Zero preparation as usual for me, but I knew that I had a couple of Pirin drives left and I remembered that I had a nice setup at Misano...so that would be a simple case of copying it across. Except, on race night there was no setup for the Pirin in my Misano folder?
? I have no explanation for that
Mild panic as I tried to cobble together a working setup for the Pirin in Race 1, which seemed determined to swap ends on the exit of each corner whenever the power was applied. Eventually after much trial and error with diff and roll bars it was at least driveable. I tried to hang on to a very rapid Ziu in the early laps, but that ended in disaster when the handling caught me out. Patrick was showing that he will be a quick contender in future races and he took 2nd spot and a healthy gap.
His appetite for gardening came to my aid and whilst he was tending some delicate flowers at the chicane I was able to regain 2nd spot and hold it to the flag. As I got used to the car it became obvious that my gears were wrong as I did not need 5th gear and was effectively using a 4 speed gearbox
Race 2.
I could have tweaked the Pirin setup and tried again, but I thought that I would try one of the other Fiats.......I must like things to be difficult
The whole of qualifying was spent trying to tame the little beast!! Once again I just could not get to grips with the handling...was it me??
As a result I did not set a decent time and started at the back of the grid, but the final qually lap had felt better and might have moved me up the grid, but time ran out. I committed a cardinal sin and made adjustments to the setup before going to the grid, but I sort of guessed that I had been tweaking in the right direction and took a chance. It worked, fortunately.
My faster car jumped a few of the class B cars before T1, but I had a big gap to close to get at the leader. Erling was the leader, so that was going to be a tough ask. Gradually picked off places until I was tailing Bob, I arrogantly thought that as I had caught him it should be relatively easy to complete the pass and steal 2nd spot......Bob had other ideas and matched my pace to maintain a 3 second gap!! lol
We were faster or slower at different parts of the track and the gap see-sawed. I got within 1.5 secs by pushing hard but then lost it again with clumsy braking. Erling was gone by now and out of reach, I gradually hauled Bob in again and was thinking that maybe 3rd would be the best I could hope for, when he stirred up the gravel trap. I did not need a second invitation and swept through to 2nd place. There were a few moments when I almost lost control of the little buzz box, but I managed to bounce over kerbs and catch some hairy slides to cross the line in 2nd spot ( with 2 Cut Track warnings!!)
Now that the season is ending I am beginning to find the sweet spot with these cars.....the story of my life....too little and too late !! lol
CYA'll at Spa, which promises to be a bit different