You might not know this, but Team Buschfink Racing has a very strong Swedish contingent… and by very strong I mean there are loads of them…… so many in fact they even have their own league where they invite other Swedish chaps with names I cant pronounce to race with them on a Tuesday evening and call it the Swedish iRacing League. Last night was the leagues 6th round, held at a pretty cold and miserable looking Road Atlanta (seriously, that track is gonna need resurfacing the amount of racing that’s happened there over the last 2 weeks!)
So qualifying is a 4 lap solo affair, and the 5 TBR drivers (Magnus “wsankstain” Wallström was on commentating duties) who were taking part had a slightly mixed bag of results. Mikael “Swedish Rig Design” Engstroem was taking things seriously (according to Andreas as he didn’t join TS) which seems like a good choice as he placed himself 3rd on the grid with a 1:14.7. Next up was Rickard “Too many nicknames” Allardh, who had actually been practicing for this event on a track which he loves and posted a 1:14.8, good enough for 5th although he insists that he “had way more pace in me”… at least I think he said pace…. Joachim “Painting Guru” Ljunggren was just outside the 14’s with a 1:15.21 in 13th with Andreas “Team Denmark” Olsson in 16th on 1:15.29. Finally Jonny Wermelin was just outside the top 20 in 22nd with a 1:15.647. The grid was pretty tight at the top, with the first 10 of the 40 car field separated by just 4 tenths and the top 20 by less than a second!
Race is a 45 minute sprint but with limited fuel forcing drivers to take a pit stop at some point, although its doubtful anyone would select to take tyres. From the rolling start Rickard “Assface” Allardh was suffering some major FPS drops and slipped from FEM to 7th and shortly afterwards down to 8th. However, L5 would see Mikael leaving the circuit and dropping from 3rd to 19th. Blaming the fact that he had started with the wrong set-up Mikael would recover by L26 to 10th before another spin dropped him out of the race altogether with too many incidents.
Meanwhile, Jocke and Andreas were deep in a battle of their own. The pair had a decent start, picking off a couple of spots early on and progressing through the field nicely. Andreas firmly sniffing the tail pipes of Jocke’s 488 for lap after lap until L20 where Jocke’s indecision whether to enter the pits or not let Andreas through on the high speed final turn. Pitting the lap afterwards from P5 Jocke would find that his pit crew had been contacted by the iRacing bugs and gone on strike, refusing to let his car leave the pits until he paid their fee’s. Jockes race in tatters, Andreas pitted the lap afterwards from P3, leaving the pits in P5, a position he maintained through the the finish of the race.
As for Jonny, he had climbed to P18 and having had a fair few chunks knocked out of his Porsche RSR he took the option to pit early on L17 dropping all the way back to 30th. However, once the pit cycle had completed, he was back up to 18th, 17th briefly before finishing in 18th.
Rickard “Ballsack” Allardh’s race hadn’t been going quite to plan. Having worked his way back through the FPS glue he was suffering with to P6, Ballenack decided to take an early pit on L14, leaving the pits way down in 18th and in among some traffic. To no-one’s surprise (if anyone even noticed) this evened out to P6 after the pit cycle. Another couple of spinners with 13 laps remaining would have The Boss circulating in fresh air in P3. Now free of the FPS issues he had been suffering, Mr TBR was able to haul in P2 to the point of being 0.3s behind. It’s at this stage we need to understand that when your pit computer says “you need 31ltrs to finish the race” putting only 29 ltrs in the tank is probably not the cleverest move you could ever make. The horrible feeling that with just 3 laps remaining, you’re going to run out of fuel before the finish is one that we have all felt before and Rickard “Balls to the fuel calcs” Allardh switched in to serious fuel saving mode, losing almost 7 seconds to P4 and spluttering over the line for a podium finish of second loser. Congrats to the podium of Wilhelm Wiberg (Blue Flag Racing) in 2nd and Robin Sundqvist for the win.
So all in all, had Mikael managed to choose the correct setup, and Jocke bothered paying his pit crew, it could have been a great result with 4 TBR cars possibly in the top 7… as it turns out, it was a 50% success for TBR Sweden…. Oh and a 100% success in the commentators booth for Magnus… probably at least as I couldn’t actually understand a word he said.
In the drivers table, Magnus leads the TBR boys in 4th with Rickard in 6th. Andreas sits 8th, Jocke 12th and Mikael in 15th, positions Im sure Mikael and Jocke will agree is not really aligned to their abilities. Jonny is down in 30th after a DNF and DNS at the previous 2 rounds.
In the team cup, TBR Ferrari (Andreas and Jocke) are in 2nd with TBR Forsche (Rick and Mik) in 3rd.
Official results are here.
Official VOD is here (Check out Magnus “Swedish Murray walker” Wallstrom’s incomprehensible commentary)
Jocke’s view of the race is here (until his pit crew spazzed out)