Just a quick note: It was a horrible race! I was overconfident that I could have made it with minimal training. BIG MISTAKE!!!

Race 01, Brands Hatch GP:

Stats before starting:
-Strength of field: 1720
-My iRating: 1796
-My car numer: 10

Yes, I thought this would have been an easy race. I have had success on this track last year, when I did a two hour race on it with the Classic Indycar Series. We did a testrace there, that I took good time for to get up to speed. Since that moment I loved this track.
That race was actually pretty nice. I had bad rhythm at the start, but regained that towards the last part of the race. While both leaders were fighting fatigue, I became balanced and consistent. I mostly perform pretty well in lang races. I was able to close the gap from 15 seconds to about 5 seconds in the last few laps.

This race, and a lot of training before season 1 2017 started, gave me the confidence to start this race with low expectations. But I did think it wouldn’t be as hard as it actually went.

I submitted myself for a race on Sunday afternoon 14:00 GMT. With 20 minutes of training. Started up the sim, set my car up with a good setup (I thought), and jumped in the car. That first lap was horrible! No stability on the brakes, no balance mid-corner and no traction on exits.
The first thing I did, was to change my driving. Braking a bit earlier fixed a bit of entry and mid corner problems, but it still didn’t feel right.

So the race session began. First was a qualifying session, that gave me two flying laps to set a time. The first one was like I was driving on eggs. I never heard my tires that much before! The second lap was a cautious improvement of the first one, but a disaster on my ego!

Qualifying time: 1:24,570

That gave me 20th spot on the start. A place you don’t want to have in the lower GT3 grids! So I started from the pitlane, to minimize the chance I would be wrecked, or I would wreck anybody else at the start.

I started in 26th place.

So when the whole field was started, I saw no incidents at the start. Doubting my decision to start this way, I trotted on. The car still felt like crap! That made me spin in the second lap, hitting the guardrails slightly.

Yes, it was a big hit on my confidence. Maybe even more on my ego. I was 15 seconds behind the next car. Carefully doing my laps, and keeping it as clean as possible, I was gaining a lot on the next couple of cars.Somehow I could reset my mindset, and the car began to feel better. So my laps improved.

Nearing the rear end of the first car, I knew turn 2 was a good spot to overtake. Fortunately he ran wide in the first turn, so my run to turn 2 was great! Braking even later, I was already ahead when turning in. Ego +1

The laps from that moment on were the same, but I gained speed almost every lap. And overtaking wasn’t even a problem. I took my time, and I was just much faster in most cases.

With 15 minutes to go, I needed to do my pitstop. No car in the field can run the race without taking some extra fuel. But I did my pitstop a lap later. That means I needed a bit less fuel to reach the end. Less fuel means less time standing still. Very nice!

So after my pitstop, I gained a few places, and had a nice distance to the drivers in front and behind me. Just cruising to the finish!

I overtook half the field in this race, finishing in 13th place! I have never felt so glad to get such a bad result. Just exhausted of the tension, I forgot to save the replay. That means I don’t have screenshots of the race. The next race report will include proper screenshots from the race. But I will include a shot from a training session after the race.

The next race will be run on Philip Island. A nice flowing track, that is very challenging. Should be nice!

Started: 26th
Finished: 13th
iRating: 1797 (+1)