Fuji Grand Prix

Congrats to Tim for i'm sure a very tough victory! Conor and Justin, great job guys. Not an easy task here. Gotta say i ran a pretty normal race except a few errors. One being had one small spin but no damage received. The chose to do a DAMN 3 STOP RACE!!! Realized i was probably the only one to do so. That kind of made my race toast. I was running decent times. And really would have had a much better finish i hope if i chose a 2 stopper. Just couldn't do it do to tire wear.

George had alot of fun on th track with ya. Just kept watching your time behind me go up and down constantly. I bet we ran very similar lap times al race. Then we both pitted and wouldn't you know, you came out 1 sec behind me like you probably went in at. Then i made one more stop and never saw you again. Would have been good fun man!

That was a fun race. For starters, I got a sick launch at the start and thought I could come into T1 on the inside but it was too ambitious with my early-race shakes I get and I had a light side to side contact with David. It was very soft and I there was no damage, I hope the same for you David. Sorry about that. Anyways, I went from possibly 1st to 7th or 8th or something from there because I just let people past to avoid any further boneheadism. From there, I worked my way up and drove a mostly steady race. My times were pretty good but so many laps were marred by brain lapses costing me a second here, a second there. One or two unforced error spins cost me a chance at competing for 2nd place with Conor in the end.

@Scott: I ran a 3-stopper here and I don't think it was a bad decision at all. I had enough downforce that the soft tires could last me a 17-lap stint. As long as I didn't go too crazy on it, it held together well and had me driving competitive lap times. In the end, I am sure that the time I lost through the race from self spins and little mistakes (like driving off into the dirt at max speed on the straight because my GF distracted me) would likely have been as much as the 20 or 30 second gap I had ahead of me in the end. Those guys just made fewer mistakes and deserve the points for it. My stop strategy had me driving in a lot of different traffic throughout the race with different groups of people, it was quite an intense race.

Congrats to all finishers.

Crashed 1 turn from posting a time in qual, started 16th out of 17.

Took it way easy lap one and still managed to spinout...17th. Found my rhythm and soon was picking off cars every lap, very fun except for the knobs re-entering the track after their mistakes. Caught up to Conor when my tires and fuel said STOP!

In lap was real interesting since I was fiddling with the pit stop trying to select HARD tires, DOH as I realized that I couldn't I had to change my entire race strategy causing a very slow in lap.

Got my fresh rubber and fuel and set out again in 10th. Soon found myself in 6th again after everyone else stopped. Dodged another backmarker and Greg got by me so now I am 7th again.

Third stint was probably my best time wise but I was basically running alone the rest of the race.

Pretty pissed off at some of the cars that were literally all over the track when being lapped. Really it isn't that hard to let up on the throttle before the turns rather than drive over your head when a faster car is behind you. Trust me it is much faster for both drivers.

Grats to Tim on the win and Conor for a fine 2nd.

Kent, that's unfortunate to hear. My experiences were mostly good, though like you I did have a few laps where I was trying to overtake a lapped car and I would go easy and then get a good run coming out of the final turn onto the straight and the lapped car was seemingly racing with me. Full speed diving right into T1. No incidents occurred, but it's scary getting into a game of chicken like that when you're expecting the person to make it easy since you're not even racing on the same lap.

Very frustrating race - I was completely in no mood for racing today (and a couple of days earlier as well) and my result shows that clearly. 10 laps into the race I had enough and just couldn't focus on driving. Made lots of mistakes because of that.

Had some fun in the beginning but that was ended by a collision with Bob. Sorry man, I successfully passed Kent earlier in a simmiliar fashion and got over-confident when I was passing you.

Congrats to the podium, Very nice drive from all 3 of you.
Well done on the debut podiums Conor and justin!

I wasn't happy with my setup for the race, as i was slower with my 3 stop strat (yes me too scott) than Justin and David were.. but completely blew myself away when i got a front row ticket to the start of the race.

Start was fine for me, but i hit the brakes for T1 and justin didnt, and as he mentioned he got into David. I was a little unsettled by this, but managed to come out of it ok, and at the end of the lap Tim passed me for 2nd. I was doing well to keep up and hopefully was putting on enough pressure and pulling a gap behind me, when i got too close to Tim at T1 and lost it pulling out, this didnt do me any favours and from then on it was a race to salvage my mistake.

Had some racing with Conor, and Justin, and also made an odd mistake here and there, but in the end coming home in 5th was good enough, though not making those mistakes would have liked to see what may have happened.

I didnt have problems with guys we were lapping, so grats to them aswell..

See you at montreal! Cant wait!

