USA Caterham: Zandvoort

Oh well I was quite competitive in this thing in the last 2 occasions but not in this twisty and bumpy track. Completely off pace here in both qualify and race, was lucky to score 6th place after some guys went off. Umm need more education on how to drive this thing.

Congrats to Mike, Tommy and Rob for the podium!

This is a strange car to drive. It was my first time driving it and found it a bit difficult to pick up initially. It just feels spooky. I knew the car would slide around after seeing video of real cars in action. I tried to replicate with a pitch into the corner and catch allowing the car to slide. This was proving to be difficult and risky so I changed gears and softened it up and focused on driving as smooth as possible. This worked much better and was quicker. The car still slid around a bit when pushed, but focusing on driving smooth with least control movement possible (brake, gas, wheel) dampened the liveliness.

The previous owner of my real race car had used one of those ptouch label printers to print a "Be Smooth" label and put it right in the center of the tach. I thought it made sense to leave it there to remind me.

Once I got a hold of the car, it was an easy race. I gapped Tommy to a comfortable 1.5 seconds over 3 laps and just cruised from there. I'm sure Tommy and Rob were points racing otherwise they would be pushing me.

Thanks to Tommy and Tim for teaching me how to setup a soft race car.

Was never feeling comfortable with these cars, even worst on this track. It makes me very nervous all the way (but i guess that's part of the fun too)....

Did ok in quali but Mike is simply uncatchable. I have too much rev drop at the start so drop back a place to Rob right away. Was driving tip toe at a reasonable pace until a slight bump from Mak throws me out of control. The try to push harder to gain back position but that only induced a couple more mistakes along the way. Was really lucky to end up in 7th due to a number of drop outs.

All in all a very challenging track for this car.