The Pits Touring Car Championship...started as a project in 1997 to modify the NASCAR 2 Racing game by Papyrus to mimic SuperTouring auto racing. The rest is history...it was the first time someone had completely rebuilt a game to make it something else, and the popularity of the patch has provided years of racing fun for thousands. It is even the predecessor to other talented sim editors who have gone on to produce other patches for other racing sims...but this was the first, and upon this patch was built a road-racing league that has continued on since that time. To quote our original history page:
"The history of The Pits Touring Car Championship leads all the way back to the summer of 1996 and Nascar Racing 1. Gerhard Lingenberg deserves the first mention. His ICR2 to N1 convertor lead to the creation of the Internet Touring Car Championship by Sean Staples. Inspired by the North American Touring Car Championship the league had the bare minimum compared to the TPTCC features of today. There were the road courses, the paintjobs on the cars, and nothing more. ITCC completed three full seasons and by the end of 1997, with Nascar Racing 2 on the market things were about to change. Part of the ITCC's 1997 schedule featured a, "Next Generation", championship using the new sim. Only Watkins Glen and Sears Point were featured but it was clear there was a change on the horizon.
That summer, sim editor extrodinaire David Noonan announced the release of the ICR2 to N2 track convertor. When ITCC director Sean Staples contacted Jan Kohl of The Pits about obtaining the full version of the convertor he got some very exciting news with Jan's reply. The Pits gang had been working on a new project, a full blown patch of N2 that would recreate the sim to create the touring car experience, The Pits Touring Car Championship. Everything was getting a makeover, new cars, new cockpits, new sounds and just about every other needed aspect. With the ITCC 1997 season coming to an end, and the TPTCC patch nearing completion, Jan and Sean began planning the TPTCC offline league. The first schedule would feature ten rounds at the five tracks drivers could obtain with the free version of David Noonan's convertor."
...and now on to the history of the TPTCC. Click on the year (1997, 1998, ect) to go to a reproduction of the site at that point in time. Please note, not all links will work, and files are not available from that area. Some reformating has been done to make the pages fit into the history.
1997 Pat Dotson, Champion Team: EuroSport Manufacturer: BMW Team's Champion - Eurosport Racing Privateer's Champion - Tom Petersen Manufacturer's Champion - BMW | 1997 was the first year of the TPTCC...and had some interesting drivers. Sean Staples took over the reins of the TPTCC administration, and put together a superb program. There were only five 2-round races at four tracks, but that didn't mean it wasn't a hard fought season. With drivers like Pat Dotson, Skotty Flynn, Carl Rimmel, Stuart Brown and so on, the competition was tough. Even tougher was the fact that wet races were implemented and the second race at Watkins Glen was completely rainy. Pat Dotson persevered through the entire season, and whipped everyone soundly the last 2 rounds at Portland for a total of 5 wins. Great inaugural season, and it set the stage for some great racing over the next five years. That year also saw the inaugural Bullrun 1000, the 1,000 kilometer endurance race held in the fall for team drivers.
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1998 Jake Myers, Group A Champion Team: McLaren Manufacturer: BMW Team's Champion - Lip Service Racing Privateer's Champion - Greg Colgan Manufacturer's Champion - Honda  Tommy Brolsma, Group B Champion Team: Chapaz Racing Manufacturer: Peugeot Team's Champion - Chapaz Racing Privateer's Champion - Jonathan Palmer Manufacturer's Champion - BMW |
1998 marked some major changes for the TPTCC, the first change being that there were two groups, Group A and Group B competing. There were thirteen 2-round races, which made up for a big season, and big fields! Twenty drivers competed in group A, and 54 drivers competed in group B! The battle for the championship was hard fought, with Stuart Brown, Stephane Flach, and Jake Myers all competing for the lead. Stuart had an amazing nine wins, but his 18 starts to Staphane's and Jake's 26 starts was the killer. Jake took home four wins and the championship.
