I suspect perhaps my 5th gear was just hitting the maximum revs in slipstream. That or just random bad luck.
I always try to keep the rpm down at max speed which can be difficult to judge in these cars because the draft is so strong. I tested various top gear ratios so that in clean air the car will not quite reach max speed (1 or 2 mph below). That usually gives 1500 rpm to play with when you get a tow without compromising clean air top speed too much. I've not had many engine failures using this approach but as you said, there is always random bad luck.
Championship now looks much harder after this and last race's bad results, but anything's possible! Congrats to Clive and Evil for their win and 2nd place respectively, with such a small gap too!
Yes, the championship won't be decided until the last round at this rate.
On a side note, I can't figure out how to fix the issue I'm having with the fps drops. It only began to happen since the previous race, after I upgraded my video card. I had no such issues in all the races before that, so I don't understand what's going on. Tried all kinds of graphics settings but nothing is making enough of a difference. I'm really puzzled what could be causing it. I'm beginning to suspect my CPU may suddenly not be working correctly and that it's not the graphics card. Any tips/ideas are welcome.
I have similar issues with the 55 mod and the closed wheel cars despite having a vastly more powerful graphics card than GPL needs (Geforce RTX 2060 Super). The only way I can solve the low FPS rate ATM, is to reduce the detail bias. All the other open wheel cars are OK. It is as if the new cards and drivers have switched to using processing (ray tracing?) that GPL doesn't use to the detriment of trditional processing. I have no idea. As you know a solid FPS is essential so I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of eye candy for cars 10 places ahead of me for a solid FPS and good graphics on the cars next to me.