Hello everyone and welcome to the final edition of the ATR news update.

Even though the ISCC and GT24 championships have now been concluded, there was still one major event left on the calender for all involved in TORA. It was time for most of the teams to travel to Germany for the 2011 edition of the TORA N24 to tackle the world famous 13 mile Nurburgring Nordschleiffe circuit.
After a hugely sucessful second half of the year for the squad, team boss Daniel (ATR DAN) was determined to carry the form on and take the overall victory at the notoriously demanding event. ATR turned up with a strong two car team with DAN in the leading Ford GT MK7 and Zach Casto (BuckeyeBullet20) in the second machine. Previous sponsors Cadbury were all too happy not to miss the opportunity of promoting two of their products for the race. Daniel's vehicle displayed "Cadbury Dairy Milk" whilst Zach's car had "Cadbury Caramel" so it was instantly recognisable to everyone as to identifying which driver was in either of the purple Ford's.










Daniel was scheduled to participate in Tuesdays qualifying session but was later prosponed due to the difficult weather conditions which appeared rather suddenly. So instead, he took part in Thursdays session whilst Zach would enter on Saturday.
Qualifying turned out to be really close at the top but Daniel managed to qualify on pole position by nearly 3.3 seconds from the former EZT driver, Shane (TrooperR6). Zach qualified fifth of the GT2 entrants but neverless, it was a very solid first outing for the young american driver. The explaination he expressed later on was that "The engine should have been topped up with oil after the earlier leak. But I think the mechanics decided to have a laugh and replaced the oil with caramel for the qualifying session."
The main event started a little later than planned due to a couple of competitors having issues on the starting grid. Once the issues were ressolved, the race finally got underway and for the first few laps, DAN led the race but Shane was trying his hardest (in the outdated Ferrari F430 GT) to try and stay on the tail of the ATR Driver, but to no avail. As the race wore on, Trooper was finding it extremely difficult to keep up which resorted into the american spinning and causing damage to his vehicle on a few occassions. Once the threat to the lead was erroded, DAN just kept pounding round the 13 mile track without either spinning or colliding with the barriers or another competitor.
ATR DAN triumphed by taking victory in the 2011 TORA N24 by a massive margin; over six minutes from his former team mate Mark (Rollin InAn STi) in his Ferrari 458 GT. There was a sense of huge relief when he crossed the line after nearly three hours of hard, gruelling and painful driving.
Zach produced a solid drive in the other Cadbury Ford GT to finish a credible fifth place overall and fourth of the GT2 category cars. The atmosphere in the ATR pits was electric once they achieved the greatest prize of any TORA event. Zach in particular helped himself to the champagne as DAN drunk lots of Cadbury hot chocolate.
After the huge sucess of the last six months for ATR, can they keep that momentum going into 2012? You shall have to wait and see!

The second piece of news is that ATR have extended their contract to use Aston Martin Vehicles. After the sucesses of the ISCC and GT24 series, the team announced yesterday that they are to continue using the Aston Martin Virage for the 2012 TORA GT championship. The driver line-up hasn't changed much except that Conner has decided to seperate from the team and enter as a privateer. However, the team have kindly offered the services of the mechanics and engineers to help set the cars up for Conner in each race he's participating in for the GT's.

Two days after the N24 sucess in Germany, team boss Daniel Austins has decided to write up an exclusive review of 2011 from his personal point of view. The high's and low's of what has been an extraordinary and character building year for the team as a whole, and DAN finally spills the beans to the disaster that was the final touring car championship round at Sedona. We hope to hear from Matt, Conner, Zach, Mark and Ben about their own experiences and reviews of 2011.

Just before that though, everyone here at ATR would like to wish the members of TORA a Merry Christmas and all the best of luck for the New Year.



