I just had a rear brake failure while practicing. Hopefully that's not something to be worried about for the race.
Recovering from Covid-19 last week I was still not at my best in terms of focus this race and was curious if I could make it to the end witout a lot of mistakes. Surprisingly I quallified on pole so that was quite surprising... My opening lap howevers was not good. I overshot the first corner after the start by missing or forgetting a downshift and therefore had more speed and in the final corner I pushed too hard on cold tyres and had a spin in the last chicane (luckily did not hit anything). So I had to start from pretty much the end of the field finding myself behind Ken once more which was a deja-vu from two weeks ago. Unless two week ago it did not take me as much time to pass and I was able to get back into a four way fight in the mid pack with Andy, Anatoliy and Barrett. I had a good run on Andy when his rear stepped out in the hairpin at the back of the track and could overtake him after the straight. I followed the fight between Anatoliy and Barrett and tried to benefit from possible mistakes. When Anatoliy passed Barrett on the outside I followed on the outside as well being forced wide with two wheels on the grass but was able to make it stick. In the meantime Anatoliy caugth up with Kostas and they were having a big fight. When Anatoliy overtook Kostas, Kostas had a spin and I could pass as well. After that Anatoliy had clear air and was able to pull away a bit at a time. After the pit stops I was on track alone just putting in fast lap times (nowhere near the laptimes Caitlin was setting well up the road). To my surprise I saw Anatoliy stuck in the gravel trap with brake problems and got an easy 2nd position. Later I also passed Ken going very slow with similar problems. I did not have any kind of brake issues during the race (luckily). In the end Caitlin was superior in this race (congrats). I was very lucky finishing in 2nd being ill last week and not feeling as I normally do. Last race coming up and all to play for. Hope it will be one for the books. CU all later.
The brake problem originally identified by Caitlin in testing also bit me totally unexpectedly in the race. I didn't realise it immediately until several corners later after losing the back end even at slower speeds. I thought it was a puncture at first, as I have never, ever had a brake failure in rF2 over many years of racing with it. Barrett also lost one front brake before the end, but could still continue with extra care. After the race when checking the brake settings in the setup menu, it showed both my front brake disks were "0" thickness i.e. completely gone! Very odd considering I'm always light on braking and have never had this problem with this car mod, the same as everyone else I suppose until this race. Unfortunately the Fixed Setup option configuration we are using does not allow adjustment of the brake cooling ducts, so I can only hope it doesn't bite us again the final race.
I also had a break failure. Actually I expected that because I tried running the full distance in practice twice and always had a failure. So just before the race I moved the break balance to rear as much as possible which cost me loosing stability on breaking, so I made several mistakes and got to the back of the grid. However it didn't help me keeping the breaks. In the beginning of the race I tried to keep breaks alive sacrificing the pace, but when I got closer to the end of the grid I decided to forget about the breaks and just enjoy fighting as long as I could. Congrats Caitlin with win and Gert-jan with the leadership in the series.
Hey, I didn't know you were recovering from covid! Damn! Well, I'm glad you're recovering and I'm glad you could race.
That's why we do testing! I honestly believe that if I hadn't had that problem the day before, I would have driven the race very differently and probably retired with a braking issue, so I'm really happy to have won this one! Motegi is a notoriously hard circuit on the brakes, but luckily Okayama is much slower and less 'point-and-squirt', so I think we should be ok.
I didn't experience any of the brake failures like others have. Although I brake heavily towards the corner, I then let the engine braking do the trail brake into the corner balancing it with the throttle. This might of allowed me to conserve the brakes and avoid cooking them. Brake bias was 57/43 reduced to 55/45 mid way with 54/46 (to manage decel turn in) just before pitting for the tyre change after which it went back to 57/43 and stayed there for the softs. Not sure if it has anything to do with the car class either as we all took the same one this race, (I have a class pos readout on my dash) as I had 8 cars in class. Maybe the other SFJ chassis have better brakes?? Problem I had was the funny understeer/oversteer effect this track gave out. It was quite informative with bouncy-bouncy for over speeding understeer into the corners but the oversteer was just deadly as it just went with no feedback, in all corners it tried to kill me. I got used to it as no bouncy meant I had slowed the car enough and just had to keep the exit throttle smooth.