Tommy Brolsma worked hard for his championship as well, as Ron Peterman won many of the initial races but then dropped out later. David Blevins and Sandy Robinson took a few more, but Tommy went home with 6 wins and the championship for Group B. This year had also changed in that the inaugural season had been fairly short, and only on tracks that were available with the "free" converter from David Noonan...this season you had to have the full converter, which allowed you to run all the ICR2 tracks as well as the NASCAR 2 tracks, plus a few add-ons that Papy released. The 2 race format was composed of a 60% distance sprint, with a 100% distance final race, no pit stops. One more addition that made it's way into the 1998 season was the addition of a Group C class for the last few races of the year. The TPTCC league used TPTCCv2 to modify NASCAR Racing 2 for this season. |
1999 Dmitry Nekryukov, Group A Champion Team: Black Squirrel Manufacturer: Honda Team's Champion - The Pits Performance Team Privateer's Champion - Phil Whiteman Manufacturer's Champion - Alfa Romeo  Adrian Collier, Group B Champion Team: Attitude Motorsports Manufacturer: BMW Team's Champion - Team Speed Racing Privateer's Champion - Adrian Collier Manufacturer's Champion - Honda  Kevin Jurasinski, Group C Champion Team: Jet City Manufacturer: Dodge Team's Champion - Team Neon Privateer's Champion - Gary Creswell Manufacturer's Champion - Dodge |
1999 marked the full-time addition of a third class, the Group C class. As well, it used NASCAR 1999 as opposed to NASCAR 2, with TPTCC99 version 0.9. This changed the use of the cars in NASCAR to trucks, due to the fact that trucks were slightly slower, thus contributing more to the touring car feel.
The Pits Performance Team looked formidable this year, with 3 drivers, Jan Kohl, Goy Larsen, and Stuart Brown driving the Abbott Ale sponsored Alfa 156s. Goy and Stuart took off like a rocket, and by season's end had won over one-half of the races. Goy himself won a record 11 races.
Adrian Collier didn't have it very easy, as Paul Hamilton, John Hinkle and Alejandro Mira all had five wins on the season. But Adrian let consistency count, and by seasons end he had three wins, and taken the Group B title with a mere 34 points over Paul. Kevin Jurasinski, on the other hand, dominated in impressive form. His nearest rival, David Carter, was 315 points behind him by the season's end. His "Team Neon" Dodge whipped up on the competition pretty bad, setting the stage for him to be a serious contender for the 2001 Summer season. |
2000 Michael Heymanns, Champion Team: SimRacing Germany Manufacturer: Alfa Romeo Team's Champion - Sim Racing Germany Manufacturer's Champion - Alfa Romeo |
The 2000 season was the shortest TPTCC season on record, with Sean Staples finally throwing in the towel after administrating TPTCC for 3 years. The Official TPTCC website, www.tptcc.com, came down, and Jan was very busy, as he was moving house, getting another job, and going on vacation to the UK all at the same time. However, he made sure the TPTCC drivers had something to do for the summer...there were five races scheduled, but one was dropped off the schedule at the last minute due to track problems. The league used TPTCC99 v1.0 to modify NASCAR 1999.
Michael Heymanns brought along a strong team of mostly European drivers, all in red-liveried Alfa 156s. He won 2 races, his teammate Thomas Sturm won another, and that pretty much finished off the competition for the 2000 season. Michael got the championship with a very narrow 2 point lead over his teammate Thomas, the narrowest victory in TPTCC competition up until that point in time. |
2001 Jan Kohl, Champion, Winter Season Team: The Pits Performance Team Manufacturer: Ford Team's Champion - The Pits Performance Team Manufacturer's Champion - Ford Mustang Cobra  Terry Vreeland, Champion, Summer Season Team: SimRacing Germany Manufacturer: BMW Team's Champion - SimRacing Germany Manufacturer's Champion - BMW |
The 2001 season marked some big changes...the first being the racing sim. The TPTCC 2000 patch was used to modify NASCAR Racing 3 with a new body, and great online action. And online action was the key word, as this was the first year that TPTCC had ever been in direct competition online. The 2001 season was actually made up of two smaller seasons, the Winter season and the Summer season. While TPTCC had run Winter seasons before, they had never been counted in overall TPTCC competition for championships. So, in 2001 there were TWO championship rounds, and two championship winners.
