GP'79: Zandvoort

Congrats to podium and finishers (there were only 5 drivers on track when I left).

Tough race as you all said + not much practise = DNF. I didn't qualify because I wasn't confident on making a good time, so I started from the back, managed to be 11th with a careful (nanny) driving but it was a matter of time to have a crash and that time came in lap 22 I think.

I pitted but my crew didn't fix my suspension problem, so I crashed again in the out lap, pitted again and this time the car was handling much better. I thought I could at least finish, but trying to push a bit to keep a better pace made my car fly (anyone saw the rear wing sponsor?) and ended up in one of those damned guardrails.

At least I could have fun for 24 laps before parking it.

See you next week !!

Man what a shame this race. Mad my first error in this series and it was lap 1 of my hometrack, which damage the suspension and my wheel was 20 degrees to the left :'(.

Was 2s off pace and it was horrible to drive. When Peter left I thought I have to stay in to make the pointdifference as big as possible, but only half a lap later I clipped a curb and ran a bit wide, jumped a dune and smacked the armco losing a wheel :(.

I see one thing happening with the creditsystem. It looks like it's a "good" strategy to join in the 60 point car, race for the win (or even win), next race finish very low so you get the points back, and then pick a 60 point car again. This was you can win around half the races, winning 70 points or so.

The N177 Ensign 'Rally car' was just a bit too tough to handle Zandvoort!
WAY off the pace (over 3secs to top cars) and had to be driven to 105% to even be top 10, so as usual the aim had to be to rely on attrition.

I got a good start and after not too long I had Aubrey and Kevin behind me (instead of in front as per grid) but it was going to be tough to keep the N177 ahead of the McLarens! I managed to hold them off for ages, but one by one they closed up on me and I had to let them go past so that I could focus on finishing with whatever points that any attrition would give me.

But once they were ahead I could hold on to them ok, so I decided to keep the pressure on because I was 8th and only going to get 1 point, so I needed to see if I could get one or both of them to error and help out!
Too bad that as much fun as it was to have a psycho-mad and frenetic non-stop race, to keep the N177 going fast and on the track, it was too much to ask to do without an error for so long. So it was me that made an error before Aubrey or Kevin! DOH

Flying over hills, but not hittign anything, it gave me a damaged left rear suspension and from then on you could not accelerate fully in any right handers - great, the whole track is almost right handers! So I fell right off the pace and could not even keep Jeffrey at bay for very long. Especially with numerous near death occurences from then on and one big flying run off that then damaged the front suspension too! So that then made it impossible to keep Jeffrey behind anymore.

I was just lucky that Rolando crashed out and left me the last car running then, in 8th and 1 point! And shortly after that I clipped the grass when I let the leader through in a tough area and I careered off into a barrier and wrecked the car.
I don't know if I would have lasted the whole race or not anyway but another spot or two up the ladder would have been handy!

Note for next season: Consider offering zero credits to non-finishers?

man,what a day for me. First I flew over the hills in qual and as I thought I had clear passage coming back in Thomas came and we had contact :-( Sorry about that ,all my fault.

Oh well ,about 1s off pace as usual in qual my plan was to just stay alive and get through in one piece.

Got off to a horrible start. Bogged down completely (even worse that my start in the renault at Oster) .
Good to see that everyone got through T1 cleanly.
Coming out of the 4th corner there was a small bump and suddenly my car was sliding slowly towards the guard rails.

Hit them at like 10 mph ,but still more than enough to completely mess up my front left suspension and my front left tire. I slowly crawled back to the pits hoping that the car might be drivable after all,but it was not to be. I decided to quit and not risk making a mess of things.

At least it looks like I can get a contract for one more race for the Renault team next time :-)

Grats to all that managed to finish this very very tuff race.

Scott: that is definitely something that needs to be considered. Also the starting amount of credits will need to be reduced a bit, probably into m28 range.

Very hard race.
Somehow i finished but Rogier put the pressure on me almost whole race, well done Rogier. Congrats to Arrows boys also (Robero and Chris) for great run. And all finishers, well that was Aubrey who concluded the list of finishers.

Yes, maybe bonus system gave advantage to early crashers (like me) so my suggestion for future is, awarded everyone with +10 credit pts. that finished (or not) outside the points (top 8).
So if someone finished (or not) race on 9. place earn a 10 credits also as someone who crashed on 1th. lap and finished 16th.

