Difference between revisions of "Tom Parker"

Revision as of 19:21, 20 October 2011

Tom Parker

Superleague Career
Nationality	British
Active Years	2
Team(s)	ST Racing Nijo Racing Nordsjoen Racing
Grand Prix	10
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podium finishes	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
First Grand Prix	2010 Australian Grand Prix
First Win	{{{First win}}}
Last Win	{{{Last win}}}
Last Grand Prix	2011 Chinese Grand Prix

Tom Parker (born 13 August 1993 in Ascot) is a British sim-racer and co-owner of the PB Racing Supercup team.

Tom has driven for ST Racing, Nijo Racing and Nordsjoen Racing in Superleague events. He is currently lead driver for Kernow Sport in the Supercup and the test/reserve driver for 3 time WCC Nordsjoen Racing. He is also a regular member of the GPVWC commentary team.

Early years

Parker began his sim-racing career in early 2008 with the already established game F1 Challenge 99-02 competing in small local leagues. It was in these early days that he met several racers from the GPVWC community such as Nijo Racing team boss Chris Williamson, Ben Warren, David Jundt and Simon Cattell.

In the early years of his career, Parker used a keyboard to control the car and whilst he had relative success against his fellow racers, he felt purchasing a wheel would enhance his abilities further and he eventually bought one. This led to Parker achieving results he had not been able to before and success was much more frequent in races he competed in. It was at this stage in his career that he had changed to racing on the very popular and successful rFactor simulator which further enhanced his understand of racing.

GPVWC Career

2009-2010 Megane Trophy

Parker first heard of the GPVWC through Ben Warren and decided to follow him to the league. The league had just finished the regular Superleague season but the Megane Trophy series was just around the corner which meant Parker could pit his skills against some of the best simracers in the world in a different car. The mod used for the Masters series that year was the Megane Eurocup series which Parker had raced on-line and felt he was very comfortable in. These results showed when Parker took a podium position in his début race after a race long battle with Mark Stanton which impressed driver and manager alike up and down the paddock. Sadly, Parker could not keep this strong start to the season up and he slowly slipped down the order eventually finishing ... in the drivers championship. But his performances throughout the course of the season had attracted the attention of team managers up and down the pits and an offer for a drive in the 2010 season was imminent.

Masters series 2010-11

Parker took part in the final race of the GPVWC Masters 2010-11 season at the recently revamped Silverstone circuit. Parker showed very impressive speed in the event, it being the first time he had driven the car, and was chasing down Mark Stanton for 3rd position when he made a mistake and relinquished 4th spot and ended up low down the field. Parker had been struggling with lag issues which had prevented him from putting on more of an attack on drivers earlier in the race and this severely hampered his race. Parker made an impressive overtaking manoeuvre on Samuli Leinonen during the first race in which Samuli himself admitted not only surprised him but impressed him hugely. Parker had taken to the grass to force the gap open and take the position in a very aggressive but satisfying move.

The second race of the weekend went badly for the young Englishman as he fell down the order and finished towards the back. The pace shown in the first race had proved once more that Parker did have the speed, he just needed the car to win.

2011-2012 season

Parker has teamed up with David Jundt to form Tiger Express Motorsports for the 2011-12 Masters series which features an extremely strong field and record numbers for GPVWC. TEM are looking to show that they have the pace with Tom, David and [Erik Tveit]] forming the team for the season. The team name stems from the team Tom and David race for in the racing simulator Live for Speed.

Superleague

2010

Before the season had started, Mark Fuller, team principal of the newly formed ST Racing approached Parker to drive for the team in the upcoming Superleague season. Parker jumped at the opportunity and took to the track eager to impress his new team. The pre-season testing times showed Parker had promising pace and the team were confident on a strong season.

The first race of the season at Australia had Parker qualifying in the middle of the pack. Parker survived a attrition filled raced to finish 5th in his début race. Critics were impressed with Parkers willingness to finish the race rather than risk a higher position and possibly crash. Although a high finish was recorded, the race was not without incident as Parker lost a front wing and span just in front of the leader Janne Tanskanen as the Finn was coming up to lap him. Nevertheless, it was a strong start to the season for the young Englishman.

The next race of the season took place in China. Parker struggled in qualifying and the car was towards the back of the grid as they lined up. Parker managed to get to the end of the race in a respectable 11th position, just outside the points. The following week at Japan, Parker took 12th at the finish after a hard, physical race for the Englishman. Abu Dhabi a week later saw Parker retire from the race which was his first DNF of the season.

It was after this race that Parker chose to focus on real life commitments such as exams and his appearances in the Superleague after Abu Dhabi were limited to two performances which both ended in DNFs.

