I had a couple of okay races. Ultimately was fast enough to hold position but not fast enough to keep up with the lead group. A 5th and a 4th in the end. Would love to see the setups that were being run by guys able to run 1.31's with race fuel, very impressive. I don't think I was aggressive enough with setup, this was my first time in the car and it is very much not the sort of car I am used to, so I did not want to play with setup too much on the basis that I didn't really know the car that well.
Next time may be different, I feel I know the car now and did very much enjoy racing it.
In race 1 I jumped up to 4th at the start and almost third, but the outside line in T3 is not really an option. On lap two I lost 4th when 2nd gear refused to engage into the chicane and Tibor duly hit me up the a$$ and took the place. Once the gearbox calmed down I carried on and tried to build a gap to Daniel running behind me, but he was on around the same pace as me mostly and so did not allow me a seconds rest during the race. Finished a distant 5th, with Daniel a couple of seconds back.
Race two there was a lot of fun jostling at the start and I was very nervous about netcode, in the netKar Pro way, but it held up well and I did not see any real netcode problems. Some other guys were not nervous at all and it seemed to me that everything seemed fine with some very hard racing in the early laps, good stuff. In the melee I kept relatively clean in my pink machine and slotted up to 3rd. Then I was hunted down by the obscenely fast Kevin and passed in a relatively simple block pass move into T1. Clean stuff. Then as I watched him disappear up the road I noted the gap back to Tibor was very big, I think from the early lap fun. After a few laps I started to play with lines a little because I was bored, threw it through T2 faster than ever before (and it stuck!) but then found myself braking too late for T3 and taking a little trip over the grass. One 1.38 and there goes my laptime consistency figure! Anyway, this meant Tibor got alot closer so I had to stop messing around and run as quick as I could, which on my race setup was low 1.33's and high 1.32's. Looking at how well the tyres held up to the end I think I could have been more aggressive with setup and ran quicker, but I doubt in the 1.31's. Using a shifter and three pedals whilst heeling and toe-ing to blip on downshifts had me build up a good sweat in this car, it's a lot more effort than running the semi-auto KS2. But, well, I will be glad to get back in my old baby next week.
And yes, I agree with running the KS2 next week, it will be the ultimate test of the netcode. Perhaps we could run at Singapore? In prep for next week's GP?
