07-11-2017, 12:35 PM
I practiced a bit in the week leading up to the race and got into the low 3:11s. That netted me a 6th in qualifying, starting next to my team mate.
I survived the start and got into a rhythm in 5th place, where the distance to the front and the back slowly increased. So far so good. I decided to pit early after lap three to not get in the way of everyone else. Unfortunately, I entered the pits a bit too fast, so I got a penalty. Being a good citizen (and I could only blame myself for that), I requested another pitstop to serve the penalty and entered the pits again after lap 4.
And right there my downfall started. The pitcrew got busy to fill my tank up again and change my tires again. Needless to say, I lost another minute in the pits and still did not get my penalty cleared. Got going again with about 1000 liters in my tank and quite upset. Consequently, I binned it at Masta kink and that was that.
In race 2, I started form the absolute back (I still dont grasp the rules of reshuffling, but hey), so I tried to avoid the usual carnage in the first lap. I avoided the crashes and hayballs at Radillion and Malmedy, but at Masta I arrived at a big ball of smoke and crashed into some road furniture while avoiding other cars. My drive was a severely bent, but I could still hold it on track. So I limped back to the pits veeeryy sloooowly. I did run a bit wide at La Source (car would not brake in a straight line), which got me a F***ING penalty because of track limits(!). Entering the pits, this time it did serve the penalty correctly. But this time, I would rather have my car repaired! So after the stop / go I left the pits and had to limp around the track again, to finally end up waiting just under 500 seconds for the repairs. So I took a dump, serviced my cat and got going again, a few laps down and bringing it finally home in 7th place.
I have to repeat myself, I think this track not suited for online racing. I see the challenge of getting good lap times and finding a few mphs out of Masta by going high risk. But having other people around you, having those hayballs getting in the way and having pit rules straight out of mystery land really kills it for me. In all of my sim racing I barely finished a race on that track, and most of the time I could not blame myself.
I never had less fun on any track and if you invest even a few hours in training and setup, its always for nothing and simply a waste of time. So I urge to either drop that track from the schedule, make it a time trial or at least remove the hayballs and have a proper pitlane. The latter would be hard I guess and result in a modified track. So just drop it. Take Spa88 for christ sake, and have a proper race! (Yeah I know, these cars raced on the old Spa in '70, but being absolutely historically correct is not the goal here. And they did have guard rails instead of hayballs in 1970)
I survived the start and got into a rhythm in 5th place, where the distance to the front and the back slowly increased. So far so good. I decided to pit early after lap three to not get in the way of everyone else. Unfortunately, I entered the pits a bit too fast, so I got a penalty. Being a good citizen (and I could only blame myself for that), I requested another pitstop to serve the penalty and entered the pits again after lap 4.
And right there my downfall started. The pitcrew got busy to fill my tank up again and change my tires again. Needless to say, I lost another minute in the pits and still did not get my penalty cleared. Got going again with about 1000 liters in my tank and quite upset. Consequently, I binned it at Masta kink and that was that.
In race 2, I started form the absolute back (I still dont grasp the rules of reshuffling, but hey), so I tried to avoid the usual carnage in the first lap. I avoided the crashes and hayballs at Radillion and Malmedy, but at Masta I arrived at a big ball of smoke and crashed into some road furniture while avoiding other cars. My drive was a severely bent, but I could still hold it on track. So I limped back to the pits veeeryy sloooowly. I did run a bit wide at La Source (car would not brake in a straight line), which got me a F***ING penalty because of track limits(!). Entering the pits, this time it did serve the penalty correctly. But this time, I would rather have my car repaired! So after the stop / go I left the pits and had to limp around the track again, to finally end up waiting just under 500 seconds for the repairs. So I took a dump, serviced my cat and got going again, a few laps down and bringing it finally home in 7th place.
I have to repeat myself, I think this track not suited for online racing. I see the challenge of getting good lap times and finding a few mphs out of Masta by going high risk. But having other people around you, having those hayballs getting in the way and having pit rules straight out of mystery land really kills it for me. In all of my sim racing I barely finished a race on that track, and most of the time I could not blame myself.
I never had less fun on any track and if you invest even a few hours in training and setup, its always for nothing and simply a waste of time. So I urge to either drop that track from the schedule, make it a time trial or at least remove the hayballs and have a proper pitlane. The latter would be hard I guess and result in a modified track. So just drop it. Take Spa88 for christ sake, and have a proper race! (Yeah I know, these cars raced on the old Spa in '70, but being absolutely historically correct is not the goal here. And they did have guard rails instead of hayballs in 1970)