Author Archive

The Eagle soars as practice begins…

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The form book is turned on its head when the BackMarker Brigade decide to get racey…

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Hennings Cordes takes the fourth win of the season and proves that winning in GPO Challenge is very reminiscent of the old party game “pass the parcel”

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And so we move to Malysia were it was all change at the top again. A third winner in as many races…

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As we make a long overdue catch up with the fantastic GPO Challenge series, we make whistlestop reviews of each race and evaluate – will there be a changing of the guard as Jan-Moritz Kammann finds his early lead under attack left, right and centre? This is part one of four seperate articles about GPO Challenge that will be published over the next four days…

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Robin Van Brenk and Stuart Fields take one win each at Melbourne and Sepang respectively and so begins the titanic scrap to chase down Malcolm Rice for the sprint title glory.

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With the teams now preparing for the tough streets of Melbourne, GPO hits round two of its inaugral sim racing season. With both Challenge and Sprint series’ seeing dominant wins, everyone will be eager to show that no one will be having it all their own way in 2010. You can catch the GPO Challenge qualifying and race live on PSRTV this saturday from 19:45 GMT (race kicks off 20:30). Bring you drinks and snacks and be prepared to cheer on your favourite driver!

Albert Park is the place for the race, GPO is the race in your own place!

Jan-Moritz Kammann took a dominant win in GPO’s inaugral Bahrain GP in the main challenge event on Saturday. Kammann won by 30 seconds from Drazon Cokor and Stuart Fields snuck home in third.

The stage was set for a dramatic opener around the newly redesigned Bahraini circuit and with Kammann on pole with Camilo Nino alongside it was looking set for an almight duel. The midfield looked particularly tight with 5th Jody Fannin to Brian Oates 14th seperated by just 0.7 of a second.

However on the off it was all to come crashing down for Nino. Who touched who didn’t matter but Nino’s hopes of victory were out the window and onto the dirt track, along with Rothmans duo Graham Dickinson and the perennially unlucky Keith Doherty, who were both caught up in the melee and was out. Also joining them on the sidelines would be Rizwan Sarwar & Sven Smits for European F1 and Jordon Norwood for Deletraz BMB. 5 down, 17 remaining.

Next to go would be Heniz Vanderhoydonck from accident damage and then Erik Brodan for Redspeed Sweeden would follow suit, although he had looked uncomfortable all weekend. He would quickly be joined in the sand traps by his teammate Fredrick Arbegard with an uncharacteristic DNF.

However as they went off two by two, Jan-Moritz Kammann was going from strength to strength and was busy dragging teammate Mikael Folcher along for the ride as the two battled hard for the lead for Millenium Racing. Third was a delighted Mihajlo Vicentijevic however he too would over do it and crash out – the new section proving extra tricky for the drivers. This allowed Drazon Cokor into third with Ari Kesseli and Stuart Fields having a ding-dong battle over fourth and fifth.

Furtherback more action was unfolding as Benjamin Chong recovered from earlier drama’s to overtake first Erick Davis, then Brian Oates and finally Jody Fannin to find himself back in the points. He shouldn’t have worried however…

Ben Ross had retired with technical difficulties for OrangeTech before teammate Brian Cowley, new to this type of racing found  himself a working experiment that tarmac is better than gravel! With both OrangeTech’s out, it was a bad day for Williamson Dynamic related teams with Camilo Nino finally ending what had been a miserable day in the wall too. He had been suffering from food poisoning and one had hoped he’d not done a Mark Webber…

Up front however Kammann remained unfazed even with Michael Folcher refusing to let up. The pair had opened a massive gap over the battling Kesseli and Fields and it was heading for a great show down. Folcher was one stopping and Kammann was two. Kammann came in for his second but had not pulled out enough of a gap and Folcher retook the lead. It was going to have to be decided on the track… that was until Michael Folcher suffered terrible luck and retired due to technical difficulties! What rotten luck.

Jan breathed a sigh of relief and then gave us the fastest lap for good measure before crossing the line to win the Bahrain GP. Drazen Cokor stayed out of trouble to claim an impressive second while in the last few laps Fields dived passed Kesseli taking third away from the Finn and giving GRIDLine a third podium slot in the weekend.

Jamie Rush had been quiet most of the race but came home a well deserved fifth ahead of Benjamin Chong who recovered to sixth despite many problems early on. Jody Fannin came home seventh meaning R&S Motorsports were the only team to get a double finish and points for both. Brian Oates gave his usual steady and dependable performance to claim eighth and some valuable points early on while the final finisher was Erick Davis after three stops and being lapped four times.

So Jan has laid the gauntlet down for everyone at Melbourne and it will be interesting to see how everyone, especially teammate Folcher, will react. As a great lyric once said “Kammann if you think you’re hard enough!”

