A mixed evening's fun for me which ended rather prematurely
Grats to the podium(s) and Kurt seemed to have found his perfect car in the Renault 5 turbo
. Superb pace Kurt.
I thought I knew the track from GPL, but some sneaky person had reversed the direction!! which I only discovered when I dropped onto the server during the afternoon and spent 30 mins lapping with Dan and his Toyota. With no real plan on what car to use I tried a couple during the afternoon session and when Dan left I tried the Renault.
Having attempted to drive/coax/direct the Metro a few minutes before I was not anticipating any success, but if the Metro is a delinquent and wayward dog that wants to run off the road with zero provocation, then the Renault is a refined and compliant obedience dog who just wants to succeed!! I honestly could not understand the difference... and the 5 secs in the laptimes!!
Strangely when it came to the evening's hostilities someone had stolen all of my Renaults and I had to re-install with Tony's help just before qualifying. Once again I had not done any long runs to work out fuel/tyres etc so was just going to wing it for the pitstops.
At the start both Kurt and myself discovered the Achilles heel of the Renault as the whole grid swept past and left us both at the back of the pack
Our task of getting back towards the podium places with what should have been faster cars, was not made any easier by those drivers in the slower classes driving faster than nature intended!!
My info, after a couple of laps, was that I could expect 18 laps from my tank of fuel and judging by the tyre wear I was going to need some rubber at the first stop. Maybe Kurt was running longer gears than I was, but I was a little surprised when he continued as I pulled into the pits with only 0.5 laps of fuel available?
OK fuel and tyres please Mr pit man!! ( I am still unable to turn off the autopit feature Tony? I have tried multiple times with permissions ON and OFF, but with no success??).
Pit stop complete and we exit pits being careful with speed limiter. Back on track and I glance at the nice new tyres thinking that I need to be just a little kinder to them so that I only need a splash and dash for the second stop. Glance at the projected laps of fuel and 1.5laps!!!! Somehow I had only taken on about 1 gall??!! Another trip to the pits and extra careful to fill tanks and set off a couple of secs down on Dan. When Kurt caught me and I allowed him through, I did notice that Dan appeared to be racing him and I guessed why that might be. A case of mistaken identity in the mirrors??
This did allow me to close on the pair of them, but I was reluctant to make Kurt's life even more of a problem by attempting to unlap myself so I sat behind hoping that Kurt would find a way past and then I could have a crack at Dan and his Toyota. I felt for Kurt and I understood what Dan thought he was doing, but it was slowing down my laptimes and I was unsighted at some corners.
Then I had a cunning plan...… All cars were probably going to have a second pitstop towards the end of the race, and my Renault had a slight speed advantage over the lower group cars. But 8 laps was probably not enough to make that advantage work, so if I pit NOW with 16 laps to go and fill the tanks I can run in clear air until they make their stops and maybe do the "undercut"??
The plan was good, the execution less so! I'm still not entirely sure what happened, or why it happened but either my calculations were wrong or I punched a hole in my fueltank on one of the kerbs, but with 6 laps to go the engine coughed and died....no fuel.
No choice but to quit and walk home
It was hectic fun while it lasted guys.