Westwood - 29th of February - Round3

[Olaf Lehmann]

track.ini with wider grid, visible starting flag for the polsitter too and more space between pitstalls:
http://race.eolc.de/Olaf_Lehmann/trackiniWESTWOOD.zip

[André Jahren]

The server is updated

[André Jahren]

Qual
A really good qualifying session, with a solid new PB.

Race
A good start and I managed to hold off Dag in to turn 1.

Then already in turn 3 I saw Dag spinn out from his second place.

Also this time I went for a non-stopper. And it paid off well.

Congratulations to John and Bjørn for joining me at the podium.

[snafu]

I had a much better night than I expected. Lead up to the race wasn't ideal as I'm having some building work done on my house so days have been spent surrounded by loads of mess and evenings vacuuming it all up ready for the following day's work.

Qualy was some way off my PB so lined up 4th on the grid, but it would have needed an unlikely PB to steal 3rd spot from Bjorn, so I was happy enough.

Last time we raced here I took out a number of drivers at T1 (All my own fault, grovelling apologies). Tonight I made sure to stay in lane and not attempt any "Banzi" moves.

After Dag spun on lap 1 the 1st part of the race was spent trying to harass Bjorn and we slowly managed to gap Olaf while keeping Andre in sight. It took until sometime around lap 22 but finally Bjorn spun into T1 and I was through. I had decided on a 1 stop race, how some of you guys keep the tyres working for a full race is beyond me. It's way beyond my skill level. Pitted on lap 24 for tyres and fuel which dropped me back to 5th behind Rainer, Bjorn also pitted a few laps later so up to 4th and also passed Rainer so back to 3rd and chasing Olaf. I was able to make use of my new rubber and put Olaf under a lot of pressure but he was having none of it and defended well. Eventually I passed him on the run down to the hairpin when he struggled with traction exiting turn 3B?? and I passed over Deer's Leap. Wth clear air in front of me I was able to extend away from Olaf and consolidate my 2nd place. Andre was long gone by this time.

Then I made a demoralising discovery when I realised I had not put enough fuel in at the pit stop to get me to the end of the race. A quick calculation told me I had enough in hand over Bjorn who had passed Olaf for 3rd so I dived into the pits around lap 48 for a "Splash and Dash" to get me to the end of the race.

On to lap 52 and I had Andre (Who had decided he could lap the entire field) quite close behind. I think my tyres would have kept me in front and he might have been happy just to follow me home but given the advantage over Bjorn I decided to pull over and let him past and save myself a last lap and possible disaster.

So well pleased with this one. Congratulations to Andre for an amazing drive and Bjorn for completing the podium.

Does anyone know why Tim wasn't at tonight's race?

It's a shame our 2 mystery drivers who drop onto the practice server don't join us for race night.

TTFN
John.

[tim]

Guys I´m sorry, but I did not find a minute to drive the last 3 weeks. Not my job is stealing my time, it´s all the other things I´m after.
Will be back next time..

[Olaf Lehmann]

Code: Select all

  PITSTOP LISTING

  27:39	 30.3s	J.Hammonds	Tire change/Refuel
  32:46	 30.1s	B.Finnestad	Tire change/Refuel
  35:15	 53.9s	R.Alpen		Repair/Tire change
  55:08	 17.2s	J.Hammonds	Refuel

You said it, John. I had a lot of pressure from someone behind me and my tyres were very slippery. I had never looked at the laps on the calendar until race day. I reckoned we would do about 58 laps. So my plan was: one stop strategy as usual. But when I saw yesterday afternoon that we were only doing 54 laps, I decided to switch to a zero-stop strategy, which was probably the right decision. After all, I was in 3rd place for a long time.
Björn had to go after a microsleep. I thought I'd missed the braking point before Marshall's hairpin and hit the brakes hard. Then I realised that I was still well before the braking point and released the brakes - but for too long. In the end, I ended up in the dirt next to the bend...

The stream turned out great. My compliments to the director. But above all to all the drivers. Exciting battles at a high level almost the whole time - right up to the last place. Except for André, who was once again too fast and therefore hardly in the picture.
Thanks to everyone for the great race!

@André: Seb is missing a point in the standings.

[Bjørn Finnestad]

Grats André and John! It was a good race.

Testing: The Ferrari on the default setup with mostly the usual changes I could drive better than I have ever done before on this technically demanding track. But the stability was not good enough for races. I tried many changes to get rid of oversteer when the tires get hot and the tendency to oscillate sideways rotation. Succeeded with a very good setup in the end.

Qual: Couldn't have gone better for me, improvement on most laps (until I spun).

Race: I would not have thought that I came out so well from the start. Because of Dag's spin, I had 21 or so nice and constant laps behind André, and I had John in my mirrors. André pulled away but was within the field of vision before I made a spin in the dosed turn. In the following laps, rear tires got more slippery, and I had problems but continued to the planned pit stop. I lost the pit stall and chose to do one more lap instead. Lost positions on that, but basically, I had pushed hard and steadily throughout the first part of the race. At the end of the race, I slowly caught up to Olaf's Ferrari. A few laps to go, Olaf missed a bit on braking which enabled me to come up to third place.

Dag did a good job of moving up in the field after his first lap, too bad he didn't make it to the finish line. Otherwise too, very well driven by everyone.


Thanks to everyone for the race, administration, and programming. See you next

[André Jahren]

The stream turned out great. My compliments to the director. But above all to all the drivers. Exciting battles at a high level almost the whole time - right up to the last place. Except for André, who was once again too fast and therefore hardly in the picture.
Thanks to everyone for the great race!

@André: Seb is missing a point in the standings.

A big thanks to you Olaf for our great Live race director

Seb's score is corrected.

[snafu]

A big thanks to you Olaf for our great Live race director

Fully agree, Westwood was an excellent stream catching almost all of the battles throughout the race.

TTFN
John.