OK,
@Arunas was pressing me hard, he's quicker than me you know
but I was ahead and wanted to stay there. Being careful to hold my line made life difficult for him in most places and I could always keep him at bay to through T7, the entrance to the straight. There he might close a bit or not depending on how we both got out of the corner, I thought I could get power down nicely there most of the time. At times it came down to braking for T9, the big bowl. I never really push my brake points until I need to in the race and Arunas was making me push them further back on every lap. I went too farone time and got into a "situation". I mentioned on TS in R1 that I had a splendidly good car as far as handling went, faster thane I was and very forgiving. Unfortunately, I had the mic muted and no one heard it so I repeated it again at the end of R2. It really was fantastic but it couldn't stop me from putting on the brakes too late
and so I had to scramble to get the car in shape, back down the banking and onto line. I believe Arunas was trying to take advantage of my "oopsies" and managed to tag me
for which I am sorry and hope no damage was done.
In another attempt to drive my best at T6, the end of the esses I had once again pushed the brake point past where I had knowledge and being a very tricky brake zone, I got out of sorts and had to get gathered back up and make a second attempt to make the corner before I got there and that required braking hard, slowing rapidly to be in control through the corner. Arunas, being a faster driver than I, had no such problem and closed the gap on me while I was controlling weight shifts, chassis rotation and deceleration. There was no brake check going on just an average driver trying to maintain his line during unavoidable circumstances
. Again, I must say that without the car I was driving I would have been up the hill and into the a wall or sliding sideways into a wall.
Everyone in R2 that I ran near acted the perfect driver and while all I really could hear all race was the thumping of blood as it pumped past my eardrums I did have a lot of fun, one more time, thanks to a car that drove very well. I'm not good at tuning a car, nor lucky. I work at it very hard and have found out a few things that seem to hold true. When I apply them correctly in cars that respond to these truths I get a car that is easy to drive. They're seldom faster than any other setup but they handle the inputs I give and respond the way I expect them. This is a result of using many of the same cars often,almost six years in Race 07. Much has been written about setting up, most of it UNBELIEVABLE
. There are some changes you can make that do a lot and some that do not give any noticeable change or at least not until you have optimized the major movers.
If I know all this why do I not just tell you? Simply because what works for me may not work for you. You must pick a car to make changes to, session after session, event after event until you can see the result of those changes. Believe me when you change something on a major mover you will know it. Then you can play with it and take advantage of what it offers. As you play you will find that the major movers interact, and you can get the same result[almost] with several of them. It's the blending of the settings that makes the difference, using a bit of each mover to get the job done instead of just expecting one to handle the job. It takes time, and you have to be quick to see when a change works and when your driving has changes because of it. I like to see laptimes drop but usually they settle down for me and the car just gets easier to drive and then maybe if I'm lucky, like I was yesterday, I'll go back and make one little change because I recognized that I hadn't covered one of those basic truths as well as I should have and I have a fantastic car.
And now, you know why I write short race reports leaving out some items.
