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Gtr evolution servers3/23/2023 The only other surprise occurs on lap 27 when one of the cars battling for first (a Mini) blows his engine. Surprisingly he doesn’t pass me back, and in the rearview he looks like he is fighting his car and fading slowly. I tell myself to stay focused, run my line, and if he passes me back to not worry about it and just finish the race. Now I’ve run with Gator in practice all week, and I know he is a bit faster than me. My car isn’t terribly fast, but its predictable and the tires are holding up. I’m moving up the field, slowly but surely, as people have offs. I am able to settle into a good rhythm with laptimes right around 1:19.5. On lap 3, someone spins in front of me in the Shell Esses and I clip him going by. Lap 2 I run a respectable 1:20.109 but I’m still in last. I run a very poor lap 1 and get passed by Gotz putting me in 10th (last). Two people are out, one by a disconnect and one by a DQ so the field is now 10. The race began, and the field did a great job negotiating the first few corners without incident. Time for the race, and its right on the borderline between the harder v softer compounds. My best was a 1:19.125 for 9th on the grid. Well, great at control, not so great at hotlapping. Excellent! The track was damp, but my new conservative setup did great. I logged on for race day and found we had 12 competitors. Stupid me over-wrote the “hot” setup…I should have kept it for qualifying. So given my goals of not wreck anyone, and to finish the race, I dialed back the setup. Secondly, while agile, it was a bit of a handful to drive. On one relatively hot practice, the rears became way too hot even on the harder compound tires. I had a setup that was wonderfully agile and good for laptimes ~1:18, but it had 2 flaws. There are several places on the track where if you string them together just right the Abarth sets into a gentle 4 wheel drift and you really fly. With so little power, my goal was to maintain smooth, clean lines with as little braking as possible. The Gr5 version is a wonderfully adjustable car, and a few setup changes really make a difference in how it drives. I then began to work on setting up the Abarth to my liking. I love both cars, but I found the Gr5 Abarth faster in my hands. In the week before the race, I ran many laps on the track online and off using the Mini and the Abarth. My big goals therefore were to not wreck anyone, and to finish. Not only was it an unfamiliar track, but it was my first experience in a semi-serious online race. Its not a recap, because I was no where near the front and cannot report on the happenings up there except to say it looked interesting from the messages and the occasional exploding engines.Īs I began to approach this race, I was nervous. This is my writeup from the Sunday 2/1 race.
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