Another 150 minutes event at a fun track where we kept full throttle 90% of the time and did an average speed of above 200 km/h/lap.
Qulaification (
8th)
Hahaha… that should be what I had to say about my qualifying lap :wink: Had 3 exits in one lap and did a time 2 seconds up of my own race pace :biggrin:
Race (
2nd)
Well who ever said grid position wasn’t important in a mid distance event was surely joking :tongue:
From the beginning I had a good knowledge of who likely my direct race adversaries were. So I had mixed feelings while climbing through the field and seeing Andreas right in front but Matt Hunt almost 20 seconds up the road.
In practice I had prayed to the “gods of virtual racing” for a decent race engine deal… next time I won’t ask anything I bet I will be better
My engine health started a little below 50% :frown:
On this track, if pushing the C8 (even with a longer than needed 6th gear) in a near regular sprint racing pace, I would lose about 1 to 2% engine health per lap. Since Engine durability really diminishes when below 10-20% I quickly knew I had to exercises good rpm control if I was to finish the race.
So my first 2 stints were done with shortshifting trying not to lose much distance to the front. Only in the 3rd stint I really used the full power of the C8 as I could afford the near 2% engine health lose per lap late in the race (but by then it was too late...).
Suficient talk about the “engine” (btw there is NO XD “engine bug”, it is like that… some times you have a good engine, others you don’t); the race…
The first stint was fun but hard as I had to overtake people with a slower race pace (at the time) without going above X rpm in a track with only 2 real overtaking points. The first pit stop came when I was on top of Bob Hutchins’ Mosler and we both went in at same time. I enter the pits behind him but came out in front but we both were unlucky with the exit of the pits as we lost about 4 valuable seconds waiting for 3 cars to go by the dangerous pit exit.
At the start of the 2nd stint I noticed that my main race adversair elect had gained 10 seconds over me with the all 1st pitstop affair and worst of all was gaining a little here a little there. As I knew likely he would gain more time in the last pit-stop I started to see my victory chances going backwords. These mid stint wasn’t all about losing time, distance over 4th placed increased and time was gained to 1st placed at the time M. Hunt.
By the
3rd stint my “fears” were confirmed as
Andreas exited the pits in front of
M. Hunt and he gained another valuable few seconds with the last pit-stop. Above all
Matt was also in the middle… but now I could use the full range of the rpm.
Matt’s overtake wasn’t that hard (
he had a ½ spin exiting the 2nd slowest corner of the track) and after it he no longer had the engine to really pressure me from then on. As for
Andreas… early in the stint I was gaining a little but lost all my 3rd stint early gains with a small but time costly mistake at the slowest corner of the track (
went straight). Later I was a distant bystander of “the” unlucky race accident when
Andreas failing the braking, “punted”
Jeffries and he crossed into the other side of the track going head-on into an unlucky
Tobias (
C6). For a split second my “darker self” sow in that an opportunity of gaining valuable time to
Andreas, but… he went on without much trouble amidst a fuming
C6 and an aerodynamically “improved”
M3. After that, until the end of the race it was low/mid 56s, opposed to low 57 from the front runner… to little too late.
Finished 2nd, I would be lying if I told you I had come here to be 2nd
, had the small consolation of doing the fastest laps (
lap 75/76) but above all, my
Nvidia driver experiment was a 100% successes (
a driver with almost 2 years old)… max detail , no freezes or any of the kind and a much better result than the last DNF at Algarve.
Congratulations to
Andreas for his fine win, grats to
Matt for the good run and obviously to everyone who finishes these events as clearly they aren’t equal to the usaual 20 to 50 minutes dashes.:wink: Much
thanks to everyone who once more was able to fully commit to the event and
above all to
Tobias for "organizing" and server (
practice & race).
Btw Tobias, although in these events we have had a little more than a dozen participants, not only our DNFl ratio is lower (those who start are almost those who finish) but also at the time those other events were done, there was about only 1 popular RD championships gong at same time. Not like It happens now where at least 4 popular RD championships "dispute" people availability every weekend :wink:
Cheers & I hope I can make it to the next one :smile: