Feel free to discuss the race in this thread, as long as it is within the forum rules.
gpcos said:It was a quite good race, i was in many fights, and i enjoyed very much. At the start, i wanted to survive the first laps, and after that, i had a great fight with Lapchin. After the first stop, i was in the 5th place, and i don't know what happened with the others in the pit, but they soon overtook me, and then i wanted to defend my position. On the 33th lap, Lapchin made an overtake on me, and i didn't want to lose a position again, so i tried a bit brave move, it could be succesful, but he didn't give me any space on the exit, and i was close to spin, but i took my foot off the throttle. The next action was in the last stint, I had a fight with Puumalainen, i'm a bit disappointed about this, because my brakes was bad in the last laps, so he could overtake me easily. He was faster than me( if i hadn't got brake failure, he could overtake me too ), so he pulled away about 1 sec, but Raino Room was behind me close, so i pushed as hard as i can, and i finished the race in the 9th position. It could be better, i was slow, so i'm a bit disappointed, but i think it's a good result in my second race. Congratulation to Bono Huis, he was crazy fast today. I'd like to say thank you to the team, Ernesto made a very good setup, Rob gave us much advice before the race, Zsolt Nagy was my race engineer, so he helped me a lot under the race. See you in China!
Q1: P15 with a 32.1, pretty much expected
Race:
I had a good reaction to the lights and manager to get a tow on Brljak in front and passed him under braking. Trouble started in T2 however, I was following Greco closely when someone made a mistake right in front of him, which cost him his FW and I didn't have a chance to avoid his car. We had contact and I had quite significant damage, costing me a lot of straight line speed and downforce, I believe even 0.3s per lap.
After that I struggled a lot for pace, but kept pushing, trying to at least score some points.
On lap 14 I was battling with JES and Parisis in the S2 hairpin when I lost traction quite suddenly. I almost took out Bono who was right behind me after his pitstop, so I quickly backed off and allowed him to take the position since there was no point in me fighting with him.
On lap 29 I came across Tali who was exiting the pits, and he unfortunately missed his braking spot in to T1 and collided quite heavily with me, causing more damage.
I gained one position on lap 41 thanks to Room having some kind of issue in S3.
Then I drove very hard in the final stint, I believe one of my best stints since joining FSR in 2008. I managed to catch Baldi on lap 51 and passed him with a late braking move in the last corner, it wasn't the prettiest pass of my career but it got me a couple more points.
In closing, during this past week I've spent a lot of time thinking, and I've decided that this was my last race in FSR. It's been a long 4+ years and I feel I need a break. I won't call it a retirement though, since plenty of drivers have made that mistake in the past and come back in a couple months time. So it's not a goodbye, but until we meet again...
"Q was fully ok, I hoped for 3rd but P4 was respectable.
Start was good however, so I was third out of first corners, and stayed there for the remainder of the race. So to Simon, nothing special to say.
I knew the pace of the front runners this time was unreachable for me. I made new personal bests in hitting the escape button hard during testing for this race. Car was not good, not fast, and it was frustrating not being able to improve it to get where we wanted to be. So considering this, we had 3rd place in mind today, meaning mission accomplished. The margin to the guys ahead was a bit embarassing though, so we must try to recover for China. I doubt much will change in that race, but it should suit my driving better at least.
Well done to Bono and PM for the win. Cya in two weeks."
In closing, during this past week I've spent a lot of time thinking, and I've decided that this was my last race in FSR. It's been a long 4+ years and I feel I need a break. I won't call it a retirement though, since plenty of drivers have made that mistake in the past and come back in a couple months time. So it's not a goodbye, but until we meet again...