The Winter season started off at Sears Point, and the online competition was fierce, with 44 drivers entered (although most races only had 12-15 drivers). The racing format was changed slightly to have a long race with pit stops, then the next track would have two short non-pitstop rounds, then it would repeat at the FOLLOWING track with a long race...and so on. Jan Kohl, of The Pits Performance Team started off the year never having won a single TPTCC round before, but by season's end had not only won five races, but set the all-time TPTCC record of winning four races in a row (Crystal Palace, Willow Springs - both rounds, and Bullrun). That run, plus finishing in the top five 11 out of 13 rounds put him up as the inaugural online TPTCC champion. The Summer season began where the Winter season left off, same long-short race format, and adding a few different racetracks. And again, the competition was fierce. Terry Vreeland, another long-time TPTCC driver who had never won in previous years, showed in 2001 that online racing was where it was at. Kevin Jurasinski, winner of the 1999 Group C championship, proved to be a serious contender, but Terry was not to be denied. In the Winter season Terry won his first TPTCC race, but went on a roll with the Summer season, winning seven races and ten pole positions...and taking home the Summer championship. With him and Jan each winning 9 races out of a total of 28 races for the 2001 season, the competition got tired of seeing Terry's grey/blue BMW and Jan's gold/purple Mustang. |
2002 Rusty Greer, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Team RTB Manufacturer: Opel Team's Champion - Team RTB Manufacturer's Champion - Opel  Clarence Fiander, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: Fiander Brothers Racing Manufacturer: Opel  Olivier Raumel, Champion, Summer Tour 2K2 Team: Manufacturer: Mercedes |
The 2002 TPTCC Season can be defined in two ways; change and growing pains. For the first time in TPTCC history, the racing formula was not based on a modified Papyrus sim. Thomas Heineman's DTM Heat mod of Hasbro/MGI's NASCAR Heat sim was utilized, featuring multiple car bodies (Alfa Romeo, Mercedes Benz, Opel), more realistic physics and damage models, and a completely new set of parameters for drivers developed on and used to Papy sims. Still, it was Papyrus experience that ruled the day as NASCAR Heat veteran Rusty Greer dominated the Group A season with nine race wins out of a possible sixteen races, and 8 poles, besting his brother and teammate Van Greer's five wins and 6 poles. Group B was a more wide open, closer affair, with Clarence Fiander's Opel edging John Palmer for class honors based on his four wins and 2 poles. A brief Group C championship was contested before being folded into Group A and B midway through the season. Summer 2002 brought several changes to The Pits Touring Car Championship. For the first time, the main championship was be contested over the Winter months while a more casual Summer Tour 2K2 was run to get new drivers accustomed to racing online while testing new tracks and patches to the DTM mod. With six wins on the season, Olivier Raumel (left) bested TPTCC veterans James Altemus and Clarence Fiander for the Summer Tour 2K2 title. Click on the 2002 at left to see The Pits TPTCC site, later that year The Pits regained the TPTCC.com domain name, and uploaded the new site there. When you are on the 2002 The Pits TPTCC site, click on "TPTCC Newswire" to see the later TPTCC.com site, or click here. |
2003 Tim McArthur, Summer Season Team: Mach 1 Motorsports Manufacturer: Ford Team's Champion - Fiander Brothers Racing Manufacturer's Champion - Ford |
The 2003 season again saw some major changes to the TPTCC league. It was decided to move back to the Papyrus racing platform due to the age of the NASCAR Heat racing sim, and there was a 12 race summer season using NASCAR-spec stock cars on road courses. At the same time a limited 6-race NASCAR Heat summer series was run for a final send-off of the NASCAR Heat mod. Kevin Jurasinski won the final NASCAR Heat series. The Papyrus-based TPTCC championship began fairly even, but Tim McArthur finally ran away from the rest of the field, pulling in 4 race wins and 5 poles. The final race at Nurburgring Tim only needed to show up to clinch the championship. The final few races were ran using the new road-racing physics on the cup cars, which gave an idea of what the new mod would race like. Then, The Pits got involved in TPTCC again with a new mod for the N2003 racing sim. Like the original series, tin-top road racing was replicated with 4 new cars for the Papyrus game, Mustang, Ford GT, Corvette & Viper. |
2004 Rusty Greer, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Team RTB Manufacturer: Chevrolet Team's Champion - Team RTB Manufacturer's Champion - Ford  David Henrie, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: TeamSMO Manufacturer: Opel |
