I raced last night under my real name Paul Anstey. My alter ego SimMadPaul is indeed mad in fact totally insane.
. So 2 apologise to make, First off I thought the race was on Thursday so I came into the server thought I was all alone saw that the session was near to ending and tried to restart it as I wanted to do a long run. Hadn't noticed Tim was on the server. Thank god he was as I could have really screwed things up for everyone. Which would have made my first race here a real embarrassment and probably my last race here.
Sorry for that one I won't be doing that again. I'll come to the 2nd apology in a bit.
Next embarrassing bit. I was so focused in doing a long stint as I hadn't done one I spent the whole of qualifying trundling around with a high fuel load in total ignorance that everyone else was trying to do their fast laps. At this point I was in total ignorance that the race was today. Jeez real amateur newbie newb. I have by the way been online racing for over 10 years now. I know what I'm doing honestly I do. I did say I was mad.
. So by the time I came in to the pits I had no chance of setting a fast lap on low fuel but amazingly I was 7th probably wouldn't have done much more than that.
Next embarrassing bit. I am used to there being a warmup before the race starts although only in rF2 races. My mind has gone. So I decided to get up stretch my legs. I came back to see that everyone was lining up on the grid and I had 25 seconds to get ready. Mad scramble to get my gloves on and get focused.
So to that 2nd apology. The race. Lap 1 didn't go well. I didn't want to get involved in any racing until my tyres came up to temperature so I was letting a few people through. Stefan being one of them. I gave him enough gap to go through but he went wide after he past me and seemed to slow up. Think he had a car in front of him. I slammed the brakes on and locked them up and slid right underneath him. Stefan span out. I waited for him and gave the place back but by that time we were flat last so I could only give him back 13th or 14th place. Sorry Stefan. Not sure I could've done things differently. It was just one of those things but thought I better wait for you and let you past even if I couldn't give the place back we had before the incident.
Settled down to a good rhythm and started picking off a few cars. Tried to stay behind Stefan and follow him through the field. Apart from the first lap incident I didn't spin the car once. Drifting like mad at certain stages especially towards the end of the first stint but no spinning. Took too much fuel and a new pair of boots at the pit stop and tried in vain to catch the cars ahead. Tim before the stop and Stefan after the stop. Finished the race in 8th after passing a few late stoppers. So almost got back to where I was before lap 1.
These cars are awesome exactly what I like. No downforce. No grip. No brakes. Just what a sportscar should be. Progress in my opinion has killed motorsport. The introduction of downforce was the downfall of the sport. OK to begin with. The 70s, 80s and even the 90s were great but now there is no racing. Just cars going round tracks on rails. DRS in F1 is a great example of how downforce has killed the sport with cars unable to follow cars in front because of dirty air. They needed to introduce an artificial way to allow the cars to overtake. Lets hope the new cars are better. GT3 may have addressed some of the problems by taking off downforce and making the cars less grippy but for me there's nothing like the 50s to the 90s era of motorsport.
Well done to Syd for making the 917 work around here.
I will pick the race where everyone else will be in 917s.
Well done to the other podiums and to everyone who finished and bad luck to those who didn't.
I suspect they won't allow me out of my padded cell for next time but if they do I'll be better prepared. Honest like.
