When Dimitar told me yesterday he had a race at the Nordschleife, it got me excited enough to come out of retirement and take part!
I was expecting the Lotus to be better around the track, but it turned out the Porsche, with its 5 gearbox and wider torque range, was much better suited to tackle the large variety of corners. I did not want to spend too much time setting up the car, so instead looked up through the online folders to try and find some decent setup. Fortunately there just happened to be one in the regular Nurburgring folder, and with a bit of tweaking of the gears, tyre pressures, diff and shocks, it was really fast and predictable to drive.
Wasn't expecting to take pole with my Q lap, so that was surprising, but then I lost a lot of ground after the start, then lost it under braking for T1 and nudged Micha. Luckily we managed to continue dragging along the armco on the outside.
Not sure if it was the engine down on resource (%) or my gears or my tyre pressures, but I was always losing out on acceleration in general, which made overtaking difficult and maybe even impossible, had it not been for the mistakes of those in front of me. I also made several big mistakes, on lap 2, 4 and 5 respectively. Lap 2 was just as I took the lead and lost focused when I thought of having to do almost 4 laps on my own. The mistakes on last two laps were for a different reason though - I was trying to improve on my fastest lap time and it was going quite well both times, but taking such big risks bites you back, inevitably. Fortunately the trees around the track are not solid
Manfred was suddenly a huge threat on the final lap, so I just eased off and brought it home. Kinda disappointed with those mistakes, because I was on course for a 8:53 and maybe even a 8:52.
Congrats Manfred for the great recovery and everyone else who managed to survive. Particular congrats to Dimitar who somehow managed to both qualify and complete the race without actually knowing the track!