Sticking with the Brabham I guessed this was the round were the Eagles and Lotus would start to appear in force and begin to make my life a misery. I spent a fair amount of time leading up to this race against the AI @ 36fps and optimised the gearing to try to hang onto the back of the Eagles and Lotus's if I could stay in the slipstream. It cost me about 0.5s in clean air but the ideal gearing would have seen me probably blow the engine if I did get a decent tow. Qualified 7th about 0.6 off my Brabham PB which would have jumped me up a few places on the grid.
Got a great start, passed Francesco and Bastian moved right giving me a clear track ahead. I saw a gap and went for it slipping between Bastian and also passing Dave R before CurveGrand. The next few laps was full of close but fair racing between Dave R and me. He had a look at Parabolica on L1 so I took the long way round and somehow finished the lap still ahead, Lesmo 1 was also taken side by side but finally he passed and made it stick at Parabolica on L2. Hung with him and found my gearing meant I could actually stick with the Eagle as long as I could enter the straights within about 10ft of his rear. Lap 3 and I even got back past entering Parabolica but he had the position back before the start of the next lap.
Oh so slowly lost time and once I was out of the tow of Dave's Eagle on the straights Bastian was up my chuff and he passed me on Lap 6 putting me down to 5th. Managed to keep them in sight but was trailing by around 400yds by Lap 15. I did notice around Lap 9 Bastian's car jumping and disappearing which was worrying.
End of Lap 15 and I came across Bastian recovering from a spin at Parabolica and was back to 4th passing as he got back up to speed. Shorty afterwards he lost it in Lesmo 1 and I was driving alone. Looking at the server replay it looks like his connection went AWOL for some seconds and I must have re appeared directly in front of him in the braking area for the 1st Lesmo.
Managed to stabilise the gap to Dave R in his Eagle at about 3s so Not close enough to actually make my presence felt but close enough to take advantage on the off chance he had a moment..
But it was me who nearly destroyed my race on Lap 27 while Lapping Jack in his BRM. We were on the run down to Parabolica and he slowed to let me past. (Thanks). I glanced right to check I was clear and found myself a passenger in his BRM.
WTF!!!! Instinctively I glance left and was back in my own car with a major problem. My braking point was about 25yds behind me. Tried everything I could to get it stopped and almost made it but spun into the sand fortunately stopping before the sticky hedge. By the time I had gathered my thoughts and realised I was still in the race Bastian was back within a few 100yds.
Somehow managed to calm myself down and concentrate on holding onto the 4th spot.
So really pleased not to have been completely annihilated at what most definitely isn't a Brabham track in a sea of Eagles and Lotus's. My gearing strategy almost paid off but needed a lot more concentration I could muster for 33 laps if I was to have any chance of hanging off the back of an Eagle.
My WTF moment was tracked back to my "Joy2key" program I use for Wheel mapping etc. I had been playing GTL previous to the race and for some reason the automatic profile setting didn't switch to the GPL profile when I launched GPL for the race, and if your already ahead of me... My Look Left/Right buttons in GTL are the same as the Car Camera + & - in GPL. I've now assigned a startup sound to each profile so I can be sure it's selected.
Thanks for the race guys, Awesome as always.
TTFN
John.