Very good race for me. I'd felt quite comfortable Monday and had done a couple of 42s on low fuel, but in official practice I just couldn't get the car how I wanted it and was really struggling. Was still nowhere in qualifying so I went back to an earlier setup and made a small tweak, and presto chango slapped a 43 dead in to take 4th place in the dying seconds.
Had to defend a bit on the first lap or two until I got a tiny gap open up behind, and carried on attacking Mike for another lap or two as the front two broke away, until I made a little mistake and Mike got a little gap and was able to just drive away slowly. Then Dan blew his engine and that promoted me to third, and we all held station until the stops.
I didn't plan to change tyres, so I was leaving my stop as late as possible to avoid the penalty of carrying excess weight around. Mike and Paul both stopped a lap or two earlier which temporarily gave me the lead, and my stopped went perfectly, with two lapped cars exiting their boxes just as I came in to give me a clear run into my stall.
I guessed Mike would not change tyres and Paul would, and sure enough I came out just behind Mike and just ahead of Paul.
I managed to keep Paul behind for a few laps but on worn rubber I was fighting a losing battle, and after a hairy mistake-filled run through Maggots/Becketts he got a big run on me out of Chapel and I pulled left on Hangar Straight rather than risk a fight I'd most likely lose into Stowe. A few laps later he pulled a great move on Mike into Priory and made it stick out of Brooklands and we were back in 'natural order'.
The last half a dozen laps were interesting (in the Chinese curse sense) as the tyres passed some sort of threshold and the grip got dramatically worse. I could see Darren was catching me hand over fist, and wished I
had changed tyres, but I managed to find the right balance between preserving what was left of the rubber and not haemorrhaging so much time that he could catch me before the flag.
Bottom rung of the podium was a great result, probably better than I deserved. My only real disappointment was that my setup didn't allow me to do doughnuts.
200 laps of practice without a glitch then blow the engine on lap 5 or something stupid !!
....Was shaping up to be a good one .
(changing down at T1 I think)
Yeah; I noticed in practice that I was perilously close to bouncing off the limiter downshifting in T1 and forced myself to delay the shift to avoid engine problems. I think Ken must've been downshifting early too as he lost a place on the final lap with his car smoking heavily.
Then was a bit lonely for a while, until I couldn't brake anymore, wheels were locking up everywhere. Moved the BB from 55 to 50 and that sorted that out till I pitted at half distance to get on some new rubber and add another 9.9 gallons.
55?!
No wonder you were locking up! Apparently in real life they run them with <50% front bias... I think I ended up on 50%.
Sorry chaps the import process has defeated me, awaiting help/instruction.
I'm Googling for GreaseMonkey script update problems right now... I spent 20 minutes fixing it on my games box last night.
