Blancpain WEC Round 6 - Suzuka (17th October)

All timings based on UK time (add 1 hour for CET)
Quali - 30 minutes starting at 8:45pm
Warmup - 15 minutes (or until 9:30pm)
Race start: 9:30pm
Race length - Timed: 1hr 30 minutes, Time scale x6
Fuel use - x2
Tyre Wear - x1

Event detail added

Try my best to be there

Michael Pitschmann wrote:Try my best to be there

Hope you can mike, its been a while

Max Spooner wrote:Hope you can mike, its been a while

Looks that I cant make it, some guests tomorrow, think they will stay long. Have fun guys!

Points update will be done tomorrow.

Apologies for disappearing guys in race guys, Car was awful to drive and had high speed smack on exit of 130R. Decided not to continue.

Not that it mattered as 10 minutes later I had internet outage that lasted an hour so in a way would have been more p****d off if I'd been doing well and had disconnect.

I had a great race!

Pitted 1 lap early from the lead on the first stint to take advantage of reduced pit stop time, and my tyres were buggered. After the first round of pit stops it was clear the Mercedes were either running hybrids, or there was a mistake in the files which allowed them more fuel. So we had Roy and Jim at the head of the field. At that point I'd resigned myself to a 3rd place finish, then Dan had other ideas and passed me just after we'd made our 2nd pit stops. So I thought I'd settle for 4th. After then I did something a little different and pitted 2 laps early for my 3rd stop for the shorter stand-still time again. This gained me about 10 seconds and put me  ahead of Dan again. I then made some pretty accurate fuel calculations in my head and knew I could get to the end on 1 more stop - so I was short shifting and able to save about 0.7-0.9l per lap, while only just keeping enough pace to stay ahead of Dan.

And it worked! Dan was on my tail for a long time and made me push more, but he had to make one last pit stop a few laps from the end, then the Swiss Motion guys had to do the same thing - Jim was 1 lap from the end and had to pit from the lead! I'd saved just enough fuel to cross the finish line with 0.2l left in the tank in 1st place and it ran out as I reached turn 1 on the cool-down lap.

If Dan had stayed out one lap longer I would have had to pit for more fuel, after he pitted I went into extreme fuel saving mode saving 1.4l per lap which is what got me to the end.

It was an excellent race, and very tactical!