Grand Prix of Europe

Only for one second has connection lost and race for me has ended. It's very a pity, I was on the fourth position after my last pitstop :(

It seems i miss smth :)
Leading the race before my second pit, but some of backmakers was a realy peoblem for me, my car was damaged and i lost additional 5 seconds on the pit and lost leading the race too. Then i thought about very intresting last laps, coze Tim was 1st, D.Fisher behind in 1 sec and me behind D. 1 sec too. But after 46-48 laps i lost my front brake, then another, then rear brakes, rear wing etc. :) But i still finished at 6 place :)
So, no tire change in this mod? It's like my another mistake :)

OK, I've learned my lesson, no more F1 for me.

Had a huge crash, landing upside down right in front of Tim! : (

I did have one heck of a start when everybody fell asleep at the start, went from dead last to eighth at T1!!! Boy was that a scary 7 or 8 laps running that far up the field! LoL
Ran several laps with Francesco hot on my heals and unable to pass due to my wild gyrations trying to keep the car on the road. He finally got by when I bobbled exiting that tricky right hander as you exit the stadium section of the track. It was fun Francesco! : )

Have fun boyz, F1 is definitely a younger mans game!

Feeling my age, groan...

Dan

I finished second to David Fisher again! Yippie! :P

This was a good race for me. I was having a great drive behind Kevin Inkman and Dan Ortega then on lap 9 I lost it. I normally come into the pits immediately, but this time I stayed out...had yellow damage to the entire left side, but I kept it out there until lap 17 when I really had a spill. I had to bring it in then with no front wing. The crew fixed me up and I was back out...this time I remembered to add some front wing to compensate for the damage and the car did firm up nicely after a couple of laps.

I went with soft tires, and my front left had just a hair of red left on lap around 40 so I pitted and they replaced it...which made the next 2 laps really crazy with the one fresh tire. On around lap 45 I had them replace my front right...another 2 crazy laps, then I had a cruise to the finish.

But Dan, you worked so hard! Don't give up so easy, for me these are the easiest cars to drive because you can go just as fast ragging the wheels off the thing as you can driving smooth as silk. I've done a little coaching in these cars before with my FSR team mate, if you want some help I'd be happy to offer some advice... they really aren't difficult, just a knack really.

Anyway, as for my race, which pretty much consisted of qualifying:
I planned to burn off some fuel for 4 laps then pit and run two timed laps on fresh tyres (I thought your starting fuel was taken from the end of your outlap... must be getting mixed up with the FSR rules or something...). Anyway, after the fuel burn period I crashed. Somehow my previous time was still good enough for pole.
On the formation lap everything was going fine until Tim typed "rolling start" then "sorry about that". I assumed he had accidentally pressed an autochat and that it wasn't really a rolling start, so I carried on as normal. Then coming into the final corner he typed "just like GTI", which made no sense to me because I knew we were on an rFactor formation lap. I typed something like "are you sure? It wasn't at Montreal" and he confirmed, so I accelerated out of the last corner only to see my glowing grid spot! So I slowed down for that and in a panic started to type something to Tim, and my finger slipped off the clutch button and I stalled. Race over, day wasted. Damn...

If there is a next time, I suggest we restart the race session if we are on the formation lap and there is any confusion. Its not worth wasting a person's day for the sake of a few minutes, IMO. I'm not sore but if it had happened to someone else I'd have felt very sorry for them.

PS: I also didn't realise you could change tyres in the race in this version of the mod, so I was using hards, which probably wouldn't have worked so well over the course of the race anyway... is there a thread somewhere explaining all the intricacies of this mod? Because I've been trying to learn as I go but I don't seem to be getting any closer...

Cya

And i want to ask Mr. Leon Coxen if he knows what blue flag means?

Got off to a decent launch, going two-wide through Turn 1 and coming out fourth ... Totally pro start! :-) I struggled with the laps that followed, though.

I just couldn't seem to keep the rear end planted for much of my first stint. I broke loose coming out of the last turn ... Kept it off the wall, but had to give up a position to Aubrey, which was rough because I assumed he was on his one-stop and was heavy with fuel. Sure enough, I could catch him but just not find a place to get back around.

Finally I broke loose again ... Aubrey drove away and I suddenly had Leon hot on my rear wing. I composed myself, found some focus and made some time, keeping my position for the time being.

The middle of the race was uneventful. After the second of my two planned stops I was holding down fifth place and thinking about finishing when I noticed Oleg dropping time. I guessed brakes, but wasn't sure and pushed again to pick up fourth while I could. Then I noticed Tim on pit road and I was in third with 40 seconds over the car behind me and less than 10 laps remaining.

When I left my last pit stop I had three blocks of red remaining on the front tires. So with a pretty solid lock on the final podium spot I start scrolling through my telemetry to find the tires ... And in that momentary distraction I put two wheels into the grass, lose it and whirl around into the wall. Bang! Dammitdammitdammit.

I limp around for repairs, finish the last four or five laps, and that was that.

Good racing, though. I thought everyone ran pretty well ... some close-quarter battling all came out OK.

I was so ready to run this race....

We took to the formation lap...I see some chat from Tim...some chat from a driver... so I start looking down to read it..I spin and tear off my front wing. I see that it is a rolling formation now??...I cant get it turning so I let everyone go. Now I turn in to the pits just to see everyone gridding up. So no work on my car...Tim is telling me over TS not to leave the pits....my over-heat warning comes on... The cars take off, the crew finally repairs me and I take off. The light at the end of pit road was red, I knew I should probably not go through it, but with all the bullshit that happened during the formation lap, was something screwed? So I head out. DQ!

I knew I could dip into the 29's in Q with a two stop strategy, and high 30's with 1. Went with the 1 stopper, and I ran just one Q lap. Even though I started my outlap with 32 laps of fuel on board, I only missed pole (awarded it later due to Scott not starting) by .070 to Scott whp just nipped by on his second lap.

Between practice and Q, It looked like I had the quickest pace, but I was very concerned that the heavy tire wear at this track would make the heavy car very difficult to drive as the race went on.....and it was. :-/ It would go from heavy understeer to oversteer very quickly. I'm not sure that my usual one stop strategy works very well at this track. Still, if I hadn't had a couple of bobbles during two laps when I let my mind wander late in my first stint, and if I had signaled the pits for my pitstop earlier (lost a total of 12 seconds), I would of had a strong lead over Tim after he made his second stop.

Instead, he came out a couple seconds ahead, but then had a small spin. Went by and then Oleg and Tim were jsut a few seconds behind. Oleg was apparently running small ducts (good race by you though Oleg---Alex too)) and he retired. So it was Tim and I late in the race, but I think he said he made a small mistake, took some damage and pitted, and then his engine blew soon after due to running too high a boost.

Dialed back the boost to 1 and then cruised to the finish and the win.

Congratulations to Aubrey and Leon (best new F1 entry this season?) for their podium finish. Aubrey, we are on a roll I guess. :-) Still, just 8 points between us.

Steve, I had no idea that a tire that was about to blow would actually be changed. Thought they had to explode first.

Dan, don't give up. Just try and find a comfortable pace with a conservative setup and you will pick off those who overdrive or run the wrong settings.