Interlagos, Brazil is a track that always provides drama and entertainment from start to finish and for GrandPrix Online, 2010 will be no different as both Challenge and Sprint titles can be decided here.

For Challenge, Scott Wilde’s non attendance at Road America saw his main rival Muhammed Patel tear up the lead he had and now just seven points seperate the two rivals after Patel took victory in America. Wilde can still take the title should he win and Patel finishes lower than 6th. Drazen Cokor could still win in theory should both title leaders eliminate themselves from this race and he takes the victory in their place. For Sprint, Stuart Fields has a commanding lead over Malcolm Rice which ensures that should Fields finish higher than Rice, the title is his.

Interlagos’ Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace itself has been through various moderations but its current configuration has been in regular use since 1990 when the 27 turn circuit was shortened to a highly technical 15 turn bowl. Known for its gradient changes, interconnected infield section and the infamous Senna-S, it provides great overtaking opportunites both there and at turn 4 Descida de Lago. Set up compromises consist of getting around sector 3′s flat out kinks as quickly as possible whilst still being quick through the infields twists and a good balance is required to keep the flow as fluid as possible.

The Challenge race will be broadcasted on SimRaceTV with Mathew Weston on cameras and Simon Smith as your commentator as we aim to bring you all the action live from around 7.00 GMT.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

Taking a look at the title standings to your left and you may think that you see a startling gap between Scott Wilde (193) and Muhammed Patel (161) however the gap has been consistantly decreasing round upon round upon round and as the title reaches the final three rounds, pressure has hit a fever pitch as the main title challenges lay down their final bid for glory.
However go back to the start of the season and neither driver were even competing. The opening rounds saw emergence of other talents, notable Jan Mortiz Kammann, David Dominguez Christian Weibel and Hennings Cordes yet one driver was very quietly raking up points in every single round and that was Drazen Cokor. Cokor had been the points man, always around at the race end to collect a bag of goodies, even picking up a podium at the season opener in Bahrain. Indeed once the grid had settled Cokor even took the title lead for a while before Barcelona saw the debut of Scott Wilde.

Wilde took 4th on the grid and drove with the leaders to take a podium finish on debut just nine seconds shine of the victor. He then followed this up with a stonking victory at the crown jewel of Monaco and a second in Montreal. In comparison Muhammed Patel had only taken part in a single round, notching up a second in Melbourne. Valencia would see game on!

Having caught up to Drazen Cokor, Wilde had emerged as a consistant challenger for the win but at Valencia Muhammed Patel returned with a clean sweep – pole, fastest lap, race win. It had been a great return to the series and Patel had not returned alone. He also brought with him a new teammate in his brother Ibrahim, whom while not quick as quick, was just as formidable and came in 3rd, taking Wilde off the podium and plumping the Englishman to 4th.

Wilde regrouped with a win at Silverstone while the Patel brothers were absent. With Drazen Cokor notching up a second place, the two drivers were primed to swap positions at the top of the sheet. They duly did so at Hockenheim when Scott Wilde took his second win of the season in what had been absolutely epic race, beating home Muhammed Patel by just 0.7 seconds after 67 laps of high speed action.

Hungary had the same epic battle however this time Patel would come out on top with Mike Seymour splitting them as the three drivers finished the race seperated by just a single second. Mike Seymour had been grabbing podiums and strong finishes for a while and took his first win at Spa, a race that Patel would miss. This would mean Wilde could only grab second and thus not fully maximize his opportunity. Cokor grabbed third too, thus keeping his toe in the water.

However as we began to move into the home straight a mental power shift quickly took place. Suddenly Scott Wilde now had a championship lead to protect and a teammate in Heniz Vanderhoydonck whom had been having a very solid season for his own standards but hadn’t been challenging for wins. Muhammed Patel now had nothing to lose. He had missed a lot of races and was behind but could now throw caution to the wind. He also had a rear gunner in Ibrahim to back him up all the way. The challenge was thrown down and the race to the title was on.

Monza. Patel edges Wilde to second on the grid behind Lukas Euler. Patel jumps straight into the lead and Wilde follows through into second before causing a massive pile up at the Parabolica. Wilde emerges all but last and has to drive back up the order but obviously frustrated, makes various mistakes in a car that’s more a shopping trolley and is lapped by Patel! Muhammed grabs the win while Wilde does well to scrape a 5th.

