Online practice during the week told me that I'd be two or three seconds slower than the fast guys, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to improve my speed. Zeltweg is a notoriously difficult track, despite having few turns, and in such cases I have but one principle: Stay between the ditches and let attrition do its magical work.

In qualifying I had a PB that put me eighth --- 8th, I say, with a PB --- on the grid. I knew this was going to be difficult, but I didn't think it would be harder than trigonometry. I made things even more difficult for myself with an unbelievably terrible start, losing two places before I'd even reached the S/F line. Still by the start of L4 I'd managed to creep up to 6th. Fabio, in front of me, went wide at Hella, hit the fence, and spun back on the track. I just nicked him unavoidably and spun, and also hit Walter behind me and putting him out of the race. The damage with the contact and smacking the fence didn't seem to have done anything to the Brabham. I continued, now in 5th.

On L7 Ruy spun exiting Hella. I overtook him, followed by Billy. And there we remained, Billy and I, in a delicate courtship that lasted until the back straight on L23 when we caught up to Bernie at the back of the pack. I got by easily, but Billy and Dave, immediately behind me, somehow switched positions. I never even realized that Dave had overtaken Billy in the process of overtaking Bernie, but it really didn't matter. I'd had Billy climbing up my tail pipe for what seemed like a week. The only thing Dave did differently was get even closer to my rear end.

With Eric's retirement on the last lap, leading the race with only four turns to go, I slunk into third and still managed to hold Dave off by less than half a second. I'd gained five places and hadn't overtaken a single car in a contested pass. Remember what I said about attrition? Yeah, it really is magic.

I've had no problems, but I'd never seen this version of Zeltweg before. Is this supposed to be more accurate for the era than zelt71?

As for the second contact between us on L18, when I regained the track (after going off in a failed attempt to overtake Eric), I was five seconds ahead of you, though at the time I didn't know whether you'd overtaken me or not while I was in the weeds. Getting myself smacked in the rear was probably more of a surprise to me than it was to you.

As for my greater speed on the straight, I clearly had a better exit on L27 from the last corner than you did. When I followed you past the corner worker standing to the inside of the apex of T10, your speed was 79 mph and mine was 82. I was just two car lengths behind you, so I was going to catch a great draft. By the time we hit the S/F line, I was at 141 mph and you were just 133.

I'm laughing now, because I thought the first smack was my fault and the second one yours! At least we were even at the end. 

I thought I might have a tiny advantage here since we'd run this track a year ago in oAo. Just to make sure, I put in countless hours practicing every conceivable entry and exit point for the various corners and by race day I was feeling pretty comfortable. I qualified fourth behind Matt, Dave, and Roger --- all with 1:33s, which beat my PB by enough to teach me that a podium was unlikely for me today. But still hope springs eternal, and at this place, staying on the track is absolutely critical.

Naturally I went off the track with David pressing me hard on L4 and I never saw him again. Then began a battle with Fran that lasted the rest of the race. We did trade two unfortunate rear-enders, but since we were in the same car and never could shake each other, it could have been even worse. With maybe ten laps remaining, he had gotten a six-second lead after our second contact (and my second reset). I managed finally to bring some concentration to the game and began clawing back at him at the rate of about one second per lap. With two to go I finally managed to get close enough to him coming out of the last corner and a nice draft put me just inches ahead of him as we entered T1. Somehow I held on to finish fifth. It was far from a clean race for me, but at least it wasn't as bad as Hockenheim two days ago. I guess that's what passes for an acceptable standard for me these days: Was it better than Hockenheim? Yeah, but not much.

Yes, sigh . . .   

Lasse Albrecht from asteroid B612 almost never lets off of the accelerator. His setup for this track has ramp angles of 30/85 and a FBB of 49%. This, obviously, is not for everyone.

After the race I entered this text in the chat: I think this was the sloppiest race I ever had.  But then I remembered I bought GPL in November of 1993 and I had a race that first week that was much worse than this one. So this will go down as the second sloppiest race I ever had.

I saw Matt doing amazingly slow laps online just before qualifying (brake issues), and I knew Pete Lohmar wasn't going to show up (family issues). I told Matt that I'd also seen Ricardo in a Honda turning times that even I could beat (he showed up in an Eagle), so I figured there were three guys who usually kick sand in my face that I wouldn't have to worry about.. I also said that Moises would probably come in with laps in the 1:53 range (he was two seconds faster than that and would have sat sixth on the grid in the works race). I guessed I could probably qualify third or fourth and hang on for a shot at a podium finish. I mention these things to give you an idea of my unique capabilities of predicting the future.

So I qualified eighth and lost another three places during the first lap. From there to the finish it was simply a case of my repeatedly screwing up, recovering places, and screwing up again. I finished eighth, where I'd started. It was a miracle I wasn't lapped. But there's this consolation: At least it wasn't the sloppiest race I ever had.

First, as others have mentioned, this is just one great track, especially for F2 cars. I don't think I've ever had so much fun and peace in the hours I spent on- and off-line practicing for this event. I feel like a ping pong ball floating down a river when things are going well. You did a magnificent job here, Francesco, and I'd look forward to taking laps at any track you might construct. Might I suggest that your next project be to modify the original Nurburgring track and make it two miles long?

I had a PB in qualifying which was completely undone by my later entering the track directly in front of Dave, almost an exact repeat of what I did to Billy two days ago. I apologize once again, but this time I mean it.

