UKFormula Grand Prix of Watkins Glen

What a race!
Originally I was going with the 79, but when I joined the server I was the 5th person in the Lotus out of 10 people. So I quickly decided to switch to the Tyrrell, which worked well because my Lotus setup (curtosy of Zach B) fitted the Tyrrell just as well. Subsiquently, I qualified 4th, just 0.2 off my Lotus PB (although I'm sure I could have goe much quicker with more practice in the Lotus)
The start was a disaster, I was lined up so close to Roman infront that when he fluffed, I had nowhere to go and had to back off too. That let Enis through and I was in 5th. I made one place, then shortly after Roman went off, which left me 3rd. I then caught and passed Enis (round the outside baby!), and tried to pull away, but I just didnt have the speed on the straights and (after a nice battle) Enis got back through. After that, Roman passed both of us, but held me up in the meantime and I went back into the clutches of Roberto's Williams. He got passed, but then caught me by suprise braking for the toe and I had to jump out and make a rather lurid pass. Imediatley after that Enis wrecked. I let Roberto through because I didnt feel the pass was fair, then we battled pretty much to the end, but by the last couple of laps he's picked up his pace and I couldnt quite hold him off. At the same time Peter caught me from behind, but I held him off on the last lap and kept 4th.

A great race, just a shame I couldnt quite pick up 3rd... but hey, you dont win races by choosing slower cars, so what else should I expect? :P

PS: Happy 100th event for me!!! What a great way to round off that little milestone :D

Qualifying:
Wasn't very good. Too much wings, and 0 practice fro the race.

Race:
Got off to a great start, 5th to 3rd.

Peter and me touched coming into "Chute" in the first or second lap of the race. I watched the replay, and I'd say it was a racing incident.

I was 3rd now, but Scott was near by. We battled it out, but he was in a Candy washing machine, so fighting him didn't make me feel any better, quite the opposite. He pulled stunning pass coming into "Outer Loop".

Then on lap 13, at the time I was 3rd and menage to pull away from Scott some 1.5 s, I was coming out of right downhill corner (one before uphill left) and car just went away from me quite violently. I didn't feed too much power in, seemed to me it hit some bump in an awkward way. Baaam into the wall, lost front right wheel. Limped to the pits, took the mechanics 18 minutes to repair the car.

In the end, I used waaay too much wings. No practice does that to people.

Congrats podium guys. Superb job Craig and Roman.

I have to say, I didn't have high expectations for this one. And I'm glad to say, I exceeded them. Well, the one I had, I guess.

I finished the race. That was my goal. And exceeded it by not getting lapped! Woohoo! This was my first race in these cars, before this I had only qualified and done some practice alone, not at Watkins. I was stupid again and drove the car for the first time just before quali and got 2 laps under my belt before qualifying started. I almost wrecked in qualifying, I hit someone else, and barely made it around my one clean lap pointing the sharp end forward, and was 8th. Of 13. My start was pathetic, trying for no wheelspin, and ended up 10th by end of lap 1. I kept swapping around in the 7-10 position range until I spun in T1. Just one of what must have been 10 spins in the race. I just kept spinning and spinning, and wound up with the leaders one corner behind at the end of the race. Oh well, do better next time I guess.

My setup was so so, i dont like nervous cars (had to lift before long stright), plus brakes where not working very well, maybe overheated because i set air-dimension to 1.
Very bad start, i was back to 9th, again setup problem, i think that to feel comfortable i use unusual tyre pressures, thus i must be carefull on first laps.
I watched Enis and Scott battle..it was fun from behind and i didn't want to come too close and do disaster.
Then i catch Scott and i was thinking "i'm sure he thinks i'll wreck everything"...so i tried to gain a better reputation in his opinion (i hope i did) even if obviously he was in slower car. It was nice and long battle.

I'm very proud about my >30% podium ratio now, never noticed this!

duhh. posted in wrong race!

I obviously had too much wing because I was losing a lot of time down the long stretches, and not getting much back at all in tighter areas anyway.

I was surprised to qualify 3rd, though that was 1 second behind 1 & 2! I guess a smallish field was part of the reason for that. And I knew I didn't have the car speed to do anything of use in the race as far as advancing, unless there were crashes etc.

