A controversial 12 Hours of Kyoto Grand Prix opened the 2008-2009 Masters of Endurance season on October 4th, as a server malfunction mid-race caused the race to be red flagged and restarted on a new server. F1RST Racing claimed the GT1 victory in the event, while spdoRacing took the GT2 win in controversial fashion.

The server disturbance occurred approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes into the 12-hour race, disconnecting nearly half of the field and preventing anyone from reconnecting to the server. The admins eventually decided to stop the race and to declare a red flag at the point at which the large-scale problems began to manifest themselves.

Teams were told that the results from the first part of the race would factor into the final results, but the method in which this would happen was not specified, leading to some confusion in teams' strategies and the broadcast commentator's inability to say for sure who had actually won the event at the end of the 8-hour second part.

Mercury Racing had been dominant in much of both of the GT1 race's two parts, but ran into trouble twice with disastrous results. A crash-to-desktop with several hours to go erased their massive lead and left Saša Pašic with a large deficit to recover. He and teammate Joona Laurila managed to make up the gap and reassume the race lead with just over an hour to go, and engaged in a fierce four-car battle with F1RST, #low-racing, and n!faculty.seasonic. But the Mercury drivers would subsequently suffer two disconnects in the space of five minutes and find themselves several laps down and out of contention for the win.

F1RST's André Roque drove a brilliant last couple stints to solidify a gap over #low and n!faculty and take the provisional victory. #low's Johannes Scheurele incurred a late race penalty due to a protest made against #low by F1RST's GT2 car, but managed to stretch a large buffer over third place n!faculty before serving the drive-through and retained the runner-up spot.

In GT2, the early part of the race was ruled by F1RST Racing, who managed to put a lap on much of the field before the red flag. Other contenders up front included Mercury GT2, AutoMotoTrke.net, and spdoRacing GT2. After the crash, spdoRacing persevered through a combination of their own good luck, other teams' bad luck, and some very good driving to take the checkers first among GT2 teams. F1RST Racing suffered a badly timed disconnect and finished the second part of the race a lap down, just ahead of last season's class champions CoRe Racing.

With the provisional results in, the admins set about devising a method for tabulating the race results. Eventually, they decided on a method which treated the red flag period as it would be treated in real life--in essence, it gave each team credit for the laps completed in the first part of the race, but did not allow them to retain their minute and second advantages. This resulted in some controversy, as spdo's winning margin in GT2 was smaller than the minute and second gap F1RST had held prior to the red flag. However, despite an appeal from F1RST, the method was upheld and spdoRacing were declared the winners of the GT2 class, with F1RST taking the runner-up spot. AutoMotoTrke.net Sim Racing Team took a very impressive podium position in their first MoE start, setting a high bar for the rest of their season.

Revised rules are expected prior to the next race at South City Long to solidify the policies enacted in determining the Kyoto results.

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