After taking fourth on the grid and somehow moving up to third because of some problem in front of me, I thought I had a decent chance at a podium finish. But two mistakes, one small and one big, knocked me into sixth and I never really did recover from that. On the last lap I managed to slip past Franceso when he was being lapped by Matt, but I'm never too ashamed to take advantage of another driver's misunderstanding. On GPL Weekly's race rating, I'd give the track 6/6 and my performance 1/6.

Molteni came out of the pits in qualifying, directly impeding the beginning of my first hot lap, something that's so wrong on so many levels that I was still grinding my teeth about it some laps later when I did exactly the same thing to Billy and caused a crash that knocked both of us senseless. I've got no excuse. The only comfort that I take is that Molteni has even less of one since he's done this to me before. Does the word "Pribluda" mean anything? I admit, I clearly misread mine, but at least I looked at it before coming onto the track.

And then on the first lap of the race, we've got guys --- plowing from the back of the field on a mission from their personal sky wizard --- who've decided that they can win the race by getting to the first corner before anyone else. This isn't the first time that such suicidal conduct has happened. Hear me now: You can't. You're in the back of the pack on the qualifying grid because you're not as fast as the guys who're ahead of you. Try a little discipline for once in your life.

I started sixth and finished sixth and didn't make a single significant mistake along the way. I would have done better if I'd been faster than the guys ahead of me. That seems almost too obvious to mention, but I do so because apparently it isn't.

What can you expect when you put one of the original Papyrus tracks on an F2 schedule? Ten starters and ten finishers all on the same lap. In my case I took the Matra 5 and somehow managed to knock off one second from my PB in the practice session before qualifying. I had seen earlier in the day online that Matt and Dave were going to be in a different world than I was. I didn't know that David had the chops to join them. So when I turned a 2:04+ in qualifying, I spent the rest of the session rolling around with race fuel. I wasn't going to catch the three guys in front unless they crashed out.

What I didn't count on was the guy behind me --- RogUK? --- who was also in a Matra like mine and was just 0.04 behind me. I figured he'd had a lucky lap and I'd lose him after the hairpin at the bottom of the hill. I didn't lose him. We crossed the S/F for the first time. He was one second behind me. Matt, Dave, and David were walking away from me and this . . . this guy was still there. Lap 2. One second behind. Lap 3. The same. And this went for the following laps, with RogUK never more than one second behind me: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21. On the last lap I was down to little more than fumes in the tank, so I figured I'd distance myself from this leech and set a PB in the process. I did not. He managed to close the gap at the end to 14/100ths of a second.

I bought GPL the week it came out in October 1995. In all those years I have never had a race with anyone as close as this one was.

[Erratum: I just looked at the replay. It wasn't RogUK but Fabio behind me in the first two laps. I blame the error in my original post on the three bottles of wine I consumed in the first ten minutes after the event.]

I hope this doesn't need mentioning, but I'd like to remind everyone that the pit lane at the start of the race is not a passing lane. That first bend is bad enough as it is. Having cars coming out of your blind spot on the right when you're not expecting them just guarantees mayhem. We saw enough of that at T1 two weeks ago.

It's not Bill Cooper's original SRMZ. Paul Taylor has recreated the basic format and structure of the original, but the bulk of the information lost when Cooper's site went down has not been restored.

I had a PB in practice immediately before qualifying, but Moises and Pete Lohmar were so much faster than I was that I was happy to take third in qualifying and just try to protect that position for the next 21 laps. It wasn't much of hope, to be honest. In more than two weeks of practicing at least one hour every day, I'd never managed even once to complete a full length race either in training or against the AIs. But with just two guys in front of me, I hoped that if I didn't bog down at the start, I might at least get through the entrance to Boavista, at which point I could just try to stay steady. But for Walter's Brabham in sixth on the grid, all of the top eight cars were Coopers (like mine) or worse.

To my astonishment, everyone got through the bales at the entrance to Boavista in one piece. I'd predicted last night that they would be at least three accidents in the next two 90-degree left-handers. There were twice that many, one even taking out Moises, the leader, on L2. That put me in second behind Pete, also in a Coop. But I've raced against him in oAo for the last five years and I know what he can do. All I could hope was that he wouldn't gain more than three seconds a lap on me.

And he did, but I held onto second as if my life depended on it. Dave was just two seconds behind me. Ricardo and Eric were maybe ten back. I was never going to shake those guys, but it was clear that their Hondas didn't have enough speed coming out of the corners to overtake the Coop. At least not until I carelessly spun the rear wheels exiting the left-hander at the end of Boavista on L10, letting Dave by easily. Only by the slimmest margin was I able to keep Ricardo behind me. That error cost me about 13 seconds, most of which I never recovered. It was the only serious mistake I made in the race, but it was enough.

Tracks like this, Dundrod, Brno, and Sachsenring have some sort of macabre appeal to track selection committees. There is no conceivable way to minimize the dangers lap after lap because the entire track is a war zone. When I see them pop up on the schedule, I just sigh and hunker down. Maybe, like today, I'll get lucky. If I do, the next thing I'll be looking at is a big glass of red wine.

There's one other thing. You've got this listed above as 16 laps. We'll be through with that in under 40 minutes. The registration page shows this race to be 21 laps. This conflict needs to be clarified ASAP.