Euro F3: Silverstone

Not bad I guess. Qualified 2nd, screwed up the start and was 5th. Fought back to 2nd again, by which time Scott had a big lead, and I had nothing for him anyway. Successful, but uneventful race.

Well done to Scott for Championship.

Pretty good race. Didn't practice at all because my graphics card is starring into the light, so I'm trying to prolong its lifespan until some 8800GTs come in stock in this country. Still managed to get pole, over a second off my PB, but fair enough. The one point I got for that won me the championship :D
Got one of my best starts (and they are usually pretty solid) so lead by 3.5 seconds after lap one. Pretty much enjoyed myself from then on, these cars are so rewarding when you get them right on fast tracks like this. Had a stupid little spin at about half way that lost me 5 seconds but I had plenty in hand for the win :-)

Nice way to cross the 10,000 mile mark :D

Cya next time!

Congratulations to the podium.

I'm quite happy with this result, I moved up 5 spots from qualy. The car is fun to drive and setup was quite stable.

I know I belong to the last third of the pack so far, therefore while I gather experience in this races I try to keep my own pace, pushing it little by little every race and trying not to make mistakes, and it seems it works.

See you next race.

Yet another lousy 'low online grip' race day here.
I never do too well at Silverstone's anyway, but I put in extra practice to get into the 42's so that I could hopefully be in the top 5 for sure. And 90% of practising was done online on the server.
But when I joined, and there were only about 3 or 4 other people, I got a 43.8 on the 2nd or 3rd lap out and from there on it got slower and slower as more people turned up.

I could get 43.0 pretty well guaranteed on at least 1 of 3 laps for qualifying practices just 8 hours before, but couldn't even get under 43.8 ever now. And to get the 43.8 took a near perfect lap which would have got me a 42.7 area normally.
So it was pretty assured I was going to be approx 1 sec down on pace for the race.

I qualled 5th, from a near perfect lap run, and was exactly 1.0s down from my best practice Qual. So that was really annoying.

At the race start I got great traction and shot through the field up to 2nd and was away fine. Though I knew I could not run a pace to hold onto that.
Within a few laps Dave was right on my rear wing, so I decided to let him pass as soon as he ever got some overlap. And I expected he would on one run down the back straight, but he didn't quite get there so I left it to be on the main straight - except I them promptly downchanged to 2nd too fast and spun off the end of that back straight! DOH.

It was no use aiming to fight off Dave, who was clearly faster, and I quite probably could have held 3rd (letting Dave pass) fine enough based on the times and gaps that I see had unfolded for the race.
But I just had to have that spin! bah

With the car lapping way slower than practice it was quite hard to even make headway back up the field. 12 laps is not much time to do too much of a recovery. And within 7 or 8 laps the car was really struggling for half-decent grip and the lap pace was dropping off fast.
I haven't checked the race but I could see that the lap times were ridiculous... 1:45's when my practice runs could do 43's for a very long way into the race (race fuel tests) and be low/mid 44's at worst by the end.

But it could have been far worse! So 5th was ok.

Congratulations to Scott on a dominating series! WAY too fast for pretty well anyone to challenge really. So the fastest racer wins! Just as it should be. lol

Oh yeah, the flakey lag in the race.
I suspect that ties in with my whole 'low grip effect' for this event. Something amiss somewhere. Whether at the server, or the game, or a path to the server (near the server end seeing it caused troubles for pretty well everyone to see some result of it.).

As I came up through the field I saw a few cars 'popping' in and out and jumping around. Though even at that stage the grip was still the same as the whole event as far as I could feel.

The 'low grip effect' is not a Client end PC problem. It is the data path. Whether from the Internet, server bandwidth, game stuffing up the smooth flow, or a users Router or provider delay problems.
And it was so bad for me right from joining the event, shown by the highly notable 'low grip effect', that it pretty well told something was amiss more than normal.
(I had my Router out too).

The car 'popping' settled down later, but the grip never returned.