Two in a Row!
March 7, 2010Greger Huttu took another fantastic win in the iRacing World Drivers Championship by sealing a dominant win at VIR in the Team Redline Fanatec Dallara. This achievement was coupled by the superb finish of Bastien Bartsch and Dom Duhan who finished 3rd and 4th respectively, wrapping up a great result for Team Redline.
Qualifying once again was a key component, it looked like Team Redline would seal a 1-2-3, with Greger on pole, Bastien 2nd and Dom 3rd, however, on the last lap Dom was pipped by Shawn Purdy andd Richard Towler by a couple of hundreths of a second.
The race saw Greger build a dominant early lead with Richard and Bastien battling for 2nd place, meanwhile Dom was hot on the heels of Shawn and managed to make a pass in the final hairpin. Unfortunately not without consequence as Shawn clipped his rear damaging the suspension, nevertheless Dom could continue with Shawn heavily damaged from the incident.
Bastien was passed into the final hairpin also and remain in 3rd place until the end of the race. Dom spent the next 30 laps or so behind Ilkka Haapala before overtaking the Finn with a later pit stop. Greger built his lead to a whopping 26 seconds and kept an even pace taking the win in incredible style.
Greger retains his lead at the top of the table with Bastien in 3rd position overall, Dom moves up to joint 4th overall.
Next time Team Redline travel to Daytona RC, hopefully this round will be changed however!
Greger had this to say...
"I did a pretty good qualifying lap although I found it hard at first to get a clean lap in. Getting the pole is usually a nice advantage with the rolling starts and I got away a little in this race as well. I saw Bastien and Rich battling it out behind me which allowed me to build a gap on the opening laps.
After that I had enough pace to keep increasing the gap lap by lap. It was a pretty straightforward race for me in that way, I didn't have any close calls or anything. It wasn't easy though as VIR is a tough track and there are a couple of places where if you put a wheel off the next thing you know you're in the wall.
My pit stops worked out fine and there wasn't as much traffic as there was at Barber and everyone did a good job in giving room to pass which always makes things a lot easier.
Anyway, I'm really happy to get my second win and I'm a bit surprised about my pace in these first two races. It was a great team effort for us as well with Bastien and Dom finishing in 3rd and 4th. Too bad Ben and Luke missed the race though. Finally cheers to Fanatec for supporting us! "
and Dom's comments were...
"Firstly, awesome job by Greger and Bastien:)An overall good race for me considering my consistency in practice. I managed to put in a good qual lap but was blocked on what could have been my pb and good enough for 2nd. I was pipped in the dieing seconds of qual by Rich and Shawn with pushed me down to 5th position. Still, I was pleased with that as it would give me a shot into t1:)
The race began without too many incidents, after a couple of laps i got a good run on Shawn and thought I did enough to pass but obviously not, we clipped and i saw Shawn go off the track, apologies for that. I sustained a msall amount of susp damage which like Barber made the car looser to drive and a bit tricky. This came to a head at T1 the next lap when i found it very hard to brake in my normal place and I went off a couple of laps later allowing Finn and Ryan to pass. I passed Ryan (thanks for helping:P) and then set about Ilkka. After he pitted earlier I thought I could get a fast lap in and leap him in the pits, unfortunately I got stuck behind Jan Z at a crucial moment! and that cost me the place.
After battling with Ilkka for another 20 laps or so he pitted and allowed me to get a few flying laps in on low fuel. I managed to pass him in the pits and seal 4th place:)
I had a few other scary moments, my main problem was braking, thanks to those who let me through and to JP for making me lay a cable.
Shout out to Fanatec for supporting us:)
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