Yo folks,
I see a lot of discussions about the incident at Forests Elbow and I got a chance to talk with the stewards afterwards and we shared our opinions. First of all though the actually racing, I'll obviously be talking about this in my video as well.
Qualifying
Qualifying went really well for us, although really annoyingly, we got 1 fast lap before it started and I did a 2:01.4 haha, wish that counted
! But when I did get the 2:01.8 I said to my team if I get a 2:01 I'm just going to go for it, unfortunately I just went a tiny bit to hard on exit of T1 and that cost us. As the commentators pointed out I got the fastest last sector, so I could have ended up with a right cracker of a lap if I put it all together. Funny thing was when Porsche crossed the line I looked over to Matt and pointed, and we both were laughing our heads off at that as we'd been talking all day about different strats and wanting to be on the podium and stuff so was hilarious we nailed the same time.
Spa
Spa Group 4, we knew our only chance was to break away from the back as fast as we could which is why we went softs first. Tatsukt wanted mediums at the end which worked out to be the best strategy for us I think. We were hoping we could break away from BMW but that didn't happen which is why they won by 3 seconds as they got the mediums for free essentially, which is good/smart driving from them and I congratulate them. It was especially smart to leave the door open for turn 1 so that they lost as little time as possible as I think an overtake on the kemmel straight would have cost them BIG time. I thought the Spa race was brilliant personally, lots of clean, close action between a variety of cars. Even though the tyre wear was still low unfortunately for us it still impacted us and you could see the last lap on softs we were absolutely suffering, I think we were the only car to, to suffer with it. One thing people forget with FF cars is that yes the tyre wear may be similar to other cars on the fronts, but our fronts do everything, so if its 25% like others, then we can't accelerate while others can still use other wheels to accelerate. Double H also found a sneaky trick for those interested, we could reduce tyre wear by coming in the pits in 2nd gear, so we didn't have 1st gear wheel spin on exit, which actually helped us. One thing you may have noticed is the bus stop chicane, especially on hards! We would loose soooooo much time there it was ridiculous, we couldn't accelerate at all until we were straight.... So 4th we were pretty happy with, the only surprise was Lexus coming through but we know it's a powerful car and we couldn't do anything.
Bathurst
Another interesting one, we were surprised, or at least I was to see Lexus struggle initially which was great for us getting up into P3. As the pitstop times at Bathurst were longer than normal, which was really frustrating as it meant the strategies were locked again we had to do a 2 stop... If the pit stop time was the same as at home we'd have done the 3 stop and have been in with more of a fighting chance. But you'll notice as we get towards the end of a stint we are really just trying to survive and manage rather than race, so we lost the slipstream to Porsche which has a bit better tyre wear than us and then we became sitting ducks. The minute we saw that 5th place had hards (Toyota) we were happy, but amazed at how the Toyota kept up on the hards to be fair in the opening stint, which I think was partly due to the first lap overtakes. Our hard stint went brilliantly with Double H as well so when I jumped in I short filled slightly as I knew we would have some slip-streaming in there, but it was nothing major and with the power increase we could short shift slightly and lose 2 tenths only. 6% fuel was used flat out and we filled to 45% from 36% which cost 3 seconds in the pit I think it was.
Anyway I got in the car and came out 1.9 seconds behind Hyundai which I thought was so unlucky so up the hill I pushed like hell to try get in the slipstream. I was also surprised to see that I had come out ahead of Toyota and did question it a number of times. They were in my slipstream so they could catch all the way upto the back of us but unfortunately we were 2 tenths outside if coming onto Conrod
. Sooooo unlucky, like literally 1% less fuel and we would have been in it and potentially safe. Toyota got by and then the battle began to try get past Hyundai. We did ask Hyundai to let us go if they had a chance but they said no which is fine, but that meant Toyota, Audi and Lexus were really close. I personally am unsure why Toyota got a penalty for the move with Hyundai although I believe the reason was Hyundai lost 3 positions because of slight contact, but I think that was inevitable anyway as they were on a different strategy. Lap 15 is where it all really kicked off for us, so going down mountain straight we went side by side with Toyota and they tried to tighten us up against the grass as much as possible and you can see the banging on stream, so I get turned into and nearly clip the grass, so I push back a little as it narrows a bit, I got hit again then hit the grass and had to completely back out of it. I wasn't happy there and my language may have turned french... I talked to the stewards about this after and they said that should have been a warning, you've got to remember a lot is going on, and sometimes things can be missed, especially with the camera angle that was being shown. Obviously at this point I was a bit fired up.... going over the hill of course the Audi is strong but a bit of dirty air and of course the down hill it can get a bit sketchy, then there was the move with Lexus. I'll talk about that in a second but that cost us more time and a bit of tyre wear. We then had a great battle with Aston but as you can see the car gets sketchy on the 8th lap of softs so I couldn't do much more after. P4 overall again for Audi though.... definitely a cursed position, P4 Tokyo 2 points off podium, nearly a podium at Monaco but slight contact cost us, then P4 again here
!
The Forest Elbow Incident
So, with this incident I've seen multiple camera angles and gone through it with the stewards with someone from the FIA watching, some from PD and also my team mates. A couple of things to note with this as well which makes it even harder.
- You can't see radar on hood cam because there's a web camera pointing at you at this event. You will have seen at Spa me staring directly at the camera, that was me trying to use Radar.
- Hood camera has no rear view mirror.
I knew Lexus was close coming down the hill after the incident earlier in the lap with Toyota and the car did get lose slightly. So moves don't really happen at Forest Elbow that often because they are often risky and normally always result in contact. It's not as clear cut as everyone is making it seem either. You've got to remember we are on the limits here so even a slight out braking will have implications. I personally wasn't expecting it, and couldn't see it so that does make it a good opportunity I guess to overtake? So there was no penalty given for the incident because I didn't go off circuit, but I did argue that the only reason I didn't go off was because I had to lift to stop the car going off when I would normally be full throttle at the point of contact. Now in my opinion I would say it was worth a 1 second penalty to just put back to status quo because the Lexus went for the move and without me there would have been in the middle of the track before it could turn in which in my opinion would have meant they hit the wall on the outside. But as I was there they made it round. It literally is only like 2-5m braking difference, if it was slightly earlier then ye it wouldn't have been a pen. One thing I've always said is that a dive is clean if you make the apex, if you miss it then I think the move then isn't clean in my opinion. Even so we talked at great length about it in the background which is good to do. I may still differ on the opinion of the penalty but that's in the past now and have to move on with it. I have no issues with TsuTsu either as it was a move he had to try and make somewhere as I was in the slipstream at the time of the Toyota and the Audi was fast in a straight line. Remember we are racing, tempers flare, we're on limits and in the moment things happen. At least I got to talk to the stewards and review it
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Congratulations to BMW, Porsche and Lexus on the podium!
I honestly think this will be the last time you see Audi at an event (May have been good for us to get the points as well to even up the world final), as there's no way I'm racing for any FF manufacturer anymore. It's been 2 years now and they are still just group 4.5 rather than group 4 cars so I'll be looking for a new manufacturer for the future seasons, although qualification for EMEA is looking pretty much impossible so if this was my last event at least it's a good one to finish on
! Thanks as always for the support and lets enjoy Nations today and any future events coming up! <3.
. I'm not getting up a 5am 
so I'll read all about it over breakfast tomorrow...
