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It's safe to say that the first round of this seasons IVRA Endurance series did not go well for our #256 car, with a race-day driver eligibility issue meaning that our car couldn't take part.
That wasn't to be the case for the rest of the season, and nor for this last round which was a 12 hour race around the Fuji International Speedway. The drivers for this round were the increasingly ever-present Tim Penny this time joined by the returning Ryan Hamilton.
Tim put the car onto 6th position in the GT3 class in qualifying, and headed into the first stint as the Sapphire rated driver that must start in that class. Great pace in the early laps ensured a strong position when the first of the safety cars was triggered.
Our race was mostly concreted into place straight away during that caution period with the decision not to pit. All but one car in class chose to pit, and we were destined to be on the alternative strategy for the rest of the race.
During the early stints, including a second safety car in the second stint which we also stayed out for, that alternative strategy meant that we could be in first or last in class depending on which part of the stint we were in.
Many hours of green flag running allowed the gaps to increase throughout the class from there, with only a 40 second pit speeding penalty making much difference to where the car was sitting in relation to everyone else in class. Heading into the final quarter of the race the #256 was once again in the podium positions but realistically fighting for 3rd or 4th.
As the race moved towards the final hours, with no sign of a safety car, it was time to work out the best way to split the final stints. The decision was made to shorten Tim's final run in the car and then allow each Ryan's final double stints to have a fresh set of tyres – a final roll of the dice to get a P3 which was becoming more realistic. Unfortunately it wasn't to be, as a spin on the outlap put the car out of contention and into a mode of ticking off the laps to the finish.
In a cruel twist of fate, that still wasn't the end of the story. With 5 minutes to go we suffered an internet connection drop and lost more positions to finish the race on a low.
This season didn't go to plan but, of the 5 races the team were able to take part in, two podium results (and one that got away) is a positive to take into next time. As a team we're looking for more, and will be back again next year to see how much we can improve those results.
Here are a couple of the more general graphs produced by Prestanda that we use behind the scenes to assess a race, which you might find interesting:
The above shows every lap and its lap time, which clearly shows the caution periods in the first two stints.
If we zoom in to remove those caution laps, we get a clearer picture of the effect of track temperature on the pace of the car over time. It also starts to show a few laps that were slower than most of their surrounding laps, which were mostly due to traffic but also a couple of driver errors.
Boxplots are a way for us to look at the consistency of a stint – generally the smaller the box, the more consistent the stint. Then the placement of the box on the lap time axis gives an idea of general pace, and outlier laps are shown outside of the box. This zoomed out version again really shows off the caution laps, but also shows us that most stints had a "big" outlier too.
Zooming in to remove the majority of the outliers shows a clearer picture on the movement of pace throughout the race, and also visualises the change of fortune in the final stints – note that the recovery of pace as the temps drop off later in the race doesn't continue. This visualisation helps us to drill down into the areas to work on and improve for future races and the next season of IVRA endurance.
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