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8 hours of Spa-Francorchamps
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- Written by Jan Bronee
The fourth event of the NES took place at the famous track in Belgium on January 24. The track is home for many endurance races over the years and is of course also included in the NES schedule in an 8-hour version. It features the exiting Eau Rouge / Raidillon combination.
Once again we had a good run throughout the 8-hour event. Only exception was a contact with car 65 from Hammer Down Racing in turn 19 after about one 1 hour and twenty minutes of racing. It was a simple incident, most likely caused by some misunderstanding in communicating and sharing the track and corner. As a result the wheel was of center by 10 degrees or so. We brought the car in for 5 minutes of repair and when reentering the track the car was almost back in shape but not quite though. The handling was somehow still different and lap-times were a bit slower – not by much though. From then on the race was a pure joy and great to be part of :-)
With only 3 races remaining we are placed 12 of 15. This properly the best we can do for now as we are racing some of the fastest simracing drivers around.
Circuit of The Americas
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- Written by Jan Bronee
After a very short race at Sebring – which only lasted one lap – we finally managed to reach the checkered flag at COTA in the second round of NES season 2. It quickly became obvious that we are one of the slowest teams in the GT1-field. We qualified the car to the dead-last position on the grid for our class. After 6 hours of racing on this very challenging track, we finished 10 out of 15 by consistent driving and staying out of trouble. We will go home, practice and return stronger for the next race ☺
New drivers
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- Written by Jan Bronee
We are very happy to announce the addition of two new very capable drivers for our driver line-up for NES season 2. In this season, we will participate in the GT1 class driving the Aston Martin DBR9. The competition is even tougher in this upcoming season. The first race is an 8-hour race at Sebring taking place October 18. A warm welcome to Michael Tommerup and Jens Christoffersen ! :-)
Bad luck at Interlagos!
- Details
- Written by Jan Bronee
February 15 was not a good race day for The Dart Frogs. We qualified for P4, but a procedural mistake during gridding lead to the fact that we should start from the pits. After doing a super fast double-stint, Dave was able to bring us from dead last all the way back up to P4 after 2 hours of hard work. He handed over the car to me. After a few laps, I was hit by a combination of a somewhat “optimistic” HPD driver and net-code issues. This sends me straight into the concrete wall. At this point, the car was drivable but also very slow. A few more laps later after being hit by 2 Ruf’s and a second HPD, it was game over! 2 hours and 15 minutes into the 6 hours race. This meant zero points for this event of the NEO Endurance Series. The season podium finish suddenly seemed very far away.
Come-back at Road-Atlanta
- Details
- Written by Jan Bronee
The last race of the NES series took place at Road-Atlanta. Since we scored 0 points in the last race, the season podium finish was miles away. For this reason we did not do much preparation, but showed up to have some great fun. In that spirit – my job was to qualify the car on Saturday and to also take the first stint. The qualifying-result was as expected: I was second last in qualifying, just 1/1000 of second faster that the guy closing the grid :-)
The 6-hour race was on and the start was nice and clean. The track is great to drive and time passed quickly. This time the faster class cars did a good job overtaking in a safe manor. This was not the case for one of our competitors. He made a nice dive-bomb on me in the turn into the long straight, costing him a 60 seconds stop-and-go penalty. The car was still handling ok – but some top-speed was lost. Shortly here after my stint was over and the car was handed over to the PRO’s - Karl and Dave from the remaining part of the race.
As usual, they managed to drive the car up trough the field by doing fast and consistent laps despite the loss of top-speed caused by the incident.
Suddenly the 95 car of IRDK Endurance made a small driver-error and crashed the car costing 10 laps during repairs. This meant that a chance was given to re-claim the overall season third place from these guys. All that this required was to overtake 92 car of New World Sim Sport and thus finishing in 4. place in this race. They were 25 seconds ahead of us but had one pit stop less. So we would jump them as they pitted. It was soon clear to us that they did NOT intend to pit again – but instead try to pull it off with one less stop. Karl was flying this day and started the hunt for the 92 car.
Karl was closing the gap rather quickly, properly because they needed to manage fuel-consumption. With 4 laps to go the gap stabilized around 2 seconds. Would New World Sim Sport make it to the checkered? No – with only one lap to go, the fuel was out!! In this way we took the 4. place of this race and the season overall 3. place beating IRDK Endurance by just 2 points!
Thanks to Karl and Dave for an amazing performance trough out this first NEO Endurance season! :-)
Circuit of the Americas
- Details
- Written by Jan Bronee
Once again, we managed to get on the podium by finishing third on round two of the NEO Endurance Series, which this time was taking place at COTA - Circuit of the Americas. This track is very demanding and even the smallest mistake leads to a huge increase in your lap-time. We managed once again to keep our nose clean and despite the fact that I had trouble in getting a proper pace … Karl and Dave delivered excellent performance which lead to the fine result. It do needs to be mentioned that two of our competitors experienced a very unfortunate disconnect. We are right now leading the GTC class but we have no illusion that this should stick all the way to or after the final race :-)
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