Gran Premio de Espana

got rear-ended on the starting line along with a few others. i kept thinking there would be a restart but after waiting a couple laps i gave up. i looked in the R2P rules and it seems you guys don't do restarts here? it's kind of sad because by my count, we had six drivers with wings missing before they reached the first corner. that's a third of the field.

oh well. hope you guys enjoyed your race.

You are at the mercy of careless drivers-seems unfair!

Back to the training camp for me. After a surprising 5th place on the grid I proceded to forget to launch when the lights went green, then heading into T1 either I was way too late braking or David was early, result was I took evasive action to avoid a collision and went through the gravel trap.

Rejoined in 14th or so and thought I was clear, turns out I wasn't as I turned into Bertrand taking us both to the trap. Sorry Bertrand Got going again now with some wing damage but still there. Lap 2 caught back up to Bertrand only to have him spin off to give me that position.

Lap 3 I caught Tomasz and as he slid a little I caught up to him at a surprising pace and proceded to drive up his rear tire. Sorry Tomasz I should have just parked it at that point but the car was still running and I really wanted to run this event.

Car was really pretty shitty from here on and as a result I had 3 more spins and hte car just felt like crap. Pitted a bit early to try and get some repairs and rejoined in 10. Through attrition I made it up to 8th I think but then I had my final brain fade and stuft it into the tire wall ending my race.

Really a piss poor outing again, and quite embarassed about my performance, after all I had contact with 2 cars and almost ran into Fisher on lap 1.

I was having a great race for 6th with Steve Wood until Todd had a major off after T3 spinning his car all over the track ... and I ran full in to him. :-( Game over ... no points and my first DNF in F1 in ages. :-(

My first DNF with R2P. Disappointing really. I was quite slow in practice and qualifing. This was my first F1 race and the cars really take some getting used to. It will probably take me a few races before I can run well. I didn't expect to do well, but I did expect to finish.

There was some big shamozil at the start. My launch control worked great and I took off very quickly. Too quickly to avoid the maddness up ahead. I lost my wing and did suspension damage.

I continued to T1 taking it easy intending to get to the pits to repair and finish the race. At that point, I noticed all force feedback had shut down on my wheel. There was absolutely no spring at all. It was free wheeling. It was impossible to drive, but I thought a new wing would help. After coming out of the pits kitted out with a new wing, I continued to struggle with steering. Having 0 force on the wheel makes it impossible to drive. I quit and found I still had suspension damage too.

Oh well... That 1st DNF had to come someday.

Qualifying:
Did one flying lap, 1:18.4, knew that will put me midfield, it was good enough for me. Could've been better but wouldn't mean much.

Race:
I had nice 2 stop strategy, with mid 18's to mid 19's, but fell a victim to no mistakes of my own. On the start Todd stalled or something, was very hard to avoid him, almost managed it but lost a wing and damaged front left corner. Great, it hasn't even started yet I was already down a lap and with damaged car. Tried to force it into 19's, but wasn't possible as front left from damage was overheating after only few laps.

In second stint Scott B spun in "La Caixa" while I was approaching, tried to avoid him but wasn't possible. Another hit with front left. Now I knew this thing really wont make right corners, which I soon felt as I tried to navigate fast last sector car went very wide, spun and hit the barrier, slightly, with rear right. Race was over then.

Congrats to Tristan and podium guys, amazing pace. Also congrats to finishers. China should be better, I hope so, otherwise I'm quitting.

Excuse me while I have a small rant:

If you join the server in the middle of qual, please don't participate, and if you do, be aware that everyone around you is going to be on lower fuel and will be a lot faster than you. I had to start in the middle of the field because a car joining in the middle of qual wrecked my fast lap, and that ultimately led to my retirement.

Anyway, starting from 13th it was always going to be difficult, but I wasn't expecting a mess that early. I've watched the replay a couple of times and I can't really tell what happened, but it looks like Todd let go of his LC button early, or thought he wasn't lined up properly, and jumped forward before the start. He then stopped as the lights went out, but wierdly didn't go again, and just caused a nice big pileup ruining 6 people's races on the spot. Looks like a simple mistake from Todd but, as usual, I get the worst of it. Sigh.

That pretty much sums up my "race". My championship is now totally over, so I'll just be aiming to have some fun and get in the top 10 before the end of the season. I'm already looking forward to S9 (3rd time lucky).
Cya.

That sure was...different. Very messy start - I suggest if someone missed it you should go watch replay - it's simpy amazing what was going on on Lap1 before T1...It felt like everyone was spinning like crazy. I'm really glad I gave up qually and launched slowly from last row so I didn't got cought up in this terrible mess.

