SEASON 9 RACE 10 HOCKENHEIM RACE REPORT

[Valerio Vinassa]

Merry Christmas and good Holiday for someone


Last race for the season 9 we wait season 10

 

[Valerio Vinassa]

short race a disaster in quali I did 3sec better in warmup with race setup in lap1 .
Race 7laps nice battles with Bob and Nicolas but tooooo short lost connection long time that not happened grrrrr.

Thanks all guys PrestoGP and RD another great season


PS hope that some good fun events will be, can I suggest old WTCC? Im old and need training always otherwise I rust

 

[Valter Ostman]

Q: Somewhere near 13th position

R: DNF and LC when watching.
Kurt gave me some nice racing before I had to call it a day. And thx Nicolas and Eliezer for the chase (-: My preparation wasn't as fantastic as I thought. I had to box for security reasons.

Thanks to Nicolai, Daniel, RD and to you all!

I wish you a Merry Christmas

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

Qualify 12th: I did a pritty good qualify, I think I did only one small mistake (<0,5sec) and ended up on 12th, around Peter, Anthony, Nicolas, Eliezer, Valter and Kurt. Iow the table was perfectly laid for an enjoyable evening.

Race 9th: (2 stop, 57 liters soft, 54 liters soft, 54 liters soft).
I have not looked at replay yet, so this will be vague, from the top of my head.
Short story is that I was close to Jim and Peter for first two stints, where our pit stops were the place to try to gain a place (or avoid losing one). Classic battle I think, great fun. After the last pit stop however, I think Jim's team turned his engine to 100% because I was not able to keep up with him anymore. At the same time I noticed Peter dropped back, perhaps Jim had stolen som HP from Peter in the last pit?

I must see the replay to honer all those guys who gave me good battles on the track. In addition to Jim and Peter I remember Nicolas and Eliezer, but I bet I am forgetting people.

I did what I call a perfect race, iow I did no mistakes, except losing 2-3 seconds in my first pit stop.

Thanks for a great race, congratulations to Reik for both race victory and being the Champion (5 times in a row now?) Congrats to Dino for a strong race, and all others as well. I made no mistakes and ended 9th, that means:
a) my race pace was relatively slow at this track
b) everybody in front of me did a solid race

So congrats to all!

ps: I just managed to finish on the leading lap, I had Reik less than a second behind me the second last lap (his last), but I very much wanted to do 53 laps, and I managed without him being hindred I think.

pps: Anthony, for me the grip seemed consistant the whole race. However, Jim, Peter and I had same pace for two first stints, but not last. I am guessing Jim simply became faster from the "practice" in the first stints (his learning curve was still relatively steep), while Peter I have no idea what happened.

 

[Reik Major]

Big congrats to Dino for a very well deserved 2nd in his first season and to Sean for 3rd.

Qualy (1st):

After the rainy practice session I decided to switch the balance from my usual agressivness more torwards safety and a clean style. I knew that hitting all apexes well at this track is a good basis to put in a decent lap time even if you don't push it to the least limit. So I did and ended with a nice 1:12:9xx. (I'm glad I had no cuts or wides)

Race (1st):

scheduled strategy: 18 laps, softs, 60 l / 18 laps, softs, 60 l / 17 laps, softs, 60 l
final strategy: 17 laps, softs, 60 l / 18 laps, softs, 60 l / 18 laps, softs, 60 l

I had a very average start and Dino close behind in 2nd seemed to do it similar, beacause he didn't catch up on me until T1. But Sean from 3rd had an amazing start and jumped through on my inside between Dino and me. Sean was nearly through but before T1 but couldn't take T1 from the outside. So I held the outside position close behind him.

Sean was so kind not to drift to the outside at the exit of T1, so I was able to catch up speed a little bit earlier and drive next to him on the outside before T2. We entered T2 side by side and went on this way through T3. Again I had the better exit and finally regained P1.

On the long straight Sean had my slip stream so I had to defend it on the inside at the hairpin. After that defensive move it was done. A pleassure to race this way!

Now I was able to slightly increase a gap to Sean. Having some slight mistakes here and there it grew to ~7 seconds or so after 2/3 of the stint. From lap 13 the tyre wear made it tricky. In lap 16 or 17 I had a big mistake due to slippery car behaviour. So the gap was down to ~3 seconds.

That's why I decided to pit 1 lap earlier just to cover myself and not to loose more time because of the worn tyres. The stop went well and I pushed hard on the following laps. So when everyone had pitted I was back in the lead again by ~5 seconds.

The second stint wasn't that eventfull. Some mistakes again, so the gap to Sean didn't increase much. In the end of lap 35 I pitted again well and after everything had settled I was in the lead again.

I don't remember when it happened but Dino had taken the 2nd position from Sean close before or after my last stop. However I was chased by Dino now. In this last stint it felt like the tyres had worn quicker, because even after 11 laps they started to feel bad with lots more understeer than usually at this point.

The gap to Dino decreased lap by lap and there were some more to go. For the last 3 or 4 laps (I guess) he was on my tail. So I focused very much on clean and tight corner entries and the best way to accellerate out of them. I also increased the risk at the entering point of T1. The risky way to enter it was to take the outside curb between the wheels to widen the corner a littel bit.

