Round 2 of the Sports Car Open was held yesterday evening at the super-fast, super dangerous Monza circuit. Confounding all their critics from the first round (where TBR finished 3rd) and in just their first drive as team mates, Tom “Weeeew!” Michelmore and Matt “New Boy” Farrow secured second place in the LMP1 class, just 12 seconds behind the winners Pure Racing Team.
In the P2 category, Endurance Team Manager Fraser “Maer Baws then Brens” Williamson and Tyler “Other New Boy” Hervias calmly steered the TBR Yellow HPD to 5th place, with Baz “RSR King” Morrison and Lewis “Oval Driver” Goodway bringing TBR Pinks Porsche RSR home in 12th in the GTE class.
How did it unfold?
Qualifying for the SCO races is an individual, 20 minute, 4 lap maximum affair in which anyone from the team can drive, and the qualifying driver is not required to start the race. P1 qualifying was undertaken by Tom in the TBR Blue Porsche 919, posting a time of 1:30.125, good enough for 6th of the 16 car field. With the likes of Pure, Thrustmaster Mivano, Coanda and Simucube ineX only a maximum of .7 of a second, the entire field was really tightly packed.
The 14 car entry P2 qualifying was headed up the by CoRe Simracing, with Tyler dropping the TBR Yellow HPD entry in to 4th spot in a time of 1:38.070, less than a tenth behind the pole sitters. GTE is the most popular class in SCO with a 24 car entry, it is also arguably the most competitive with the whole field covered by only 1.2 seconds. With Barry at the wheel of the TBR Pink RSR a time of 1:46.251 was enough for 22nd place on the grid. On the plus side, at least the car with the horrific pink wheels (I blame Scott “I like pink” Brazier) would hopefully not be caught up in the expected lap 1 turn, 1 melee!
First stint for the P1 was to be taken by Tom and from the flag an issue for the #21 Thrustmaster Mivano entry elevated the TBR car to p5. Driving fast and hard, Tom stayed in this spot until lap 10 climbing to p4 when the #3 Thrustmaster Mivano entry tangled with a HPD and dropped out of contention. 2 laps later Tom put a move on the ineX car elevating himself to 3rd position. Lap 18 Coanda’s Jeremy Bouteloup had a coming together which required a pitstop for repairs. This would drop Coanda 2 laps down whilst elevating Tom to 2nd place. So from 6th to 2nd…. And just 3 ½ hours to go!
In the p2 category, Tyler got off to a steady start, maintaining position and keeping pace with Will Tregurtha of Thrustmaster Mivano. Come the first pit stop cycle, No Name would get involved in the extremely close battle for the top 5 and Tyler would find himself in 5th position. The battle between TBR, CoRe SimRacing PC, Mivano, Heusinkveld and No Name would continue on throughout the rest of the race, with each team switching between positions as the pit stops came and went. After 60 laps, TBR n00bie Tyler handed the car across from 4th position to a TBR old hand, Fraser Williamson. Fraser quickly settled in to his rhythm and set about chasing the cars in front of him. The 5 continued to switch around throughout the pit cycles for the remaining 80 laps however after picking up some damage on a kerb, Fraser was unable to find a chink in the armour of the cars around him, and had to resort to fuel saving before unfortunately being passed for 4th just 9 laps from the finish. So a final finishing position of 5th for the young team of TBR Yellow.
Lewis Goodway took the first stint in the TBR Pink Porsche RSR, and after starting toward the rear of the packed and highly competitive field of 24 screaming GTE cars, quickly gained several positions, in fact come the end of his first stint, around the 1hr mark, Lewis would hand the car across to Barry in second position in class! Obviously this was due to the pit cycles, and once Barry had settled in behind the wheel and positions levelled out, with the gaudy pink wheeler settling in to position around the P16 mark. The remainder of the race turned in to a battle with the #63 Thrustmaster Mivano entry and fuel strategies, with most teams on a 4 stopper and TBR on 3. The final 60 laps or so, the 2 switched positions before Baz had a beast of a final stint making the move for 13th position stick with around 12 laps remaining. 5 laps from the end Baz stuck a move on Marcel Fassbender in the SimRC.de entry for a final position of 12th, a net gain of 10 positions, so not a bad days work for Lewis and Barry.
Meanwhile, the LMP1 race was turning in to a battle of fuel strategies. TBR Blue and PRT were clearly on slightly different strategies, with PRT tending to pit slightly earlier than TBR. This saw Tom in the lead for an extended period from L27 to 41 until PRT with arguably the slightly quicker pace were able to overhaul him on L42. All the while, Marcus Hamilton in the #21 Thrustmaster Mivano entry was making a recovery drive and passed Tom when he pitted to hand over to another TBR new boy, Matt Farrow. This dropped Blue to 3rd for a while, however the pits played their part again, and Matt was able to take 2nd back. With Frederic Evers behind the wheel and catching Matt there was an incident on the start/finish straight where Mivano, in the process of passing Matt, moved across the front of the the TBR 919, spinning himself in to the wall and out of the race. Amazingly Matt was undamaged and retained 2nd place, handing the car to Tom from the lead with 40 laps remaining. Again depending on pit stops, Tom maintained either first or second position for the remainder of the race before finally finishing just 12 seconds behind PRT’s Patrick Wolf.
Conclusions
So final positions of 5th for Fraser and Tyler in HPD, 12th for Barry and Lewis in GTE and an brilliant 2nd for Matt and Tom in the LMP1. All in all a great 2nd round of the SCO for all 3 cars. Whilst Im sure Barry and Lewis have higher expectations for GTE, it is a highly competitive field with twice as many cars as the other classes. In HPD, Fraser and Tyler had an excellent first race together, and with an average age of just 17 1/2yrs old, they have plenty of time and share the enthusiasm to improve. Finally, in Tom, Matt and Michael Loosen we have 3 LMP1 drivers who have proven over the first 2 rounds that they have the capability to challenge the very best in the sport.
League standings after 2 rounds show TBR Blue leading the premier class LMP1 by 2 points from Radicals Online JRT. TBR Yellow are sat in 9th spot in the P2 class, just 3 points behind P5 with TBR Pink down in 18th spot in GTE after a DNF in the first round.
Results can be found here.
Racespot coverage is here.
Pics courtesy of Fraser “Mr Media” Williamson.