That was a very enjoyable race. I was able to advance a place or two from the start and then settled down to watch the titanic battle between Jens and Ken. They swapped positions a couple of times until Ken eventually made a slight error and both Jens and I accepted the invitation to pass . From then on I was happy to ride shotgun for my teammate and was very pleased to see him get a well deserved podium spot ... good job, Jens . Thanks, SRO for keeping AMS very much alive. Congrats to Toni and Paul on their podium finishes.
The first position swap with Jens happened when I got a short screen freeze entering the main straight and I'm not sure whether Jens ran wide in T1, or played the friendly card (?) and let me back through. My subsequent error is par for the course for me and with such good competition here it was going to be a tough act to recover back to third. Csaba had an incident of some kind which I didn't see, but it gave me one place back (thanks mate ), but then sadly. a few laps later, I saw he went out but not sure why. Thanks for your vote of confidence in AMS, which I feel is unfairly rated in general, and rest assured that if we continue to attract the level of entries we have for this series, there will be more in future.
Had practiced only with full tank so was abit surprised of my pole. Even in race had more speed than in my little practice session. Had done little change to set: lowered ratios abit and put front suspension very soft. Reason of this was to gain time on 3rd sector where I was losing and to manage front tyres from heating up too much. Learned last chicane and how to drive it in 4th gear just in time for Q. Start was goodish, did 2 practice ones and those went tits up so happy. Then noone got past and think i just let loose and drove. One of those things that when things dont go so good in life, time to time, you find yourself happy behind the wheel hmm i just have to rub it in here: Consistency 99.53%
This race was more enjoyable as the feedback from the track was much better than the race at the previous track, even if it had an interesting layout it's for the better we don't visit that version again as noted After an rather clean start from what I could see, I was on Ken's tail for a couple of laps. Not easy to overtake with equal car and keep it clean, a little mistake is always helpful. Noted on the straight that Ken disappear and then showed up in rear mirror. I was actually playing the fair racing card here and gave the position back, as it was still 30 minutes or so left to race A few laps later Ken did an small mistake and I and Bill could pass. Great drive as well by teammate Bill who tailed me thru the race. Grats to Toni for P1 with he's excellent speed, and Paul for slowly sailing away into P2 Simresults can be found here for some other stats https://simresults.net/190116-xq9
Learned that not at any time. Maybe worth to try such things a bit more. But my struggle here started with the set up. I tried to build my own and increased the rear wing and changed the ration. Which send me probably into a dead end, thanks to Csaba for helping me out. After that I was back on track but I really ruined my quali effort. At the start I had really problems to line up properly Sorry for that. But the worst is still to come. My getaway was ok but Csaba blocked the road, I was not aggressiv enough to move over and lost momentum. That delegated me to dead last. So I had to overtake, which was difficult but I managed it three times. But view yourself The last one arround the outside of Ramon was actually not necessary because I could pass him before after he spun. But half a lap later I made another by my own. I gained Csabas place because he stucked at pit entry in a fence, no idea why he had to enter the pit. My pace seemed not that bad as I first thought, but with my start I already lost to much time to fight with for example Ken.
Well, you guys know that feeling when you start the race thinking "Ok I'm not going to win but I have the correct pace for being in the Top 5")? Yeah, that was me today I was completely wrong, I didn't have the pace at anytime in the race, and always had spuns when downshifting to 1st gear. Too much torque, I suppose... Btw, good to see that I'm not the only one who has problems placing the car in the slot after the formation lap See you in the next one.
Yeah, that was not my race. In practice i was quick, but then came the bad things. My laptimes were ok, but i had steerings problems. My wheel forgot the saved settings and the control was strange. I could not so handle my car then earlier. After a few laps i went in pit and leaved the track. Grats Toni and who finished yesterday. Cya next time!
