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