Not a very satisfactory result for the UK and largely down to me. I had my chances but fate dealt me from the bottom of the deck.
Grats to the Mybroga gang! Surviving here is paramount and you doulbed our finishing rate...2 vs 1.
Huge apologies to John Roberts for KO'ing him out of P2. What a bonehead thing to do. I didn't know for sure that it was he...I had my suspicions, tho...since a start from pitlane is after the S/F line and I was being scored a lap down with the pitboard of little use at all.
The event started under a grim note when I had no end of controller difficulties. The FFB feel was all wrong and the calibration shot to Hell. First lap out in Q and I could barely make it thru the Station Hairpin despite being on full left lock. WTF? I jumped out of the server and recalibrated offline and ran a lap at Monaco. Everything fine. I came back to the server and the problem re-surfaced. Impossible! Again, I left the server and tried to determine what was going on but never did suss to anything. I got back to the server for a third time and recalibrated there and it seemed better ref the lock but the FFB was still out to lunch. That I managed a 28 in Q shocked me. Fearing that things would go horribly wrong on the grid or into T1, I elected to start from the pitlane after everyone had got away. I honestly didn't think I'd last long as the G25 was well out of tune and around a circuit like Monaco, that will earn punishment early. Still, if I managed to keep it off the barriers for long enough, I just might snag a point or two for the club and that might help in the final tally.
I passed by a number of shunts early on...saw your's there, Jethro; bad luck...to be running around P10 a lap down on everyone. Of course, I knew that this was a scoring glitch thanks to the pitlane being down-track of the start line and would be corrected later. Still, I had to get on with the programme and try to reel in as many as I could.
Around L30, I came across JR seemingly struggling a bit in a Brabham. He almost lost the car in front of me a couple of times and I did trying to miss him. There's no way I get around him unless he made a serious error. And still, of course, I didn't know for sure whom it was. L34 and JR has a slight slip in Tabac and I get a nice launch and as I'm right on his tail, I reckon this time to make a bid going over to the Gas Works Hairpin. John held to the right side of the road much longer than I thought he might and in my zeal to get up the inside, stayed well over there myself until I realized that I was going in past the point of no return. I hammered on the brakes, slid into the inside rail and ricocheted off it to slam JR amidships. I'm sitting there, stopped, watching his Brabham do a high-side to mount the bales and then fall back onto the roadway...inverted. Sigh... Whomever it was, I thought, I'm going to catch an earful for that.
Nothing to do but carry on at that point and I lit out after Lynn who was quite far up the road but I started carving about 2 seconds out of the deficit every lap so it was going to be close. With just a handful to go, I managed to catch and harry but with little opportunity to get by. Of course, I was a lap ahead but the scoreboard said otherwise. With two laps to run, Lynn went a bit wide in the Gas Works and I tucked low to undercut him but he pulled down sharply on me on the exit and we had a minor biff. Round he went directly in front of me. I decided to wait and let him recover and we spent the last lap going at it again but I came up just a bit short.
Quite relieved and satisfied to finish the full 50 laps considering the woeful state of my G25 steering. It caught me out once in the chicane to send me for a wild spin and I was lucky to get away from that with all wheels still attached. Whatever could have caused this grief? VROC? But I've run the UK server before with VROC and no probs. I do have some brand new firewall software that is giving me fits with access. Maybe that was the source. Dunno. I'll be looking in to this you can bet!