Round 8 - Great Britain (Silverstone)
ACE SERIES Qualifying Starting Grid Race Report Finishing Order Fastest Laps Driver Comments Download Mixed Logfile Action Replays Semi-Pro Results
	1995/96 Pole Position:  1:14.679 (Donald MacLeod) 1995/96 Race Time:  1h21m09.146 (Oliver Roberts) Race Distance:  59 laps

Qualifying

Race

Axel Bruns was the one to open the first round of pitstops in lap 14. Diener, Ant Hill Mob's Stephen Orr and Ignacio Garcia Cuadrado followed this example after the next lap and by lap 20 nearly everybody who started the race on D tyres, including Roberts and Schatzer, had made a stop. Hans Gunnar Hansen, who started on Cs, got the lead after Oliver's and Reinhold's stop, but only until his own visit in the pits. In lap 27 Stephen Orr retired and a bit later Schatzer's race was also over as he had a heavy accident in lap 35 when he tried to overtake some of the CCs but ended in one of the walls. Hansen was now in 2nd but the lead of about 20 seconds that Oliver had at this time stayed stable until the end of the race.

But position 3 was still undecided. Nuno Maltez was pushing Michal Janak but Michal was able to stay ahead of Nuno. The question whether Nuno would have been able to overtake the driver in front of him will never be answered, as Nuno joined the group of retirers in lap 50 together with Alan Strang. Both wrote off their cars when they wanted to lap CCs. Nuno's bad luck meant that Ignacio Garcia Cuadrado was now in 4th but Derek Waters, the other Maverick driver, as well as Steffen Diener and Markus Kruggel were right behind him. But Waters went soon into tyre-trouble and lost valuable seconds every lap, so that Ignacio only had to deal with two pursuers - unfortunately his race ended in lap 57 (!) after he tried to lap some CCs. Now it was Steffen who was in 4th but a slow penultimate lap from him let Markus Kruggel pass and he finished the race on this position - his best race result so far. (I somehow had to stress that ;-)

A very interesting detail of the race was how the different tyre strategies influenced the race outcome: the first four drivers opted for a two-stop strategy that used Cs somewhere in the race while the drivers on 5th, 6th and 7th were on Ds the whole race. Obviously, Derek's decision to make only one stop was wrong - he had grip values of about 84 before the stop and at the end of the race. However, Axel's and Steffen's tyres were doing well, but therefore they had to make three stops instead of the two that the front four made. So, the better grip that a DDDD strategy gives does not seem to justify an additional stop at Silverstone.

Fastest Race Laps

Some of the driver statements

Andrew Clark (Ant Hill Mob Racing): "Race was fairly straight forward to start. Pitted lap 29 for C`s. With only 11 laps to go I was in danger of being lapped by Damon Hill. All of a sudden my car didn`t stear left and ..... BANG !!! :("

Ignacio Garcia Cuadrado (IGC Racing): "I'm such a stupid !!!! I was leading the race ... and I crashed in lap 57!!!!"

Martin Devine (Enigma Racing): "About the best thing I can say about this race is that I didn't need a wing-stop! Nice simple end - concentrating so hard on the cars in front that I forget to brake in time, lose control, and the car don't want to go any more... This was really irritating as I found that I liked the circuit for driving. Tried a three-stop DCD tyre strategy. Now for the wrecker's yard that is Hockenheim (knowing my luck, I'll probably finish!)"

Steffen Diener (Roadrunner): "... I had no problems with opponents this time. In fact I felt like a hot knife cutting through butter. But to often I was cutting my own fingers. I spun three times and found myself in the gravel about seven times. I probably lost one minute due to my own mistakes. Fortunately there was enough room to do this without even damaging the car. My pitstops lasted very long (10, 8 and 13 seconds) although nothing was broken. Maybe the mechanics had to clean the air intakes from all that gravel I picked up ;-)"

Markus Kruggel (Wild 13): "I was a bit disappointed about my race time although I achieved my main goal: improving my last season's time. I worried about the pit stops as the pit entry is known to be buggy at Silverstone. Fortunately, my technique to switch into power-turn just after the 2nd right allowed me to enter the pits without losing to much time or offering a target for the killer CCs. However, while they where no obstacle for me at the pit entry, the CCs managed to annoy me on every other part of the track. Hmm, maybe I was more annoyed about my stupid behavior when it came to overtaking these guys."

Oliver Roberts (Digitech): "I can't believe I was only 3 seconds quicker than I was last season! The race itself was much the same as last season too - no major mistakes, not much time lost to backmarkers and some exciting passing manueovres. I even ran the same tyre strategy. I was sure I could go faster, which is why I made a few changes to my car setup from last season. The conclusion is that this change actually made me relatively slower than last season :-( I should have left it alone! I can't complain though - I could have done a lot worse, obviously ;-)"

Derek Waters (Maverick): "I really dislike Silverstone as a circuit, so I was rather relieved just to finish the race without so much as a scratch. It did get a bit hairy in the last ten laps, as there were numerous yellow flags, and six cars retired in just the last five laps! I also managed a huge spin at Club corner, with about twenty laps to go. This was caused by a neighbours car alarm, which kept on ringing continously for about twenty minutes - quite distracting! Anyway, I look forward to Hockenheim, which is a circuit more to my liking."