Germany Reports

[deecee52]

Qually

This was a case of the car being better than the driver for me , I had done a lap 088 in practice and I knew there was definately a 51 in the car , but greedy driving blew it , many times I was ¾ of a sec up with half a lap left but instead of consolidating I got greedy and pushed usually resulting in an off which lost me all I gained , the word Dummy springs to mind .

Race

Start was ok but DJ and JP had a little incident on the exit of turn 1 which meant I had to lift , this let Dani get the run on me and he pushed me down a place , we stayed this way for a few laps then Dani spun out on the entry to the complex so I was behind Ed in 3rd , we stayed this way for a few laps then I got the opportunity to attack I closed to the back of ED on the approach to the 3rd chicane with the intention of drafting on the exit, but unfortunately his car snapped sideways on the entry and I had no space to avoid so we tangled , I got going again but just as Stu arrived he had no chance to avoid and hit me hard up the backend , the car was squirreling away when I tried to apply power and I was unsure what damage I had , I was thinking puncture but I couldnt see , I spun out and lost more time on the entry to the complex and pitted , repairs cost me 108 secs and it turned out my rear wing was missing .

Got going again but car didnt feel right and couldnt give me the laptimes and I ended up getting lapped by DJ and ED ,apologies if I held you up guys but I had no blue flags shown so wasnt sure if I was fighting for position , you could do with putting colour on your cars nose then we know who is behind , so many cars are running stock skin . I eventually finished a fortunate 6th .

[argl]

Ran into the crash after turn one, hit the side of my team mate, we both got airborne and landed both behind the barriers, looking ever so foolish. So that was that.

I hate that track configuration with that petty ostkurven chicane, its a disgrace. Leave that chicane out and you have that Hockenheim character (still not a fave, but hey) of luring you into screwing up a decent lap right at the end.

Onto Austria, another high speed track!

[gorgias1976]

I watched Dave's incident live, it looked really frustrating.

[DJCruicky]

Got going again but car didn't feel right and couldn't give me the lap times and I ended up getting lapped by DJ and ED ,apologies if I held you up guys but I had no blue flags shown so wasnt sure if I was fighting for position , you could do with putting colour on your cars nose then we know who is behind , so many cars are running stock skin. I eventually finished a fortunate 6th .

Was wondering why you were not letting me by. Yes, I need to put big colourful wording on front of my car that says 'Oooot Maaa Way'. I'm missing my 'Quickshark' skin. That made me a second quicker every lap .

[deecee52]

i was running a new hud , dont know if this blocked blue flags , did anyone else see them

[bullwinkle]

come to think about it I am not sure I saw any either

[Tygernoot]

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!

[J-P SImard]

For my part I still had a lot of fun, the qualification was very close with DJ and ED, I love that.

Then I hesitated a lot between 1 and 2 stops and at the last minute I decided to leave for 2 with a little more gas to be able to adjust if I saw that it was not the right strategy and move on at 1 stop. The two-stop strategy was more flexible and made it possible to make laps in the 1: 53.xx and the car was really unstable with used tires in the stadium, this would make it possible to push harder.

I had an ordinary start despite I was on the race line, Ed took advantage of it to pass me and I had a little contact with DJ on the right back, I seemed to have damage but it did not seem not really have any effect on the car. I managed to get through Ed quickly and then pushed as hard as I could because I wasn't sure the strategy was working.

Then there was my first stop and I thought I would come back behind Ed and have to fight to regain the lead, but unfortunately there was the incident that I saw I am sorry for Ed. I came back a few seconds in front of him and I pushed hard to give myself a little gap and I was finally able to lift my foot a bit and take it a little more relaxed, but I feel that without the incident from Ed, I would have had to push like crazy throughout the race to win because it was very fast.

As usual I had a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing you again on the track. It would be nice to find the few drivers that we lack to be able to have 20 cars at least on the grid, I will do PR for the league in the near future.

See you soon.