USA F3: Bahrain

A very enjoyable race tonight. Congrats Esteban on the win and the track record.

I qualy'ed 18th, not good, as usual. After quite a number of people spinning and offs, I managed to pick up 10th, and battled for quite a while in the 10th thru 13th places. It was a blast.

I have a few apologies to hand out...

Top Studans, last corner of lap 3, should have given you more room on the inside. We touch tires and around you went, was all my fault.

Kevin Inkman, lap 8, you got a great run off the corner and we were running side by side down one of the straights, I kept drifting over and you went into the grass a bit. I should have given you more room.

Sorry guys, I hate it when I do stupid stuff like that.

It was a fun race though, I think did not make any other mistakes except the ones mentioned above (well being slow was a setup mistake, or not :) ).

Congratulations Esteban Gutierrez!!!

Best!
OG \o/

2nd?? I certainly did not expect that!
I was aiming for about 5th....

I improved my car a bit, from the Euro race, in the lead up practice. Though very minor gains once again.
I decided to stick with a 'safe' grippier car because of how slick they can get after half or two thirds race distance.

From a 5th qualify grid start I got a good traction start and shot through to 3rd behind Fernando. 4th and back were actually dropping back, which surprised me. By 1/3 race I had about a 10sec gap back to 4th, and thus lots of leeway.
Not fast enough to catch Fernando, but he spun at some stage and that gave me 2nd with about a 4 sec gap to him in 3rd then.
But I knew he was faster - IF he could keep that slick car running well !!

He kept gaining, then losing time back, but I still expected he would catch eventually. But it took him ages longer than I thought.
A few slips ups by me finally and then he was right on me and trying to find a way past.

I had already decided that if he could get a run on me, and get alongside, on any of the longer stretches, that I would just let him go and then aim to pressure him and HOPE he would skate off in his slicker car again. Which is better than fighting and both losing time!
I was pretty sure I could hound him well enough to have a fair chance of that plan working.

But he had some problem before that ever happened and he dropped right back and I had a goo dleeway once again. Then on the last lap he had to pit - a fuel shortage??
So 2nd it was!!!
Very surprising!

That was a fun race. Had a few good battles. Jimmy J. that was just close racing man, no apology necessary. Congrats to the podium.

Thanks for that info Omar!!
WOW, a great driver for sure!

I assume that is real FBMW?
It would be good to know what he thought about the rF3's for realism, and even more so the FBMW Mod!

He obviously has taken the real racing experience and put it to 100% useful application in rFactor!! Doing top end things in both!
Very impressive.

Jimmy, that was partly my fault as well, I was probably a bit too aggressive, and it was just unlucky that my car happened to bounce off you in that particular way. :)

Excellent drive, Estaban, it is quite apparent your talent carries across all platforms of racing. Good luck in your young career, it looks quite bright your future. Also good to have you racing in the R2P league, I think you will find some real good competition here and most of all good clean fun.

For me, no practice, I got what I deserved...well maybe a bit more than I should have.
Anyway congrats to all the podium finishers and my teammate Francesco for a solid top 10 finish.

Congrats to Esteban for his win and RL racing accomplishments as well as congrats to the other front runners.

Just prior to the race, offline,I had what seemed to be stable (for rFactor F3)setups and had turned fairly respectable times (57's-qual - 58's race trim). Went onto server and car was almost undriveable.

Got what felt like a light tap from behind prior to turn 1, but went sliding out of control off track like I was shot from a gun. I ended up stopping on track at the exit to Turn 1 with a lot of on coming traffic. I thought I was at the edge of the track and if I backed up a few feet I would be clear of traffic. It wasn't until I watched the replay that I realized that I was in the middle of the track and traffic was going around both front and rear. When I reversed, I pulled right into the path of Greg M (who I already apologized to on TS). So anyone else I messed up, sorry about that.

When I got back on track I was assessed a S&G for cutting the track by the game, which really ticked me off as I was the victim. While decided what to do about the penalty I was issued a drive through by the stewards ( still not sure why, but maybe for moving my car before all the traffic was clear). At the time I thought it was to override the original S&G so I served the drive through and was DQ'd next time around.

Oh well the car was a pig to drive so maybe it was just as well.

As an aside, it really doesn't do much to warm the tires by swerving all over the track on the formation lap in spite of what you see on TV and the commentators say. If you must try to warm the tires, read "Drive to Win" by Carroll Smith for a safer and much more useful technique.

Better days are coming and they better come soon because I don't have that many left:)

Yeah about the tire warming, there were many times on the warm up lap I thought for sure I was going to get rear-ended. I kept rear view driving to make sure I could avoid any potential race ended incidents from behind...