Throughout all of my practice the dodgiest section has always been Hohe Acht, not sure why as my car is very stable everywhere else. But both qualifying laps were ruined by big 'moments' there and then I had another moment on the first lap of the race.
Hohe Acht has caught me out many times in the past, especially when going for that magic hotlap!
What to say though, a very late car change to the Hesketh which I've not driven for more than a handful of laps ever and have no setup for put the pressure on. Lucky I managed to find an hour at the end of the afternoon to try it, so I jumped in and went to last weeks venue of silverstone. Quickly copying the basics of my mclaren setup for suspension and aero, and guessed gears / tyre pressure I went out and did a few laps. After 8 laps I think I was down to a 1m22.0, so matching last weeks race pace with hard tyres and decent amount of fuel.. promising
Off to the Nords then, copied in my hack setup from silverstone and set off. It wasn't awful, but the back end was definitely a bit bouncy, so after a couple of laps I went back to the pits and tweaked the spring + damper. Back on track, it felt better, I did 3 laps in a row with some fuel, and got a quite nice 6m34.7 I think, just off Tims best time on stracker at that point. Pretty good
but I had to stop then and go cook dinner...
Pre-race practice: Tim had kindly shared his setup, so I immediately loaded that up and went out for a lap. Thank you sir, but it just highlights how differently we set the car up and drive. Its almost funny, we have such different style/setup yet end with very similar results
The only thing I learnt from his setup was I had way too much ride height, so I loaded my setup again and lowered it a little, then went out. Eek, it didn't feel quite right now, so I quit the server and headed over to silverstone again just to get the level pit lane and see true camber / toe values... Ahh, a little tweak and I think that probably did it, so back to the nords to check. Yes, that feels better and I have a drive-able balance, but now time was almost out for practice and I didn't have time to really properly correct my off-roader ride height or test changing the brake balance, so I took a break and waited for qually.
Qually: Having had no time to try a qually run, I just set fuel for 2 laps and threw the softs on and hoped. The outlap I left the pits instantly and just tried to get a quickish but clean 1st lap run for a banker, and learn how the car felt. Lap 2, the flyer was going great, then I caught Fabri on I think an outlap at Hohe Acht - he did a great job of seeing me coming and let me past beautifully (thank you!), but it messed with my concentration and I nearly binned it down the hill into Hedwigshohe, which unsettled me more and I made 2-3 more stupid mistakes before the line. Result was good though, so
Race: Got a nice start and just tried to drive a sensible first lap without any mistakes but not too slow as Tim was looking interested in my gearbox
. At the line it was a 1second gap, not much but in the mirror I saw him run a little wide out of the last turn and kick up some dirt, so I gained a bit more. I went a little faster the 2nd lap and at some point Tim disappeared from my mirrors, at the end of the 2nd lap I had a nice 10 second lead, so continued at the same sort of pace. At the end of lap 3 the gap was suddenly 7.5s
, which gave me a wake-up call and I pushed a bit harder, result, at the end of that lap I'd gained 0.1s
. I tried to maintain that pace to the end and think I did fairly well, though I did slow a bit on the last lap knowing I had a good lead and that only my own mistake could cost me the win. Its always racing the track and not overdriving here, so to see the chequered flag was a very nice feeling
Mclaren vs Hesketh : No comparison really, the Mclaren is fundamentally broken - you can't raise ride height enough without going out of range on the toe alignment and ending up with stupid amounts of toe out, and regardless of the height it has some really nasty bump steer, seeing the wheels toe in / out by 10-15 degrees as they go up and down is no good. Happily the Hesketh does none of that silliness and is much nicer to drive, so that'll teach me not to pick a different car to anyone else without doing any proper testing in future.