During the race I realised that Dan must have been using far more splitter/wing than I was ( I had tried upping the wing angles in practice, but found the car too twitchy ). This became very obvious when we reached the straight and I simply blew past Dan with consummate driving skill, I felt that my skill level on the straight was superb
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So the splitter and wing settings do make a difference?? I really didn't notice it during practice, so that's puzzling. Perhaps it's a subtle difference and I didn't test it enough (definitely not full laps or even a top speed test, just a handful of corners).
Really happy with my qualifying lap, it was right on the edge (you can watch it here
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1122968121). Bogged down on the start as expected, and also oversteered, which forced me to lift up enough to drop well behind Dan and Erling, almost losing 1 more position to Dimitar as well.
Unfortunately Erling went off 2 corners later and then after having a nice 3-way battle with Dan and Dimitar, the former decided to let us through, which was a bit disappointing. Overtaking here is so difficult, even with a pace difference, plus I noticed Dan was really good through the last 1/3rd of the lap during practice when I ran behind him.
I was trying to nurture the tyres a bit and couldn't escape away from Dimitar, so when we reached the long straight at the end of lap 1, the big slipstream effect gave him a chance to attack, but he thought better of it. As I was distracted looking in my mirrors, I forgot to brake in time for the last chicane and then also changed from 2nd to neutral (button issues), which spun me around. Dimitar was now 8 seconds ahead and it was shaping up for a nice chase, but then he had his incident just a few corners later and had to retire because of damage.
After that I had a lonely race for most of the race, which made it feel like it's taking forever to do all 6 laps. Tried to entertain myself by pushing hard on lap 3 and then decided to change tyres so I can have a shot at improving my fastest lap time on the last lap. Messed up my pitstop instead by putting too much fuel in, losing a lot of time, dropping behind Erling and then spinning off and getting stuck at T4 on cold tyres. The car was handling really weird at that moment and I couldn't figure out why.
Even though I was about 22 seconds behind now, I knew Erling was going to struggle with his worn out tyres, so I just pushed as much as possible and was only 6 seconds behind when we started the last lap. He was obviously having grip issues as he kept missing his braking points and apexes, so I just waited for the right moment to go around him. I think if Erling could somehow just keep the ideal line and cover all gaps, it might have been impossible to overtake him, even with that pace differential.
Congrats to all who took part and survived, that on its own is quite an achievement with this car/track combo!
I was hoping more people would join this one, for even if it was very challenging, it was also an exciting experience trying to manage all that power around such a narrow track. I hope we drive it again some time soon and I second Dan's request to make a full championship with the car!