Malcolm Rice took the win in the inaugral GPO Sprint Bahrain Grand Prix. Nick Oldenhuis came home a fighting second with Michael Pieneman rounding off the podium finishers in third.

The newly created Sprint series, which takes place on Sunday mornings (GMT), saw 15 eager drivers on the grid ready to impress and Rice, in his own car, coverted his pole position to the lead down into turn 1 while behind, Oldenhuis battled for second with Rothmans Racing’s Ed Williams, the pair swapping positions constantly. This allowed Malcolm Rice to pull out a small lead, until Ed Williams crashed out on lap 9 of the race trying to keep up with Oldenhuis’ new GRIDline Racing car. This allowed Pieneman into the final podium slot.

Behind the lead three, an almight battle over the rest of points finishers was keeping everyones attention. Jermaine Venhorst had avoided some turn 1 jockeying to take fourth and was holding up Craig Johnston, Simon Smith, Maurice Willems and Ken Hunter. Hunter would lose control of his Rothmans on lap 3 taking himself out of the equasion, which then allowed Willems in his his BackMarker Brigade DNQ to attack his sister car stablemate Simon Smith, however an ill planned move lost Willems his front wing in the final corner and so he was in for an early pitstop. This then proved to be a blessing in disguise for Maurice as after dispatching Emmanuel Baako and Patrick Wier, he ran in clear air for the rest of the race, gaining time on the position swapping fest that was Venhorst, Johnston and Smith.

By the time everyone had pitted, Rice had opened up a good 15 seconds over Oldenhuis and over fourty seconds on a lonely Pieneman in the second GRIDline. The battles behind had not quite finished however as Smith, who’d lost out in the stops dispatched Venhorst for fifth and closed down Willems quickly only to have a costly spin in the closing laps and hault his charge. Further back we’d lost Flavio Nobrega from a points scoring position and also Emmanuel Baako who’d worked his way to 9th when he retired his Deletraz in the barriers. The other retirement was Myles Dixon who suffered a screen freeze and by the time the game returned, he was already missing some vital pieces of his car!

Malcolm Rice took a comanding win with a lights to flag victory and fastest lap for good measure – a fantastic achievement for Rice Racing and a race that will go down in history as the first ever GPO Sprint event. Oldenhuis and Pieneman make sure GRIDline take the constructors lead with second and third overall and team boss Stuart Fields will be delighted with that.

Behind Willems takes a delighted fourth ahead of a stunned Simon Smith grabbing one of best finishes in his sim racing career to date. Patrick Wier took sixth after a determined drive and playing catch up after a cautious start, however his end lap times were on pace with those in front. Jermaine Venhorst was demoted to seventh after two drive throughs in the closing stages for ignoring blue flags, marring what was a stiring drive for RedSpeed. Craig Johnston came home ninth after a lengthy pitstop to repair damage following an off whilst James Scanlan improved his pace over the course of the race to claim ninth and Lee Massey grabbed the final point with a dogged drive to 10th depsite being significantly down on pace.

GPO’s inaugural race at Bahrain’s 2010 new layout, will be fuse two new designs and both will be broadcasted for the first time in Sim Racing history live on PSRTV. You’re commentators for this exciting event will be the much loved Michael Lam, technical minded Phil Roberts and highly respected driver Nick Rowland.

The event will kick off at 19:30 GMT where you get to experience the battle to qualify for the grid before the race itself gets underway around 20:30 GMT.

Who will win the first ever GPO race? Tune in and find out – only with PSRTV!

As GP-O continues with leaps and bounds to work towards the opening race in the leagues history things have really began to pick up pace.

Firstly, a completely revamped Beta Mod is now readily available to all our approved drivers in the forums. The mod is based on the Ferrari F60 from the LMT Modding Group. Remember registration is completely free… hang on… so is the racing! Just what is there to lose? Sign up today! You’re more than welcome to bring a friend but unfortunately you can’t already discount free things for doing that.

Elsewhere in the world of GrandPrix-Online we have plenty going on.

Our first track pack is in the final stages of completion before it is released to the public. Our track packs will come in different stages so you have access to groups of tracks at a time and can prepare for them in advance.

We also now are in the final preparations for signing sponsors for a teamspeak3 server to help out with team radios and race control during the events, plus we now have the fantastic Live Timing on our website for all the ontrack action and the amazing Live Stream which effectively becomes a TV Channel dedicated to GP-O in the making. All these exciting media prospects are already at our fingertips, not to mention a potential partnership with PSRTV.

As you can see, now is starting to become the most exciting time in GP-O’s short life span. We really hope you come to join in with our community and celebrate fresh starts, new beginnings and our pre-season excitment as the tension builds for when the red lights go out.