups right until the last moment. So, as is often the case, the team generally struggled in qualifying but had significantly better race pace than their qualifying suggested.

Paul, Matt and John in the thick of it into T2

In #66 Fokke qualified 14th but drove an excellent race to slowly make his way up through the field. A very late (and short) pit stop helped his position and he eventually finished an excellent 6th. John and Matt ran in formation for most of the race, with Matt leading initially. A small mistake by Matt let John by and they stayed in that order until the end of the race, John a good 12th from 20th on the grid and Matt 13th from a 19th starting position.

John and Matt had a drag race at one point

Paul continued his unlucky streak in SEK. He qualified 16th but had a disconnect on lap 1. He lost 2 laps reconnecting and then drove a storming race, running at a similar pace to the leaders. He ended up 21st - way worse than he deserved.





In race 2, Lewis qualified 2nd in #67 and despite challenging Brad Wooten hard before the pit stops, couldn't find a way past and settled for a great 2nd place. Robin, in #68, opted for a fuel saving strategy and managed to get to the end without stopping. He still had good speed and the strategy allowed him to move up from 11th on the grid to 9th at the end of the race. Tommy drove #69 and was heading for a top 10 finish until he got spun (twice!) on the last lap, dropping to 16th.  Jake struggled with #66 and had some incidents with another car and wound up 19th.

Lewis nearly got the lead on lap 24

CESCS Round 8 - Virginia International Raceway

For various reasons, the last 2 rounds of CESCS has been a bit disappointing for the team so a good performance was needed at VIR to regain the momentum we'd had earlier in the season in all the championships.
Stephan was unavailable for this one so Lewis joined John in #67 with the Marco/Christian partnership continuing in #66.
Marco did a lot of testing and setup work during the week and was fastest of all the runners in most sessions. John also ran well and with Lewis and Christian both having extremely good records at VIR, confidence was high at the start of the race session.
Practice went well for #66 - with Christian and Marco both setting very fast times. Lewis was also very fast with #67 but JOhn was badly off pace - a combination of internet access issues, a 5am start and lack of talent putting him way off the pace he'd been in the earlier session.
In qualifying, Christian did a great job to put #66 on pole. John was slow in #67, only qualifying 9th.
At the start, Christian immediately took the lead and although he was challenged initially, slowly edged away from the challengers and was able to keep the lead throughout his stint, stopping to hand over to Marco at lap 24. John drove steadily and although he lost a couple of places initially to people who hadn't qualified, managed to regain 9th place by the end of his spell and also stopped on lap 24 to hand over to Lewis.


Marco drove well although was hampered slightly by problems with his pedals. He lost the lead halfway into his stint but keep the car in contention, particularly as the main challenger (car 490) stopped 2 laps earlier than Marco did, who stopped on lap 48 to hand back to Christian. meanwhile, Lewis was charging through the field setting lap times similar to the leaders and had moved up to 5th by the time he made his tyre/fuel stop on lap 48.

Shortly after all the pit stops were made, a caution was thrown (for "geese on the track"). This brought the field together although we'd been confident that Christian would have been able to catch and pass 490 as that car would certainly have needed another pit stop or to do some major fuel saving. At the restart, Christian stayed with the 490 car and made a great pass when 490's driver made a small mistake. Despite massive (and probably slightly over aggressive) pressure, Christian managed to retain the lead and took a great win for the team, our 1st in the Mustang in CESCS after a couple of near misses.

Lewis started 5th and had a great battle with Kevin Ford, eventually getting by him. He then quickly caught the 3rd placed car and took 3rd place after the 049 car went off track and made contact with Lewis as he came back on track. Lewis was damaged but held onto 3rd for a double podium for the team - a truly awesome result.

The results mean that Marco retakes the driver championship lead and #66 moves to within 4 points of the team championship leaders. In the Mr Clean standings, Marco extends his lead and JOhn moves into 2nd place. Christian move into the top 5 in these standings as well.

SEK Round 10 - Phillip Island

The final round of the championship took the teams to Phillip Island, just south of Melbourne. With the recent strong showings by both the #66 and #67, confidence was high in the team.

The day got off to a bad start when John messed up the entry for car #68 and registered a BMW instead of a Ford so a quick driver reshuffle was required, with Oliver joining John in 68 and Joseph moving to #69 with the 2nd Ford.

