Euro FH: Longbeach

Qualifying:
Not good. Not even near absolute possible.

Race:
Not much to say about it. Tried to stay out of trouble, thought I did good but after watching replay I realized how close 1st corner was.

Roberto and Craig left me in a trail of smoke. I struggled in first couple of laps, I did menage to get into groove after some half a dozen laps.

Shows that one should practice more than 10 laps especially if the mod has changed. To me the feel of the cars is completely different, and maybe bit too forgiving.

Congrats Roberto and finishers. Bad luck Craig, saw the replay, maybe you pushed tiny bit too hard. Better luck next time.

OK, this race showed me that I have to do more practice before entering events. Was clearly off Craig's pace. But again (like Silverstone) I was a lucky ass, changing some things in my set after the bad Qualify and tried to avoid every fight on the start (just let everybody pass hehe, what a stupid strategy, ha?). After the the half of the field retired on first laps my mission was to bring home the car slowly but safe.
Im sorry for the people who didnt finished this one. Tough track.

Grats Roberto and Enis, nice Drive!

DOH.
I like Long Beach, from many other races, so it never bothers me racing there. Though it seemed the V2 cars were worse than the V1 (more slippery here), but I am sure that is not the case really.

I did some pre-race practice online for an hour or so (on the server) and I didn't have any problem lapping reliably in the 1:20.0 area, which I already knew was notably too slow because I had seen Jeff doing long lap runs of mid/high 1:19's. But it was all I could do safe and surely, so I was happy with that pace anyway.

Even online in official Practice it was all fine, though I was 0.3sec down and could not match the prior "solo online" practice times, but it felt fine to drive - exactly the same except I could just never get that same lap time. That was still a pretty good pace anyway.

Qual was ok, but 0.6sec down on my better lap prior practiced Qual times and I messed up a second run for it so I did not get to find out how close I could really get to that prior best time. But it still had me in 3rd anyway so that was ok.

I don't think I wrecked the car, or hit a wall, in the entire 2 hours of last practicing (or at least none when driving purely for race laps), and have never spun off Turn 1 (hairpin), but of course managed to do that in the Race right away on Lap 1! Even though only running at about 90% pace while the traffic was tight there.
I had practiced starts and knew I could run fine right away at a very high pace for Lap 1 - not that I was going to be able to do that from 3rd, but it meant I knew I didn't have to 'tippy-toe' around too much like many other setups do.

So the spin was annoying, but I could still see that I should be able to get way back up the field over the 24 laps and I never even considered I would not finish the race. It was so 'easy' to lap and lap and lap, through practice, that I was sure it would be no problem.

But no... after only getting back one position I managed to turn-in a fraction too soon somewhere and hit a corner's apex wall edge quite hard and ripped off the front right wheel!! DOH again. Lap 2 or 3???
Bloody idiot...

Though it was STILL annoying to find when online with more cars it made for a notable enough difference to grip, and thus laps times grow.
Not that I was ever going to get ANYWHERE near Craig's blistering speed in the same Lotus79! Phew, that was fast!

Only .054 out of Pole, not too bad, considering I qualified with softs (but i think almost everyone did that).
V2 has some better sides and some worse compared to v1.
Better are tyres temps, they look more costant (yes i keep always an eye on that even in race, i always scroll the lcd screen), and more balanced car no matter how you screw with the wings.
Bad sides are brakes, but i guess they are more genuine and real now, you need to stomp a lot to brake into the same distances as V1.
Race was good, after Craig accident I just controlled my gap with Enis, when he gained some tenths i did a pushed lap and so on all the race, this help me to stay focused and be gentle with the car in the same time.
Grats all finishers!

PS i didn't practice before, just used a V1 setup with more wings and corrected tyres temps.

Another dissapointment....
well done to the winners!
:)