The 2003-2004 Winter season started off with a bang. The largest TPTCC online fields ever showed up to try out the new mod for the Papyrus racing sim. 39 cars showed up for the Long Beach race, which is a huge amount for a tiny street course. However, throughout the long season, Rusty Greer persevered just like he had done for the TPTCC 2002 Championship. Even though he missed the first 2 events and finished poorly at the 3rd event, he came through with a commanding lead, finally winning 10 out of the 15 races and taking 11 poles. Tim McArthur tried to stay with Rusty, but for nought. The 2004 Winter season also brought back Group B due to the huge fields. Starting a little later in the season, the Group B cars ran the same tracks on alternate weeks. Ignacio Ciordia looked to be the favorite, winning 5 races and taking 4 pole positions. However, sometimes the consistency is the key, and Dave Henrie took the Group B championship by TWO POINTS! The difference was the fact that Ignacio started later in the season, Dave had 12 race finishes and 3 more top 10s than Ignacio. The final race for both groups was decided at an endurance event with driver swaps at Watkins Glen for double points. This interesting twist made the championship almost anyone's for the taking, but Rusty had enough points to show up and finish with a top 20. The summer season started where the winter season left off...Rusty was almost unbeatable! Out of the short 13 race summer schedule, Rusty took home 7 wins in his Team RTB Corvette, pretty much locking out the competition. Both Tim McArthur and Scott Whitestine gave chase, but split 3 wins between them. The summer was a single group competition, both A & B racing together for all the points. Group B drivers Paul Hamilton did a very respectable job, finishing 4th in the points with his consistently good finishes. |
2005 Pete Bunce, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Legs-r-Us Team Audi UK Manufacturer: Audi Team's Champion - Team ATX Manufacturer's Champion - Ford  Bob Eardley, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: Twisted Metal Max Manufacturer: Ford Team's Champion - American Racing Group Manufacturer's Champion - Ford |
The 2004-2005 TPTCC season brought on a whole new bunch of drivers to battle for the championship on new battlefields...tracks that had never been run before in TPTCC. Pete Bunce showed his intentions to take the Group A championship early by winning the first race of the season at Bahrain. He then followed it up with quite a few podium finishes. His final tally for the year was 8 wins for an average finish of 3rd (out of 19 races), and by the end of the season had built a commanding lead that left Ignacio Ciordia struggling to keep up. The Group B championship was not so easy for eventual winner Bob Eardley. It was a close battle all season between him and Tom Nasella, and it finally came down to the last race. Bob kept pace with Tom at Nurburgring, but Tom finished ahead of Bob. However, it wasn't enough...Tom got 8 points on Bob, closing to to a 12 point gap for the final standings. A very good battle down to the last lap! The summer TPTCC championship added a new twist...both Groups completed separately, but with Redline Racing's GTP mod, the high-powered sportscars of Sauber-Mercedes, Toyota, Jaguar and Mazda. Bevan Roberts did a stellar job, piloting his #06 Sauber-Mercedes to 5 wins in Group A, taking the title from PeterV by 58 points. Group B driver Greg Haley only had one victory in his #978 Toyota, but he managed to sneak the title from Paul Hamilton by FOUR points after the 8 race summer season.
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2006 Blair Disley, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Independant Manufacturer: Howston (Holden) Team's Champion - Miskatonic Motorsports Manufacturer's Champion - Howston (Holden)  Jim Pejsa, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: TL Racing Manufacturer: Howston (Ford) Team's Champion - American Racing Group Manufacturer's Champion - Howston (Ford) |
The 2005-2006 TPTCC season really changed TPTCC drastically, and for quite a few years to come. Even though TPTCC had made use of another racing sim besides Papyrus NASCAR Racing, it hadn't lasted that long. Now TPTCC made a complete swapover to ISI's rFactor. The initial season was run using the ISI standard Howstons, but with modified physics that somewhat represented the Aussie V8 series with Holden and Ford. This brought in some new drivers as well...first time competitor Blair Disley had some stiff competition, but managed to do just fine on his way to the Group A championship. He missed one race, but racked up an impressive total of 9 wins, including a record-tying 4 wins in a row! This just kept him ahead of Tom Cinnamon, who did an impressive job of keeping Blair honest with 1 win and 13 top fives. Group B championship winner Jim Pejsa just beat last year's winner Bob Eardley by 31 points. Bob actually had 7 wins to Jim's 6, but Jim managed to string together more top 5s and top 10s than Bob had to take the championship. Jim also had a 6 poles to Bob's 5, and Bob got a couple of DNFs to boot, while Jim managed to finish every race. Summer for the TPTCC league change the racing scene again...this time with the combination of two mods, to make the highly successful BMW vs Porsche mod, a TPTCC-specific combination that yielded some great racing, with some fairly even performances and wins by both cars. Aussie Blair Disley continued his domination of Group A by taking the championship with a commanding points lead and 6 victories over runner-up Raymond Rieux's 2 victories. Paul Hamilton took his first TPTCC championship after competing since the inaugural 1997 season in Group B with a decisive point lead over 2000 summer champ Terry Vreeland. Jim Pejsa had the Group B race wins sown up with three.