In the 2010 Italian Grand Prix, Parker had survived a race with heavy attrition to lie in 3rd with only a handful of laps to go. As he came up to the Parabolica with about seven laps to go and about to claim 2nd place from a stricken Mark Wicks, his brakes failed him and sent him crashing into the wall in speeds of over 100mph. The crash ended high hopes of both his and ST Racings first ever podium finish. Although disappointed at crashing out, the paddock was impressed with Parker's speed at the event and, although the race was very incident filled, they were confident he would have been high up in the order nevertheless.

2011

Fresh from the Masters series, Parker was offered a contract to race at Nijo Racing for the 2011. Once again in pre-season testing, Parker looked like he could challenge for points early on in the season, having once again joined a team new to the league.

At the first race in Australia however, Parker struggled in qualifying and ended up starting down the field in 17th position. This was further hampered when on the formation lap, Parker made a rookie error attempting to warm his tyres up and crashed. He then elected to start from the pitlane. At the start, he made several places due to accidents ahead and held 11th place at around the half way stage. Earlier in the race, Parker had produced a very opportunistic pass on Christoph Lichtenstein which impressed people and once again showed Parker's strength in that particular field.

Just before Parker's second stop of the race, he was racing Ben Morgan hard for 10th place. After around 10 laps of trying to find a way past, Parker made a critical error coming out of the final corner, hitting the wall very hard, causing suspension damage and a rear left puncture. Parker, not realising he had the puncture, continued at racing speed only to crash going into the first corner, ending his promising race prematurely.

The next two races for Parker also ended in DNFs for the young Englishman although neither of these were through fault of his own as his connection had let him down in both China and Japan. In Japan, Parker had been holding a 7th place after a very impressive start moving up from 19th on the grid to 11th at the end of lap one before connection issues ended his race.

It was after the Japanese Grand Prix that Parker stepped down from Nijo to allow Ashley Walsh to rejoin the team, hoping to improve the team results over the course of the season. Parker is still heavily involved in activity at Nijo and does the occasional testing session with the team members.

During the four week summer break, Nordsjoen Racing principal William Ponissi approached Parker to become the new test/reserve driver for the team due to Davakos leaving the team and Lylykorpi sidelined with real life commitments. Parker took the opportunity with both hands and is looking forward to showing what he can do with arguably the best car on the grid alongside two extremely quick drivers in 2009 World Champion Joe Consiglio and Pavel Loknovski. Pavel has said that he may not be able to make the remainder of the races in the season due to real life commitments so Parker has been told he will hopefully get at least one race under his belt for the 3 times constructors champions before the end of the season.

Parker got his first opportunity to impress under the Nordsjoen banner at the 2011 Spanish Grand Prix after being involved in the previous 2 races free practice sessions (even topping the session in Monza). He got off to a good start by qualifying on the front row of the grid for the first time in his career albeit over one second off his illustrious teammate Joe Consiglio. He got off to a good enough start to keep ahead of the pursuing Red Archers and went about building a gap to David Jundt which would have been vital to make his 3 stop strategy work against David's 2 stop strategy. This all went wrong when Tom made a mistake in the final sector of Lap 6 and not only lost 9 seconds to Joe but he surrendered 2nd place to David and almost lost 3rd to the battling duo of Gregg Lawson and Dave Carr-Smith. After getting back into a rhythm Tom was the 2nd fastest driver on track (even at times matching Joe) he had a good pit stop and only emerged 5s off David and set about catching him. After around 10 laps of the 2nd stint, Parker and Jundt started battling and Jundt managed to hold the hard charging Englishman back before finally losing 2nd at the hairpin and Parker was about to go off into the distance to try and salvage 2nd place for himself when disaster struck. 4 corners after Parker had completed the move, heartbreak for Parker as he disconnected from the server having almost got 3rd place assured even with an extra stop to make than Lawson. This cost not only Parker his debut podium but Nordsjoen the opportunity to take the lead in the constructors champion from Red Archer. Although Parker retired, he drove a solid race and his pace was enough to hold 3rd although some critics are saying it is the car rather than driver but Parker has shrugged them off and is looking forward to another opportunity to prove himself at the front.

Parker was due to compete in the final race of the season at Singapore but he was sidelined by issues with his internet literally hours before the race so he had to pull out at the last minute. Parker knows that he may not get the chance to drive such a good car again so was disappointed at this as he had shown quick pace through the weekend during the Supercup race the day before having got pole position and led most laps of the race before lag issue put a paid to his maiden win. Parker had also taken part in free practice in Spa and Zandvoort once again topping the sheets in Zandvoort after having arguably equal pace to his teammate Consiglio in race trim.

