1976 F1 Season - Round 1 Brasil REPORTS

[Ricknau]

Great to see such a full grid! Hope we can maintain that. For me, I qualified 16th and finished 9th. Rather pleased with myself in getting through a one hour race without a mistake. Had a few good battles. Toward the end Fergy was tailing me pretty close and had few chances. I tried to keep it clean, as did he. Then he fell back so I suppose he had an off. My car got very wobbly for the last 10 or 12 laps as the tires went out. Had to fight to keep it straight even just going down the straights with no maneuvers. And braking was real tough. But I imagine it was the same for everybody that did no tire change.

[edwin]

The team gave me a great car in which i had great confidence..........but unfortunately disaster struck in 5th lap with a huuuuuuuuuuuge freeze in turn 5 from which my computer never recovered so i had to hard stop and left. I hope i didn't crash somebody else under my freeze. better luck next time i hope. luckily my Teamie kept team honors high and finished. Well done [USER=581]@Bruce[/USER]

[Fergy]

Great turn out, really pleased. Missed the start, probably still sleeping. Sorry again Tobias. Had some nice little battles working my way back from 21st to 11th. Looking forward to Rd 2.

[deecee52]

I am not particularly enamoured with the Maclaren , for me it has no” feel” about it , playing with the myriad adjustments didnt impart any feel for me they only raised or lowered laptimes and sometimes seemed totally illogical leaving me baffled .

What I did discover was the tyre temps were always high no matter what pressure you used , once they hit 70deg they slid , this compromised turn in and braking , so I decided to try and get a handle on this rather than go for outright speed , I was hoping it would pay off later in the race .



Got a good start but got hit on the turn in to the first corner ,this threw me into a half spin and onto the grass , that cost me a few places , rejoined behind Cookie and Dan Tani , fortunately for me Dan threw himself off at the next corner so that was a place back for me . Cookie was now battling with Chris so I joined in , had good fun for a lap but then Chris spun across the front of me at Lago and I had no chance to avoid as I was right on his tail so I hit him (sorry Chris) , I had no damage so chased after Cookie .

Had a good battle with Cookie who is never the easiest to pass , managed to get passed him into Lago but he repassed as I went a bit wide , in the mean time Dan B was looming large as we slowed each other down, could see Cookie struggling and locking brakes into turn one so drafted him up the main straight and took a lunge and got past .

Andi was 8 secs up the road from me but I couldnt make any impression on him , then around half distance he disappeared and it was Ed 8 secs in front of me , I very slowly started to eat away at his lead , I presumed he was struggling with tyres as mine were now feeling like hexagons with lots of vibration , on lap 37 he spun out at Lago so I got 4th , Gorka was 20 secs up the road so I new I would go no further , finished 4th very sweaty and with aching wrists PHEW!!!

[gorgias1976]

I ended fifth in qualifying, what gave me confidence to match my best expectations which were trying to end in the top 5 in the race.

At the start I went through the right side of turn 1. I saw some cars touch on the left so I went through turn 2 in third place behing Rik and Ed.
I was for several laps having JP behind until he passed me when dealing with traffic around lap 8 or so. Then I kept around 1-2 seconds behind, sometimes closer sometimes farther.
Around half race distance, a black misile appeared in the mirrors. It was Rik who had finally pitted for fresher tires. I didn't want to lose much time to JP but I got a couple of moments with my rear tires trying not to block Rik and that increased that gap to 6 sec.
10 laps to the end I decided to push hard and see if tires could stand it (as I had been reasonably cautious with them the whole race). I found myself quite comfortable at that pace as the rear of the car was becoming more stable that it had been the whole race as the cas was getting lighter and lighter. I was able to close the gap to JP, finally finishing 3rd just 0.8sec behind (what happened to Ed who started second behind Rik?).

[bullwinkle]

Well I was pretty happy in practice but in qual everyone got faster but me ended 19 I think. Had a good race ( wow one hour is long for an old man) sorry to John and Nikos who I bumped underestimating brake zone and it cost me maybe a 12th but ended 15th. I had one other mix up with I think Hang on when I tried to go inside him but may have been to aggressive sorry for that. I try very hard not to cause issues so sorry to all.

[Edvvc]

This weekend has been tough since I seem to have contracted some sort of general illness that comes and goes. It was bad for most of Sunday but some rest and paracetamol seemed to help and by the race I was feeling better. The plan was to keep it at a comfortable pace and not wear myself out, or my tyres which more or less played out as expected. Got a reasonable start but Hedlund still rocketed away and I never saw him again. Turns 1 and 2 were messy on the opening lap - I was not fully in control and was trying to avoid crashing. After that I gained confidence and hoped that a second place was possible with no stops. Initially it seemed I had the pace on Gorka and J-P, but I must have overheated my tyres and/or hadn't set the car up properly and I spun allowing them through, dropping me to 4th. Then I settled into an easy pace for a while and didn't pay enough attention to who was behind me - of course it was DeeCee! Time to put the hammer down but again I had the same problem and spun, dropping to 5th where I finished.

