Mexityre 21st March Round 4

[Olaf Lehmann]

Result: https://f1historicesports.com/GPL/mexic ... index.html

Code: Select all

  PITSTOP LISTING

  12:20	 31.6s	D.Johnsen	Repair
  12:56	 71.1s	R.Alpen		Repair/Refuel
  15:00	 44.7s	 .tagomago	Repair
  27:36	 47.3s	O.Lehmann	Repair/Tire change/Refuel
  29:46	 34.7s	B.Finnestad	Tire change/Refuel
  36:37	 31.7s	J.Hammonds	Tire change/Refuel
  36:56	 32.4s	T.Roedl		Tire change/Refuel
  41:38	 53.5s	O.Lehmann	Repair
1:00:22	 34.6s	 .tagomago	Repair

A lot to do for the mechanics it seems...

[tim]

..totally unprepared but with a lot of passion. Thx guys, thx Olaf -you were really fast for so many laps!

[Bjørn Finnestad]

Grats André for win, John, and Tim! Also, Seb for a good 4th.

The start was poor from a narrow grid position and lost many positions. Better that than causing a start crash anyway. Continued a few regular laps warming up the tyres.

On lap 5, I unexpectedly spun into the first left turn of the Esses and continued off the track. Had to drive a bit backwards to get to the track. Got a job trying to catch up and had to push to keep up but came up behind Tago in round 7. Got an opportunity out of Peralta (last corner).
I continued to chase Seb, in lap 9 I also had an opportunity and passed on the straight in lap 10 before turn 1. After that, had to give everything I had to make a gap. Dag was closer behind than I thought with an impressive overtake in Turn 1 and thus came behind me. At first, I thought it was Seb behind. On lap 10 I got a spin out of the hairpin turn so I came across right in front of Dag but had room to turn back. Good reaction from Dag who was able to take an evasive manoeuvre and there was no damage.

Lap 12, Dag got the right rear wheel on the grass at the exit of the last corner before the back straight which took the Cooper over an embankment and had to retire. Lap 13, I scrubbed the railing on the exit of Peralta. Round 15, worse; I scrubbed the guardrail at the end of turn 1. Then I spun in the hairpin. Made an early pit stop. Round 21, again I scrubbed the guardrail at the end of turn 1 and made a cut over the grass. Had to take a penalty for that in the pit.

Lap 23, Rainer blew the engine in the entrance to Peralta which must have locked the rear wheels and resulted in a collision with the guardrail. Olaf could not avoid the collision either.

This version of Mexico is more realistic than being able to cut so much in some of the turns, fun and demanding at the same time. I did not get the setup quite as I wanted. The tire wear occurred only on the rear wheels too.

A lot happened in this race, but it felt like driving on ice. I should have repaired the car after lap 15 but chose to drive to the finish. This time fifth place was like a victory for me. It surprised me to have done such good laps because I felt more behind.


Thanks to everyone for the race. See you at Riverside

[snafu]

If there is one thing I can take away from Mexityre it's the fact I either need to find a lot more speed or I need to learn how to manage my tyres.

I ran a number of race simulations leading up to this one both with 1 stop and also running full race with no stops. No stops always proved to be the fastest but destroying the car in the final 6 laps or so was always a high probability as I found the tyres "Fell off a cliff" after about 26 laps and my limited talent can't recognise the edge of adhesion like Dag, Tim, Andre and others.

I was disappointed with qualifying as I had gone sub 1:50.5 a few times in offline practice but it would have only elevated me 1 place so I can't complain.

I got an unbelievable start passing Bjorn, Andre and Dag on the run down to T1 and was 1st as we exited the T1/T2 combination. I knew as soon as I started to gap those behind there were a lot of flag to flag runners following and I knew at that point I was in trouble. So I pushed as hard as I dared knowing I would need in excess of a 25 seconds lead to have any chance of a fighting chance after my pit stop for tyres and fuel. I fell way short of that by about 10 seconds and left the pits over 20 seconds adrift of Andre's BRM. I did start to push but it quickly became apparent Andre was driving a very smooth race and knew exactly what was needed from him, so I instead started to monitor Tim who was a similar distance behind and matching my lap times. I could see the gap to Andre coming down painfully slowly but the gap to Tim was remaining constant. So I had already capitulated 1st place to Andre with 10 or so laps to go and concentrated on making sure I didn't lose 2nd because of some stupid mistake.

Congratulations to Andre for another amazing drive and also Tim for joining us on the podium.

Commiserations to the DNF's, especially Dag who was unbelievably fast in qualifying and I'm sure would have been a contender at the end if he had had a clean race.

Also a shout out to Seb who had a really clean race from what I saw watching the replay.

TTFN
John.