Damn, my first shot at F1 and I get 2nd and was almost close enough to battle for the lead and the win. That's awesome. I had very low expectations for this race since the first time I got onto the track earlier this week, I was running 1.20s. Luckily, I hooked up with Tim for late night practice most of the week and he gave me a great setup and a solid strategy. I tweaked both the setup and the strategy a bit to my liking, but his help definitely pointed me in the right direction. Lots of credit goes to him, thanks man :).

Getting the setup to mold into my driving style definitely wasn't easy. I struggled all week to be consistent and while the speed was there, I could barely run 5 laps without fishtailing all over the place. That was pretty much the case until 10 min to qualifying when I made a downforce and differential tweak that just nailed what I wanted. It wasn't as fast as I would have hoped, but it was good enough :).

I qualified mid pack which was perfectly fine for me. The actual start was an embarrassment though. I didn't know how to use the launch control so I was extremely slow from the get go and fell back from 8th to 15th before the first corner. The first few laps were hairy since a lot of guys struggled on cold tires so I had to work my way through carefully. About 10 laps in, things started calming down and I began to race a bit with Heinz and Kent. Both were faster than me, but knew they were on a 3 stopper so I didn't really try to race them too hard.

Eventually, all the 3 stoppers pitted and I found myself in 2nd with Tim about 15 seconds ahead. We pitted around lap 22 and he left his stall just as I was coming in. I came out in 6th and ensued a battle with Heinz and Justin. Justin eventually ran away from us but I kept it pretty close with Heinz. Didn't battle, but just tried to stay with him. All the while I kept an eye on Tim in the standings to see where I stacked up against him and to my initial surprise, I was closing in on him with the difference between us around 12 seconds. It was around this time where I started thinking the 2 stopper was the best move and began to try and size myself up with Tim.

My final stop came around lap 45 and I went back out on track in 4th after all the 3 stoppers pitted laps before. That solidified my thought that the 2 stopper was the right way to go since Justin and David were not much farther ahead of me and still had to make their final stops. So I began to watch Tim and our intervals and little by little, they slowly decreased. Around the begin of the stint, we had a difference of 10 seconds. With a few laps to go, I cut the lead down to 3 seconds after Tim looked to have had some issues with traffic. Right here, I tried to push as hard as I could (within reason) because I knew if I could get right up to him, I could shoot for the lead. Unfortunately, the laps ran out and he got me by 2 seconds. Drat :).

Not a bad thing at all though. 2nd was miles better than I thought I could do so I am extremely pleased with this finish. It was a lot of fun and interesting to see how the two strategies panned out.

Grats to Tim on the win and to everyone that finished. Fuji is not an easy track, especially on the tires.

See ya guys at Bahrain :)

A lot of you were sandbagging...according to the pre-race and all the practices I should have been the only one in the low 14's. Fortunately, I kept pushing myself and didn't change my strategy. I finally finished on the lead lap!

I'm sure Montreal will be a different story, but I can always hope for the best.

First, so celebrations are in order;
1) Conor for the podium in his debut F1 race
2) Justin for his first podium in F1
3) Steve for his first lead lap finish (a goal of his for some time)
4) And again to Steve for actually capturing the fastest lap of the race.

My first visit to this track so I started testing immediately follow the previous event. 2 weeks almost every night of testing and the night before this race I still felt like I was way off and would be lucky to finish in the top half. I have to thank the CCWS drivers for showing me the way to go with my setup. Actually, based on their race I figured a hi-DF setup might be good. The CCWS cars were slow on the straights (top speeds in the 180-190 range) but much quicker in the corners. I tried that approach and quickly realized how wrong it was. My tires overheated within just 3 laps... but that made me try the other direction, very low DF to save the tires.

Once I reduced the wings a bunch the tire temps came into line and I was much more consistent. I had been testing all week with fuel for 20 laps onboard. On Saturday night many of us were on the server for testing and I saw a lot of guys in the 13s and 14s, but it was obvious that they were 3-stopping. I knew this would be the wrong way to go with the pit lane here at Fuji costing almost 30 seconds per pit stop (most have a cost of 18-13 seconds). I stayed focused on my 2 stop setup and eventually got into the mid 14s, with a full stint of fuel onboard. I knew it would be faster later in the run too, meaning the 3 stoppers were in real trouble.

It was not until the 2 hours prior to the race itself that I finally ran a fuel run in testing. 22 laps on hard tires and the car felt good and stable running low 15s. I was confident enough in that as a good pace, but wanted to test medium tires now that my temps were in line. After a 23 lap stint on mediums they were PERFECT and about a half second per lap faster then hards. So the choice was made to go with mediums only 15 minutes before the qualifying session. I didnt expect pole in qual due to my fuel load but was still pleased to slot in on the 2nd row.