Supercup

2010

As owner of PB Racing

For the 2010, Parker and Scott Bennett teamed up to form PB Racing with Bennett and Chris Williamson at the wheel. Due to real life commitments, Bennett was unable to make many of the races so PB went on to compete with Williamson as the sole driver until the very end of the season when David Jundt joined to make the team a two-car one once more. The team enjoyed a very successful début season with Williamson almost claiming the Supercup title, narrowly losing out to Lichtenstein in the points standings whilst the team finished 2nd in the constructors championship.

2011

For the 2011 season, PB Racing were reformed for the Chinese Grand Prix with Simon Cattell and Tim-Oliver Wagner behind the wheel. Cattell was three laps away from a début victory for himself and the team in 2011 before losing his rear wing and ending the race in 8th position. Many critics were impressed with Cattell's speed in his opening race and it looked as if, although they had entered the season late, PB Racing could challenge for the teams title. After China, Teemu Toikka was taken aboard as cover for Cattell and Wagner and he raced alone in South Africa, having a bad début.

For the French Grand Prix, PB managed to pull off a massive coup and signed Jason Muscat as the main driver alongside Cattell which many believe up and down the Supercup paddock to be the strongest pairing in the league. In their début race as team-mates, Cattell and Muscat took a dominant 1-2 with Cattell lapping the entire field but his team mate to bring PB Racing up the constructors table. Although having had a few bad finishes, PB Racing still remain in the hunt for the title thanks to the strong pairing of Muscat and Cattell and the two drivers' speed and consistency leading to points finishes.

As driver

Parker approached the recently reformed Kernow Sport team leader Mark Wicks to enquire about a drive for the season after stepping down from the Nijo Superleague outfit. Wicks immediately snapped Parker up and he made his début at the Austrian Grand Prix. Parker surprised many by being at the sharp end of the grid for his first ever Supercup outing and was touted as a dark horse for a podium. However, Parker endured a nightmare race, eventually spinning into retirement with about ten laps to go. Parker had the pace to be on the podium and he was seen to be extremely angry after the race. Parker missed the French Grand Prix due to issues with his wheel.

Parker scored his first points of his SC career at the 2011 Supercup Monaco Grand Prix with a solid if quiet afternoon resulting in 7th place. Parker had to do with use of a non-ffb wheel which he felt hindered his chances of putting more of a fight up to the leading pack. The next race of the SC season was the 2011 Supercup British Grand Prix and it was here that Parker started to make a name for himself in the Supercup. After a disappointing qualifying from his own admission, Parker would go on to battle David Jundt for 4th spot for virtually the entire race. It was only after a mistake on the penultimate lap from Parker that lost him the spot. Critics were impressed with both drivers for their extreme fairness and sportsmanship after a very close battle. Parker also made a extremely exciting and clinical overtaking manoeuvre going into Vale corner with 5 laps to go to pass Jundt which impressed everyone up and down the paddock.

The 2011 Supercup Bahrain Grand Prix would be the race where Parker would claim his debut podium in the series after a gritty drive through the field to claim 3rd spot. Parker had qualified in a decent position of 7th and had made a decent start when contact with Phil Perkins early on left him down in 9th place before a fightback occurred. As before in Britain, Parker made use of impressive overtaking to get ahead of both Ryan Walker and Gregg Lawson within 2 laps of each other to get him back up to 6th place before his pit stop which he overtook debutant Alex Cooper on his outlap to rise him up to 5th. After pit stop problems for Lewis Redshaw and Jason Muscat, Parker found himself in 3rd and defending hard from Muscat for the final 12 laps to claim the final spot on the podium. Muscat had closed a 3s gap on Parker with 3 laps to go but missed his braking point for Turn 3 and span into Parker who luckily had no damage but this incident all but guaranteed the spot on the podium for the young Englishman. Parker was said to be relieved at finally getting a podium and then spoke of his aims to win a race before the season is over. Kernow Sport boss Mark Wicks was also on hand to congratulate Parker and back him on his claims of a race win being in sight before the end of the season.

Commentary

With GPVWC receiving coverage on Simrace.tv, the league was on the lookout for a commentary team for both the Superleague and the Supercup. Parker applied for the position and was accepted. Parker has since commentated on most Supercup and Superleague races.

Parker is a highly emotional commentator and he sometimes says things which are taken the wrong way. These Parkerisms have become something of folklore legend in the GPVWC community and are repeated during some broadcasts and in the forum as testament to their either silliness or absurdity. Parker has been noted to be an extremely good commentator, always catching the action and giving out little bits of information on the teams and drivers.