Atlantic FB: Brands Hatch

Man-o-man! What a race! What a way to start a season! Not that my result would indicate it though.

QUAL - Lots of traffic. Dodging spinners left and right it seemed. Not so lucky in the final left (after the 'chicane'). Spinner (sorry, can't remember who) comes to a rest on the outside, opposite the apex. I didn't judge it right and collided hard with his nose. Suspension damage for me. Race back to pit, fix it up, head out on another outlap and time runs out. Starting position, 19th! Sheesh. Practice times showed me potentially midfield. Not to be. Oh well. Happens. Here to have fun. =)

RACE - Good start I thought. Played it conservative and let a few by in the first few corners. Made them back up quickly though. In fact, I was carving my way through the field! By lap 5 I was 11th and had Francesco in my sights. I've never driven this well. Oops... spoke too soon. Swung the tail out just a tad in turn 1, BIG 4 wheel drift, gathered it up, but... OH NO... got in the grass on the right and on the gas a tad soon. Swung wide across the track and into the gravel. Safe, though... no contact with anyone or the wall. Dropped down to 17th. Bummer. Start clawing my way back up, making it to 14th and slowly inching toward 13th. Tougher now... everybody seems more settled... harder to make time. Then... lap 13, Low Fuel warning! Dammit! I put in 20 laps worth! I should have calculated it more accurately. Duck into pits. 20 secs, they throw on new rubber too. Out quick and only lost one position... lapped though. I hang on for the last couple laps and bring it home in 15th.

Not bad given all that happened and my most current frustrations. I'm just pleased that, apart from the spin, I had a solid race (for me). In fact, I barely avoided the closest close-call of my life on Lap 1, final turn. Three wide, I'm inside, and somebody in the middle decides to cut over into the pit lane at the last second. I think he clipped my left rear as he tucked in, but nothing happened to either of us... thankfully! Dayum. Mighty close call.

I had some truly terrific and fun battles... many in fact, given the positions I gained (and lost) and regained (in part). I don't feel too terrible about the spin or the fuel gaff. The racing was just so good! That run to 11th showed that I could have potentially had a solid top 10 at the end. I still have to work on consistency, but things seem to be gelling a bit.

I love these FBMW's.

Ran out of gas on last turn, last lap, after noticing a potential shortage several laps before and trying to conserve.

Today's lesson - it's not worth it to push the fuel mileage. :(

That was interesting. I'd never raced at Brands Hatch before today, but it turned out pretty well. I got in about 30 minutes of practice before official practice started and I thought I had the corners sorted.

During practice I was pleased to see that I had at least once hit the best times of other players, but during qualifying I made an insanely rookie(second race here) mistake of going back out after a escape button return to the pits. I was 8th before that, but quite understandably I was put at the back of the pack for the race.

I was sort of cutting my way through, down to about 16th when I had a massive 4-6 second pause on my computer. Remarkably I was still on track and only two people had passed me. I started back through the field, but just as I was starting to get comfortable with passing people I passed someone right into a wall of cars that had spun. I lost the front wing.

I stayed out for a couple laps, running ok considering I had no front wing, but I could tell that I wasn't going to make up any places. I finally went in for a 32 second pit, but got full fuel. I was being lapped by the time I came out by 4th and 5th place people and was able to unlap myself with a couple people, and even make up a couple places, but on the last lap I spun off.

Although the passes were fun, and I was also pleased to see that my best lap, which was on a full tank, not race trim, was top 4 or 5 the highlight was right near the end when I had come back on the track going very slowly and another car, presumably low on fuel, was running even slower just ahead. Some how two race speed cars came along and threaded the needle. Very Impressive.

Practice:
I was slow. No, I mean SLOW!. I could not get the car to do anything. Cars were driving by me like I was standing still. The folks on Teamspeak were getting tired of hearing me cry, lol. I was swearing I didn't buy an upgrade or something, or everyone switched mods on me and didn't tell me! On a whim, I checked my throttle response in the setting screen, lo-an-behold, I was only getting 85-90% throttle. Got it fixed just in time for qually.

Qualifying:
I place 10th without a clean lap. To say I was surprised is an understatement. There are lots of fast guys in this race.
I'm overjoyed for a 10th spot on the grid. Pre-race, last second, it is revealed that fuel is off, a fact I know from Stewarding the Euro race earlier. I pack on extra gas and get ready to rip some laps!

