Round 2 - Gran Premio Tio Pepe de España [Feb 7th]

Negotiations with Mr Osella will start tomorrow at 20h00.

Qualifying was decent...not great.
Thanks a lot David Sabre for the setup.
Some tweaks and the car ran!

Good start - scared to push.
Track was filled up nicely everywhere.

Was following Gabriele. He struggled at first but got things unter control and pulled away.

Spun on lap 20ish because I didn't pay attention at the end of the first hairpin and was briefly on the gravel.

Jules Bouchard, David Sabre and Bruno Chacon closed a 8 second gap.

On lap 24 (?) my teammate tried to overtake on the main straight and was caught out by my different gearing and clipped my rear slightly and lost momentum.
I am sorry for you *thumbs down*

Jules was giving me an unsheduled colonoscopy for 3 laps but couldn't get past me.
Bruno Chacon - who had horrible luck at the start - saw a chance at lap 27 into T1 and tried to take Jules.
It ended in a dive bomb, passing Jules, and clipping and spining me as I was still ahead of both of them.

Bruno. You dirty man. You dirty dirty old man .

Since I was out of the points I made a short smoke break on lap 44.

I pumped up the boost a little and had some fun. On half a tank and fresh tyres i did three mid 30's laps.
After that it was back to lower boost and letting faster cars go past me.

P 10 in the end. Had a durable engine twice now. Hope it stays that way.
I also hope for car upgrades.
Many good car upgrades. A lot of them.

Brian - impressive Q pace with that BMW Engine.
Gratz all finishers. Interesting replay.
Cool tactics - some unfortunate misshaps.

On to Imola. Ill be on 0-2 wings hahahaha

Great broadcast guys, top notch as always. A special mention for Ryan on his ISO commentating debut. You fitted in brilliantly, well done mate.

I guess because i beneffited from it, i am in a unique position to comment on that. I think one of the reasons why people are displeased is the fact that that tactic is doomed to failure. You see, when people are behind you, you are forcing them to run a slower pace than they are capable of. This means they are saving fuel all the time, while you are not, because you are opening the road for them so to speak. You can try to slow down so that you save fuel too, but then you will get even more people behind you, and they will be saving even more fuel. The net results of this is that when you stop or they stop, they can turn their boost up and overtake you on strategy, or even if you manage to hold them up to those last 20 laps, they will by then have saved so much that they can run full boost full bore all the time, and passing you will be a foregone conclusion sooner or later. And the more people are stuck behind you, more places you will lose.

This was perfectly demonstrated by Anders, because once he had clean road ahead, he could run his pace, and use the fuel he saved behind you to catch me. Had everybody stayed on the road, after you stopped for tires, you would have lost 4 or 5 places, with the potential to lose even more before race end. You would be better off trying to maximize your pace, and maybe following someone, rather than trying to lead all the time, or enganging in pointless fights so early in the race.


As for my race, well, i had clear air its true, and if not for fuel, i could have just gone all out for a bigger gap, but i had fuel to manage, and i am glad i did, because i ended up with 1 liter at the end. The car was great with a full tank, but not so great with an empty, and getting the hard tires was really the wrong choice, because altough they didnt fade, they would not last the distance, and they were too conservative for the last part of the race too.

But well all in all, i am happy i bounced back from Brazil , and almost made a re enactment of the real race, but this time with a ferrari as the other car.

I do appreciate your comments and I do understand what your saying. I completely agree with what you say. Just to add onto this, I am and was fully aware of knowing when to acknowledge letting someone through for me to gain a benefit. But my stance still stands. If the resulting benefit of letting the guys go would benefit my pace then I would have done in an instance. But as I said my pace was extremely strong 20, perhaps 15 laps to go. I was running at max pace, there was nothing to gain from letting anyone through so easily. Had I off done so then the result for me would be you guys would have been 30 seconds up the road for me to catch when I was competitive. Defending so hard would lessen the gap I would have needed to bring myself in play. 

I just want to make that very clear as to why my tactic was to defend. Most occasions racing so hard early on is pointless but this was on a driver to driver basis and on mine this wasn’t the case. 

I know a few say I need a different tactic but if I didn’t completely have a moment of over eagerness and ruin mine and Jaques’s race I believe I could have proved my tactic to be true. I don’t want anybody to think I’m clueless as to what anybody is saying or for anybody to think I’m just a hot headed idiot, I appreciate the advice from the guys who have given me it I know the advice given to me is to help in terms of what’s more useful in the stages of the race.

I do really appreciate the words however, I have taken a lot on board, just wanted to make it clear as to why I was so all out in the early stages. Imola is a different story and I doubt I’ll be even remotely close to using that tactic.

Congrats on the race win though, and to Anders and Miller for second and third.

As I said in the broadcast, what you do is within the rules so nothing wrong there (Although in the end is like playing soccer in "catenaccio" style).

But this is the second time in a row that it backfires badly, and I guess focusing on "if this or that had worked" is not the best way to get the whole picture right. You know, we have a saying here that goes like: "If my aunt had beard and balls ... then it would not be my aunt, it would be my uncle"

Glad you enjoyed it and any feedback that you or anyone else has, feel free to post on this thread or send me a PM 

Had good fun with Jason and Alberto who were good fun to commentate with. Looking forward to the next round at Imola.

Fantastic Race to be a part of.

Flubbed the start when I inadvertently pulled second gear as I dumped the clutch to pull away then got a box of neutrals when I tried to go back to 1st, ended up running 10th after that.


Followed on the back of the train for a while, saved a few laps worth of fuel there, that came in handy later.

Had a spin at the back hairpin which didn't help, thankfully the tires can survive a spin turn to get going again.

Ran on as best I could for the next 50 laps or so and after other fell out I found myself in 4th going into the last few laps, seeing Juha was slowing and seeing the 3 spare laps I had, the boost and revs went up for the last 3 laps, when Juha missed a gear out of the last corner I made the pass that Mansell didn't in 86 to come home third 

Someone at Honda clearly did their sums as the engine blew trundling in on the cooldown lap.

Thanks for a great race to everyone and well done to Wilks for both the win and for the Qualy runs, watching that Lotus looked like speed up film in places, awesome to watch.

Looking forward to Imola, with how competitive the field is this season it should be a good one.