Cyber Racing Porsche Carrera World Tour: Round 2 Varano de’Melegari

By 3id News | May 19, 2009 02:40 UTC | 572 Views

This was a round of mixed fortunes for Ben Crooks. Lessons were learnt and lots of experience was picked up in his first and My3id Gaming’s first rFactor league race.

During the practice session before the race, it seemed that Crooks would be among the top 7 of the grid of 14. However during qualifying Crooks was able to pull multiple PBs out of nowhere and achieved 3^rd place on the grid.

The lack of experience with rFactor soon showed in the pre-race procedures. As Crooks left the pits and lined up on the grid, he turned his engine off to save some fuel before the final warm-up lap and race start. However Crooks was unaware that the Porsche Supercup car would then not restart again until the formation lap began. Crooks began asking for some help to push start the car, luckily some familiar faces in the form of the inferno racing team were also competing in the league and offered to give a bump on the warm up lap. This was later not needed as the car suddenly kicked into life as the warm up lap began.

Race one started with a bang, literally. Crooks, nervous from the previous events, got a bad start with excessive wheel spin and was instantly under pressure from Martin Kroenke behind him. Defending into turn one and braking late on cold tyres Crooks spun and hit Joern Dombrowski in front of him. Joern got away from it safely however Crooks was now last but one, ahead of Kroenke who spun in avoidance.

Crooks got out of the gravel trap and started at getting back as far up the order as possible. With no more mistakes in the race and more mistakes from other driver, Crooks managed to get up to 4^th place. Hunting down Joern Dombrowski for 3^rd place and finishing just 2.4 seconds off him as they crossed the line.

Race two used a reverse grid, so Crooks started in 10^th place but was 12^th by turn 1. However after lap 1 He managed to get into 9^th place. By lap 7 he was up to 3^rd place behind the two leaders. However coming through the turn 6/7 chicane he hit the curb wrong while following closely behind P2 car, Mike Azzolin. When he recovered he was then in 7^th, and trying to catch the pack of cars ahead to get 4^th. After some time some of the cars ahead pitted and Crooks was left to battle Dombrowski. Coming into turn 1 on the start finish straight, Crooks had a moment of trouble as his computer drastically reduced in FPS, making him miss his braking point and hit Dombrowski off the circuit. Crooks waited for the computer to recover from the FPS drops, then noticed Dombrowski was out so waited some more for him to recover, however it seemed Dombrowski was out of the running for a while. After these events crooks set about making some good lap times and managed to get into 1^st place before making his pit stop. Crooks came out of the pits in 6^th place and had an uneventful race after this until the final few laps of the race. Dombrowski and the winner of the last race Christoph Bartels were quickly catching up to Crooks as he suffered from tyre wear problems. After a few more laps, Christoph had spun out however this let Joern Dombrowski catch up to Crooks even quicker and on the final lap Crooks was left defending his position from Dombrowski. They crossed the line 3^rd and 4^th just 0.19 seconds apart.

Next is Monaco, where Crooks will be joined by Reinier Hut and David Greco.

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JPeace (2 years 258 days ago) good luck for next round!

r4ptor (2 years 259 days ago) \o/ Don't turn off the engine again, Ben ;)

v1rg0 (2 years 264 days ago) We have lift-off. Good luck in the next race guys, represent!