AC Race #5 Championship Abarth/Mazda@Battenbergring, Wed 30th November 2022

[Programmer_Rich]

Great fun race for the first 35 minutes until I lost the server connection!

At the start I managed to slam on the brakes in the first-ish corner incident and dodge round a spinning Allan (I think) and then I had a great battle with Hank and Ernie. With Ernie in the Abarth, with a different pace at different parts of the track to our MX5s, Hank finally got slightly compromised and I of course took advantage for the pass! Then followed a desperate 4 or 5 laps with me compromised by Ernie but also unable to secure a pass due to the Abarth's straight line speed.

At the mid-race pitstops I heard/saw both Ernie and Mika having issues with the scenery, as I understand it, and I thought 3rd place was on the cards if I could keep it clean but sadly we'll never know as for the last 25 mins I was on my own on the track, knocking out PBs in my solo 'time trial' but sadly with no one to race! Hey ho that's 'Sim racing' for you!

Roll on the next race!

 

[Programmer_Rich]

Thanks Han for running tonight's race, and congrats to class podium chaps, with a super-tough combo

@eN1xes Fulvio's lap times were fantastic, saw them come up and had a "WTF!" moment After seeing that I just aimed for consistency, not too brave in the village, and to keep it together.

Tiring race, huge thanks to Abarth for providing post-race therapy View attachment 620681
For those that want them, results here: https://simresults.net/221130-s4H

Maybe it's only me that doesn't watch live TV (and hence the adverts) but Google Lens found the advert this still is from and it made me laugh out loud so sharing for others that are also unreachable by the advertising media!!

 

[Mikke73]

@Mikke73
HaHa , just to let you know? I was not going to catch you, that I knew, but you had some bad luck with a back marker, that I assumed was not your fault.
So as I was in a section where the Abarth is very quick, I knew I was going to get a very good chance of an overtake.
Unfortunately I had time to consider it, and as I went passed got a bout of conscience, so I just had to lift and return you to your rightful position.

Yes , my bottom lip bled as I bit into it.

You really should have just taken the 3rd place, I had my share of good luck too
I wouldn't have minded at all because my race was against other Mazdas.
But at least now the podium wasn't filled with Abarths

 

[Mikke73]

At the mid-race pitstops I heard/saw both Ernie and Mika having issues with the scenery, as I understand it, and I thought 3rd place was on the cards if I could keep it clean but sadly we'll never know as for the last 25 mins I was on my own on the track, knocking out PBs in my solo 'time trial' but sadly with no one to race! Hey ho that's 'Sim racing' for you!

Roll on the next race!

I looked at the gaps we had before my adventure in the pits, and I think we would have had a real battle of the 3rd place . Our last gap was 11 secs, and I lost 10 seconds in my incident.
With you and Allan gone from the podium fight I think I had it a bit too easy, perhaps.

 

[maxilogan]

I had an interesting (for me) pace and I had been able to repeatedly go through the village without too many problems, so I was very happy of the qualify time. Managed to squeeze past the first incident and gain some position, only to find myself jauting in the woods on the finish line, which I took at too high a speed to remain on track.
Nevertheless, I had the chance to exploit the errors of some other driver and find myself again in the midfield, but suddenly I saw Han going plain ahead and drowning in the tarmac, and I knew that my connection dropped once again
I wanted to take as much as I could of this beautiful track, in any case, so I reconnected and in the rush of restarting I forgot to set the proper setup, so the rest of the race was more or less lonely (with the exception of being lapped by John and Fulvio) fighting with tire pressure and with an almost full tank..

It's been fun in any case, thanks @HF2000 for organising and cheers to the podium finishers, and especially to John @Medilloni whose pace was unbeatable!

 

[HF2000]

I saw Han going plain ahead and drowning in the tarmac

Yeah, I still have a bad taste in my mouth...