Round 6 - XVIII Großer Preis von Österreich [Mar 26th]

Now the whole thing makes a lot more sense than before. Maybe it is Spielberg-specific, I need to do some more testing, but that was the first time this season, I was in charge of the car, could place the car where I wanted it to be (as long as I kept it in its window), could control slip angles and reproduce lap times. Not neccessarily quicker in relation to the rest of the field, but I was no longer at the mercy of where on the harmonic oscillation I was at the moment. At least here at the Österreichring.

16th in Q, was about 8/10th short of my personal best, down in 16th. The car just didn't feel like on Friday, and I went into the qualifying pretty much cold. I had a 2 hour nap until 10 minutes before I joined the server, for some reason I'm feeling somewhat exhausted all weekend long. Else I knew, tire management was of importance and put quite some thought in it, though what you cook up before the race is often quickly dated once the lights go green. I lost a position on the start as I was locked up behind another car, but soon had my position back. For the rest of my race, I always had a Wattman near me, first Simon, whom I had to pass twice, after doing an unneccessary 360, later David, whom I chased for a few laps, but unfortunately, the race was two laps to long for my tires, so I had to let him run. The rest of my gained positions was due to other people's retirements. Pretty early on I hit the brakes to late for Dr. Tirok, got a bit surprised in Simon's draft, that didn't help either. 11th. That's okay, about where I expected to end up.

Gosh, that was a fun!

First, thank you to the admins for the restart when internet dropped out on me for a minute just as the first formation lap was about to start. 

As for the race, I missed my first two shifts off the line (rusty!) and gave up a handful of positions by the first corner. Once tires were up to temperature, this was followed by a nice scrap with Dave Miller, a wide moment/brief wall-ride in the Bosch Kurve that lost me a few seconds, then another nice scrap with Dave. From there, I was just getting on the tail of Ray Riddall when my long-suffering and previously snapped/"repaired" H shifter came apart, necessitating a switch to the old DIY sequential I made years ago for HSO CART98 and haven't really used since. A few laps of occasional missed shifts later, my pace was back in line to start making ground on Ray again. Unfortunately, he spun in the Bosch Kurve and I, hoping I could avoid a seemingly outward-going spin by tightening my line, hit his rear. Sorry for that, Ray! Thankfully we were both able to continue to the end but my race from there was pretty quiet, earning P6 more from avoiding the grass and keeping it pointed in the right direction than from real pace.