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2007 Blair Disley, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Disley Freiza Manufacturer: Holden  Lucky Chopp, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: The Pits Performance Team Manufacturer: Holden |
The 2006-2007 season changed things once again. This time the change was to a new rFactor mod, the Aussie V8 mod by ORSM. The Aussie V8 series competes two V8 racecars with very narrow performance differences, Holden (GM) vs Ford. And just like the real Aussie V8 series, an Aussie did the best! Getting to drive in his own country's national motorsport must have been the perfect challenge for Group A champion Blair Disley and his Holden. This time he put over 100 points and 10 wins on teammates Bas Zwartenbol and Rogier de Klein, with 3 wins and 1 win respectively. The other benefit for Blair was that he started from pole position 12 times out of 15 races. Group B championship winner Lucky Chopp didn't have quite a commanding lead on second place, only beating runner up Argentinian Ignacio Ciordia by 40 points. Ignacio actually had more wins than Lucky (5-3) as well as poles (4-3), but he only made 12 races to Lucky's 14. Third place John Berry was made every race, but didn't quite catch the other two with poles and wins. The summer 2007 season started off with another mod change. ImageSpace had just released their Panoz mod, so the group chose the Panoz Esperante GT2 for their car of choice for the summer. Bevan put in a dominating performance in Group A, winning 11 out of 13 races, and winning 5 in a row at the outset of the season. Paul had a lot harder time in Group B, fighting hard with Terry Vreeland for the lead. However, Paul capped it off in the final races, taking charge and belting out wins in the final 4 rounds to grab the championship.
There was even a short-lived attempt to run a Saturday series. Interest quickly petered out, but not before Jim Pejsa won the Saturday race championship. |
2008 Bas Zwartenbol, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Scuderia Bollesnegro Manufacturer: BMW  Ignacio Ciordia, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: Argentinean MotorSport Manufacturer: BMW |
The 2007-2008 Winter season started out with another mod change...the BMW 320 mod for rFactor. These cars, while not as powerful as some of the previous cars, had excellent handling ability and consistent performance, making for great competition. Forty-four drivers signed up to take part in the long winter racing season of 18 races. Bas Zwartenbol started off the season right with a win at Northamptonshire. However, it wasn't to go that easy as Peter Valkovic kept up the pressure and Jim Pejsa was right there. Jim only won a single race, but consistent top 5s kept him in the hunt. However, Bas pulled off the season championship with a season-ending 6 victories, tied with Peter, but Bas had 17 top 5s out of the 18 races which gave him a decent lead for the finish. Ignacio Ciordia had been a long-time racer in TPTCC since the N2003 days, but had never gotten a championship. He had always been up front though, and this year put it to good effect. His season win total ended up being over half of the races with 10 wins, but Ted Mannes held up the pressure. At the end, Ignacio won the championship by only 12 points over Ted, one of the closest margins in three years. Finally, for the summer 2008 season, the mod came that the drivers had been waiting for...the North American GT mod by The Pits/RSR. This mod pitted GT cars against each other in even competition, with the likes of Corvette C6s, Mustang Cobras, Dodge Vipers and even Cadillacs, Astons, Porsches and Volvos all racing for wins. Each car had definite advantages, with some having better performance on twisty tracks and others with better straight line speed. John Graf took to the track really liking the Corvette C6. There was pretty stiff competition from Bas Zwartenbol and Jim Pejsa over the 14 race season, and Eugenio Perez also had some good runs with three race wins. However, John held out, taking the championship with five race wins. In Group B, Andrew Godlewski had a whale of a battle in his Corvette against David Peterson in his Mustang. The battle raged all season long, with David totalling out 4 race wins, 12 top fives, a pole and 4 Hard Charger awards. However, Andrew managed to sneak out the championship from under David in the last 2 races with one of his two race wins at the final event.