Really tough race today, and it took its toll on all contestants too. :P

Got in behind Roberto after a few laps, and tried to pass him a few times, and I nudged you a little to, sorry for that but I let off the throttle so I didn't benefit from it. Got past Roberto and started edging ahead, slowly tenth by tenth. On lap 53 as illustrated by Francisco's picture I lost concentration and nudged a cerb on the inside in one of the fullthrottle corners, and I think I got sliding and went onto the grass on the right side of the road and because I coulnd't slow the car down I aimed for not hitting the rail on the bridge. And I missed it for all its worth, I got passed by Roberto and from thereon I think I drove at 110% trying to catch him setting by fastest lap 1:18 and ending up some 6s behind him in the end. It was really fun chasing my ass off even though I lost 3rd place, but looking at the result I'm really happy because I didn't think I'd be able to finish at all to be honest...

I hit the jackpot by getting disconnected right at the start in the last race with 21 starters. I'm sure we'll have a better system next season. :)

Decided to spend all my credits on an Alfa and practiced about 30 laps last week. Figured it would be good on that long straight. I had it handling pretty nice, felt pretty confident, and turned a 1:20.6 on full fuel. I had to lift in all those fast corners, but I thought that was normal for this track. Come race day, I got a look at the times everyone was doing and realized my nice-handling Alfa was dead slow!

Switched to the M28 with about 5 minutes left in practice and immediately could tell it was much faster, even with my Alfa setup! It was doing some nasty things though. Raised the rideheight to get it off the bump stops, lengthened the gears, and it was much better. I took all the fast corners flat in qualifying. Couldn't believe the difference!

Got boxed in and had to lift at the start. Peter kept the momentum going as a hole opened up on my right, and he zinged thru. Chased him around for a while with Kevin hot on my heels, until Peter seemed to get a little distracted and strayed off on the straight, where I passed him. I had Kevin right on my gearbox several times over the next 15 laps or so, until he made a mistake.

Then I just had to bring it home, but I kept pushing pretty hard just to make sure I didn't get bored. It worked, although I did scare myself a few times. :)

Congrats to Milan

Hehe Aubrey, I rolled off the throttle to let you pass me because once you were within 0.4secs of me coming down the straight it was not worth the danger of a battle. I rather push from behind than be pushed, though I also expected I could not fight off a McLaren that was that close then anyway. Probably 0.1sec a lap faster (Mc), which would keep you hounding me lap after lap if I fought it out. Much better if I am the one doing the hounding!

Same for Kevin, once he caught up and I saw he had a run down the main straight I did the same as we went past the pits to let him by (approx pits?).
And once we formed the three car chain, the pressures I hoped for seeemd to turn up because Aubrey and Kevin kept making enough slip ups per lap to keep me right on their tail, but I had to make no slip-ups at all just to be able maintain that pace and hold onto them to keep that 'subliminal' pressure up.

Until I finally did make the big error, not even in a difficult area. But I clipped the grass and did not back off like I should have, and then lost the rear.
It seemed worth the gamble and dangers, seeing there was only one other car running behind and it was well over 30secs back. Though if I knew three more cars ahead were going to crash out then I may as well have lapped at even half the race pace and then got even more points than what racing with the damage cost me in a later crash anyway! (6th instead of 8th)

I hope i didn't screw it up for anybody...i know it came close with Milan!! sorry
First race in gp79!!!well...i can't say race, i mean lap??? :( i was really surprised to qual 5th, then came the warm up and i was very surprised by how fast you need to go back on track after qual, got in the grid probably, 2 tenth of sec before green, geez!!! in the excitment, i gave too much trotle and sligtly touch barrier before T1, so i let everybody pass and that was it, the car was messed up, bring it back to pit and i wonder why, this game doesn't fix the car so, it was the same after, so decided to park it to not mess others races. Learning curve with this mod is steep!!! i will definitly practice starts more!!! btw...i didn't saw the points thing in the menu when you choose your car??? how do you know which car you can choose?? and also, can somebody help me to find a way, if it exist, to have a fixed car when you pit??
Thanks in advance and see you next race!!! was short but fun:)