Season 5 Division 1

What a great race by all! Grats to Fryz and Pagone, you had some mad pace. Qualy was much closer than I expected. I managed to get a 1:55.7, which is about the same as my PB. That got me 3rd on the grid. Frz managed pole with a 1:55.4, so it was very close up front.

I went into the race planning to conserve my tyres and do a no stop. I was ideally hoping to hang behind Fryz and Pagone for a few laps and try to build a bit of a gap to the guys behind me. That all went to at turn 1 when I overshot my brake marker and ended up 6th after a hasty struggle to get back on track. I then spent way too many laps trying to fight my way back past a very determined Blueyonder, who had quite a bit of pace. Really it wasn't the best idea as my tyres began to degrade more rapidly.

After the boys up front pitted at around lap 12, I found myself in the lead. Because of my early aggressive driving though, I knew I wouldn't be able to hold off Fryz and Pagone till the end. Between laps 19 and 20 the boys managed to catch me and I just settled into 3rd and went about the business of getting to the end without having an off. All went well other than a few missed apexes, so I was pretty happy with my podium.

Thanks guys, this is gonna be a great season.

Results for Round 1 - Monza

Round 1 has been run and won and congrats must go to Small_Fryz on a great win.
Pagone41 pushed him all the way though and ended up with a thoroughly deserved 2nd place. Amazing pace shown by these 2 drivers.
Chevwah took the final step on the podium with a heroic 0-stop drive.

Great job by everyone who raced. We had a resonable turnout, but 3 no-shows for round 1 isn't a great start.
Admitedly it was a big day for IRL activities with MotoGP, F1, rugby etc. so hope to get more on the grid for round 2.

Here's the results:

1. Small_Fryz
2. Pagone41
3. Chevwah
4. FloodSim
5. blueyonder-666-
6. Cyber_STIG_77
7. thestig-13
8. natmanscoop
9. IWINNUMBER1 (DNF)

10. SNAKEiSM (DNS)
11.racerman13 (DNS)
12. Jezza1 (DNS)


Fastest Laps
1:54.394 Small_Fryz
1:54.872 Pagone41
1:56.066 thestig-13
1:56.082 FloodSim
1:56.227 Chevwah
1:56.448 natmanscoop (your lap looked fine to me natman)
1:56.691 blueyonder-666-
1:57.435 Cyber_STIG_77
1:58.123 IWINNUMBER1

Once again, thanks to all that raced.
Hope to see you all on the grid next week at Indy Road; it's sure to be interesting being the first time the track has ever been run in the Sunday League.

No probs stu. Yeah those 2 buggers doing a 1 stop just took off and slipstreamed off each other pretty much all race. They had mad pace.

I had some help for that one lol. After my pitstop I caught and passed 2 guys on the one lap, getting massive tow down the back straight and also the start / finish straight. Add in the fact I was on brand new rubber I ended up doing two 54s in a row lol. My best lap with no draft was a low 55. Great job on your D2 win as well mate!

Was a great race!! Had an epic battle with Pagone for most of it!! We were passing back and forth every other lap haha, outbraking into first and 2nd chicane + Ascari and Parabolica! However just before mid race he made an error braking into the 2nd chicane? and I managed to create enough of a gap to break the slip stream. Did I cause you to do that? I must admit I didnt see what happened, apology if I moved under braking or something. When we left corner 1 I was quite ahead so I didnt check behind braking into the 2nd chicane as I didnt think you would have closed the gap.

Approaching half way I had a good feeling Chev would do a no stop and I knew that it would be possible to make up the pit time on fresh tyres. I much prefer to drive the wheels off a car on fresh rubber then attempt to nurse one home on worn ones, so I made the choice to pit. Over the next 6 7 laps I had to push like buggery to close the gap but I really, really enjoyed it. It was entertaining pushing to the limit and catching and passing the guys ahead, working my way back to the front and doing on the fly calculations every split, figuring out if I could catch Chev or not haha. In the end I caught Chev and kept Pag out of my slip stream, really making sure I wasnt cutting on those last few laps as I didnt want to get a penalty and throw it away after 40mins of racing, to cross the line in first!

Pole, FL and Win!! Good start to the season
Really clean and fun racing guys, congrats to Pag and Chev for the podiums!! Im looking forward to the rest of the season!!

Thanks for hosting Flood and awesome job on 4th as well.

