Round 9 - Paul Ricard (May 1st)

Results up.  Points to follow.

Points!

After a midseason ride change, I was pleased to put the Team Rebaque car third on the grid after many lower-midfield starts in the Ligier.

Very soon after the start, I found myself in a nearly race-long battle with Gerard's superior Lotus and, after losing time trading position repeatedly, I settled in under his rear wing and waited for a mistake so I could get through more permanently. This was a bit worrying at times as Gerard had several half-spins in tight turns, holding us both up a bit as I jammed on the brakes to avoid contact. He was always faster in sectors two and three, though, and I just didn't have the tires left to do it on raw pace. Finally, he half-spun in T5, leaving room on the inside to get through. I ducked in there just as he got going, though, closing the door and knocking off my front wing along with his rear. That lost me a chance for the last podium position but I'm lucky to have kept all my wheels and grateful that I could continue to the end and grab fourth for my first decent finish in the F178 Series.

Tyred and frustrated, so slow, so uncompetitive, no points again , most of the race alone, only letting by faster drivers

1st of all, I'm really sorry Matt, I hope that your car wasn't damaged in the incident
I made the decision before the sweeping right to go to the inside on the exit but I should have waited for your move. I'm really sorry.


As for the event.

Struggled a lot with the car around here, had no real idea of what to do to the car and didn't have much time to practice either due to real life commitments.
Thank you to Matthias who told me what his McLaren team was putting on for wings.


For the race I had a car that I wanted to be understeery as the car was way to wayward as soon as I tried to make it the tiniest bit oversteery.

Had a bit of contact in the 1st corner, I think someone didn't know I was on the outside and so I was sent to the grass and to last in the field.

Took my time to get to know the car as it was after the contact. Had some slight damage to the front left making the car a bit more understeery in the lefthanders but otherwhise it seemed fine.

Made my way up the field, having a couple of nice battles along the way and then ended up in about 14th place or there about and had several seconds up to Matthias and David.

I drove my own race and found lines as the race was going on so was able to find almost 3 seconds compared to my PB pre-race so I was having a good run when I noticed that I was closing in on Matthias and then David as their tires went away. My tires were perfectly worn all around so had a good car to push in the last laps.

Sadly I had a bit of bad luck with where I came across lapped cars and I was being lapped myself as I lost many valuble seconds managing it.

Finally David made a misstake and me and Matthias duked it out hard for the last 3 laps of the race but in the end I wasn't able to get the gap I needed for the back straight on the last lap and with Matthias going 20 kph faster than me due to the draft and the wing settings, he got by me before the sweeper and I didn't want to dive up the inside as Gerard was right behind and went to the inside so didn't dare try.

Had a bad exit out of the last turn as well but less than a tenth saparated us at the line.


Thank you to everyone I had a battle with and to everyone who makes these events possible. I'm really frustrated to not score points as I was so close but I suppose that shows that I need to spend more time, like all the other events, to do better than I did today...


See you all at the next event

I am sorry Petr i don't realy Know what happend my wheel just kicked left and stayed at funny angle. Back right of car went down, front left came up, must of been a punture or suspension failure, pitted but wheel was'nt right. Its a shame as we were both on for points.

Jan that was a great fight. I can't believe the way you went out.

Well done to the podium.

Points up.  Screenies to follow.

Enfin une course terminée ,

Je n'avance pas et je ne comprend pas pourquoi ???
7 secondes de différence avec mon équipier aux hotlaps ,
et François m'a donné son set-up !
C'est énorme !
C'est vrai que pour cette course je manquais d'entrainement , et très peu de temps pour les qualifs,
mais bon, je ne comprend pas cette différence ??

Il n'y a pas un réglage a faire dans le mod ???
Mon ordinateur est-il trop lent?
Ou bien le pilote.......!

Allez, je suis quand même content, je suis classé

Marcus

The renault was so tricky to drive  +16 seconds in qualify the french crowd at paul ricard must have been much embarassed

Got a setup from Jonatan  and it helped a little but was still super slow

realy enoyed to watched you all guys on the new Paul ricard
see this as a test for a final public release soon
think i ll make it in the early 70s

the race itself, as i realy like this track very much was abit disapointed,
too much wing i recon to use the power of the BOXER FLAT 12 and brakes were fading rapidly which in the end cought me out of the race
find it very hard to find the right setup for these cars but thats a challenge ofcourse IF you have the time
however it's very weird that a shadow can walk around all these tracks with eaz into top 3 , should be a dog of a car to drive
looking back to the 91 season think if you guys had given greg the ligier he realy had to fight for points regarding his rapid pace
by all means , would be nice to see random winners

Screenies up Track looks great, François!

http://historicsimracing.org/en/resultatscourse/1140

With so much action at the track we couldn't talk much about the personal background of some drivers who PMed us (But don't worry we will be using it in future broadcasts ) and forgot completely to mention the update that François did for the track Sorry for that mate, I was about to say it once, but some wild action started and Richard cut me and I forgot about it later.  

It was a great race, so many fun battles ... Yves is doing great in the Ligier I bet he had lots of fun. Sad to see Philippe lose it and Dana/Gerard not getting the deserved shot at the podium, as well as Jonathan losing a hard earned point (But what an awesome last lap battle!)

Contrats to "Greg Vettel" for yet another dominating win  , Vincent for a fine 2nd place and Jan for sticking to the stubbornly. And to all finishers and participants, great racing there

Yeah i really have a guilty conscience to have stolen Jonatans first point.

Had very nice fights with Jonatan,Francois and David during the race and had more luck at the end to gain 6th. Speed was clearly not fast enough to score points, but i've been really consistent an made no major mistakes.

