The lap times being posted at Laguna were a real eye opener for me. I did a few laps on Saturday so I had a set up & was comfortably quicker than my 65 Mod personal best - but quickly found out I was hopelessly off the pace on Sunday.
Not sure how the Lola BMW compares to other chassis' but time to try some others & back to the drawing board for a set up.
Hochenheim - not quite so uncompetitive but too many silly mistakes.
Using Zandy as my base of operations (testing) when the mod came out I was finding the BMW/Lola about .4/.5 a second off the pace. Nicest car to drive by far was the BT23 which was also my fastest
The Cooper I drove last night is slightly slower than the BM/Lola for comparison purposes
First race was a disaster as I didn't have a setup and joined too late to even attempt to make one - as a result I raced with an untouched Zandy setup and payed the price.
While fairly fast it was a swine to keep under control and my slow climb up the ladder was destroyed by multiple spins, a roll (Which I managed to continue from!
) and a blown engine
In the end Cookie gifted me with a 'not last' by spinning/crashing on the last corner on the final lap
Hockenhiem was better as I was able to make some adjustments and create a Cooper that was as competitive as it'd ever be (Given it's a few hp down on the other front runners).
The start was ish with me being passed a few times after T1, this was possibly lucky as what deffinatly looked like a lag impact then took out 2 of the cars infront and a few of the following cars aswell gifting me 4th with a healthy gap back to the field.
John, H and Tristan were having a good fight over 1st which was allowing me to recoup in the corners what my Cooper was loosing on the straights - quite handy as I seemed to have gained some steering damage from the L1 accident which made braking into Ostcurve tricky with a very unstable car under me.
Several laps in H and john had a coming together in the stadium complex while fighting over 2nd, this allowed me to inherit the 2nd step and close on Tristan enough that even the Cooper was challenging for the lead (In fact I think I crossed the line in first at one point), then I outbraked myself and fell off which allowed Tristan to escape.
Bernie inadvertantly scuppered my chances of regaining the draft after he towed Tristan into the forest and promply span right infront of me when I caught him!
Oh well - 2nd is pretty good going in the Coop from what I can tell so happy with eventually finishing so high
Well done everyone who finished and especially to H for climbing back upto 3rd after his off
