Will miss this one. It's my yearly holiday time  .
No trip planned, but unavailable on 29.05. & 12.06.

Have fun.

 

I should be there, so it might be a chance to taste some champagne Tony?

I'm in

Results and replay now posted.

Yep, exactly that, the whole race was going to be run at a safe pace to then not have to stop. I also was keeping an eye on the tires, as the Merc did use them quite hard when pushing on the quick laps. I thought you had figured me out, but couldn't really see how you could get past as I think the Merc has a bit more straight-line speed than the M3.

I had to pit at the halfway point Clive, for fuel and my tyres were shot.

Yep, it did require some saving for sure. My run in quali was on full tanks, so it was possible to run 45s in the race, which I was comfortably going slower than. My full tank pace from quali was giving me 28.3 laps, running 4-5 seconds a lap slower than that for any length of time would mean the fuel would be sipped....

@Clive, the setup was with a balanced fuel load, yes. As to how to save that amount of fuel, well I started with not revving out anywhere, the Merc goes to 11k revs or something, and I short shifted the whole race. I was also doing a fair amount of rolling into the bends having been on the brakes earlier and softer, downshifting later than if I was pushing on, and not taking full throttle out of the hairpins. All this meant that when I discoed I was showing 20 laps of fuel in XD, so pretty confident I could have saved enough to do the run. Ultimately, keeping corner speed high is a crucial component of fuel saving around places like Monaco I think, and there are many corners here don't forget, as it takes less throttle to then get back up to speed. Stop/start progress will cost fuel. Balancing act on the tires, as you keep pushing them on the way into the bends, but if not stressing them with lots of right foot that does help.

The only question I had was whether I could keep Erling off me, but realistically getting past at Monaco is nigh on impossible, so I believed if I could get track position from the start I should be able to place the car in a manner making it at least very difficult. I could see how hard Erling was trying to generate some kind of opportunity by the little nibbles at the wall, the exit of St.Devote being a favourite for his M3, but my car had enough to create a gap when I needed. The back end of the race would have been very interesting had it been tight on fuel, that is for sure.