Was really surprised how much faster Jonatan was at the end, with my low wing i had only one chance to strike back and it worked (with 330Km/h in the slipstream )

I'll be missing the next two races, so good luck for the other McLaren Drivers to score some points!

First of all, i´m very happy with three points finishes in a row with the Tyrrell after changing from the ATS team. Despite some errors by myself (Anderstorp: spinning 3 or 4 times; Paul Ricard: one spin due to selecting of the wrong gear, 3rd to 1th and then seeing two Lotus going by). I´m looking forward for the rest of the season and some good results for constructors championship too. Its difficult to match the ground effect cars in qualifying, but in race it seems that there are chances.

To race
Starting from 5th i made a very good start going into second before turn 1. On the mistral straight i caught Greg but on the next turn he repassed me. On lap 2 Vincent passed me too as i was too cautious on defending my position. Nevertheless i found it more important to keep up with the Shadows than ruining my tyres and lose time while defending. I had difficult oversteer all the race and even sliding much when getting onto the Mistral Straight. Perhaps some minor changes would have helped but the race set is always a compromise.
I had most of the time a race alone with just 5-10 seconds ahead of the following cars. And there were some freaking moments too while lapping. Jason spun while braking for turn 3 so i had to avoid that beautiful car. Some lack of rear end grip since Anderstorp
As i said before, near the middle of the race i made a error while shifting (3rd to accidently going for 1th) so my Tyrrell said (no,no,no!). In addition to that i forgot to use clutch, so i crawled to the last turn.
With 6 or 5 laps to go, Gerad and Dana touched so i could slip through onto the podium. Dana had a good pace even without a front wing, the Lotus factory could even think of start without a front wing  These ground effect cars are really fast, and Greg has a run since Zolder.

Congrats to the 1-2 shadow boys and all finishers
See you in June after the long break or in other series at HSO

Btw: Does the Lotus privateer entry count for the Lotus team itself regarding the constructors championship?

Raymond Riddall wrote:

I am sorry Petr i don't realy Know what happend my wheel just kicked left and stayed at funny angle. Back right of car went down, front left came up, must of been a punture or suspension failure, pitted but wheel was'nt right. Its a shame as we were both on for points.

I guess it's Karma, a payback for Kyalami, when Richard paid for my mistake and i was super fortunate that the game was merciful to me and let me continue with minor damage. Shit happens

Encore une jolie course, solitaire et appliquée. Je ne pouvais pas faire mieux, je suis resté propre toute la course et plutôt régulier.
Greg est une minute devant à la fin, c'est énorme et pourtant j'ai probablement jamais aussi bien conduit qu'hier.

Très déçu bien sur

J'ai pris un mauvais départ parce que ma voiture avançait dans la pente, et au moment ou j'ai mis le pied sur le frein pour l’arrêter.......green !

Pas mal de voitures sont passées mais au moment d'aborder le premier gauche j'avais retrouvé une vitesse d'entrée normale...mais prudente en pneus totalement froids et à l'amorce d'une course de deux heures avec une très grande ligne droite qui permet des dépassements.

Et là ....boum Mike tape ma roue ARG puis l'AR.....Suspension cassée, l'auto est inconduisible, même après une tentative de réparation.

Abandon sans être sorti entier du 1er virage.

Mike s'est excusé en privé donc pas de souci.....mais bon....quitte à abandonner je préfère me sortir seul, comme ça je n'en veux à personne.

Jan Kowalski wrote:

Btw: Does the Lotus privateer entry count for the Lotus team itself regarding the constructors championship?

It's a constructors championship, so the constructor gets the points.

Im very happy that i see the finish in this race. Very nice track, fast track with technical sectors. I was very happy that i pushed my time per lap against the training even more down by 0,5s so on the starting grid i had for me and my car good 15th position. But in the race i fight with my bad setup which is more understeer that i expected. Each start is from my side very careful so i lost some possition. Some of them i get back but i was too slow against the driver in front of me so i lost step by step a seconds. I remember that i have no major fight with anybody i was surrised as each easilly overtooked me. In next round i have to spend more time with testing of race setup than the qualy. Anyway im pleased that i finish the race with some unlucky moments of other competitors on 9th position so i was in top ten.:-)

Après un départ moyen, j’arrive avec trop de vitesse dans le V1 et je passe par les bas-côtés du circuit et me retrouver sur la piste aux abords de la première chicane en 12 ème place, 4 places de perdues mais voiture intacte…  

Je remonte jusqu’à la 8 ème place au 14ème tour environ, après avoir dépassé François et sa Ferrari puis David en Tyrrel et enfin Yves et sa Ligier très rapide dans la ligne droite.

Je fais une première erreur au 23ème tour à la sortie du double droit du Bosset , perds deux places, et Yves me passe devant. Nous allons nous suivre, enfin surtout moi, durant 23 tours pour le gain de la 10ème place…  
Je suivais Yves sans problème, sauf dans la ligne droite où ma voiture n’avait pas de réglage boîte de vitesse nécessaire pour le dépasser.  J’ai donc rongé mon frein jusqu’à dix tours de l’arrivée, je suis résolument passé à l’attaque dans les esses rapides du début du circuit.  
Yves n’a pas lâché le morceau, j’ai heurté l’arrière de sa voiture, heureusement sans l’endommagée, mais mon aileron avant a sauté et j’ai percuté le rail et détruit ma voiture…    

Evidemment, en voyant les péripéties de fin de course j’ai regretté de ne pas être resté dans la fumée de la « Gitane » de l’ami  Yves, et  ramasser  le dernier point de la 6ème place tout à fait à ma portée…  

J’ai fait preuve d’impatience c’est sûr mais Yves a parfaitement joué sa partie en ne commettent aucune faute ; grand bravo à toi Yves.  

Bravo au podium    et tous les participants.

Merci HSO organisation et réalisation