Forza 2 really got it's teeth into some of our forum regulars, none more so than TwistedScrote who joined an online Forza Championship called the Bismark 330BHP Championship after the founding member who ran a little get together last year. Eight players met up every week and ran endurance races across eleven different tracks and just had a bit of fun.

So they decided to do it all over again starting in mid january, and our man Twisted volunteered to hold up the Rodent 'end'. Join us over the next few months to chart his progress as he wakes up at stupid O'Clock...

In the early hours of this morning I started Round 1 (75laps of Motegi East) An earlier practice run of 10 laps saw me a whopping 2.5seconds off the lap pace and wasn't doing much for my confidence going into this championship, I'd spent a few hours setting up what I thought was a winning car only to see that it was in fact, a dray horse amongst thoroughbreds. I changed cars and knocked up a setup and had a bit of a nap before the race started at 3.00am. And so I woke bleary eyed at 2.15 to get ready for the lobby opening at 2.45. Only 4 of the 8 drivers showed up so I was a little chuffed that no matter what, I would be banking a few points regardless.

I found myself in 3rd on the grid and was relieved because as I don't drive with TCM and was driving a rear wheel drive car (Mazda RE-Amemyia RX-7) there wouldn't be a problem with just spinning it off the start line and getting nailed in the arse by another car. The race started and the 4th placed man launched in his Audi Quattro and roared into 1st place as we ran downhill to the first corner, somehow I found myself following him in second place as the front row made a worse start than me. It was 20 seconds later when I thought I was going to win as cars 3 and 4 tangled and damaged each other coming into the second bend (one of the victims was a chap who was 2.5 seconds faster tan me in the practice earlier) There is no restart in this championship so everyone should have been tip-toeing around at the start, just a smidge of bad luck for them but a wonderful result for me as the chap driving the Audi was very slow (approx 5 seconds a lap slower than me) I overtook him a few corners later and started to build a vast lead as the two damaged cars regained the track and sorted themselves out, happily the chaps were friends so there wasn't any bitter recriminations.

By lap 15 the two damaged cars had overtaken the Audi and were in the region of 1500 yards behind me and I was thinking there was a real chance of lapping the entire field before the end of the race, I'd stuck on the hardest of the race tyres and I knew that I would get a good performance out of them for 20 or so laps, I'd pencilled in a lap stop at 25 and 50 laps and was clocking in regular low 1.22 laptimes and the conversations between the others had revealed that it was the fastest so far... no real shocker as half the field was damaged and the remaining 'fit' competitor was doing 1.27ish.

Then I had another of my 'Watch and Learn KC!' moments.

I came up to lap the Audi and thought I would whip past him coming out of a corner rather than have a word on the straight and safely pass... the result was slamming into the back of his car and damaging my own car quite badly (luckily it hardly hurt him) I ended up with a bright yellow front damage, both sides and a brake disc that pulled my car right when braking for a corner. I was mortified and apologised profusely and the other chap was wonderful about my moment of stupidity... however, this meant that one of the cars behind me was very slowly gaining on me. I couldn't pit until lap 25 as the fuel consumption meant I would of stopped three times overall. So I tried my best and hung on before pulling into the pits and getting patched up. I exited in time to see that the faster of the damaged cars (1973 Porsche Carrera) flying past the pitlane into first place. I settled down to my lap and with the fresh tyres and the brake disc repaired I slowly started closing into him as he pushed on with totally shot tyres, 2 laps later when he did pit, I was all over the back of him and disappeared into the distance again. Had he pitted when I did, well I reckon he would of had the race in the bag! I lapped the Audi again and then the 3rd place car (Mazda INGS) and had the Porsche sitting at around 1200 yards behind me until we hit the next pitstop at lap 50.

This time he did pit quickly, coming in the next lap and then he really started to throw his car around... every lap showed him closing in a fraction, and he beat my fastest lap, doing this in his damaged car vs the fastest I had set with my car in pristine condition. (!)

Two laps from the end he had closed to around 200 yards and I was starting to think that it wasn't going to be a happy ending for me and I was hurling the car as quick as I could... and still he was closing in. Then he pushed too hard and lobbed it into the kitty litter, losing around 4-5 seconds and leaving me to coast round and take the 10pts for 1st place.

Hurrah!

Fantastic result and I'm happy to take the flukey win as this was a track I fully expected to be hammered at. Next saturday it's 50 laps at Sunset Infield Reverse so I'm hoping I might be ok for that... However the other chaps seem very, very quick so it's going to be a battle. But for today, I'm sitting at the top of Division 3 of this championship! Team 10 have got involved with the Bismark 330BHP championship and have mentioned it on the website and also coughed up 3 'Unicorn' cars for the winners of each division.

Fingers crossed then!

February 2008

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