Yeah I saw pagones mistake up ahead and on the mini map. I was kinda hoping it was a bigger off than it looked, lol. Dammit I wish I didn't mess up at turn 1! I would have had it in the bag I reckon. But hey that's racing.

Can anyone indicate how the new lower strength slipstream felt? More realistic? Still excessive? I haven't spent enough time with 2.0 to find out.

Its a lot better. Slip was enough to get side by side but not fully passed (except main straight). The defending car actually has a chance in the braking zone. On more than one occasion I was able to succesfully defend into 2nd chicane, Ascari and Parabolica. No longer are you able to re-draft the guy who just drafted you.

Really really liking it.

Especially once we get to a proper track it will now be very possible to drop a car and not have them make up a full second on the next straight.

Excellent, if any track is going to show up OP slipstreaming its going to be Monza.

A thoroughly enjoyable race!! Thanks guys and congrats to Fryz on a hard fought win. Congrats to Chevy for final podium and Flood not far off. I wasn't sure if I should pit or not as I didn't do much testing. Once I saw Fryz dive for the pits, I figured he'd have a better idea so I followed. The mistake I made was purely on my own by simply braking too late and in trying to avoid a touch drove straight into second chicane and copped a 5 sec penalty. Till then it was great fun dicing lap after lap. In the end, I was happy with making second spot as I thought for a sec the 0 stoppers had it in the bag. I was slowly closing the gap to Fryz but he was too fast and consistent and I ran out of laps. A well deserved win! Looking forward to the next round!

Great racing last night guys.. Fryz and Pagone in a class of their own, amazing speed.
I know Chev is quick too so i'm quite pleased with my 4th place. I think it's the best I could have hoped for.

Had an average quali, not sure what position off the top of my head, but found myself in last coming out of the first chicane lap 1 just from trying to avoid, or cause, any carnage.

I am reasonably happy with the way I drove; only 1 incident early on where I got caught out by the extra speed from the slipstream and left my braking far too late, nose first into a barrier, glad I didn't take anyone with me. I didn't lose alot of time, but after making up some positions and being early in the race I did lose a bunch of places and found myself down in 8th again. So to fight back and hold 4th was a good result for me.

I was a little surprised to see people pitting when they did. At the time my tires were still in quite good shape so I decided to take a risk and see if I could preserve the tires and no-stop. In hindsight I may have been better off to pit, it's hard to know. It sure would have been nice late in the race to have the confidence that new tires give, but I thought the car is tame enough that it could be driven on worn tires and just tried to keep it tidy.
Early on in the race I was doing fairly consistent 1:57s which started to get out to 1:59-2:00 towards the end. So it might have been quite even.
Fryz and Pagone were always going to make up the time on me, and Chev is a top notch steerer so stop or no-stop I was never going to catch those guys.
Yonder was closing fast on his good tires in the final laps; another 2 laps and I reckon he would have had me.

I was very impressed with the quality of the driving; at least from my perspective right through the field the racing was fair and professional, with guys giving room where appropriate.
Looking forward to the rest of the season now.

hey guys, im back from the holiday! it was good, even just being away for a week and not working was pretty exciting lol.

im currently having some small troubles with my internet being really slow, but ive rang bigpond and the modem place up a few times, and theyre gonna try and sort it out, so there shouldnt be any issues there.

how did the first race go? i thought fryz and pagone would be right up there somewhere , but its also good to see that theres alot of competition.

ill download the 2.0 update and other stuff when i can. i still havent picked a car colour yet, or done any practice with it at all. which colour can i have?

Hi Jezza, good to know you'll be here for the season. I'd forgotten that you said you couldn't make round 1.

Colour options are on page 1 of this thread. There isn't enough unique colours to go round so we have to double up on some, so pick whatever you want it's no drama.

yep ill be here, thanks floodsim. ill have a look at whats there and pick one.

Congrats to the guys who made the podium in round 1, I'm heading back home on Friday so will be back for the next race, can't bloody wait eh, hopefully I can make you blokes work harder for a podium, naaah, haha!

Not sure what happened in that race.

On my side of the screen I got pushed right off by Pag and into the gravel. I dont know if he just didnt see me or not.
I heard reports of people not seeing all the cars on track.

Eitherway, chalk this one up to my drop round. I'll wait to hear the other side of the story.
Uncharacteristic.