Later during the race it was quite messy too, thus my undeserved 1 point - faster drivers where dropping like flies.

I don't know why but in the first stint I completely lost the feeling of the car so I was drifting a lot during first couple of laps. Kent fell a victim of it as I slowed way too much after loosing contorol...Sorry to hear your car was damaged because of that - I didn't feel much of a change in driving after that accident and I was hoping it didn't affect you as well.

Apart from that quite boring race as I haven't got enough of time to prepare well and was much slower than rest of the drivers who survived.

Highlights - I had a lot of near-spin situations in which I saved myself; saving from a spin in F1 car was something which seemed impossible to me, so I'm really glad to see that my feeling of the car and instincts and setup allow me to have better and better control.

Let's hope this was the worst race of the season and move on. See you all in China.

PS. And of course grats to podium.

Before getting into the race story, some comments.

Shame about the start. Finishing these races requires great patience and looking at the replay, there were several people who lacked patience at the start. Sure, some people screwed their starts up, but that doesn't excuse anyone who slammed into another guy's rear-end when he could have just been more cautious off the launch instead of trying to be mad max and overtake everyone by threading the needle through the wreck. Congratulations to everyone who finished and of course to the podium usual suspects.

@Scott: I agree with you that if someone doesn't have the presence of mind to be on the server in time for qualifying to begin, they shouldn't qualify. Running a qual lap only to come upon a slower temp car is really aggravating.

@John Barbour: probably a good idea to read the R2P rules before your next race, rather than after waiting around a few laps for a restart only to find we don't do that here.

Now about my race:

I am going to steal some of the glory here because I think finishing next in line after Bayless, Fisher and McArthur is something of a victory in itself.

I had a good start, and obviously Fisher didn't because I found myself able to overtake him before T1 running 3rd but of course I was back down into fourth 2 turns later. I think with my pace I could have run this entire race in fourth without any issue except that I made a single big mistake and, regretably, it came on lap one. I shot off of the really fast right-hander before the end of sector 2 but just slid through the gravel and got myself going the right direction to prepare to re-enter. No damage, so that was nice. The commotion of the race start had created a sizeable gap between 9th and 10th, so instead of dropping from 4th to dead last, I managed to re-enter the race in 9th place and was pretty fortunate about that.

From there, I just had to keep it clean and rely on my pace and pit strategy to carry me back up the ranks, which it did. I found myself running 7th behind Steve Wood about to go in for my first pit at the end of lap 15 when, to my surprise, Woody pulled in to the pits right ahead of me. I thought for sure he would be on a 2-stop strategy. I didn't want to have to follow him into pit lane only to follow him out as well, so (since I always carry enough fuel for one more lap if needed) I decided to stay out and try to cut a lap good enough to have me leaving my pit stop ahead of Steve. It worked out perfectly and I managed to get out of the pits and back into the race about 20 metres ahead of Steve.

From there, I just drove clean and tried to be really cautious in traffic. I used my 3-stop pace to regain P4 from Heinz and then concentrated on creating a 30 second or greater gap ahead of him so that my last pit stop wouldn't cost me the position. I ended up with about 40 seconds going into the pit and the rest of the race was fairly uneventful.

Glad to have redeemed my Silverstone result and looking forward to China, which will be a brand new track for me.

I haven't been this disgusted and angry from a race in a long time. My apologies to anyone who was around me, and my apologies to anyone who might come near me the rest of the day :-)

We lined up for the start and I get a message telling me I wasn't in my grid box, which was news to me because it sure as hell looked like I was in my grid box.

So I'm edging back, then forward, trying to find this magical grid box, and still the message. I'm not even thinking about the lights, yet ... I didn't think the race could start until everyone lined up, but, Surprise! The field suddenly takes off while I'm looking for my grid box! WTF?!

Immediately I have a penalty for false start or being out of my box or whatever it is they called it. Too late. Cars whizzing by. I get going. I was not even aware I had been nicked in the back already, let alone lost the rear wing from it ... until I try to put on some speed and fishtail into the wall. (I discovered the contact from the replay.)

So there I am ... just 50 feet from the starting line ... no front wing, no rear wing, and a penalty to serve. Things not going as I expected. Must ... control ... fist ... of ... death ...

Two laps into the race I've been down pit road twice and am a lap down. I eventually let it go and get down to form to see what I could get. I worked back up to ninth place coming off my final pit stop and was hoping to weasel into a points spot by the end when I made my race-ending mistake.

I drifted two wheels off the outside of Turn 3 at high speed and that's all she wrote. Pinballed off the wall and back ... Poor George Pol didn't have much time to guess where I was going to stop, and unfortunately it was in his line. I'm very sorry for your race to have ended that way, George.