A strange race for me.
Arrived late on the server and just selected the Brabham and a setup from the list. For some reason my display had reverted to 800x600 and had all the settings for "Training mode"!!
So I quit and went looking for the reason.
Re joined the server and re-set to Pro level and drove out of the pits. The gears seemed way out I was not able to get out of 4th gear on the straight?? the next few laps were spent trying to get the ratios right....really puzzled as to why they should be so wrong on an existing setup??
Then with the end of qually I had to guess at an adjustment for 2nd gear before the start. I was way back in 9th place on the grid and about 1.5 secs off the pace. The first lap proved that second gear was still too high and 1st was too low!! so the hairpins were a real problem as the car bogged down on the exits. The big plus was that the handling through the back of the circuit was great and I could make up time there.
I picked up places as cars in front had "incidents" and made a pass or two into Tarzan until I was up to 4th but with Robert,Uli and Tris way ahead.
Then I passed a slow Ferrari and it was Uli in trouble, hard luck Uli. Axel was hunting me down and slowly getting closer especially into Tarzan where he was taking huge chunks out of my lead, but I could just stretch the gap around the back of the track and get enough space to protect my place into Tarzan on the next lap. Each lap was a struggle to maintain the gap and Axel was determined to take my 3rd place.
With about 10 laps to go I thought that I had just about eased enough of a gap to be able to hold Axel off until the flag...then we came across Tristan!!! sideways across the track and still moving after an off
I had no choice but to drive up the grass bank and hope that I could keep control and get back onto the tarmac before the next corner!!!
How I kept the car going in the right direction I don't know, but I lost my hard one lead over Axel and it was another session of hard laps before I could ease away again.
I had to take a defensive line down the inside into Tarzan on a couple of occasions and I was glad that Zandvoort really has only one passing place, other wise Axel might well have made things difficult for me.
I was still struggling with that 2nd gear and now had an overheating front left tyre, something that I rarely suffer with as the race ended.
Grats to Robert on a dominant win.
It was only after the race ended that I discovered that I had loaded an F2 brab setup!!! which explains why the gearing was all wrong...but I need to look at the chassis setup because the handling was almost perfect