Round 8 - Grand Prix International 1000 kms [Nov 19th]

There are two reasons why you've lost the seat.

You've missed three races. The maximum for this series is two.

The ruling after the Fuji race has you excluded from taking part in the remainder of the season:

First of all, my apologies to Luciano for that most unfortunate move of mine which ended your race. I just saw Cezariusz in my mirrors and let him past, and never realised you were in our vicinity, as well, until you ran into my car. AMS' spotter being sometimes a bis slow in tight traffic didn't help in the situation, too, but still, it's my job to make sure I'm clear of traffic when changing lanes.

Else, it was in parts an enjoyable race, just the car wasn't entirely up to the job. I had a pretty busy week, helping organising an event for yesterday afternoon. Someone could have told me earlier that honourable office means more work than honour! Anyways, basically, I got a little more than an hour set up my car. But drawing from earlier experiences, I quickly had a well balanced, really nice handling car. But with a bit more time, I'd probably gotten behind my car was geared all way wrong. Initially, I had the idea to spend a bit more time sorting things out before the race, but first, cleaning up the place of yesterdays event took longer than anticipated, and then, 15 minutes home, work called and asked me to rush to the pharmacy and get some (legal!) morphines. That drawback of living 3 minutes away from work. Not completely out of the world, but some 15 to 20 minutes in one direction. That was my practice time. And my qualifying.

Anyways, I gave the car some laps to get used to car and track, tire stacks never happened to be a problem to me, I slightly adjusted tire pressures, and off the race went. And there I was, with a beautiful handling car, slow as a turd and with a serious fuel problem. I wrestled with the Nimrods and one or two Porsches at the end of the field, and once I had gotten into my position by lap 15, the next cars were like 40 seconds away from me and much quicker, while I was already well beyond my fuel allocation. Yuk! Second gear was to short and third to long for Becketts and Woodcote, and turning up boost, the straights happened to be to long for my revband above .80. Not a good precondition to be competitive. And a smallish miscommunication with one Porsche led to a spin for both of us during the first lapping manouvres. D'oh! Cost me all I gained up to that point, but thankfully apparently no damage, except some time lost. For half of the race, Jonathan hassled we with the Nimrod, doing Nimrod things as best as he could, keeping within 2 or three seconds for most of the time. The Nimrods are blistering fast down the straights, but on brakes and through the corners, the Porsche is clearly superior. But that doesn't help you, if you can't open a gap in the end. Whenever I was held up by something (usually lapping cars), he was again right behind me. Even a small collision with a spin, running down to Stowe. He just made it past me down the straight, but when he had tohit the brakes, I still wasn't done with acceleration! Got a bit tighter than comfortable on turning in and we swapped some paint samples. Somewhere between lap 50 and 60, taking advantage of some lapping traffic and some quick calculations on my remaining fuel, I turned up the boost a little and finally get rid of him. Shortly before my second stop, I could also get ahold of David in the other Nimrod, and tried catch up Ricardo, but while I was a little quicker, it just wasn't enough, and I had to step back a little during the last stint to get back into my fuel window again. I could shave off some 20 seconds from the gap, but I also was held up late by other cars who had lapped me, but were managing their fuel and a bit in my way. Wouldn't have worked out anyways. And the icing on the cake of a rather rotten race was getting tangled up with Luciano with 4 or 5 laps to go. When I felt that wiggle in the car and saw a hood flying in the mirror, I knew that one wasn't good.

Oh well, I better go to sleep and forget about most of all of this...