Lap1, Turn1 was almost a disaster. Justin bonzai'd into T1 bringing all of us behind to a dead stop. I tapped the car ahead and damaged my front wing in the incident. We all got away with minimal effect, but it could have been very bad. I followed Heinz and Fisher around for the first lap, just getting everything up to temp. By the time we reached the main straight it was clear that I would be able to pass Heinz any time I wanted. My low DF setup had something like 15mph over him and I took the chance as we crossed S/F. I quickly handed it right back to him with a little slide, then re-took it the next lap on the front straight. Then I was just driving like an idiot... I could barely keep it on track. Once the pressure was relieved (thanks Heinz) I slowly inched up to Fisher and watched him enter the pits on lap 13 (super early!). I knew then that I had him and focused on the other behind. When they all had pitted by lap 16 it was clear that myself and Conor would finish first and second baring any major issues.

After my first stop I came out directly behind Fisher. I was happy with that as all I needed was to keep him within 10-20 seconds of me. Amazingly enough I made up the 3 seconds to come right up to him. At that point I was content and settled in behind, not willing to risk and passing attempts. A few laps later he gave me the spot with a slip up in T1 and I watched him pit at the half way point from 5 seconds behind me. During this phase of the race I had turned my boost down to 1 (first to stay behind Fisher, later to conserve fuel) so I could lengthen my middle stint. Conor was still close enough to take advantage if I made any major mistakes so I had to defend against him. Pulling a gap was not reasonable, so instead I allowed some of the gap to go away in exchange for lighter fuel and better tires in the final stint... just in case.

Final stop came a lap after Conor's and I still had 10 seconds on him. I only had to go 20 laps this stint and exited right ahead of Fisher and Justin. Again, I knew they both had to stop again and I was done pitting so the race was already won. Justin came up to challenge for the lead and I would have nothing to do with it. The way I saw it was that I had a 30+ second lead over him because he still had to pit. He passed me, then pit the next lap along with Fisher and all the other 3-stoppers.

Final stint was mellow. For the most part I had my boost low and was on cruise control. I began to worry about brakes as the temps were spiking well into the 2500-3000f range. I took precautionary measures in the braking zones to reduce heat. All of this was allowing Conor to catch me at a couple ticks per lap, but I refused to worry unless he got within 5 seconds of me. He did of course, but by that time it was too late with only 2 laps to go.

Nice to see two 'McArthur prepared chassis' sweep the top 2 spots. I must admit I had very low hopes for this race, but somehow it just all came together. The main thing was the 2-stop strategy, though I guess if I were 3 stopping I'd have been lapping in the high 13's to low 14's all race long so maybe that would have still worked out too.

Superb showing by all today. I did not see any mishaps by lappers so I suspect Kent was just the magnet this race.

Sweet, another F1 win. Didnt think I'd get too many more of these with Fisher and Tristan around. Of course there is a group of another 4 or 5 guys that are stepping up into the lead pack so I may not see too many more wins.

Steve! Fastest lap dude... crazy!

Thanks Tim...I'm still looking for my first top 5, but it does look like my strategy is working for me. Thanks again for allowing me to pass you on that next to last lap so I could finish on the lead lap. You truly are an excellent sportsman...we are all fortunate that you are running this premium racing service.

But, my goal was just to avoid being lapped twice! I was sure I would be lapped at least once. If someone told me I would finish on the lead lap I would have laughed until I cried.

I don't yet have the skills to take those rock tires and lake of fuel around the track and score decent times. So, I'm doning sticky rubber and a trickle of fuel then letting the pit stops sort themselves out. This time I managed a 4 stopper, but was considering 5 stops because about lap 12 of each stint my tires were going red and my times were dropping down to the 16's, but it wouldn't have been worth it...a couple of 16's is negligible to the 14's I was turning. I think after a couple more seasons I might be able to try mediums with a splash more fuel and turn the same lap times, but for now I need the sticky tires. The obvious bonus is that I'm qualifying much higher on the grid and turning some faster laps.

Kent: cars that were "all over the track" were most likely experiencing the loss of rear downforce that happens when a car pulls up behind them...one of the more nasty aspects of open wheel. I don't think slowing down is the answer...the direct solution is to apply power slower...not to slam down on the brake or gas pedal...ease into the brake and throttle when there's a car coming up behind. But, nobody should be slowing down just before a corner especially when there is a car behind them...says so in the rules. There were several times this race that I stayed behind a lapped car through those last few chicanes...if they had slowed down just a little bit my race would have been over. Sometimes I gave leapped cars a gap and then used the draft on the main straight...got me an extra few tenths of a second boost. Sorry it's not working that way for you.

Thanks to everyone that reads the rules and keeps up the pace until a lead car pulls along side them. Now that I'm doing a bit of lapping myself I really appreciate the rules here at R2P which puts lapping control in the hands of the drivers that are looking for a place to pass. I don't get to race much, so if an opportunity arises to race against a driver that had a mishap or is still learning and is a lap down then more fun for me!