Daniel Austins's review on 2011:

"2011 has been a character building year for sure. There has been many incidents and trials throughout this year which have made me think twice about my decision as to whether I would continue with online racing as a whole. However at the same time, I think this has been the best year by far and has certainly more than made up for the disappointment that was 2010.
At the start of this year, I was still running my own team (Austins Motorsport) after the seperation of ATR the year before. My main priority for the year really was the TORA ISCC with our brand new machinery. The extremely ear soothing and extremely beautiful Lola Aston Martin. I managed to sell off some of my cars from 2010 which included my Mercedes DTM car in order to provide the finances to purchase the Lola Aston's from THR who used them the year before.
Once we managed to secure our sponsorship from Gulf once more, there was one more issue to resolve which was to find some team mates for the championship. Luckily, I'm not sure if the reason was because his initials were AMR (Aston Martin Racing), but we managed to secure the Welshman, Adrian Michael Rees to drive the second machine.
This left one seat free but it was too late to search and scope for another because the first official test session was only a few days away. So we loaded the cargo onto the lorries, boarded a plane and headed out to the American circuit for the test. Our biggest fear was going to be the Peugeot's for sure because they're the strongest LMP1 machines on the grid and our main aim was to secure a decent result despite the lack of running with the Lola Aston.
To my surprise and complete shock, I managed to set the fastest time in official testing by half a second from the Peugeot's. Given the fact that Maple Valley was a handling circuit, it was a clear sign that our team had potential to suceed in the series.
By the time we reached the first round of the ISCC at Motegi, our third driver was finally snapped up in the shape of JohnnyBoy360. Until recently of course (for reasons which I won't repeat for the sake of arguing), I felt that over time and with a few races under his belt, John could have had a sucessful future here in TORA.
There was only three rounds to the Asian leg of the ISCC, but the team achieving podium finishes in all three events (two for myself and one for John) was a result which couldn't have gone any better. I knew the competition was going to be extremely fearse, particularly in the shape of people like Magictap in the Audi R15 & Berty2D and lfcnicklfc in the Peugeots (arguably the best cars on the grid by far). But I was really delighted for myself, John and Adrian as a team.

The European leg wasn't as enjoyable for all involved really. Mainly because of my absense from most of the series which left Adrian and Johnny to try their best at preparing the vehicles for each meeting. Looking back on the situation, it feels like I've abandoned the team (without intent of course) and I want to apologise right here and now for that one chaps. Things might have been different if I was still around, but unfortunately I was suffering terribly again thanks to my mental health. I feel thats the reason why Adrian decided to part from Austins Motorsport during 2011.

Up til the middle of 2011, this year was shaping up to be even worse than 2010 without a race victory recorded in any series that myself or the team participated in. However, myself and Matt Hunter came up with a master stroke. 'Seeing as we're both craving for sucess once more, how about we both re-form an alliance once more?' Sure enough, both parties agreed to bring back ATR (Austins Team Hunter Racing) from the grave and lets just say, we haven't looked back.
The first official championship which we participated in as ATR was the first round of the ISCC America series at Laguna Seca which we achieved a second place finish; one lap down behind the VVV Audi R15 of Micko. At the time, it was my best performance of the year because no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't squeeze out anymore performance from the Lola Aston Martin. I was trying to produce qualifying laps in every lap of the race, but the end result was worth it. Sadly, I was to be the only ATR entrant until the third round at Sunset Peninsula.

