This certainly promises to be a great series. Always lowed the beastly cars, and these truly fits the bill
Coming back to the Chaparral after trying all the others in offline practice, it quickly became my fastest option by a fairly long shot. However, when joining online, my revcounter needle was gone. No amount of button pressing and suggestions from Matt & others (thanks) would bring it back. Initially exited, deleted all Chaparral files & folders bar my setups, and reinstalled the cars. Didn't help. Going offline, it was now gone too. Pressing "4" brought it back. Great! Online again, only to find it gone once more, and here "4" did nothing. Just had to do without it - once going, I could rely on the shift light of the gear indicator.
Not quite satisfied with my performance in qual. Had done a 2:07.6 offline, but couldn't even get within ½ a sec of this online; somehow seemed like the car had less grip, but probably just me.
Getting off the line in the Chaparral was always going to be difficult - had to get enough wheelspin not to bog down, but no so much as to lose control. Without a needle in the revcounter, it just became impossible. Had to rely on sound, but naturally couldn't hear a thing with the entire field around me. Thus bogged down, got a tap from Geoffers, then too much wheelspin, careening onto the shoulder after Ziu, giving him a bump in the right direction, but spinning myself round. Had to let the whole field past, and then couldn't get the rears spinning and had to reverse to get turned around
Thus 13th and very much last when I got going, chasing after the field. Gained 5 places on L1, mostly from others going off. Came upon Tony & Geoffers. Geoffers' car was trailing sparks in places, so wondered if it was damaged. Squeezed past at the end of the start/finish, and next outbraked Tony (and myself) at the end of the 2nd straight, so he easily made the classic dive under, to retake the position. Couple corners later, the rear got away from him momentarily, leaving a hole big enough for me to zip past.
Spend more time chasing Bob in 3rd and eventually caught him. Hadn't quite planned to pass him when I did, but was caught out when he braked sooner than expected, and thus had to dive for the inside.
Next and final victim was John. Spend many laps to reel him in, making it more difficult for myself by overestimating the grip of my not so pristine tyres, and by catching traffic in bad places (thanks to all I lapped for helping me past). Eventually did catch and pass him, like he described. He went wide at the end of that lap, and thus the 2nd half of the race was quite lonely.
Ziu was 26 secs ahead at this point, and the following laps saw the gap drop by about a sec each lap, so obviously I wouldn't catch him with the remaining laps. He could probably also have upped the pace, had I been a threat, so had to settle for 2nd - and shouldn't be unhappy about that, with such a disastrous start
Matt: I used the same car as you, and mine most definitely had reverse. Didn't you lose it before, at Porto last year, if my memory serves me correctly, so perhaps a control issue ?
Huggy: Glad you made it this time. Did notice your car lagging badly, especially late in the race. Wondering if it may have played a part in your problem in the Boss Mustang race, whatever the reason might be. Your nationality doesn't suggest it, but are you geographically far from the server ? Or could it perhaps be someone else in the household hogging all the bandwidth ?
Grats to Ziu on the win & John on the final podium (just realised we're team mates
)
Cheers,
Erling
