Kobalt

Thank you guys!

I'm pretty sure there is more to get from the 997.1 and I hope I'll get the chance to do some good laps next year in it.
The 7.38 was pretty clean. I don't remember how much traffic it was
I believe 7.35 is reachable for me.
7.29 would be amazing.

I'm looking forward to do laps in the 991 GT3 RS to see how I've improved by driving the 997 and the BMW racecars.
I have not been I the 991 since June if I remember correctly.

Kobalt

Cool

TRAKCAR

Kobalt

Yes, Great White is still around. Probably bringing out Sharkey in the spring.

TRAKCAR

Hope to see you there as soon as the Ring opens.
What has been roughly the date historically?

Cant get an answer out of Porsche but fingers crossed now with only 3 months available ED.

Car build Dec 7.
Still hoping for a later allocation swap.

If not:
Pickup Mid Feb, IF Porsche allows -> Spain Portugal Italy.
As soon as Spa and Ring have track days I head north till mid May.

Kobalt

This year it opened the 11th of March which was one or two weeks before the original planned opening.

Keeping my fingers crossed for en perfect ED again!

Kobalt

Nürburgring vs Hockenheim - German only

Kobalt

Ever wondered how it is driving the Nordschleife in +2°C in rain, on slicks?

I can tell you: Interesting

The last RCN race of the year, nicknamed Schwedenkreuz, took place in a hostile environment.

RCN8 is a 3 hour race with two mandatory pitstops.
Me and co-driver decided that I'd do the first stint and then he would do stint two and three,

It turned out to be no stint three because of the weather and the many accidents.

The day started early with drivers briefing and then qualification race. It was very cold.

We aimed for just bringing the car back to the pits in one piece. Both drivers must do at least one qualification lap.
We did three laps each and started as #81 on the grid. Not very good but we where still driving the main race so we where happy.
We drove on regular R-tyres instead of slicks or wets.

If you remember we blew up the engine in the last RCN race and now we had basically a new M3 E46 engine in the car. Sort of...
The day before, on Friday, my co-driver broke in the engine on Nordschleife during the trackday.
On Friday evening it is technical inspection before race. Unfortunately our cams and cam followers where done after the break in so we changed those and made it thru tech in the last minute.
After the race itself we had to change camshafts and followers again... At least the engine didn't blow up. We guess that there is problem with an oil channel.

In the morning when we came to prepare for the qualification race it turned out that we've locked in the ignition key in the car(!). 2 minutes of panic and then someone opened the booth and could open the doors. Pew!


The race itself was magical!

At 15.00 the race started after a formationlap. Track completely dry during formation!
Still very cold but at least dry.
I really didn't want to drive in the wet, in the cold on slicks...
On lap one, in Flügplatz the first raindrops appeared but lap 1 was basically dry.

Then it started to rain more and more. One lap Schwedenkreutz is dry, the next it is wet, then dry agan.
One lap Tiergarten is dry, the next it is wet... You get the idea.

Oh, and there was this little detail: We had no radio in the car... Sitting on this grand track which is partly wet trying to figure out if it is time to change to wets or not is not an easy task.
Anyhow, on lap three I for some strange reason started to like the situation I was in. (Later I learned that many of our competitors changed to wets onlap 3 or 4.)
I liked it and decided that as long as I was overtaking I would continue on slicks.

My co-driver and the team had no idea of my game plan: My co-driver told later that he was ready to jump into the car from lap 3 and that they on every lap believed that I had crashed


From a philosophical point of view it interesting to be so close the what is going on but really not knowing anything.
It is like it was in the morning before the qualification race: You are 30 meters from the track but you have no idea of how the track is. (Because the track is so long and so cold).

I drove until I saw thet there where 14 minutes left to halftime (there is a clock at the finishline) and then I did one more lap. I even drove the last lap a bit slower thinking that I might run out of luck.

When I stepped out of the car we where P25 in total and P1 in class!!!!
Not bad starting as #81.
Green Hell was Green Heaven!

CT_Peter joined me in the box and helped me survive the 90 minutes left of the race.
I didn't dare to follow our race in the beginning but had too lok after a while.

When time slowly counted down I realized that we hadn't done our second pitstop - Remember there where two mandatory pitstops.
Me and Peter was standing by the pit wall and watched my car full throttle down the straight. I was hoping to see him in the pitlane
Total confusion. What is going on. Why didn't he come into the pits? Where is he know? Parc fermé?

To make a long story short: We thought our car had seen the checkered flag. I didn't because the leader was behind our car.
So our car did another lap. Came to the pits but it passes the finish line in the pits. Comes to the box but there is no-one there anymore so he drives to first pitbox where there still is people. Then our people sees him and he drives the pitlane reverse and get some fuel. After that he comes to Parc Fermé,

At this point Peter and I have been standing at the Parc Fermé for a long time and are totally clueless where our car is.
We know that we where P2 in class in the end but right now we have this strong feeling that we will get disqualified.

The last car coming is our car. There is one vehicle behind it. Not the one you'd expect





My co driver was so focused on the fact that he was supposed to do 7 laps and then come in for a second stop and fuel that he forgot about the remaining race time .

In the end we ended up in P2 in class and P33 in total.
We've got a penalty of 8 1/2 minutes because we missed one pitstop.
That didn't matter because we where so much infront of the car behind us in class.


We learned sooo much, again!
The most confusing race this year but also the best.

LOL




A summary of stint one, sorry about the bad video quality.





The answer to the question I asked myself a couple time in the race: "Why am I doing this?"

928cs

Congratulations!

beoliving

Awesome!!!! There is nothing like the Ring and you mastered it, great race and story.

Kobalt

Thank you guys!

Kobalt

I took some videos of some of the 992's last Thursday. Sorry for the bad quality.



Carrera


Turbo Cabrio


Turbo



Some others

Cayman GT4

Taycan


Cayenne(?")


Panamera


Cayman

erik_plus8

Hm. The first GT4 sounded a bit.... ...PDK-ish... :O

It had however the best exhaust sound of them all - N/A FTW

Kobalt

There was a 992 GT3 too but it was too fast for me : It sounded best of all cars being there that day. (Including AMG's and other brands).

Taffy66

That's very reassuring and shows Porsche are fully committed to NASP at least for the 992 anyway.