Grand Prix du Canada

I can't believe I am that stupid.

Filled the tank about 3 gallons too short, and was short-shifting on boost 10 from lap 20 to lap 60. 40 laps of concentration to carry momentum and maintain the lead... effort wasted.

By the time Heinz had caught me, I knew I would not make it to the end, and had a distracted spin at the hairpin which allowed him by. With 1.5 laps of fuel left (but 5 racing laps still to complete,) I decided to go boost 1 and have some fun trying to re-pass Heinz before my engine coughed to death.

Epically frustrating. Huge thanks to my teammate Kevin, who shared me a really excellent setup. It was fabulous in sector 1. And thanks to Anthony James who tried to push me home.

I'm so happy- after a cruddy week of R2P results, I finally enter a race and don't spend half of it pointing the wrong way. I didn't spin once during the whole 70 laps, and this was probably my most mature performance yet, racing consistently at 98% of what I was capable of.

Quali: Used my race setup with low fuel to qualify, couldn't remember which things were affected by parc ferme so raced with big brake ducts, big engine radiators, etc. May have been over-cautious, as I had more pace than my P13 result, which became P10 after the penalties.

Race: A busy opening period where I joined the party battling for P3, but was consistently 0.5s-1s off their pace. Had fun battles with those who had a spin and rejoined behind me, including eventual winner Heinz. I realised it'd be pointless battling like my life depended on it as I'd just lose too much time, so let most of them go. Picked on Darren Adams though and wouldn't let him through for a couple of laps before my pitstop, just because I was tired of giving up places :)

Most of the rest of the race was uneventful. I found myself setting some quick laps and changed a three-stop strategy into a two-stopper as the supersofts lasted longer than I thought they would. Tristan slowly caught me up, lapped me, we both pitted, then I was surprised to be able to follow him pretty easily. Then I was more surprised when he fell off the track in front of me. I was even more surprised when the gap between us closed to a mere 62s. Did he have a problem or was I suddenly turning into a star? Oh, the former.

A slight problem with adding up meant I thought I was going to run out of fuel on lap 70, but actually I was reading the lap counter wrong, so despite easing off in the last six laps (giving up a vain hope of catching Mark, who was 8s up the road), I didn't have to. I chose my moment to let Tristan and Heinz through, only for Tristan to suddenly slow almost immediately afterwards. Was I becoming a bad luck charm or something? Nope, he'd run out of fuel. So my P7 became a P6. And I was happy with that.

Race Replay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFijstQPo0

Ugh one of my worst efforts in a long time.

Practice showed my race pace would be bang on but Quali was a bit off. Managed to put in a PB in Q2 that was good enough for a grid adjusted P2.

Come the race I had a lot less grip than I had on my long runs in practice, was planning to go 1 stop with softs so was just looking to settle in behind Tristan/Tim when I mistakenly grabbed second coming in to the final chicane...whilst waiting for the field to go past there was a loud crash from the room next to me which slightly distracted me and when I looked back again I was moving across the track, actually reached for the escape button but I'd already been collected by the time the press here to exit came up, sorry to who that was.

Went about a recovery drive with a bit of suspension damage and just didn't really have the pace I should have. Had a few good battles with Anthony and Brian on my way back through and I guess to end up in the top 10 was something to take away.

Disappointed with making a number of sillllly errors to compound my early error that really ruined a chance for a great race

Thanks Lynn again for another great Live Stream.
Grats to the 2nd and 3rd Tim and Darren.
Grats to all finishers.

Finally!! A Canadian F1 Victory! Woohoooo
Tried a couple years back in the CTDP05 era against the likes of Tristan, David Fisher and Vindexworks Drivers Tim, Conor and Todd, and have finally trumped my previous double best finish of 2nd.

Had a 10place grid penalty from the aborted Monaco event so I was up against it.
Quali : Had to do something special for my 1 stop strategy and best I could do was 2nd in Quali So starting from 12th I was now ready to be the most nervous about a start i've been for a long time now.

Race: Epic

Sergio Didn't exactly put his foot down at green light and with the tight grid I accidentally aborted Launch control moving around and for the next few corners my heart was beating at 200bpm.
Paulo Martins got through me, and Mark Johnston powered through while Darren was regathering himself giving me track position due to damage he got from a spinning Jose.

I struggled in the early race a bit, Mark was very forceful so it helped get through Paulo, but I was unable to get passed mark who had much higher top end and could not find a chance to get through.
Mark caught Caner who tried a very hard move in the final chicane and just seeing contact and smoke (my smoke file is so thick) I panicked and locked the rear and spun.

Regathering and having lost another 6-8 seconds to Tristan and having now giving up hope of even seeing him I carried on. Darren went off at T1, So my next massive target was Caner. We had an epic dual into the final chicane multiple times. Caner had balls of steel and would always win that contest. Eventually I got him and was able to move on. The problem was tristan was just motoring on and by now close to 20-25seconds in the lead already. My target was set on 2nd and Racing Tim Brook when I saw him pit early and on a 2 stopper.