I had a poor start off the grid so Enis sneaked ahead of me, just. So then there was a 3 way battle with Enis, me and Scott. Until I clipped a curb un through the chicane and lost 2 spots to be 5th.

On Lap 3 Roman (who had been 4th) slipped off so I was back in 4th and battling with Scott for a while. But coming onto the main straight I lost view and reference of the corner whilst chasing Scott and I JUST touched the outer edge grass and looped the car. I was very lucky to survive that unscathed, and to not to destroy it by bouncing off walls which is very easy to do there when that happens!
So then I was 9th....

That meant the rest of the race was a long struggle to make my way back up as far as I could.
A long and arduous battle with Allen Cotton, who drove fantastically to fend me off and even took my passes back at least once! That was tough to get past and then when I did I was able to cruise away clearer.

In that battle with Allen we had to pass JoeG and whilst I knew I was very good on the right into the Boot Dippper, I went just a few K's too fast and then couldn't hold the inner curb and and elbowed Joe aside in that pass. Which I was not happy to have done, SORRY!! But we cruised away with our slightly better car speed, so we would have gone past somewhere else soon enough anyway.

So then I was 6th and it was a long boring run trying to catch 5th and 4th who were battling up ahead the whole way.
Somewhere in those laps someone ahead must have dropped out because I moved to 5th automagically.

I finally caught Scott, who was then 4th, with a few laps to go, and then made an error to drop back again and it took until Lap 25 (last lap) to catch him to battle it out again. But after I few passing attacks, and I just could not quite make them complete, I had to back off and hope for a perfect run through the last two turns of the lap. But I messed that up and had to just settle for 5th then.

I was just happy that I survived the front straight loop incident!! So my 'aim' after that Lap 3 event had become "Any half useful finish position would be good enough after that"!!

Main aim for me this race was just to finish. Had an aweful quali 3 secs off my race trim pace. As people started to fall off and my tyres got nice n warm I gained 6 positions easily. Then had a nice little scrap with Peter before he finally got a gap, but he did a great job of dragging me up to Joco who also gave me a great little scrap for a couple of laps, as per usual I was a lot faster in race than qually (must learn to qually some day!). Finally missed a braking point on lap 20 and took the nose and front left off, dragged it back to the pits and was going to wait it out but pressing my engine cut off did nothing and I stared in horror as my eng temp went through 120. Had no choice but to go back out for a slow crawl round just to cool the engine. It was quite funny cuz at one stage I cuaght myself singing "3 wheels on my wagon, and I'm still rolling along!" Finished 8th which I'm more than happy with and rest assured I've now checked my key mappings! Grats to podiums.

Steve B I think your post was meant for the USA Race not the Euro Race? You might have confused the post race thread.

Big thanks to R2P, series sponsors B&P and Gibralter as well as event sponsor UK Formula for the first race of the new season. :)

Race start went smoothly as hoped for... Came under some pressure from Roman in the beginning and during that time we gained a bit of ground on the following pack. We nearly made contact into turn 1 however Roman managed to prevent an incident but unfortunatly spun around in the process. After Roman dropped down I just tried to maintain a steady lead from the the rest of the pack until he worked his way back up into second. I then had to up the pace a bit and tied to keep the 4 second lead I had until the finish. Struggled a bit in turn 9 towards the end of the race, Roman capatalised on that and edged closer and closer. Finally took the chequred flag and was lucky to finish first.

Missed my good friend and nemesis Enis "shifty" Duarti...
Hopefully next time he comes better prepared.
Pull finger bud... no fun without you. :)

Very well done to Roman for an excellent drive and congrats to all those that finished.

Ps. Joco.. What happened to your super duper fast Huttu setup? Didnt it work well with the Ligier?

CH

Don't worry, I'm there and ready! Had some of the best (if not THE best) online fights ever with you. Dunno why that is... :D

Enis... my best races have been when competing with you...
If you were not particating here I would more than likely be doing something else on a friday night......
We are always on opposite sides of the fence and I guess we always will be... Thats what makes it fun!
You are an awesome competitor my friend and you will always have my respect no matter what :)