Christian and Lewis were both driving solo, with Christian expected to mount the strongest challenge. Both qualified well, with Christian a great 2nd and Lewis 7th although Lewis was a bit disappointed with his time and expected to be able to run higher in the race.

Christian was brave at T1 and took the lead into T2

Christian made a great start and led the 1st lap but was then overtaken by the #1 car. Lewis made a cautious start and was 7th at the end of the 1st lap. Christian maintained 2nd and Lewis slowly moved up and was 4th when the pit stop cycle begun. Lewis stayed out longer than any of the front runners and led a few laps before stopping. The 2nd stint was much the same, Christian staying 2nd and Lewis slowly moving forward, taking 3rd during the pit stop cycle.

Christian and Lewis chasing hard during the latter stages of the race

During the last stint, both Christian and Lewis chased hard but couldn't make much impression on #1 and eventually settled for 2nd and 3rd - making it a great double podium for the team.

In #68, John made steady progress during the 1st half of the race, running as high as 10th at one point although that position was slightly false because of the different strategies cars were on. Oliver drove the 2nd half of the race and did well to keep the car in the top 15.
Joseph had a difficult day in #69 with a variety of incidents and finally a disconnection putting paid to his efforts.



Full results here

BES Week 10 - Phillip Island

Only 3 cars were entered - Christian in the #66 Ford GT3, Robin (making his BES debut) in #67 BMW and Joseph/Gary in #68 Ford.

Christian qualified an excellent 2nd and settled into that position from the start. The MSP #58 Ford was super fast and Christian had no chance of outpacing them. But, on lap 39, the #58 crashed and had to tow, handing Christian the lead he kept to the end although the final few laps were fairly tense with #58 closing him down quickly using fresher tyres after being forced to adopt a 3 stop strategy after their crash. But Christian held on to take his 5th, and the teams 6th, win out of the 10 weeks.

Joseph qualified the #68 in a great 6th place. Gary started in the car and struggled in the traffic and spun on lap 6, dropping the car to 22nd position. But, after that he, and later Joseph, drove really well to recover back to 11th at the end.

Robin had an interesting race. He qualified 19th but made good progress through the traffic, running in the top 10 during his 2nd stint. But he fell victim to some terrible driving by backmarkers and eventually damaged the car beyond repair.

Full results here

SEK Round 9 - Twin Ring Motegi

This was a sprint format meeting so 2 separate races.

In the 1st race, we only had #66 and #67 running and with the BMW uncompetitive without Lewis as the driver, hopes rested mainly on Juha in the #66 Ford GT3. He didn't disappoint, with a calm and competitive drive to 4th place and zero incidents.

In race 2, we had a full complement of cars, with Christian in #66, Lewis in #67, John in #68 and Craig in #69.

The best Craig could hope for was to gain positions through attrition and he drove a steady race, bringing the car home 16th.

Somehow, Lewis qualified the #67 BMW 5th and managed to move up to 4th during the race - another amazing drive in an uncompetitive car - the next best BMW was 10th! Christian qualified 4th but struggled in the traffic during the early laps and had an incident that damaged the car, forcing him into an early pitstop, dropping him to 15th. But, a great comeback drive saw him up to 6th by the finish. John qualified the #68 Ford in 9th and drove well, running as high as 5th at one point but eventually following Christian home in 7th place to make 3 BAM cars in the top 7.


Full results Race 1

Full results Race 2

BES Week 9 - Twin Ring Motegi

With a lot of the team having real life events over the weekend, only 2 cars were entered - #66 for Christian and Marco (making his BES debut) and #67 for John (driving solo).

Expectations were low - we'd done little work during the week to get a good setup and only Marco had really put in a decent practice effort.

Marco and Christian ran well, running in the top 10 throughout the race and finishing a creditable 7th with a low incident count. Marco's debut was impressive - running around 3/10ths quicker than Christian for most of his stints.

John's race was compromised by an accident early in the race, forcing him to do a tow/reset. He dropped back to 27th place after his stop but recovered well to finish 17th.

Full results here

CESCS Round 6 - Road America

After a poor result at Lime Rock, the team was looking to bounce back at Road America.

The opening stages of the race went fairly well for both cars, with Christian and John both doing solid jobs during their 1st stints. What became clear during this stage of the race was that fuel economy was likely to play a bit part in the outcome of the race and both Christian and John got to the 1/3 point of the race before stopping - critical if we were to make the end with only 2 fuel stops.

