Superb first outing with the Lambo at BRNO (and first go in the Lambo for about 4 months). I joined with about 10 mins of warmup again, and asked "is anybody on the track" as I always do this when nobody's on the track. Of course there were people on track, I was just that I was at the other BRNO again (the one where nobody is on track). It seems that whenever SimBin fsck me over, I end up at BRNO with no other people, probably a reason why I dislike this track.
Got back with about 1:30 left of Praccy1 and had a quick blast to get used to the car, threw it off too. Dedicated the first 7 minutes of Q1 to getting to know the car in race trim, Did a semi OK laptime too I think. After that I put softs on and did my real qualify lap, did a conservative lap, then threw it off on my really quick one, still got 10th tho, so can't be bad.
Got in the race and lit up my rear tires like I always do. I then got it into my head that I was behind the guy behind me, so I let him through, and bugger, I'm in 11th :-(
Took me ages to get past JonMUK and Bernie Ecclestone. Infact, I can't remember what happened, did they go off/disco or did I overtake I dunno, I can never remember much from races so why the fsck do I write post race reports. Oh yes to brag about what I'm proud of!
EDIT - It appears that JonMUK ended up quite a way infront of me, perhaps he just pulled away and was therefore not a factor, in any case we were close for a long timeObviously realised it was too slow when fozz caught me. Increased my pace a little but still could not hold him and he pulled a great move to pass me. Now this made me angry, Fozz being a nancy n-gt boy and all
Well there you go, it took me an absolute age to catch Sponsored, can't have been more than 0.3 per lap, eventually I got upto him and he just wasn't going to make no mistakes what-so-ever. I pushed him for all I was worth for a shed load of laps but it was no go. In the past I've been strong up the hills when I want to be, mostly I feel because the second one, I'll keep the acc pedal jammed when the slide starts and it just cancels itself, I think this slide scares a lot of people, but we were so even up there that that was impossible too.
Time for something new! I realised yesterday that the first corner, if you arse up the entry, providing you don't make it to the marbles, you don't lose out too badly as you gain on the next straight. So I deliberately half arsed it up, came back and took a super late apex and still managed to catch both curbs and made about 3-4 car lengths up on him down that straight (I'd lost a good 2 ish with my strange line). Got a little bit of drafting and pulled side by side with him into the corner Sponsored seemed to not want to go too wheel to wheel and just slotted in behind me and the place was mine!
After that I had about 7 mins to go and the rear end starts coming around at a place where I didn't tell it too and I know that my rear tires were just destroyed. As shark said afterwards, "The Lambo's tire wear isn't so bad" "It's the way you drive it"
. Anyway it got me this far, and now the pain starts... I thankfully keep all four wheels pointing in roughly the same direction for the rest of the race, mostly by just dialing out the speed (something that I haven't done at BRNO yet successfully, yesterday I was off everywhere in the last 5, so I was nervous). I was to scared to back off going up the hills as well though as I knew I would get caught so it was a real battle to keep it all going. Sponsored had a good look up the inside in the 2nd 2nd gear corner which I just held mine in. In the end I just limped home, counting down the minutes.
I honestly believe that if it had been one more lap I would have lost it, both through stress and tire wear. I've kindof made a speciallity of driving slowly (read tactically) but at BRNO i felt unable (wide track that I don't really know so well), so was forced to just drive non stop, at the pace dictated by other people. After yesterdays race where I started last and fought well to finish in a semi reasonable position, I'm pretty tired now, and I've also learnt that there are some nice elements to this nasty track (the battles).
Fozzmeister