A very fun race and I look forward to the next. Thank you all for making it happen!

On the subject of flatspots and vibration - I suffer a lot from this so turned down force feedback for this race and broke extra carefully which seemed to avoid the problem. When it's bad I find the steering wheel is yanked at high speed which doesn't seem realistic - or is it? I could understand a vibration which increases with speed - and this happens sometimes - but other times it's like a rogue hand on the wheel occasionally pulling it left and right randomly with a force that increases with speed.

[myself9]

I had it in my head that the race was NEXT weekend. I started a new job and have to travel, so my head's been a bit of a mess.
So Saturday night I went to a concert and drank a bunch of pints, then spent all of Sunday in bed with a nasty hangover.
I'm too old for that crap

Very sad and disappointed I missed the race.

[Hedlund]

Felt great to be back! Really fun race because of the size of the grid, different strategies and different cars. Initially, I was hoping that I could still be top 5 or something, but turned out I had not lost any pace. In the quali I cut off a half second from my previously personal best.. I have no idea how I managed to do that but probably because I've been running longer stints mostly. This time I took fuel for 7-8 laps and I did 5 push laps in a row. Seemed like the tires were just getting faster and faster.

The race was interesting because of the uncertainty with the different strategies. My start was good so I was not threatened in the first corners. So I pulled away instantly and quickly realised that the cars behind wouldn't pit. I pushed as hard as I could but without stressing the rear tires and knew I needed a big gap because pitstop is ~24 seconds. I think I had ~26 seconds when I dived into the pits. Only J-P and Gorka passed me and they were just a few seconds up the road. So at this point I was quite certain I would manage to get the win as long as I stayed calm. So I catched them quickly but took me one lap to get past Gorka. Then it was much harder to get past J-P because he got slipstreams on the start/finish straight from lapped cars every time But eventually I managed to take the lead and from there on I made no mistakes. Had loads of lapped cars all the time but no problems at all. Good work with the blue flag guys! I was really sweaty after the race... It wasn't exactly easy to get the lead back after my pitstop.

Thanks for hosting. It was really fun. Everything worked flawlessly for me. Feel sorry for my old teamie Edwin tho... Better luck next time!

[J-P SImard]

On my side I had a mean start, my front wing has also touched another car without me to do anything, I'm sorry for that.

I did not have good qualifying rounds, I knew that in the race I had to hang on to the guys in front of me and I was able to get behind Gorka by waiting for an opportunity that will come when he had a confusion with a car a lap behind.

Then I quickly saw that it would be nothing to push too much, Hedlund was certainly on a stop with this pace but I did not know what would happen after his pitstop or if he would come out in front of or behind me. I knew very quickly that I did not have the right strategy when after his stop I saw him catch me quickly and overtake me without me really being able to defend myself, my tires were really too worn out at this stage of the race. Congratulations to him he did what it took to win, I take note of it ;-).

Thanks to the admins and their work and especially Gorka for the beautiful fight again. You see me for a few years doing some running here and there with you but I think I'm doing this championship in full.

I have rarely had so much fun.

[edwin]

Feel sorry for my old teamie Edwin tho... Better luck next time!

Good to see you back here exteamie, i somehow knew you wouldn't have lost pace.

[edwin]

[USER=582]@Edvvc[/USER] i know what you mean with the flatspot feeling, unfortunately it seems to be related to hardware not being fast enough. In this case the wheel you use. had long discussions with devs about this but it seems to be difficult to get right on all the hardware available. this being said without even knowing what wheel you use but in my case it never felt right until i've got my today's wheel (small mige with simucube aka DD)

[sdancourt]

Bad begining for Ecurie Peruvien, big setup problems and a bad decision on my side at the begining of the race. Thought lost front left wheel in a crash click to left race just to realize all four wheel were in place. Very fast pace for us. Working on it.

[Ricknau]

When it's bad I find the steering wheel is yanked at high speed which doesn't seem realistic - or is it? I could understand a vibration which increases with speed - and this happens sometimes - but other times it's like a rogue hand on the wheel occasionally pulling it left and right randomly with a force that increases with speed.

Yep. I had this big-time. To anyone behind me, I was not driving erratically to block or impede you. This rogue hand was trying to make me crash. I'll definitely take better care of my tires next time.

[1959nikos]

Good to see you back here exteamie, i somehow knew you wouldn't have lost pace.

I second to that, glad to have you back Sweede guy