Grats to the podium and all finishers.
No preparation for this race and I was sort of thinking of using the BRM, because I knew that somewhere I had a setup that had worked well in the past. I did spend 5minutes before I joined the server digging around for that old BRM 69 setup and eventually found what I thought was the right file. Whatever it was back then. it did not appear to work for me now!! OK I'll select a different car.
But, I suspected that this circuit might claim a few victims, so I did not want to invest in a top chassis and find that I got involved in a crashfest. Thinking about Interlagos, I took a chance and opted for the Lotus 49 which would be fast on the straights and there were a few of those here. I had a setup from Hockenheim which needed a little tweaking but had worked well.
It took a while to filter into my brain that this track was counterclockwise and the setup I had dragged in, was set up for a clockwise track
Once I had mirrored the settings, things improved and I was beginning to get comfortable just before the start.
Several cars ahead bogged down at the start and I did an "Alonso" around the outside of T1. Without the drag of wings the Lotus 49 was very quick on the straights , but suffered a little in the corners. Even so I was keeping pace with some of the faster cars and was looking to pick off a couple more places...until a series of unfortunate events spoiled my plans.
Bastian has apologised for torpedoing me, and that is OK, we all make mistakes. But after I untangled my car from his I had lost a lot of ground and something important was bent or damaged. The car was no longer quite as predicatble under braking or through those long sweeping bends and I suffered a couple of spins that wasted all of my efforts to climb back up through the field. I had got the fuel load totally wrong and finished the race with 11 galls of fuel still sloshing around in the tanks
Relieved to make it to the flag and collect a few points after an eventful race. At least I saved a few tokens to spend on future rounds