The last round of the Tiger Express Z30 Festival took place on the longest layout of PMD’s open configurations pack, Kyoto International GT Long(KY33). Even with LFS’ second fastest ever car – the FO8 – no one could lap this layout in less than 3 minutes and 12 seconds.
The race was dominated by poleman Rudy van Buren and 4th place starter Simon Cattell. The latter managed to pass both Matias Pikkarainen and Philip Ellis in the opening corners, and chased his Dutch ineX team-mate for the whole race, without ever managing to make a pass. Van Buren eventually won, 4 tenths in front of Cattell, with the two of them also sharing the fastest lap of the race(3:12:64). Philip Ellis completes the podium after a lonely race in 3rd, and makes an ineX Racing 1-2-3.
Matias Pikkarainen(spdo Racing) and Phil Diaz(ineX Racing) round up the top 5 after a rather uneventful race for both.
Things were a bit more difficult for the championship contenders. After a difficult qualifying session(8th), Joe Holmes span at lap 1 and dropped to 10th, putting his championship chances under danger. Fortunately for him, his team-mate Teemu Iivonen wasn’t in a good day, and blew his last chances in a spin from 4th at lap 4. Both ineX cars were nose to tail while Teemu recovered, but the Finish driver managed to pull away from Joe, taking 6th, while the young Englishman settled in 7th and secured the title.
The top 10 is completed by season long mid-field animators: Martin Kapal(Angel Power Racing), Yann Laprevotte(Tiger Express Motorsports) and Ditlev Errebo(DABAR Racing).
At the drivers’ championship, ineX succeeded to have 5 of their drivers in the top 5. Joe Holmes becomes champion of the Tiger Express Z30 Festival with 1 win and 3 podiums. The Englishman started the season on a high with a win in the STD round 1, and then managed to capitalise on that victory to control his team-mates’ return. Season long challenger Teemu Iivonen takes 2nd(4 podiums), in front of Simon Cattell(1 podium), who saved his season in the last round. Phil Diaz is 4th with 1 podium, while Rudy van Buren finished his rather “all-or-nothing” season(3 wins and 2 retirements in 5 races) in 5th place. “Best of the rest” is Matias Pikkarainen(spdo Racing, 1 win) in 6th, in front of Dennis Lind(Dennis .Inc, 1 win, 3 podiums), Yann Laprevotte(Tiger Express Motorsports), Ditlev Errebo(DABAR RAcing) and Martin Kapal(Angel Power Racing).
With no surprise ineX Racing comes on top of the teams’ championship, with almost 2 times more points than their closest rival. It wasn’t totally a Sunday drive for them though, with very tough opposition at times(Kliaudaitis, Lind, Pikkarainen, Kööts). ineX still managed to get an amazing record of 4 wins and 13 podiums in 6 races, a fabulous performance. Being them comes the group for 2nd place with spdo Racing(1 win, 2 podiums), Tiger Express Motorsports and Angel Power Racing. 1 car entry Dennis .inc(1 win, 3 podiums) completes the top 5.
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They said…
Rudy van Buren(ineX Racing. Quali: Pole, Race: 1st, 5th at the championship):
“Since the moment the calender came out this was the race i was looking foward the most. I tested some laps the evening before the race and had my setup pretty much sorted for the race. The quali went well, phillip put down a good time but i managed to get 0.1 of it and take the pole.
Start of the race was good with simon in p2 pretty fast, i could see pretty soon that he had a slightly better pace then i did so the only thing i could do was drive consistent and make sure he doesnt get in the draft. Though i made a mistake ones, and we swapped position but i managed to get p1 back and hold it to the end.”
Simon Cattell(ineX Racing. Quali: 4th, Race: 2nd, 3rd at the championship):
“Ever since the GTR round finished I was looking ahead to this race, FO8 is my favoured car on LFS plus the “KY33″ open configuration turned out to be a wonderful track configuration. I knew that racing alongside Rudy would make it tough to be the winner, but I pushed hard all race, and we pushed each other to the limits setting fastest laps all race. We both picked up similar damage during the race which made the cars a little bit tougher to handle but I enjoyed the fight with him and congratulate him on the win – he was just a little bit too fast on the day, but we had a great battle and both enjoyed it.
Also congratulations to Joe on the drivers championship and ineX dominating the constructors championship is also a great result. I hope there will be a new season and will look forward to that.”
Philip Ellis(ineX Racing. Quali: 2nd, Race: 3rd, 11th at the championship):
“Although I qualified in second I knew the guys behind had a better pace than me. After Simon passed me right after T1 I had a good fight with Teemu for P3. Unfortunately for him he spun out after losing grip. Now I had to push in order not to let Matias get any closer. After the pit stops he was right on my tail but also spun out after having slight contact on the start/finish line on the second last lap, giving me third. I enjoyed all 3 races I was in and I’m definately looking forward to the next season! 
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Joe Holmes(ineX Racing. Quali: 8th, Race: 7th, Champion): “This round was very hard, i usally struggle in the FO8 and this wasnt any different. I did a reasonable qualy lap and got a fairly average starting position. In lap 1 i hit a buggy curb which spun me around and set me far back in the field and also put my championship title hopes under pressure.
I kept pushing and got back to 8th place, but with Teemu running close to 3rd place the championship was looking very close. Somthing happened to Teemu in the draft and he dropped behind me, but hit pace was just too fast and he quickly got back past but made an early stop. I did my pitstop on lap 7 and exited the pits ahead of teemu. I made an error into one of the turns and got very bad damage and i dropped away from the pack i was chasing.
In the end i did enough (with some luck) to get the title and i had lots of fun every single round, there was a very high standard of drivers in this league which was very great to see!
Thanks to the admins for a great job, and the drivers for very clean, fair and close racing!”
Alexis Georg(French Street Racers. Quali: 16th, Race: 16th, 19th at the championship): “What a race! I’ve done this race especially for having more experience with FO8, but what i’ve seen, it’s that I still have many things to learn about how driving this car. I have make many mistakes, but anyway, I had a good race with some nice battles. Maybe my setup wasn’t good because I used a BL1 setup due to change game (my 0.6A1 is in a different folder than my 0.5Z, so I just had some old setups here…). Thanks Yann for this championship, it was a pleasure to race with these people, and congratz to Joe “Mc Nish” and ineX for their titles.”
Tom Parker(Tiger Express Motorsports. Quali: 11th, Race: 19th(DNF), 40th at the championship): “That race was a pile of wank.
Should’ve practiced the combo beforehand and the inexperience really showed when I was over 6s off the pace in qualifying and then even further off the pace in the race. After doing my planned pitstop and repairing damage it was only uphill struggle especially after planting my car in the wall on final corner on my outlap and releasing speed limiter by accident giving me stop-go so ragequit was the spectacular result.
Decent season, consistently high turnout and epic admining “
