Mr Bli medal 5000 6 years 311 days ago
Hi everybody!
I'm writing to see if any of you can help me understand why my race today played out the way it did:
Season 2, Europe GP (28 laps), rookie .
Competition is very tight with a friend of mine, but so far I've been having the upper hand. Today, my good mate didn't set up for the race (I presume he had no time, he wasn't online for the race either).
We get to the race on sunny 16°, I'm set for 3 SS stints and sitting pretty with my 1-2 start cause my rival's drivers are on M and I know it will be a 3 M stint race for them.
up to lap 5 all good, I'm gaining as expected, although not as much as expected. On lap 6 and 7 he laps as me. After this, total chaos, he starts lapping .6-1.2s faster than me.
Tyre temp is fine, the only thing I realise, is that I could have opted for 2 SS stints and still make it to the end.
I get to the conclusion that harder coumpound somewhat works better on 16° in Europe, so I change my strategy on the fly to 2 stints SS-S.
We pit around the same lap, so I think I'll be fine cause he has to stop again.
Couldn't have been more wrong, last third of the race, he costantly laps 1.2-1.6s faster. After his second pit, I'm behind by .7s. I try to keep calm and use boost to stay within DRS range (only a few laps to go). Even that was useless, my guys with DRS and boost, are lapping as his!
What I can't figure out is how?
He didn't do a single practice lap, got into the race with default set up, and still manages to swipe me under the carpet with such ease?
So far fierce battle to be .1 faster than the other.. then this.. how..it's killing me!! Help meeee!!
Thanks guys!
EDIT: Engines had 1 race on them, I got the most developed car but he is "catching up fast".
Frank Thomas medal 4979 Moderator 6 years 309 days ago (edited 6 years 308 days ago)
I suppose he used a new engine and it's the better driver although due to the still lower Stamina it's just starting to show and that mostly earlier into the race. I'm surprised that this was enough to equal out the drawback of the non-setup but then Europe is one of the tracks with higher values for the setup so that helps a bit there and medium push should've worked well too.
What mostly happened was that this surprisingly good performance in the first stint, especially after your tyres starting to run into wear (the mediums last a lot longer and thus didn't suffer from that) drove you into a mistake.
Your first super soft stint looks like it was about the max those tyres could take. So far so OK, the next one would've probably been either the same length followed by 8 laps or 2 times 9 laps, both of which would have worked because for one your driver should have gained on his competitor later into the race and mainly the auto setup was completely off and overfueled his car which means he started his last stint of 4 laps with fuel for 12. But you changed your strategy into 18 laps on softs which means your car was a lot heavier due to the fuel, you switched to an initially slower tyre than before and a stint length slightly longer than the softs really work. So to weaker engine came less tyre advantage and a weight disadvantage instead of the advantage in the first stint. That slowed you down as long as your tyres worked, even more so when they suffered from wear and after his second pit stop, when he returned with that huge surplus weight, your tyres were already about dead.
That's my take on it. Could be wrong though because not seeing the race and not knowing the teams there's naturally some guesswork involved.
Gustavo Heiden medal 5167 Super Mod 6 years 308 days ago
There's one important thing missing in your race report, Bli: Drivers health before race.
Mr Bli medal 5000 6 years 308 days ago
You are right Gustavo, I always race 100%, I presume he does too.
Frank, where do I start man.. blew my mind. It all makes sense, great race reading skills. Thanks mate!
Gustavo Heiden medal 5167 Super Mod 6 years 308 days ago
Ouch, I thought you had raced with low health drivers :S
Mr Bli medal 5000 6 years 308 days ago
It was good thinking Gustavo, I failed to put that detail and it was a possibility!