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2009 John Graf, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Graf Motorsports Manufacturer: Chevrolet Corvette C6  Jan Kohl, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: The Pits Performance Team Manufacturer: Ford Mustang Cobra |
Finally, for the start of the 2008-2009 season, there wasn't a swap of race cars...for the first time in about four years. The NAGT mod had been planned to last awhile, so drivers were taking aim at getting good at driving these cars. John Graf didn't intend to leave off where he won the 2008 summer season...in fact, he put on the most dominating performance that TPTCC has ever seen. Out of 15 races, John put his Corvette into the winner's circle in 14 of them...an amazing performance that almosted ended up being a shut-out. Despite John getting rewards weight dumped on him unceremoniously, he continued to put the 'Vette up front, on the pole and steamrollered the competition. Jan Kohl finally put forth a full schedule of race runs, the first time for running the whole season since the Papyrus NASCAR Racing days. But the competition was hot. Paul Hamilton in a Volvo and Tom Nasella in another Mustang proceeded to share a lot of the race wins, with Steve Madurski and Rod Viper waiting in the wings to pounce. However, Jan finally put together a win and a few second places in the last few races to complete a championship year. The summer season used some interesting twists, to try and see if they made differences in the points chase. One of the differences was that incremental points were to be had for each meeting. However, it didn't really seem to make a difference... Both Rogier de Klein (Group A) and Steve Madurski (Group B) were set on making their championship bids early, both of them winning the initial outing at Fundidora in Monterrey. Eugenio Perez and Rick Kendal kept the pressure on Rogier, but all for naught as Rogier cleaned up with 2 wins and all finishes in the top five. Steve put on an even more dominating performance, winning five of the nine races and keeping in the top five for all finishes as well. That plus 6 pole positions pretty much settled him for the championship.
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2010 Rogier De Klein, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Scuderia Bollesnegro Manufacturer: Cadillac CTS-V  Rod Viper, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: Doctor Who Racing Manufacturer: Cadillac CTS-V |
Rogier decided to take his 2009 summer season championship and put it to good use. He worked hard, and while he only won half of John Graf's eight victories, he kept in the top 5 thirteen times to John's ten. That made the difference, and Rogier won with a very tight margin of victory...FOUR points! In Group B, Rod Viper put on a great show, but never made it to the top step of the podium...he didn't win a race. The two other racers with the most points, Ted Mannes and Rob Thaeler, had 5 race wins between them. Nor did Rod win a pole, and Ted & Rob got 5 between them again. However, that didn't stop Rod, who managed a string of 12 top fives against his competitor's eight...giving Rod the championship without a single win! For the summer season, rewards weight was removed and another car was added to the mix...the Chevrolet Camaro. As well, the start of the season began with a torrid race...two 2 lap sprints at the notorious Nurburgring. Drivers were given a month to practice for the first race, and the monumental summer season began. In Group A, Bevan Roberts showed that the Aston was no slouch by taking wins at Nurburg AND the tiny Soramame Speed Park. However, by mid-season he had bowed out and John Graf came on strong in his Corvette. By season's end John had racked up 7 wins and taken another championship. Group B ended up being another close fight. Rod Viper in his Caddy and Rob Thaeler in his Mustang both raced hard most of the season and were very close in points...however, The Pits Performance Team Astons of Chris Squier and Jan Kohl both picked up the pace with a late season charge and both Rod & Rob had problems. However, Rob was not to be denied his first TPTCC championship, winning it at the last minute with a three point margin over Rod.
