The NA race started the same way. I qualified number eight, and had a good start. As I was ending the first stint, I realized that the changes I made didn't really help at all. (I did change it from the set-up I gave you during practice, Speedy, but not enough to take out the "twitchiness" in the rear, as becomes clear.) I was running alone and getting ready to pit when I just lost concentration and spun out. As I tried to straighten out, traffic caught up to me, making a bad situation worse. I had NO tire wear left, and could barely keep it straight at 40 MPH, when the leaders came by. I did my best to stay out of the way, but now I was over a lap down and my race was effectively over. The rest of the race I sat back and enjoyed the throaty sound of the engine in this beast, a small consolation.
Overall, another great week of racing!! Thank you to the admins for a great job!!
It was good starting the race with you last night, Chuk. I knew you had more general pace than me, so after a couple minor errors, I decided to make it easy for you to go by and then worked to maintain your pace.
Unfortunately, I think we were both a bit victimized by your spin, but after watching the replay, it's clear to me that a combination of shot tires compounded by severe wheel spin when attempting to recover caused the issues. If only you could modulate that darn reverse gear.
The one comment I would have for you is something I learned when praticing on severely worn softs. Once you got going forward, you would have been a lot better off putting the car in 5th gear right off and limping it to the pits. Leaving it in 1st probably did as much to cause your spins after that as anything. Hindsight is 20/20, but this is something for everyone to keep in mind with the new tire model.
I was on a 2 stop strategy, with my car setup to run on Mediums, which are actually the tire I set my fastest lap on. Due to the incident with Chuk on lap 6, my rears ended up taking a bit of a beating and I had to come in a lap earlier than planned, meaning I had to stretch my second stint on Mediums to 10 laps. A couple of my minor mistakes with braking points, etc. were actually made while I was trying to work out a revised pit strategy on the fly.
On the 10 lap stint, my tires were down to probably 20% in a rear by the end of lap 24, which is when I came around the final corner behind Alibubba, put it into the outer barrier, and just had to mash the brakes to avoid a spin. I knew I had a car right behind, and I thought it was Speedy (for position), and that's the reason I yelled 🤬 , not because Al also had a small crash of his own into the left barrier in front of me.
My overall strategy was consistent laps, 2 stopper, with even wear on both the soft and medium tires. I managed to keep the car pointed in the forward direction the whole race, and am happy with my 4th, although it looks like with slightly better execution (fewer mistakes), I might have been able to challenge for a podium. Alas, I guess that's what next week is for.
Thanks for the great race, guys. 👍
Kevin