01-05-2020, 05:13 PM
After a rather disastrous race at Silverstone, I put in some additional effort for Hockenheim. I always quite liked the old circuit layout so was hopeful of being able to extend my championship lead a bit.
Qualifying didn't start off to well when I was disconnected half way through. My internet appeared to have dropped for a minute, argh. When rejoining the qual my car was behaving differently. I had much more understeer and couldn't grasp what was going on. In my final laps I managed to drive around the issues and put myself in 3rd spot. Only when loading my race setup I realised I had actually loaded an older qualifying setup! lol
The race started off well, I jumped from P3 to P1 into the first corner. JP immediately managed to overtake me on the straight again using my slipstream. I figured I'd take him on the next straight again, but it was trickier than I thought and it soon became clear he was on a 2-stop, driving off into the distance. I had put in some effort to make the tyres last half the race distance, and with a gap growing at 1s per lap I was pretty sure I was on a superior strategy. There aren't that many corners on this track to make up the pitstop times...
A bit of hectic start behind though...
I was doing alright until lap 5 when I suddenly saw Daniel in my mirrors. He made a mistake into the stadium though, and then Dave Coyne started chasing me.
The first (small) disaster struck when I was about to lap Ricky. In the final corner he made a mistake sliding outwards and thus I went for the inside to overtake. Unfortunately I think he quickly wanted to get out of the way by moving to the inside. I ran out of road and we bumped into each other. A "Nooooo... Ricky!!!" was heard by my wife downstairs wondering what I was on about... haha.I had some damage according to the HUD, but nothing noticeably influencing the performance, and it only cost a few seconds.
The real disaster struck on lap 12 while Dave was chasing me. I still have no clue what happened when I downshifted for the 3rd chicane. Looking at the replay, my car went from 5th to 4th, and then from 4th directly to 2nd in one shift. I can only imagine my finger twitched on the paddle performing a double downshift, despite the PLR file being set up to prevent accidental double shifts... Ugh... My rear wheel locked up, I spun, took Dave with me who had nowhere to go. I think we came out of that shunt reasonably well, until Stuart came into the chicane and couldn't avoid Dave anymore. I was able to continue but Dave suffered a lot of damage. Such an unfortunate and avoidable accident, and I feel really sorry for what happened.
After JP's first stop I came out just behind, and again with his second stop we were only separated by a few seconds. With the same fuel but more worn out tyres I couldn't do anything to put up a fight. Such a shame, as without the two incidents I think I stood a proper chance of finishing ahead. And maybe I should have tried a bit harder to keep him behind at the start as well...
But so be it, that's racing
. I am looking forward to the rest of the championship!
Qualifying didn't start off to well when I was disconnected half way through. My internet appeared to have dropped for a minute, argh. When rejoining the qual my car was behaving differently. I had much more understeer and couldn't grasp what was going on. In my final laps I managed to drive around the issues and put myself in 3rd spot. Only when loading my race setup I realised I had actually loaded an older qualifying setup! lol
The race started off well, I jumped from P3 to P1 into the first corner. JP immediately managed to overtake me on the straight again using my slipstream. I figured I'd take him on the next straight again, but it was trickier than I thought and it soon became clear he was on a 2-stop, driving off into the distance. I had put in some effort to make the tyres last half the race distance, and with a gap growing at 1s per lap I was pretty sure I was on a superior strategy. There aren't that many corners on this track to make up the pitstop times...
A bit of hectic start behind though...
I was doing alright until lap 5 when I suddenly saw Daniel in my mirrors. He made a mistake into the stadium though, and then Dave Coyne started chasing me.
The first (small) disaster struck when I was about to lap Ricky. In the final corner he made a mistake sliding outwards and thus I went for the inside to overtake. Unfortunately I think he quickly wanted to get out of the way by moving to the inside. I ran out of road and we bumped into each other. A "Nooooo... Ricky!!!" was heard by my wife downstairs wondering what I was on about... haha.I had some damage according to the HUD, but nothing noticeably influencing the performance, and it only cost a few seconds.
The real disaster struck on lap 12 while Dave was chasing me. I still have no clue what happened when I downshifted for the 3rd chicane. Looking at the replay, my car went from 5th to 4th, and then from 4th directly to 2nd in one shift. I can only imagine my finger twitched on the paddle performing a double downshift, despite the PLR file being set up to prevent accidental double shifts... Ugh... My rear wheel locked up, I spun, took Dave with me who had nowhere to go. I think we came out of that shunt reasonably well, until Stuart came into the chicane and couldn't avoid Dave anymore. I was able to continue but Dave suffered a lot of damage. Such an unfortunate and avoidable accident, and I feel really sorry for what happened.
After JP's first stop I came out just behind, and again with his second stop we were only separated by a few seconds. With the same fuel but more worn out tyres I couldn't do anything to put up a fight. Such a shame, as without the two incidents I think I stood a proper chance of finishing ahead. And maybe I should have tried a bit harder to keep him behind at the start as well...
But so be it, that's racing
. I am looking forward to the rest of the championship!