Singapore. Patel grabs pole with Wilde third on the grid yet as Patel once again pulls away Wilde has another lap 1 drama clipping a barrier in sector 3 and dropping to last! Amazingly Wilde climbs again up the order only to get into more trouble later on. 4 pitstops later and taking a fasest lap by 1.5 seconds, Wilde eventually comes home a desheveled 4th as Muhammed wins again.

With two dramatic opening laps, Wilde comes clean to everyone that he feels he needs to beat Muhammed on track in order to feel like he’s justified being champion. As a result, perhaps overdriving caused the mistakes, or maybe thinking too much about protecting the title distracted him. Either way, Patel had muched into his lead and caught up with Cokor, still in second.

Japan. With Patel and Wilde the class of the feild the two have a race all of their own that Muhammed wins by 25 seconds and moves into 2nd overall. Wilde however grabbed second and so limits the damage to just 8 points and takes satisfaction that he stopped the clean sweep by taking the fastest race lap.

Now with just three to go, Wilde needs to decide which way he wants to play it. He could play the percentage game and aim for podiums all the way and just about get away with the title. Option 2 however sees him take the fight to Muhammed to prove, more to himself than to everyone else, that he is a deserved GPO Challenge champion. It’s an interesting decision in his mindset that he needs to go for and stick with in order to remain victorious. For Muhammed, the mind set is simple – push like hell, don’t crash. One mistake from Patel effectively means game over but then it wouldn’t ever matter as he has nothing to lose, everything to gain. One man hoping that the duo will have an uncompromising battle that will end in tears is Drazen Cokor. Mr Consistancy himself, Cokor is still mathematically very much able to win but it would require some Prost/Senna foul ups for it to happen.

Either way…three rounds to go, two rivals gunning for the title, only one can be victorious.

We’re in for a cracking end to the GPO 2010 Challenge series!

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

Off the beaten track we go to visit Road America for Round 17 of the GPO 2010 Season. Nick Oldenhuis gives us the lowdown…

Round 17 of the GPO season will be a “special event”, South Korea did not manage to complete their track in time for the GPO races, so the decision was made to change to America for this round. Scott Wilde still leads the Challenge championship by a margin of 32 points to Muhammed Patel. In sprint, Stuart Fields still is the man to beat with 244 points, but Michael Pieneman and Malcolm Rice will try to close the gap to him by all means neccesary. Nothing is yet decided in both championships, so we can expect fireworks in the remaining three races.

Road America has been a regular feature between 1982 and 2007 on the Champcar Calender, just missing out one race in 2005. Nowadays the track is used by multiple raceclasses, like the Atlantic Championship, American Le Mans Series and the SSCA Speed World Challenge Series.

Road America is a permanent road course and is located roughly between the cities of Milwaukee and Green Bay. It’s situated on 640 acres ( 2,6 square km ) in Wisconsins Kettle Morain. It has hosted events from September 1955 and hosts over 400 events a year.

The track is one of only a hand-full of road circuits in the world maintaining its original configuration being 6515 km in length and 14 turns. The track features many elevation changes, along with a long front stretch where speeds of 320 km/h could be reached. One of the best known features of this track is a turn on the farside known as “the kink”

The Challenge series will be hosted this Saturday. Qualifying starts at 18:45 GMT, the race will be 47 laps long. The event will be broadcasted on SimRaceTV with Simon Smith as your ears and Mathew Weston as your eyes.
The Sprint series take place on Sunday at 9:00 GMT, tasked with completing 24 laps on this track.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

Ryan Walker grabbed a popular maiden win in GPO Sprint with a gutsy drive to head off Stuart Fields and Ari Kesseli. This played into the hands of Fields who increases his lead over Malcolm Rice whom came in fourth, but this allows Rice Racing to close in the constructors after Michael Pienemann crashed out.

Full reports and results will be available during the week.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

A full race report is to follow.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

A full race report with radio commentary for download will follow.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

A full race report will follow shortly.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

A full race report will be available shortly.

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League

Round 12 of the GPO Challenge Series was held at the Hungaroring in Hungary. The twisty and bumpy track first used in 1986 is widely known as a “Mickey Mouse” track, for it’s short, slow corners and few overtaking possibilities.

Qualifying featured an interesting battle between Scott Wilde, Mike Seymour and Muhammed Patel. All three of them were very close to eachother timewise with Patel and Seymour spearheading a fierce battle for the important pole position trading times almost every lap. About halfway the session, Patel drove a 1:19.457, which was too fast for Seymour. Wilde had to settle for third place on the grid.