Finally it worked well and Dino didn't risk an over agressive move, so I was happy to bring it home in first at the season final.

As always I can't tell enough how grateful I am to have such great place to race with other great guys. So my biggest thanks go again to Nico, RD, MMG and everyone involved.

Merry Christmas and see you all (very) soon...

 

[Reik Major]

...congratulations to Reik for both race victory and being the Champion (5 times in a row now?)

You could be true.

And don't worry, you didn't hinder me during the last laps, because I was too slow to catch up on you.

 

[Dino Paolini]

Great final race of the season on my home track

q: A very average lap in which I lost quite a lot of time on turn1 because I clipped the inside curb, 9 tenths off my pb here

r: Start was ok, but Sean had a really good one and was past very quickly.
There were some exciting moments in the beginning, where a lot of guys were close when braking into the hairpin and I was very happy to come out of it still in 3rd.

The race rythm wasn't really there yet in the beginning, but it became better and better throughout the race and I had also realized that my tires weren't dropping off as quickly as for the others this time.
I decided to pit a bit later both times because I had more tires left than I planned to, because I coudn't push as much as I wanted behind Sean and also to maybe give me better tires for the finish.

Before stop #2 I went past Sean after he had to avoid the huge curb in the mid-sector; but he pretty much let me through as I haven't really made it past by my own.

The last stint was a really good one with a lot of good laps and I could even catch up to Reik for the last part of the race.
I tried to have some good corner exits on the last 2 laps to maybe get into a good position, but when I did that close behind Reik, there wasn't enough traction left anymore in the dirty air and my car wanted to brake out too early

-> q: 2nd / r: 2nd

Very nice finish and an enjoyable season in general, even though some technical stuff and incidents happened too, so there are enough things to get better next time around.

See you guys soon

 

[Bob Miley]

Totally outpaced by everyone. Just could not get to grips with this track. Was happy when the usual pre Christmas visitors came just after getting lapped and I had to quit before becoming a pain in the race for everyone. Not the way I wanted the season to end and once it's decided which car is used next season I intend to practice and at least try for mid table.

On the plus side I think I have fixed my screen freeze and minimising problem. It seems it was the Windows Desktop Manager kicking in on Windows 7. I have disabled this service as it only deals with aero effects and have had 3 problem free races since.

Thanks for all the fun.

 

[Marko Vuori]

Grats to Reik, Dino and Sean

Qualifying: 1:14.058 (4th)
I made one big mistake in my qualifying lap. which probably cost me 0.3 secs, but I don't think it affected my position.

Race: 5th

From the video you can see key parts of my race. I had two stop strategy (60ss/s, 55ss/s, 55ss/s).

Grats to Reik for championship! Thanks for a great season and Merry Christmas for all PrestoGP members

See you next season!

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

Q: 3rd
R: 3rd softs 61 61 61

Managed to get a great start and very nice side by side battle with Reik 1st few corners which was a pleasure. Most of the race was spent trying to keep Dino behind me though. Reik and Dino had better race pace and i couldnt really stay with them in 2nd stint i made 1 small mistake and Dino was right on me and through turn when he passed i did make abit of mess of it but Dino was to fast for me anyway. 2nd pit stop i made mistake trying to lower fuel slightly cost me 10 + secs so settle for 3rd after 2nd pit and managed gap to finish.

Grats to Reik and Dino again Great Champ again Great season again !!! cant wait for next already

Merry Christmas everyone and big thanks to Prestogp Nico and RD cyas on servers

 

[Reik Major]

Thank you for the nice vid Marko!

 

[David Turnbull]

qualifying - 5th

terrible lap, missed every apex and struggled to find the grip after the wet practise, happy to still be 5th due to other struggling too.

race - 6th

started very well and was past marko and fighting with dino into turn 1, we both left each other room and both got round no problem while keeping the speed up, very good fight from there i tried to catch the group in front which was dino, reik and sean, but id chose the wrong setup for accelaration, due to starting 5th i went for top end with a longer gear ratio and lower wing, it didnt pay off at all i lost a lot of ground on dino going onto the straight that the gap id had to marko was wiped out and he had the chance to pressure me into the hairpin, i went tight to defend but the pack closed up so i had to slow even more, marko made the right choice and stayed wide and pulled off a great pass, nice one marko (i wasnt saying that at the time though ) , i pushed to stay with him and spun out at the last turn, managed to keep hold of the car and was behind anthony now, we had a great fight for a number of laps, i pushed and pushed but anthony was doing very well, i attacked at the hairpin on one lap, outbroke myself and anthony made the undercut and stayed in front, good driving anthony, when i did manage to get passed it was at the hairpin again and anthony left loads of room, i then pushed on with tim in front, gaining on him all through the lap to loose it and more going onto the straight, damn setup changes, i made one or two more spins pushing as hard as i could but in the end 6th was my maximum for the time id put into practising for hock, was a great race.

grats reik (and for championship AGAIN!) grats dino for the 2nd place and sticking around, your a great new addition to the league, grats sean for rounding off the podium.

merry christmas to all, see you on the server soon

 

[Reik Major]

Thank you David!