Between a sick kiddo, a new puppy, and some home improvement projects, as well as being sick myself there has been very little time for racing.
Finally got a chance to jump on tonight and immediately headed for Race B. I love the '16 GR.2 Nissan at Spa. It's my go-to car for grinding the 1 hour race.
Tried to set some qualifying times and kept getting off track penalties from pushing too hard and understeering off. Managed to set a low 2:08 even while serving one of the 0.500 penalties. Entered a race and immediately regretted not being faster. I started in the middle of the chicane lol.
Didn't do all that well though, wrecked myself trying to pass into the turn before Blanchimont and fell to 14th. Did a recovery drive and finished 7th.
Ran more qualy and set a vv low 2:07 and was on pace for a low :06 when the timer ran out.
Started 2nd and had a great time bumping 1st up the Kemmel to gap the Mercedes in 3rd. Got us clear enough that we could get through Les Combes and Malmedy uncontested.
We had a 5 second gap by Blanchimont and I had a helluva run so I went for it. Up the inside into the chicane BUT OH NO I TOUCHED HIM!
We get loose, he recovers but then slides sideways. I slam on the brakes, I'm not taking this position this way. He pulls ahead of me and then I hit the gas. Our 5 second is down to 2. He gaps me up Kemmel this time, I had a bad La Source.
I play defense from the guy in 3rd as penance for almost ending 1sts day. Unfortunately my defense is too vigorous and on lap 3 I bin in through the long left and fall to 11th. As my kiddo was making some noises I didn't like I decided to exit instead of trying to recover.
Regardless this is a GREAT combo and I highly recommend anyone interested but nervous to just go for it. Set a time and just vibe with the combo it's awesome!
Also, today I learnt that I had been calling Raidillon as Eau Rouge my whole life! Well, better late than never!
It's called Eau Rouge because there's a stream that runs beneath the circuit right there called:
de l'Eau Rouge
way back in the day the drivers used to take a HARD left there and do a little loop before heading up Kemmel Straight:
The road over the stream lead to: i'Ancienne Douane which was used as the racing circuit (no Raidillon at all) until 1939 when the race promoter wanted to advertise Spa as a faster circuit and so the hard left onto the road that loops through the background and up the hill slowly was eliminated and the drivers headed up the Raidillon itself.
They kept the name Eau Rouge though for that little left hand flick that has been tightened a LOT over the years from basically what you see below into what you see in your post above.
I love the history of racing and its circuits and the history of Spa and what it went through from the early days of Grand Prix racing pre F1 through today when Eau Rouge and Raidillon was again reprofiled with additional runoff, gravel traps, and some smoothing of the curves themselves to fix flood damage from this past winter.
Thanks for listening to me ramble
I don't get why people even attempt to drive fairly around these "meme" players.
