Quite an interesting race for me.
Selected the Macca M9A as it looked like it ought to be quite fast?? Light weight, huge rear wing...what can possibly be bad about it??
After a few practice laps I was getting increasingly depressed, I just could not get any speed out of this car!!
Eventually I reduced the wings and upped the gear ratios so that I could use 1st gear out of The 90, somewhere I usually expect to sweep through in 2nd!!
After much adjustment of ratios and diffs I was able to remove toe in and toe out to gain a few more mph. Then I started trimming off wing angles to gain a few more mph's until the car was just about driveable, but still only in the mid 1:03's!!!
Sure enough the fast brigade were clocking 1:01's in qually and I was not going to be bothering them unless they made some serious and regular mistakes.
The start was a little scary when the grid had to find a way around a slow Marco??? who I see had blown his engine. I confess I held my breath through the fisrt part of the Esses waiting for contact...but woohoo untouched.
Then, there were yellow flags waving, and as I took the right hander onto the straight there were cars everywhere, even in the air!!! so i just aimed for the middle and backed right off the gas, figuring that you aim for where the cars are,cuz they won't be there when you arrive!!....................It worked LOL and I emerged onto an empty straight having gone from 9th to 4th in 50mtrs!!
No point in waiting for a medal, so I nailed the gas hoping to get a tow from the fast guys. Huh!!! some chance!! when I exited The Loop they were already out of sight!!.
I just pushed as hard as I could trying to hold onto 4th place. Eventually Andreas hauled me in with his Matra and it was very claer that he had much more downforce in the corners than I did. But because I was geared for speed he could not get past on the straights even with the slipstream. So, for many laps I had a Matra sat on my tail, just waiting for a mistake from me.
Andreas just would not go away and every time that I pulled out a few metres of breathing space he closed up again at The Loop!! Then he made a mistake and ran off the track, so I pushed as hard as I could to build a gap.
Then a recovering Axel caught and passed me in his quick Matra and I was demoted to 5th place. I had no answer to the speed of his car even though I had the same engine...
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Slowly, lap by lap, Andreas was eating away at my lead as he too recovered from his off. Eventuall he was back on my tail and I was driving at 110% in every corner and trying to hold the racing line. Once or twice he got alongside out of The Loop but I had just a fraction more straight line pace to get ahead again
Apologies to Greg at this point because I saw Andreas run wide in my mirrors and thought " At last I can relax again". Then suddenly there was a Matra on my tail again??!! How the hell did Andreas catch me that quickly??
But I glance at Prib 2 corners later told me it was Greg and not Andreas. then i was prepared for Samb and Dean when they caught me and was able to move over .
Once I had been lapped i was able to cruise to the flag and collect 5th spot. Not too bad for a car that was at least 2 seconds down on pace
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Big thanks to Andreas for resisting the urge to make a desperate move to get past a very wide and slow McLaren, and grats to Greg, Sam and Dean for the stunning pace up front.
