Season 30: Specials. Round 8: Zeltweg (27 laps) (69 F1 cars)

Well after a lot of work I ended up with a very fast and competitive setup.  Set an easy pole position (although with a bit of a tow from Axel), and lined up ahead of Greg, who was also in a Ferrari.  Got a good start and took the lead.  What followed was basically 20 laps of pressure, as I could lead from Greg but could not pull away from him.  So lap after lap, corner after corner I was watching him in the mirrors.  I feel I had him covered for the most part, my car was hooked up nicely.  So on lap 20 I had a slight slide under braking for turn 4.  That put my car a little high, and Greg came charging in.  But he didn't go for the low line, he was more to the middle of the track.  And he basically slid into the side of me.  That combined with a bit of lag and ended up sending me over the fence.

I landed on my wheels but could not rejoin the track, so had to do a reset.  And then had to do a stop and go penalty stop at the pits.  I rejoined to find Greg waiting for me, but instead of letting me past he continued on ahead.  I tried to push hard to get into his slipstream but I now had a full tank of fuel, and cold tyres.  I just couldn't get close enough.  So Greg led across the finish line.  He said later he meant to let me past but got caught out by the finish.

So there we are.  On reflection I've decided to post an official incident report.  I can't accept that finish as it stands.  Greg's passing attempt just wasn't on.  Sad it's come to this, but.  Standings are pending.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		368.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0	50.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		315.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	43.0
3	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		181.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		166.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0	32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		106.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
11	Rainier (R1)		28.0	McLaren M9A								28.0
	bagrupp (R1)
	Gareth (R1)

Testing in Austria

Hard at work in Austria.  First had to figure out and confirm that the BRM is slower than the Ferrari, which entailed lots of back to back laps and refinement of setups.  Finally I could then concentrate on the Ferrari and experiment with the balance of the car.  I love the Zeltweg track, it's got a great flow to it, and the key is to have a car that can go deep into braking zones, get the car turned, and then be able to get early on the throttle.  So it has to be amenable to be slid about through the apex of the corners.  Lots of fine tuning and testing of small adjusments have followed.  Each one has to then be tried out which requires several laps to get the tyres up to temperature.  And hanging over it all is the question of what the benchmark is, is the car actually fast enough, and is there some key aspect of the setup I've overlooked.  Arrgh.

Restaurant review: Cafe Prague

Found a lovely restaurant filled with all sorts of pictures and paintings of the city of Prague.  Unfortunately it was totally empty, I suspect it's more of a breakfast and lunch place.  But they have a full dinner menu as well, so we settled down in some peace and quiet to make our selections for the very nice waitress.

We started with a brilliant bread and dips platter, featuring different kinds of bread as well as nice dips.  Then it was on to the mains!  I decided to be bold and selected something called the Svickova.  It's slices of beef with bread dumplings, and a creamy sauce - with real cream!

While I'm reliably informed that the roast vegetable dish was "nice", if not particularly European-feeling, I found the Svickova was delicious, if a little odd.  Anyhow, the restaurant was brilliant, with a good relaxed feel and packed full of character.

Season 30: Specials. Round 7: Brno (10 laps) (67 GT cars)

To Brno we go, and I notice that Greg has also picked the GT40 Mk2 for this race, and Axel has gone with the Mirage.  After grappling with the Mk 4 in practice I gave up on it when I couldn't stop it locking rears at the end of the long straights.  I prefer the feel of the mk2.  This is such a tough race track, it's relentless.  Laps are over four and a half minutes long, with a wide range of fast straights, hairpin bends, hills and fast hidden turns.  It's great.

Greg took pole, though.  By a long way too - about 5 seconds faster.  That got my attention, it seems Greg was really hooked up - able to brake later than I can, and his car looks much more stable.  I lined up second on the grid with some trepidation.  And then it all went my way.  As the flagman raised his flag (which I needed because until then I wasn't sure where he was), Greg took off - jumping the start.  He immediately stopped again but he'd lost the momentum and as the flag dropped we all swept past him.  Axel got a better start than I did and I followed him through the fast section of bends ok, then down the long straight I got a draft and went by on the inside - braking neatly into the slow turn ahead.  It kicked off behind me.  Carlos in the Ferrari outbraked Greg, and then himself into that same turn, locking his brakes and hitting Axel, spinning him around.  Greg tried to come through only to get tipped into a spin by Carlos.  Greg rejoined fourth behind Carlos and Doni.  Greg caught up to Carlos but the whole middle of the track is technical, and Carlos in the Ferrari was good enough to keep him at bay until they got onto the start/finish straight.  There was a moment as Carlos maybe blocked, but eventually Greg was through.

That put behind Doni, and again he had to spend a lap caught behind him, so as they wound up on the s/f straight again Greg was hot to get past.  He bombed down the inside line into the super fast and tricky turn one, but left his braking too late.  The back swung out and clouted a telegraph pole.  He tried to continue but he'd bent something, and needed to do a reset, then come around to do a penalty stop and go in the pits.  That put him far behind me.  I'd had a small silly spin on lap 3 when the car had got onto the grass under braking, but other than that it was under control.  The car had started to understeer as the tyres heated up, so it was a case of just driving carefully to the end.  As others made mistakes Greg got back up to second, and that's how we finished.

I'm still not thinking about the championship, the slope is too steep.  Just concentrate on the next one.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		318.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		272.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0
3	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		181.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		134.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		69.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
	bagrupp (R1)
	Gareth (R1)
	Iestyn Davies (R1)
	Rainier (R1)

Testing in Czechoslovakia

Brno (1965 version) is next up, and this should be a little special.  This is an amazing racetrack, long straights, fast curves, elevation changes, and a number of technical sections.  It's very difficult, fast and bumpy with absolutely no margin for error at all.  I'm on the back foot here.  I don't know the track as well as I should, and I spent a lot of time last month practicing in the Ferrari P4 - the car I thought we'd be allowed to use.  Turns out the official race post says we have to use something with a Ford engine.  So I've been forced to scramble and spend time first figuring out which Ford is probably the best one for this track (quick back to back testing at Monza short track showed the Mk2B slightly better than the Mk 4), then to start all over again at Brno trying to set the car up.

I'm exhausted, the car is like a truck compared to the wonderfully fleet Ferrari, and it's overheating the rear tyres after a couple of laps.  Very annoyed to be on the back foot.

Restaurant review: Belgian Beer Cafe

We've been to the BBC on a few occasions, so it was with comfortable familiarity we settled into our chairs.  Our waitress was still new to speaking english so we helped by pointing to the items on the menu we wanted. Bread with dips made way for the pasta dish, we were in the mood for the Italian flavourings of Belgium.

I'm informed that the vegetarian pasta deal was very very good, and I can confirm the Chicken pasta dish was absolutely perfect.  And not too large to prevent temptations of desert.

Yes, what could go better than victory Belgian waffles with chocolcate and cream?  Nothing, nothing can go better than that.  Nice food, nice people, it worked out really well.