Tim was pretty quick after his stop and had to make up quite a bit of time before my stop. I think it started at 7 or 8 seconds and by my stop he was about 3 or 4 behind me but I was able to hold that gap.
When I rejoined Tim was only 8 seconds up the road, I thought Tim had spoiled it with a spin or something, but I realised after the race it was just a very short pitlane and knew now that I would recover 2nd when Tim came in again.

What I wasn't expecting was Tristan short shifting the whole time, he pulled a 20second gap to 40+ during this time, Don't know what kind of pace he'd have had with the correct fuel amount in his car, absolutely shockingly fast pace.

Found the Gap to Tristan coming down heavily toward the end, so much so my excitement caused my Team mate to spin - sorry
found tristan recovering from an off behind a lapped car which put me within sniffing distance, but tristan just kept holding this 1second gap and I thought there was no way. I pushed harder, but nothing. Then Tristan Spun at the hairpin and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.. Wow!
The pressure with Tim behind and this was really crazy.

Tristan made a comeback though, and really made me wonder if this was a cruel joke when he retook the lead down the back straight, but Just halfway round the lap he moved over and slowed. Told Darren he was going to get onto the podium and we brought it home waving goodbye to our 5 and 10 place grid drops and welcoming 1st and 3rd finishing positions

Tristan was very unlucky here, and with race fuel fully deserved the win. Nobody could touch him

I've put in this race 661 laps for practice and my best time was 1.15 as per stats in my game options.
At Quali I was not able to reach my best but then my time was cut in half when Jose had hit me from behind.
I went into Warm up as usual but this time when I had returned to pits and hit race the car was resent to the pits, I still cannot fig how can I take that long to come out of warm up and hit Race to join formation and instead you go back to the pits!!
It is indeed a major frustration when we spend so many hours to have stupid results like this!! 20 cars participated, I didn't start run the red light to join the formation manually, got DQ and come out as car 21?!? kkkkkk
..must find a more pacifying hobby...!!

Heu!! TRISTAN...i was more stupid than you and i cant believe i did that, i completely forgot that we cant refuel during race !!?? so i have been doing 100+ laps of practice with 24 laps of fuel thinking of making 2 stops for fuel and tires, and i was with medium, never tested with soft nor extra soft...concentrated so much on everything else, like brakes, differencial etc...on top of that i had left the car in 1st gear for start, pushed my lauch button, pushed the gas pedal and car moved lool, got a drivethru, then i started to catch up and with spins and good laps got up to 11th or so, but finally understood why, i was a lot lighter than all lol!!!, oh well, another one to forget darn!!
Great job all, it was clean racing...while the fuel lasted :)
will try that again next race probably, but with more fuel
seeya

Bah what a screw up.

Spent so much time developing the setup and yet still the engine was grinding itself away too quickly. By lap 30 I was down to 34%. Short shifting, turning the boost down, coasting into corners... nothing seemed to work. In the end I lost concentration and binned it taking off the front wing. I knew I couldn't finish the race anyway so I decided to park it.

Bit mystified by my lack of pace as well. I qualified about where I expected - it's really not my forte - and I knew that in my testing my race pace was reasonable. Didn't show in the race itself though for some strange reason.

On to the next one. Congrats Heinz. I think we need to start adding weight to your car... clearly giving you grid penalties didn't help.

Quali

No problems in Q1 first run so I went back to softs to practice for Q2. Got a reasonable lap in for Q2 but didn't think it would be good enough for 3rd. It was in the end but still had the 5 place penalty to add on.

Race

Had a terrible start, Caner had to lift for something in front of him and I tried to steer around him but clipped his rear right wheel and had to give it up. Dropped to 11th by T2 and had a damaged front wing, didn't know how badly damaged so took no chances and told Heinz to take the next corner and I slotted in behind him.
We made our way past a couple cars then Heinz went off leaving me to attack Caner and Mark. Things were looking good until I touched the grass approaching T1, a stupid mistake I had never done before, the car just went straight around and I lost all the places I had gained and was back to square one.
Got back into the fight and passed Mark Dowling and then Johnston, got close to Ryan before he stopped and stayed out 3 laps more trying to open a gap big enough for me to pit and re-join in front of him. It was very close but it just worked and got me up to 4th. Pulled away from Ryan and when Tim took his 2nd stop I was only 4 secs behind him but he had fresh tyres.
Got caught out by a couple lapped cars slowing through the last chicane and one ran into my rear as I tried to avoid the one in front, so that gave me rear wing damage to add to the front. Gap to Tim was now about 6 secs and it was time to push if I was going to have a chance.
The gap was staying the same so I was pushing a bit more each lap and eventually made another error which ended my chances of a podium (or so I thought).
Slipped back behind Ryan and had a good battle to re-pass him for 4th again.
Then I heard from Heinz that Tristan had problems and next thing I know I pass him sitting on the side of the track, wtf!
So another race where I got a very lucky podium after making more errors than I could afford, gotta be fairly happy with that.

Grats to Heinz and Tim and huge commiserations to Tristan, fantastic pace which deserved to win the race.

I have to ask; Any brake failures?