Marco and Stephan continued in the same way, holding good positions while still keeping fuel economy in mind.

At the 3rd and final stop, Stephan continued in #67 but team manager John King made the call to put Christian back in the #66 as Christian is more experienced at fuel saving and the car was fairly marginal on fuel.

The strategy looked like it was going to pay off - with Christian able to get the fuel to positive levels and still stay in touch the the cars in front (most of who were in serious fuel problems). But, the strategy and the race was destroyed by a needless caution with 25 mins to go. The cars ended up 6th and 7th, with #66 far further down the field than it deserved to be.

Full results here

22/8/2015 - BES Week 8 at Mosport

For the 5th week out of 8, BAM emerged victorious from the 9:00am GMT timeslot with all 4 cars finishing in the top 10 of the race. However, this week's victory was a 1st win in BES for the #67 BMW, driven superbly by Lewis Cugaly who was in a class of his own throughout the race and only a late incident with a back marker prevented Lewis from lapping the entire field.

The #66 Ford GT3 was 3rd, mostly driven by Christian Challiner who maintained his very consistent finishing in the races, with #69 and #68 both producing great recovery drives after early race problems.

Full results here

VLN Round 6 - 4 Hours of Spa 22nd Aug 2015

This was the final round of the 2nd season of VLN and the team was determined to do well, especially after the win in the previous round at Road America.

Qualifying looked promised - with Marco and Christian putting the cars onto 2nd & 3rd on the grid in the Mustang class. The race was strangely uneventful with both cars running in the top 3 all race, with the positions varying depending on the pit stop cycle but Marco and Stephan eventually brought the #68 car home 2nd behind SRN Motorsport with Christian & Clark following in 3rd.

Full results here

DGFX Round 8 - Road America

With the recent increase of BAM members, we increased the entries to 2 BMWs for this race and continued to run one BMW and 1 C Spec as "development/fun" cars and will try to have 1 competitive car in each class.
For the BMW's one of BAM's top pairs - Lewis and Christian were nominated although Christian has hardly touched the BMW this season so we were keeping expectations low. Lewis did a great job in qualifying, putting the car 4th on the GT3 grid as the fastest BMW.
In the early stages of the race, he ran very strongly and get the car up to 3rd in the GT3's but was forced into a spin by an impatient HPD and lost about 20 seconds. He recovered well to hand the car over to Christian in 4th place and Christian drove steadily to keep the car in that position, moving up one place when one of the cars ahead crashed. Lewis pushed very hard during the final hour setting the fastest lap of the GT3's in the process but couldn't catch the cars ahead and had to settle for a very good 3rd place.
The #67 car, driven by Matt R, Josh and Ernie, finished a solid 7th despite a few hiccups with Matt making a very good debut for the team.
In the C Specs, Juha and Fokke were always near the front and lead for around half the race although they were on a slightly different pit stop strategy to their main rivals. After the final stops were completed (we thought!) Juha had a 50 sec lead and although we had a late scare when we realised that Juha needed a little bit more fuel, he brought the #68 car home fora great win, the 3rd for the car in the series and a 1st win for Fokke for the team.
In the #69, the race was spoilt by and impatient HPD driver (see the pattern?) when Denny was hit entering the pits. The car was badly damaged but Brandon did a great job to drag the car home.

Full results here

SEK Rnd 8 - Monza 2h 45m Endurance

The team headed for Monza with a slightly different line-up to most of the races this season:

#66 was driven by Christian and Lewis and they had a really good race. Christian was involved in an incident early in the race and dropped to the end of the field but a great recovery drive by both of them saw the car in 2nd place in a latter stages. Lewis had a MAJOR moment on the last lap (see 3:07 on the coverage below) and dropped to 3rd but it was still a really great run.

#67 was driven by John and Craig. They had a solid run and were up to 12th in the fairly uncompetitive BMW at one stage but a mistake by John late in the race saw them drop to 14th.

#68, driven by Joseph and Matt N, was involved in a start line incident and immediately lost a lap. A good drive by both thereafter saw them recover to 15th.

#69 with Oliver and Gary on-board was another BMW struggling for straight-line pace. A steady drive to 15th was about the best we could have expected.

Full results here