After an initial dramatic opening stint, technical gremlins caused a race to restart which led to a reduced race distance of 75% (53 laps) and so the field lined up on the grid for a new challenge. It promised to be an exiting race, as Patel and Seymour were so close in qualifying, made all the more interesting as Patel had to servea grid penalty, thus moving him down to sixth on the grid.

As the lights went green, Seymour made sure he kept his lead. Behind him, Nick Rowland had an amazing start and was side by side with Scott Wilde in turn one. Wilde however had the better exit and kept his second place, for now. Ibrahim Patel, Muhammed’s younger brother settled behind Rowland in fourth position. At the end of the first lap, Drazen Cokor managed to sneak up into sixth position, with an fast starting Heinz Vanderhoydonck right behind him. Vanderhoydonk started thirteenth on the grid, but saw himself solidly in a point scoring position after just one lap. Ari Keselli was in seventh, and also Jovan Nikolic had a brilliant start, crossing the line in ninth position, whilst starting way out of a point scoring position.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim Patel forced his way passed Rowland, who had Muhammed on his rearwing right after that. Seymour had nothing to fear from Wilde early on, as he set fastest lap after fastest lap and slowly gained ground on the chasing pack behind him. Rowland was defending against the faster Patel as best as he could, but after a small tap on his rearwheel he lost the car in lap three, giving the place to Muhammed Patel who had now some clear air infront of him. All that battling gave the top three a small gap over the unfortunate Rowland and Patel. Rowland had to lick his wounds and limp back to the pits for repairs.

Behind the leading pack, the field settled down very soon, there were no hard battles on track at this time of the race. Despite the lack of battles the field spread had been relatively slight meaning that every mistake would be devastating, as Cokor found out. He made a mistake at the slowest part of the track, causing him to slide into the gravel. Vanderhoydonck had to make an emergency move, leaving the door wide open for Nikolic to take fifth place. Vanderhoydonck made a quick recovery to slide in just infront of Keselli. Nikolic couldn’t hold the pressure from Vanderhoydonck after a tough battle and ran wide, losing the position he’d lucked into earlier. Cokor however had dropped three places in the blink of an eye and now had to climb back up. It was going to be a hard task as these drivers were all equal on pace. Behind Brian Oates had quietly sneaked his Rothmans car into tenth place, giving him the last championship point at this stage but with his teammate Keith Dohorty on his tail, Oates had to soak up the pressure.

At the front of the field Seymour continued to lead Wilde, with the Patel brothers behind them. Muhammed had been increasing the pressure on his younger brother lap after lap but Ibrahim would not give in so easily. Muhammed however was in a bullish mood and made a brilliant move at turn 13, passing Ibrahim around the outside!

At the first round of stops Scott Wilde seemed to be on a different pitstop strategy to Muhammed Patel and Mike Seymour. He pitted quite early and lost track position when the stops had shaken out. With Muhammed now released, he was on fire! Muhammed sliced through the lapped traffic like a hot knife through butter while Seymour lost time hand over fist. This led to the gap being significantly reduced by the time their pitstops were due.

Just over the halfway mark, Seymour decided to take the risk and dived into the pits first. He came back behind the two stopping Ibrahim Patel. Muhammed reacted and came in the next lap with his fingers crossed he would leapfrog the Fusion Grand Prix driver. He failed however but the battle was far from over! Muhammed Patel continued his detirmined driving and eventually on lap 45 made a bold ovetaking move on Mike Seymour who had defended galiantly to take the lead.

After an eventful race with drama and excitment Muhammed Patel grabbed the win, just infront of Mike Seymour and Scott Wilde, who had almost caught the second placed driver on the final lap! Ibrahim Patel came in a solid 4th, with Cokor being the best-of-the-rest in 5th. The other points went to Nick Rowland, Bruno Castello (whom had made his way quietly up the field), a delighted Brian Oates, Heniz Vanderhoydonck and Ari Kesseli snatching the finale point.

Scott Wilde still leads the championship, with a marginal difference of 8 points over Drazen Cokor. Cokor’s team however is leading the team standings, but have a lot of work to do if they want to keep it that way until the end of the season.

After a small, but truly deserved 4 week break the GPO circus continues in Belgium. Spa-Franchorchamps will be the host of the Belgian Grand Prix. The weekend of 28 and 29th of August will be full of Jupiler beers, Vlemish fries, but most of all: exciting racing.

(Lovely pictures will be added shortly)

Original post from Grand Prix Online Sim-Racing League