Let's face it I thought that I was always going to struggle here, with a "B" grade car and lack of experience with these Beemers.
I have to agree with some of the other comments here that I find the handling "different", maybe if I had a few hundred hours to practice I might get my head around it.
I used a Soggies setup and tweaked it a little, mostly in the brake balance to move it back and allow the front to turn in earlier. This also seemed to help keep the front tyres out of the infra red spectrum.
A quick practice session proved that the softs would probably not last the race so I stuck mediums all round and they were still 75% intact at the end of the race, so maybe the softs might have survived?? who knows.
A gentle nudge on Lap 1 left me at the rear of the field and playing catch up in an underpowered car...not good
.
But slowly I reeled in a few targets ahead and Matt (phspok) appeared from somewhere behind to hassle me. Eventually he got past and I tried to stay with him as we closed on Doni and Mark ahead.
at half distance a sudden epidemic of Hari Kari erupted and cars seemed to be throwing themselves off the track ahead of me. Doni, Mark, Legzy, Senior Dan, and Matt and then Postal all dropped off the charts. A couple of them rejoined behind for a few laps and then quit, except Matt who insisted on being a nuisance and hunted me down again.
Despite defending as fairly as I could, the extra strain on my tyres was getting them very hot and eventually i got a tank slapper out of the final corner just as Matt drew alongside. There was contact and I only just held it together as Matt went ahead. Then guilt got the better of him and he relinquished the place ( although he did not need to IMHO), not only that but he dropped back by about 7 seconds as well!! Then i relised it was just a ploy to demonstrate his superior speed and ability, because he rapidly closed the gap in the final few laps to sweep past!!. I made the last lap a banzai effort to keep the pressure on hoping for another mistake from Matt, but he didn't oblige and I discovered the limit of temperature and grip on the medium tyres as I spun on the penultimate corner.