This has to be the hardest section that I've ever had to write without the use of explicit language, but I suppose the next section to talk you through was the 2011 Touring Car Championship. Just two cars entered for myself and Chris (GTR Evoluzione) in our Honda Civic Type R.
By half distance, our Civic was deemed to be too fast and had to be pegged back, despite the fact it was myself rather than me and Chris that was at the front of the grid race after race. Then came the disaster that was Sunset Infield where the connection issues were not rectified properly thanks to the staff in charge of the event. It was only at the final race where I found out who I was having connection issues with. It was somebody who qualified behind myself, yet I was the one shoved back into the lower lobby. Admittingly at the final round at Sedona when I found out, I was absolutely fuming at the staff and I was at boiling point because I thought that they cost me valuable points which would have proved crucial at the final round. Just before the first race of the meeting finally got underway, I made the decision right there and then that I wouldn't be participating in this championship in the future as I felt cheated and robbed.
There was one experience during the first race which I'll never forget. Because I was angry, M&M racing tried to deploy Peugeot style team tactics once they beat me off the line so they could help Ian win the drivers championship. My initial though was 'Right! You wanna deploy that kind of tactics? No problem! I'll just be as aggressive as I can be and see how you like it!' I don't know why I was angry at their teams tactics, but it was all the emotion running through of the previous event at Sunset. Despite feeling like this at the time, I was amazed that I managed to ruin their plans by finishing second behind Ian by overtaking Richard in the last few corners on the last lap.
By the time we reached the final race, I calmed down a lot since I knew that I had to finish the race in order to win the drivers championship. However, on only the second lap, NickyF1 ran wide on a left hand corner and I went passed him. All of a sudden, I felt a tap on the right hand rear corner of the car. Nicky touched the rear which forced us into the gravel. I started to panic and decided to rejoin the circuit without looking into the rear view mirror. As a consequence of my actions, I caused an almighty crash which I was later disqualified from the race meeting and lost the drivers championship to Nicky.

After the disqualification, I sunk to an all time low and spent some time thinking about my future as a virtual race driver. All sorts of emotions were running through my mind; 'Is it worth being here in TORA anymore?', 'Should I continue racing online?', 'Or should I just spend some time away to concentrate on improving my driving skills before the championships start again in 2012?'
I initially decided the latter. Spend some time away from racing and take a break. However, the untimely and tragic death of Dan Wheldon was a sudden shock to the motorsport community and when TORA decided to re-name the first round of the Ferrari 458 challenge to the 'DAN WHELDON TROPHY', it was an event which I couldn't say 'NO' to. As it turns out, it was a wise choice because I won both races in the first meeting by a big margin to my surprise.
After that race, my enthesis changed once again. I made a u-turn and decided to continue racing in the 458 Challenge.
Now, I'm the Ferrari 458 Challenge champion, TORA ISCC Asia drivers and Teams Champion with Ben Chalk as well as the GT24 teams champion with Matt Hunter and Conner Johnson. Not only this, but I've achieved the ultimate prize of claiming the overall victory in the Nurburgring 24 event which co-incidently is my 69th race victory with The Online Racing Association.

Right now, I am completely speechless because what a year this has been for myself as well as ATR. I would like to share this sucess with the other half to ATR which is Matt Hunter. Thank you ever so much for having the faith and belief in myself when we decided to re-from Austins Motorspot and THR once more and now our persistance and craving for sucess has been worth it. I believe now that the GT24 team's title is your second so many congratulations dude for this sucess. I'm extremely priviledged and grateful to be able to share this sucess with you and I hope that 2012 can be as sucessful for us as a team.
I would also like to thank everyone of my team mates who has race a long side me in 2011. I apologise if I can't remember all of your names off by heart but I would like to thank and share our teams sucesses with Ben Chalk, John Murphy, Conner Johnson, Zach Casto, Matt Hunter, Adrian Michael Rees, Chris (GTR Evoluzione) and silentalarm42. I thank you all very much for your time and dedication which has resulted in the team achieving the sucess that you fully deserve and I wish you well for next year.
I suppose it wouldn't be right at all if I didn't thank all of my fellow competitors who I've had the pleasure and joy of racing against. And now that the situation with the touring cars has died down, I would like to thank the TORA staff for providing the community with some fantastic championships this year and your hard work has certainly been very effective and rewarding. I would like to wish you guys all the best for 2012 and hope it's as sucessful as for the organisation as this year has been.

I am fully determined to make 2012 a year to remember for ATR but it'll certainly be tougher for sure to try and match 2011 for joy, pain, sucess, and controversy. However, I wouldn't have it any other way. This has certainly been by far the best year that I've every had with TORA and it's been an absolute pleasure to race here. Many thanks one and all!"