Race:
Oh, what would'a, could'a, should'a will get you! Let me state now, I should have hit the fuel button at least two more times, I could have probably finished the race under my own power. I had some great mid-pack, top 10 battles during the race. Everyone around me was clean. I was able to work my way to I believe 7th before on the LAST lap I run out of gas! Three go by while I sit off track. I'm cursing myself on Teamspeak, when three AWESOME guys take turns pushing me across the finish line!

Thanks to Chris Chappell, Tommy Christian, Gregg Mulgrew for my 10th place, and non-DNF! Race2Play has got some of the best guys driving together.

Qualified second with my teammate Tommy right behind in 3rd. I asked him if he'd be so kind as to just block everybody so I could see if I had anything for Tolga...

I blew the start, and had it not been for auto-clutch I'm sure I'd have stalled it. Yikes. I managed to get going quickly enough; good thing the front straight at Brands isn't any longer or I'd have had to back out to let the cars that were coming up on either side of me go by. As it was I just kept my foot in it as much as I could and managed to hold on to 3rd behind Tolga and Tommy.

On lap 2 I got a good run exiting the final turn coming onto the front straight and Tommy was kind to let me have the easy pass, although I ended up making it kind of ugly and probably cost us both a few tenths in the process.

With Tolga ahead and Tommy in tow, I set out to see if I could run Tolga down, which I finally managed to do on about lap 12. Coming off the final turn onto the front straight I got the run I needed on him and managed to get my nose ahead for the last half of the straightaway. My tires were beginning to fade so I knew this was going to be my only shot, and I squandered it when I blew the turn-in for T1 and had to get out of the throttle to keep from wrecking us both.

After that I kept as much pressure on Tolga as I could, but with the car sliding around as much as it was on worn tires I didn't want to do anything too risky that might jeapordize my runner-up spot. I ended up bringing it home about a half second back of him.

That was some pretty intense racing we had there for the last half, Tolga, and it sure was fun.

Congrats to Tommy for filling out the podium; with our 2-3 finish it was a good day for FMMS.

My zero prep strategy that worked with the FT's didn't go so well in the FBMW race. ;-)

Typical late day at work, get home hoping the race wasn't until later, and saw it was 15min to Qualy - Crap! Grab something to munch and go straight into Q with the race setup from Oran Park. Brands is very familiar of course, but no idea where the limits are in this car or whether the setup would be OK.

Ended up with a reasonable spot considering, but needed to raise the ride height for the compressions and wondered about fuel use. Tried to go out in warmup to check it, but didn't get a lap in before the session changed. Guessed at it and put in 21 laps worth, which turned out to be a lap short - my bad.

Really fun 1st half with some close clean racing with Brandon, Bob and Martin. Started out really tentative and got my butt chewed the first few laps, but managed to get it together somewhat and start moving back up, though it wasn't pretty at times(see screen). I Finally got by Martin for 4th at Paddock Hill Bend about 7 laps in and saw TC was up the road about 8 seconds, which looked to be an uncloseable gap in the time left unless he had problems. Turned out I was the one with the problem when I noticed my fuel level on around lap 11. Wondered what to do and backed way off for about a lap and a half, but it was clear that wasn't going to get me there, so I pitted on 14. Got back out in around 11th or 12th and managed to get up to 8th by the end.

Pretty clean driving by all save a couple of bumps, but then these cars do tolerate some rubbin' without catastrophe. Several points in the replay show my wheels and various body parts merged with others', with no noticeable contact - obviously a pretty generous collision box. Good thing... ;-)

I'm a bit late commenting on this one, but i had to ackowledge all the great racing, and especially that wild last half lap chasing Francesco.

Coming around that last fast right hander before the chicane and seeing a car on either side of the track, moving slowly -- on the pavement, mind you, not in the grass -- i thought to myself "this isn't going to be pretty".

But as we closed in on them they both seemed very steady on the line they were following, so both Francesco and i took the calculated risk of going right between them at 170+kmh (i know i only breathed the throttle slightly to balance the car for a slightly tighter turn into the chicane).

A moment i'll remember for a long time. Thanks guys for being solidly predictable there.

Grats to Tolga on the win. Nice to see you running with all four tires. Grats to Chris and Tommy for the podium.