This was my first go at racing open wheelers. Thanks to Eric for making his setup available to all of us, I was up to speed within minutes of joining the server and eventually qualified 2nd on the grid.
Race 1: Got off to a decent start, but lost some ground to Jesse in the opening lap, whom was clearly in a league of his own last night. I was able to stick with him and even gain a little ground on him for the following 3 laps or so, at which point he turned on the after burners. It didn't take long from here on out for him to out of sight.
At this point all my attention was on Peter whom was following closely in 3rd. We were matched pretty equally. Where as I was faster over 1 lap, he was clearly much more consistent. Another difference I noticed while reviewing the replay is that he had much larger gearing than me giving him more speed down the long straights. Much like Eric, I was finding it easy to overdrive the car and had several large drifts as a result of it. I was pushing as hard as I could, while trying to keep my lines tight, as I knew Peter was looking for any little gap to squeeze through. Our battle lasted nearly from start to finish. Peter finally made his move on the second to last lap. I really wasn't expecting it, but luckily saw him dive down the inside right as I was turning in and I was able to correct my line allowing him room to complete the pass. We came out of the corner side by side and it was a drag race to the fast (4th gear) uphill right hander. We entered side by side, but I had to let off as I was running out of road. I tried to slip stream him down the front straight, but despite being right on his tail, I was unable to make up any ground. I carried much more speed through T1 and got to within inches of him, but again had to let off to avoid a collision. This time it caused me to lose a bit of ground on him though and I spent the majority of the lap just trying to get back on his tail. In the final corner Peter ran it a little to wide and I was able to get on the inside of him. We were now side by side approaching the finish line fast, but Peter again clearly had more straight line speed and was able to out drag me to the line. Leaving me in third.
Race 2: My start wasn't quite as good, spinning of the line and both Peter and Jesse went by. This unfortunately put me in a bad spot in T1 as Jesse gave Dennis a slight tap. I had to slow down and lost touch with Eric and Peter at the front. As the two of them were battling it out, I was able to catch back up and was right on Eric's tail after he had a little run off. I was finding it really hard to stay close to Eric as he was fighting to keep his car on the track. Around lap 6 or so we were approaching the last turn and despite hitting my braking marker at the same spot as previous laps, I found myself approaching the rear of Eric's car quickly and hit him sending him off track in a spin. I waited for him to rejoin and got behind him down the front straight. Having lost a lot of time, Jesse was now right behind us. It wasn't long before Eric ran it wide and off track allowing me to get past and my lap times dropped back down into the mid to high 1:28's allowing me open a gap of nearly 1.5 seconds over the next lap or two. Then all of a sudden Eric was gone. I now found myself all alone with a gap of over 6 seconds to Peter and nearly 8 seconds to Jesse. I now wasn't really concentrating on what I was doing any more and figured I would just manage the gap to the finish line. I nearly chucked it several times as a result of that, but some how managed to keep it together and crossed the line in second.
Granted we had a rather slim field last night, but I was positively thrilled with my results last night. Had a lot of fun and some great battles. I'll be sure to try and catch some more Formula Masters races in the future. Just hope my chief mechanic (Eric) is there again to help me with my setup.
A big thanks goes out to RD and Yves for setting this up.