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2011 John Graf, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Graf Motorsports Manufacturer: Cadillac CTS-V  Jeff Sorensen, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: TL Racing Manufacturer: Cadillac CTS-V |
Group A Winter started out a Jops with a massive 30 car field. John Graf took the win with his Corvette and used that momentum to carry the season. With 11 wins out of 14 races, the point difference was fairly substancial with Andrew Godlewski coming in a distant 2nd. In Group B, the competition was very hot, with a slug-fest between the two front runners for the lead. Chris Squier and Jeff Sorensen both battled down the the wire, and ended the year with only a 2 point difference after 15 races. Jeff was the winter champion, and certainly earned the title. For the 2011 Summer Season, a hot battle was shaping up in Group A between Alexandru Damian and John Graf. In the ensuing 13 races, Alexandru won 6, John won 5. The number of races ran, top 5s and poles pretty much ran neck and neck. However, John barely snipped Alexandru at the end of the season by just six points!. Group B ended up being another close fight. Rod Viper in his Caddy and again Chris Squier in the Aston took the fight head to head. Chris won five races and got four poles while Rod only got 1-0, but Chris missed a single race thus handing the championship to Rod by 13 points.
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2012 John Graf, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Graf Motorsports Manufacturer: Chevrolet Corvette C6  Chris Squier, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: The Pits Performance Team Manufacturer: Aston Martin DBRS9 |
The 2011-2012 Winter Championship started with several more new cars, a Mazda RX8 and a Dodge Challenger. John Graf, Eugenio Perez and Alexandru Damian all ran at least 12 of the 13 races, and all were in the top five more often than not. However, with eleven wins and six poles, John won the championship by an impressive 70 points over runner-up Eugenio. After being a runner up for both seasons in 2011, Chris hit the gate running and was not to be denied. With seven wins and top 5s in every race, he managed to finally take his first TPTCC championship over rival Rod Viper. For Summer 2012 season in Group A, it was a fight between the Graf clan. Norm tried to take it to John for the Championship, but even though they had the same amount of top fives, John converted most of them into wins while Norm didn't get a single win. Summer season in Group B was fairly close, with previous champion Rod Viper trying to deny Tom Nasella his first. However, Tom prevaled in his Ford Mustang with eight wins against Rod's four, and finally won his first championship after some years of competition!
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2013 John Graf, Group A Champion, Winter Season Team: Graf Motorsports Manufacturer: Nissan GT-R GT1  Andrew Godlewski, Group B Champion, Winter Season Team: Black Sheep Motorsports Manufacturer: Nissan 370Z GT4 |
The 2013 year began with a large change, the move to a new racing sim, rFactor 2. It was decided to have the teams compete in two separate classes with two separate cars, but both Nissans. The Nissan GT-R GT1 would be used for Group A, and the Nissan 370Z GT4 would be used for Group B. The Group B cars tended to be 6-8 seconds per lap slower than the GT-Rs. For Group A, Norm put up a dominating performance with eight wins out of thirteen races, and twelve top fives. John Graf tried hard to beat him but came up a little short with only three wins. Chris Squire showed up with a distant third. Group B was not as hotly contested, with none of the competitors making all the races. Even so, there was a very close spread between now two-time champion Andrew and John Berry. John made one more race than Andrew, but came up only six points shy of being on the top of the standings. The final season of TPTCC had one more change...everyone in a single class, all running the Corvette ALMS GT2, still in rF2. John Graf put the final name in the record books with a closeout season...it was very close between him and Norm. Both had five wins, both ran all twelve races. The final point spread with twelve points...and John took it with 12 top fives over Norm's ten.
It is with much fondness and yet sadness we look back on sixteen years of road-racing with The Pits Touring Car Championship, of close & memorable battles between many competitors across the world. |
Special thanks:
Jim Pejsa
John Graf
James Altemus
Kevin Jurasinski
John Palmer
Jerry Liudahl
Gregory Alferov
Adrian Collier
Michael Heymanns
James Bowders
Pete Bunce
Jim Pejsa
Tony "Dizzy" Smith
"Lucky" Chopp
The Pits crew, including:
Jim Pejsa
Sean Staples
David Noonan
Jed Jedrzejewski
Gilles Benoit
David Turman
Stan Allen
Scott Stockton
Michael Schmidt
Kevin White
Jeff Sorensen
Papyrus
ISI
But the real rocket was the "Russian Rocket" Dmitry Nekryukov, driving the Black Squirrel Honda Accord. Dmitry hails from Moscow, and his enthusiasm for the tin-top racing was felt by all, as he finished off with four wins and the championship.
