1956 Round 3 - Gran Premio Supercortemaggiore

I had lag from the start of practice. At one point, Rylan's car drove past me in the paddock then popped back into me as I pulled away and we collided.
At the start of the race, I either had terrible lag or clutch slippage of both. The revs would just not rise and I got swallowed by half the field. I finally got going but again got bad lag whenever I was near other cars. I was stuck behind a bunch of 2l and the best place to over take was the banking and straight. Unfortunately, it was too laggy to drive on the inside of the banking and I nearly lost it passing Martin. So I had to keep slowing down on the inside, pop back to the outside and wait behind the 2l until we reached the main straight. That way I got past someone.
I then passed Darren as he had a moment in Curve Grande. But, again lag; my braking was off and I ran wide and damaged the steering. I took it even easier into the Parabolica but it was like driving a slide show at that point. So missed my braking and turn in point ran wide and gave up. Extremely frustrating to drive like that and a danger to other racers. Just to be clear, I've been practicing on full fuel all week, on a green track. In the race I was taking it easier.
Annoyingly, my broadband has been 'upgraded' recently. I noticed a bit of lag at the start of the last race but it cleared up pretty quickly. I wondered if it was because I'm streaming but I have been doing that for a while without issue. I'll definitely stop streaming at the next race though.
Very annoying, I was really looking forward to this one.

What. A. Race.

Practice :
I needed to practice my pace on high fuel and see where I needed to save fuel most efficiently. I quickly realized that I was losing at least 1.5 seconds a lap compared to the hotlap pace I had until then. I had a brief moment where I thought about going for a quick 2 stop instead of fuel saving for a 1 stop, to maximize the time spent on lower fuel load and never go above 115L in the tank, but I couldn't make any sorts of maths in time to predict if that would really be faster or slower.

Qualifying :
I kept getting faster and faster throughout the session but never properly catched a toe, until the last 5 minutes where I had the opportunity to try and disrupt the plans of the Lancias, which backfired when I helped Niklas get P2 from me without realizing. P3 on the grid and the inside for turn 1. Let's just say that was intentional.

Race :
I had a really poor start. Probably the worst launch off the line I had for an HSO race. Released the clutch too fast and completely bogged down. I should have practiced more with such a long 1st gear.

This meant I swiftly lost touch with Niklas and Nico, as well as the other Lancias which were much faster than us on high fuel. I also needed to save a lot of fuel and decided to play it safe instead of praying for a toe. I let Austin catch up to me when he got close so we could work together on the straights and catch up to the front pack, which worked beautifully. I was worried he wouldn't anticipate how much I coasted before grande and parabolica but he did a great job overall, until we catched up to Nico and I betrayed him to stay with my other teammate from then on. We had quite a good thing going, I felt like it was safer for me to stay in front but Nico felt otherwise at some points and got back in front a few times, which allowed me to easily save some fuel, which wasn't too bad. Unfortunately at one point, exiting the second banking, Nico misjudged it in front of me and I followed him into the guardrail, which resulted in a lot of aero damage for the both of us, but nothing more serious than a slight loss of top speed for the rest of the race, which was a big bummer.

We also had a few scraps with the other Lancias which made mistakes but by that point Niklas was just pulling away unbothered 15 seconds away from us, but we started to catch up slowly as our cars started getting lighter. Unfortunately Nico had his problem and got off at Parabolica never to be seen again, which meant I had no one anymore to help me chase Niklas, and with the aero damage I picked up, it turned out to be basically impossible. The pitstop went perfectly besides the fact that I didn't turn off damage repairs, just to see how much time was needed, which meant I needed to press the spacebar in order to skip it when my tank was full losing me a couple of seconds. A little under 2 minutes spent in the pits then. But Niklas gained 10 seconds with his pitstop which meant I was now 25 seconds behind with no chance to catch up. I made a few mistakes which lost me a total of about 15 seconds in that second stint, but without those and without the aero damage I think I would have been equal to Niklas in terms of pace.

P2 in the end, with Austin on the podium to keep me company. I want to say better luck next time but I doubt the Lancia will give us any more chance. That was immensely fun seeing so many cars around the track and such fair and clean driving throughout the field. Thanks a lot to everyone who took part, however your race went, you are all wonderful people to race with !

It was quite a lonely race for me. I didn't have the pace to hang on to the big cars yet steadily increased the gap to the guys behind me. One planned pitstop a little past the halfway point, one screaming gearchange that luckily did not harm and a Porsche blowing up in my face; that's about it.