Congrats to Turbo for an excellent race. I've just finished watching the replay of you and Rocket out at front, and my god what skill! Absolutely fantastic.
I can only do a copy of the replay (7Mb):
http://www.maelstromcrew.net/tg/(tg_event3.vcr).zip
(as ever strip the parenthesis and .zip from the name, and move to your replay folder)
Qualification
I was suffering in my setup for my hot lap in two key areas. Under braking I was just having the car snap away at me at the last second if I put the pressure on, and was having to do a touch of cadence braking especially at the downshift points. Secondly there was still a lof of oversteer on corner exits and even though i was standing on eggshells when accelerating I was just getting no speed down the straits. With 5 mins of practice left I made a final couple of alterations and hit the sweet spot, shaving 2 seconds off my time to plant a 2m04s8. When it came to qualification I couldn't quite replicate this and dropped to a 2m05s1. I was still pretty confident as this was higher than Ty or Mirf had been posting, and squid's times seemed to be mainly 2m05 with the odd 2m02 - if i got lucky I could even qualify for third.
It was not to be. Squid nailed his lap at a beautiful 2m02, with Mirfee pulling a rabbit out of his behind for a low 2m04! Damn them! I was now consigned to 5th on the grid. All that was left was for Turbo to pull a blinder to sneak pole from the ever consistently low-lapping RocketPunch.
The Race
I had a pretty miserable start having completely forgotten to practice pulling away in the Mustang from a standing start! I just managed to keep 5th position heading into the first left hander, deciding not to put too much pressure onto the guys in front. Cold tyres on this car are a real mare, and I didn't want to be responsible for a pile up within 10 seconds of my first race!
We all looked quite competitive for the first few corners, except for Mirfee who was the first casualty, running wide on 'Drifter' (my name for turn 2) allowing me to take 4th position. Racing was probably not the best word to describe what I was doing, as I was driving around the course like an old woman, early on every brake point and much over-easy on the exits. At 3am I just wanted to not crash, but my strategy had a second important factor.
I was pretty much running on flats. In order to increase consistency I had let a lot of pressure out, and was very concerned about tyre wear. Fortunately my experience with tyre conservation played in here, so I knew in what situations I could ease up to save the tyres. My plan was that I would go steady for 15 laps, and then, hoping that the other guys would be down to the rims attack the last 5 or so laps.
The front group, as expected, pulled away comfortably, with squid (who I correctly guessed was in 3rd position ahead of me) easing ahead by around 2 or 3 seconds a lap. Fortunately for me Tybalt, who had pushed me quite a lot (threatening to ruin my strategy) in the first few laps fell behind, and with no cars in sight either way I was left to just hold out and make sure I remained patient. However I just couldn't force myself to brake early enough for the chicane, and I was not taking a good line pretty much all race, even having a small spin around lap 5 or 6 I think it was. "Damn it," I thought "better not do that again".
I was a bit disheartened by how much Squid was pulling away, but he was obviously on the limits as a couple of times whilst gliding around Ernie and into Bert (the 4th gear left hander and hairpin chicane) I saw some gravel being thorwn up in the air, and a green car! Hmm... maybe this might work after all.
And sure enough it did. On lap 13 Squid made a small mistake that put him back into attacking range (under 3 seconds) and I decided to put the pressure on to force him into another mistake. Some corners I was taking a gear higher, and for the first time I genuinely beat him on a lap time. One lap later Squid spun on the chicane and with just 5 laps to go I was in a podium position.
This was hard. I'm great for attacking a driver ahead of me, and i just seem to have things click in place when hunting the fornt guy. Now I was in ahead with squid a couple seconds back things were not so smooth - I was actually shaking a bit! Coming intot he end of a lap with my rear view mirror full of green I heard an "oops sorry, that was my fault" over teamspeak! Looking ahead there seemed to be some gravel messiness up ahead!! Mirf and Ty obviously had had some sort of a run in!
And this is where I made a mistake. With a car just ahead of me I stopped thinking about what was ahead of me and started thinking about where I would catch and lap the car ahead. I buried the brake pedal as I realised I had overstepped my chicane break point by a good 20-30m. In the end I was happy that I did not also bury the car into the wall, but I could not prevent the spin, and ended up running into the gravel for Squid to zoom past.
The last couple laps was just about keeping the pressure on, but Squid had focused up nicely and was not going to return the favour. Then for some random reason i totally stuffed the last corner hahaa!! Ah well, 4th is not so bad - I would have taken that at the start!
Great racing guys!
) I ended up with even worse mistakes later on. A planned 10th lap pit for gas and tires ended up in not one, but *two* stop and go penalties... for speeding in the pits upon exiting.
Re: Event #3 - Zolder
