1st race of the series has been run. There was a high turnout today with all of the spots taken during qualifying. NICE! I have two things that unsettled me a bit. 1- I did not have the skin I requested That alone was reason enough to have a good excuse if I didn't win this one 2- Qualifying protocol. There were some who clearly didn't read the rules. That can be expected with a lot of new guys in this series. Right, on to my race report; Qualifying; I expected a few people to be in the low 1.46 times. To my amazement I was able to set a 1.46.3 early in the session giving me a "safe" time to have a real go on my second run. That gave me a 1.46.155, enough for pole. What a relief! I knew I had to have a frontrow start to have a chance at winning. Hakan Aslan took 2nd, Sean Devlin 3rd. These btw were the only ones doing a 1.46 lap. Race; My race setup had me on hard tyres with a full 55 liters of fuel. So my first few laps were going to be slowish. That's the reason I needed a front row start I was going for a race with no pitstop. I got a very good start and most importantly, a clean 1st corner. At the end of the 1st lap I had a lead of 1 sec. Decided to have a few fast laps to see if I could increase the gap. Seemed I was about 0.7 seconds a lap faster than 2nd (Hakan). On lap 7 I tought I would take it easy having a lead of about 5 seconds, only to see Hakan closing the gap on that lap by 0.3 seconds. Back to a faster, but still safe speed. No worries from then on. Untill around lap 18 when I came upon a backmarker whom I had to pass. He left the door open in the Tarzan corner giving me space to pass him. Nice. 5 laps to go... Then on lap 20 STUPID ME made a mistake. Got the wheels on the grass and spun. Cost me 7 seconds Got on the gas as soon as I could keeping a close eye on the lead I still had on Hakan. All was good. Took it easy the last 3 laps just to be safe, and finished 1st. Result, 1st Roy Cop, 2nd Hakan Aslan, 3rd Sean Devlin. A quick look at the replay showed that as far as I could see everyone had a clean race. Great! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. On to the next one!
If anyone needs it, the replay https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wp85n9u6r9d55e/AC_210418-220117_R_seat_leon_eurocup_ks_zandvoort_?dl=0
My first event here at Sim Racing Online. Unfortunately missed the race start for over ten minutes, so, apart from the joy of sharing the track with several familiar names from R2P, not much to do in this event other than bring it home safely. See you next time.
