I do enjoy these cars, I don't know why I find them so easy to drive...maybe it is a power thing lol.
" A game of two halves" best describes these races for me. Car selection was scientifically based on in depth study of all available data, so I chose what I had most of!!
Race 1
Pontiac GTO was showing as 3 drives available, so I had better use one of those. Pre race practice on the server was used to tweak the setup and try to do something to limit the tyre wear, which was probably more to do with my driving than anything mechanical.
Quite pleased to go sub 1:30 in qually, but TBH I expected Geoffers and Erling to be on a similar pace. My gearing was high so the start was compromised and Geoffers got ahead.....not part of the game plan!!
Once up to speed I was on his tail and felt that I could go faster than he seemed inclined to go. He had a little twitch out of Moss and my exit felt clean and fast. As a result, I found myself almost pushing Geoff down the straight, so I pulled out and kept my foot down. I was surprised that the GTO had such a speed advantage as I had not noticed that in Qually.
Once past Geoff and with a clear track I was easily able to pull away, which did worry me, because I thought he was saving his tyres and would pose a threat in the final laps.
I had one scary moment when Windows minimised my screen as I went over the S/F line and frantic pounding of the mouse returned me to the game only to discover myself up the grass bank, but somehow I had avoided anything hard and was able to regain the tarmac still with a lead.
Again I squeezed the gap out some more and was feeling quite comfortable...until the shifter started playing up!!!
It seemed to always happen on the downhill approach to Moss. Normally, I was taking the long downhill left hander in 4th, then dropping to 3rd and braking before selecting 2nd for the uphill right and then 1st for Moss itself. This worked fine, when it was working. But when the shifter decided to miss out 3rd gear things got a little hairy, and I managed to keep the car on the grey stuff during a couple of these incidents without losing too much time. Then the shifter upped the challenge
and dropped from 4th-Reverse in one hit, and that proved far more than I could handle. From where the car ended up I could not see the following cars approaching, so I quit and beat the living cr*p out of my shifter whilst watching Geoffers steal my win lol!!
Race 2
Again the Pontiac clan got the vote so the Firebird was rolled out. Once again I found myself on pole...very odd??? what are Erling and Geoff playing at??
If the gearing for race 1 was high, for race 2 it was almost stupid. I rarely use the clutch pedal, but for this start I had to actually slide the clutch to get the car off the line
. This time Geoff and Erling jumped past me and Dan looked to be keen to demote me even further, so I was defending quite hard at the end of the straight.
Once again I felt that I could go faster than Erling who was blocking my route to Geoffers tail pipes, but he is adept at defending the fast lines so there was no way past. Then Geoff performed a spectacular exit, stage right, at Moss...most unusual!!.
So now Erling was between me and the lead
.
I watched for a couple of laps and realised that there was one corner where I was considerably quicker, so any pass would have to be there.
A lap of intense hassling of Erling's car preceeded the pass and I was hoping to push him into that corner a little quicker than he wanted to go.
It worked ( whether it was my pressure or just a small mistake I don't know), and a gap opened up around the inside line and I fired my car into the gap and left the corner in 1st place.
From there I eased out a 2 sec gap until I felt that I could "manage" the race and my tyres and simply monitored the gap back to Erling whilst I waited for the shifter to scupper my chances.
There were a couple of double downshifts, but the ultra high gearing sort of reduced the effect and no damage done. It was noticeable that I could gain a couple of tenths on the same corner on each lap, and lose a tenth on the straight, so the gap slowly extended.
In the end I was cruising to the flag and the win.
Grats to the podium places and finishers in both races....can we have more of these cars please