Like a yo-yo indeed, Daz! Initially I liked the way the Porsche was handling in practice, but the more I extracted speed from it, by pushing and by setting it up for pace, the worst it got.
It was just unpredictable - sometimes it would handle very smoothly and then suddenly it would accelerate randomly to the side on corner exits. I don't know whether it was something to do with the transition between slow and fast dampers, or an inside wheel suddenly losing contact, or maybe just the way the tyre physics for the car are, but it made for a very stressful experience.
My race was seriously compromised when I failed to set a time in qualifying, so I spent the rest of that session trying to improve the race setup. The start was promising and I felt like I made good progress during lap 1, even though I lost a lot of time to the leaders. Fulvio in particular was very difficult to overtake, as he was driving extremely defensively.
Eventually I moved up the order, mainly because people made mistakes or just let me through (thanks Clive!). As Erling mentioned, I was just catching up to him (and Geoff wasn't that far up ahead) when the car randomly gripped the inside of the main Karussell corner and flipped up on its own. Fortunately it landed back on its wheels and I managed to keep the engine running, but it dropped me behind Daz.
Managed to recover afterwards and as Erling mentioned, we had a very close chase through most of lap 4, but the Datsun was just too quick under acceleration, so I could only harass him and hope for a mistake. On Dimitar's video I noticed Daz clipped the armco on the exit of T2 and exactly the same thing happened to me on the last lap, except in my case the car spun around and I stalled the engine. The handling was compromised, but I was still set for a top 5 position, after fighting it out with Daz in sector 3. As he explained though, after his off, I had an off of my own - into a different dimension
After falling for 10-15 seconds, I thought the game would eventually reset me on track, but it never happened so I retired.
Congrats to Dimitar for his first ever Nordschleife win, amazing pace! Also to Geoffers for making it to 2nd in the slower Opel and to Erling for the brilliant defense!
