USA EC: Donington

There are evening you should do everything except racing. That was my case tonight. Dont search for the clown who did the mess at lap1, it was me.
I'm sorry.

Frank, if anyone was the clown, it was me. I should have not have been on this track tonight. I did everything I wasn't supposed to do. I just want to apoligize to everyone and anyone that I caused damage to. The guilt of stupidity is killing me if that makes sense. I don't know what happened to me today.

Ever have your mom give you a glass of water when young and tells you not to spill it and what's the next thing you do. That was me today.

Congrats to the winners.

Good race I got beat off the start and Maciej beat me to T1. I slipped around behind him for awhile until everything warmed up and then was able to get along side of him on lap 7 i think and made the pass because he made a small error if not I may have had a battle till the finish.
Good race everyone especially Maciej!

Had a lot of fun guys.

Im not sure what happened on the last lap. My whole wheel and pedals stopped responding for a few seconds (just like my last F1 race) and I cut the entire 3rd sector! Gave me a stop-n-go of course, so I served it and exited pits to finish the race. Lost 3 spots in that, but it could have been a lot worse I guess.

At least you have the guts to admit it Frank. I haven't raced in a year or better and it showed tonight. Heck I couldn't even get the correct player file to work. I forgot how to run the sim! I still had fun!!

Good Group!

†

Bit of an ugly one for me. Used the same set from Zuhai in Q and managed one decent lap, but had traffic issues for most of the session. Still was OK with the grid spot; some fast company up there.

Started out OK in 4th, then got under Matjaz at the beginning of lap two when he went wide into the first corner. We had a good dice and swapped positions a couple more times the next lap or two; definitely the most fun part of the race for me.

Looked like Tim was giving him a handful then, and that bought me a little time. While I didn't have the pace of the front pair, I started thinking I just might end up with a podium. But I kept making small errors and they got back to me again, by which time my softs were very unhappy in back - Motec says they were at 150deg. Felt about that way too - way over optimum temp and greasy as hell; wish I'd had time to do a tire run before so I could've put meds on back. Note to self: Fire engineer...

I was most vulnerable in the chicane since the car was very unstable through it, both on entry and especially on exit -very squirrely. Sure enough, I nearly lost it in there on lap 8 and Tim got by me. Matjaz almost ran over me too before I managed to get it collected. But then under braking into the right hand hairpin, Matjaz got into me from behind and booted me into the weeds. Probably just wasn't expecting me to be braking that early - Motec says the rears spiked to 170 in that episode in the chicane and that was it for me. Zilch for grip then, so I'd had to brake too early. And it continued; when I got back on after the bump I almost lost it in the last turn and then promptly went off in T1 for lack of grip. So in the space of 3 corners I went from 3rd to 9th in two separate incidents. Nice! Calmed down and let the tires cool a bit and managed to get got one spot back before the end, which came about 3 laps too late for me tonight! ;-)

Qualified third half a sleep after waking up in the middle of the night and messing with my setup. Start was good, which by my standard means I managed to keep my position but first laps were ugly with no feeling for my car. Had some really nice battles with Steve as we were racing side by side for a couple of corners but he had better grip and managed to do some crazy lines and keep his position. Then Tim got ahead of me and I started to settle for 5th but soon after that I started to feel the car and it came back to me. Managed to get some solid laps and caught up with Tim and Steve. As he already mentioned his car was very nervous in chicane and on lap 8 he went completely sideways almost spinning so Tim went by and I had to go on grass to avoid collision. Still I had a nice drive on him and decided to pass under braking but I was caught surprised by his early braking and just managed to clip his right rear. My mistake and I already apologized to Steve for that. In last lap I saw Tim having some sort of problems ahead of me... not sure what was that all about but in the end I managed to get 2 more positions and finished in second.

This race was a lot of fun for me, and I was happy with the result as well. My qualifying time was also my PB, and then I had some great battles for position. Good racing guys.

Mechanical problems got the better of me this time. My G25 slap-shifter decided to double down shift for me. This happened in practice so I re-mapped the shifter in hopes it would cure the problem, well it didn’t. I'm just glad I didn’t take anyone out when this happened twice during the race.

So after my first spin going into T4 I had to sit there and watch just about the whole field go by. I think I was in 6th, then 23rd. I was so mad I just wanted to hit Esc and go kick the dog (not really, I love my pup). Sitting there watching the cars go by let me cool my jets a little and talk myself out of a DNF and remember that stuff like this happens in real life all the time, suck it up dude!

Just seems like I’m having a string of bad luck, bad driving, mechanical problems, but the more you race the odds start stacking up for these kinda problems.

Congrats to the guys up front, great job!

Almost unregistered for this event as I wasn't sure if I'd make it. Probably should have, I made just too many mistakes and totally missed my braking queue for last hairpin onto front straight -- sorry to Heinz and others, big brain fade and I did my best to avoid any contact.

Had more issues later on also was very lucky to get 12th.

I was using quali for my practice laps since I didn't get much, only to discover my setup rpm was not maxed out, no wonder it felt like a dog. But none of this contributed to my mistakes.