GP79: Kyalami

Well this was a wound healed for me... last season I was leading this race by 30 secs in the final laps and had a PC lock up... this time I had the pace... I had the luck... a win that makes me really happy.

The race was without much incidents for me just passing lapped cars and trying to be safe not pushing too much... I did some final adjustment to my race setup and tested it under accelerated tyre wear so I knew this setup handled fine in the last laps... that was pretty reassuring so I was actually quite sure I was not going to make a stupid mistake and give this race away. Unlike Watkins Glen this time I did not find any cars crossed along the track.. so thanks everyone for that I don't like scary moments hehe.

Too bad turnouts are dropping but I'm sure if we all help recruit new people we'll have both quantity and quality of drivers (quality meaning gentleman behaviour on track not necessarily speed). Please check this serie's forum on the "Recruiting" topic.

Well see you all again in Monza... credit system takes the Alfa away so I will have to try that T3 in Monza... I heard it made decent times in Le Mans so I'll check it out.

Whoever did my fuel calculation should be shot :) Ran out of gas with about 6 to go.
Great fun racing with you Thomas for the first half of the race. Was sorry to see you spin off. I guess it really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things as I wouldn't have made it to the finish.

Anthony, my fuel calculation was wrong, too. At the end of the race I had fuel on board for over 20 more laps.
You took hard pressure on me for the first half of the race.
Was a great surprise for me to be third at the end of the race.

Oh boy,it seems like there's no end to my struggles with these races.

Qualy went well. Managed to get 2nd place behind Emilio. At one point I had fastest lap up until 3rd sector and then ran out of fuel :-(
Anyway, I was sure I would not be able to keep up with Emilio during the race.

Got off to a good start for once :-) had a good battle with Peter for quite some time. he got by me,then I got by him. Very close racing.

Then my first incident happened. Suddenly my DFP decided to do 2 downshifts instead of 1 when braking for T1. Car spins out of control. I managed to avoid hitting the barrier and got back on track. I lost a lot of time but still had 3rd place.

Then with like 10-15 laps to go my PC locks up. That was it..Race over for me :-( I had 25s to Peter and 4th place was 40s down behind me..Damn..

Well, a shame there's 14 days until next race because I'm really eager to get going again right now LOL.

Grats to all who finished.

It was fun racing with you guys as always.

A good race all in all. Great win by Emilio. And fantastic close racing with Christian for many laps, one of us ahead and then the other!

Sorry for the side-swipe down the main straight Christian! I don't even know what happened, but I think it was my fault! I think the car bobbled on the bumps and I didn't correct it well enough and before I knew it we bumped. Hairy for you I could see!!

I think I boo-boo'ed on the setup!
I had an old M28 one from some prior race (just the one) and I vaguely recalled 1min 10sec lap times, and seeing it did that I thought it must be ok. Though I knew the faster cars could Qual in 1:08's I just guessed the M28 was a lot slower.
I actually have an rFactor installation (one somewhere) with a heap of the car type setups for Kyalami, but didn't go to look for those.
So I thought 1:10.2 was a good Qualify time (online the day before). Except when online for the race I could not get under 1:10.8 as it was a bit slipperier.

Christian was in the same lap time area and I guess that should have been a clue that I should have been even faster. But with no one else near the lap times I figured it would be closer fun racing, so I did not bother trying any setup changes to push limits.

So that was the boo-boo.... when Emilio turned up! lol
And he was over 0.6sec a lap faster in the M28!
My car was too easy to drive, so it could have been made faster, but it was too late to tinker with safely then.

It made for the great racing with Christian though!

If the stupid race car setup would run the 'solo online' times, it would have been 0.6sec faster just as it was. But I think Emilio still would have edged away anyway and thus positions would have been the same. Maybe if I was closer/faster it might have made him error along the way, but that would have been the only way to do better than him - not possible just on pure lap time.

So 2nd was still good. And sorry to see that Christian fizzed out from his strong 3rd position.
That very close driving in the opening laps was awesome - very tough to do, safely and consistently. But somehow we did, and Christian spent a lot of time extremely close to my rear wing and never made a slip up under that intense difficulty and pressure! Great driving!

Peter... yes I had some pace left in me... I did not want to push it because I had a confortable margin... but... as you said... I don't know how I would have done with a car close behind... in those situations online experience is far more valuable than offline "solo practice"... I will try to find some time to do more online practice with Rolando and Cristobal (they could not show up today), but the best scenario for me, obviously... is starting from pole and build some 3 second gap so I can do my stuff and not be bothered haha. Anyway Kyalami is a track that suits my style perfectly... meaning just one slow corner... because I do prefer medium to fast ones.

Grats Emilio !!! and the rest of the podium.

Kevin

well, another dnf!!! :( just plain and simple, went out by myself, i hope i didn't cause too much damage to M.Erickson, sorry if i did...

Yeah, where was Kevin!!??

He's unfortunately not participating in this series anymore.