F1 2018 - Round 8 - France - Sunday, 23rd June at 8:30pm UK

Q 11
R DNF again

Good start, going ok, spin broke wheels end of race... well done to Alec for his win, major fast guy.. well done Neale for his fab recovery and getting us sone points.. well done to all that finished , that was a tough race.. hopefully I can stay on the track a bit longer in Austria... not having a good time at the moment. Some improvements needed on my part lol..

Well done.

Q 6
R DNF

Another disappointing race for me, made the wrong setup choice before quali and ended up with very little grip in the rain, didn't get a great start and dropped a few places on the 1st lap, as I wasn't running enough downforce I couldn't get any heat into the tyres and was slow all around the circuit although I was fast enough to hold off both the Racing Points and Neale in the Ferrari for a few laps which was very enjoyable until on lap 13 in T12, I was battling to stay in front of Neale and Greg and got greedy on the throttle and span up the rear wheels which span me out and took off the front left corner and ended up in the middle of the track so well done to all those who managed to miss the Red Bull.

Congratulations to Alex on a dominate win and well done to Neale and Mitch for your podium.

Cheers

Dave

Q3 - 3 tenths off my PB but I was ok with that. Knowing there was going to be rain for the race i didn't think starting position was going to matter much.
R7 DNF - the start was ok and i moved into P1 when Neale and Alec had their coming together at T2. I immediately went too deep at T3 and wound up with a corner cutting penalty. I thought I slowed enough and didn't gain any advantage, but we all know the stewards have been handing out some questionable penalties recently so I'll chalk it up to that. I had Boothy on my back end for a few laps and he seemed to be struggling as much as myself. Kept my head down and just tried to put in consistent laps. Then on Lap 19 the back end gave way out of T1 and i clobbered the wall and lost my front wing. Limped back to the pits and when i rejoined i had lost about 45 seconds and 2 positions.

That second stint was ok, I was racing closely with Mitch for most of it and i eventually got past him when he lost the back end of his car before the final turn. But i also picked up another corner cutting penalty along the way. Around lap 38 I really started to feel the tyre grip going and was debating trying to hang on to the end or pit for new tyres. Word on the Party chat was that i should stop again so that's what i did. Mitch was still chasing me down, but now so was Neale. He passed Mitch then was gaining on me quickly. My engineer told me he had a penalty of 3 seconds so all i needed to do was keep him behind me by 3 seconds till the end of the race and i'd keep P2, but he was gaining every lap. I had a little bit of extra fuel left and turned up the Mix, but coming out of T7 the back end gave way with all the extra power and i slid gracefully into the barrier taking my front left wheel off. The end. I'll salvage a few points for having made it to 75% distance, but this will likely be a dropped result for me anyway.

Well done to Alec and Neale and Mitch on the podium finish. Alec seemed to be on another level in the rain here. Well done to all the others who made it to the end, and even those that stayed in the party long after then were out of the race. That made for some helpful intel along the way.

Race video here. Race starts around 17m30s. There's a good view of Neale and Alecs incident.
mixer.com/niblips2?vod=115627982

As if it’s not hard enough already to decide what your next move will be and you have 2 jokers giving away the secret details of drivers. I think that’s a case of deliberate sabotage.. 🤣🤣🤣 don’t know how you even managed to concentrate. I think I would have exited out of party., 😂 well done for carrying on.

Q: 1
R: 1

Quali: Felt really good driving around France. It's a track for me that once you get into a rhythm it just keeps flowing and makes it fun to drive. Up'd my downforce a touch for the rain as well. Set all my laps on US tyres due to the impending rain. Set my quick lap on my second run, went pushing hard for my third attempt and was up on my time until I made a mistake coming out of turn 12. Still happy to take P1.

Race (0:23:52): Was nervous about going into turn 1 in the rain (my fears were soon realized). I felt that I made the turn 1 corner alright but I had way too much speed and no grip at all trying to make it around to go through turn 2. Neale was right in front of me and I couldn't stop or avoid him and went right into the back of him. 100% my fault (I could take a grip drop penalty next race I make, it was pretty bad from myself). I spun Neale into the wall and my car spun and followed him, we both lost some front wing (Neale more than me though). Back to the pits new wing and tyres and set about catching up.
(0:30:27): After a couple of laps getting used to the rain, I was feeling surprisingly good driving through it. Started setting some fast laps and catching up to the field.
(0:33:40): Had a good little scrap with (Lemar), he nearly tried to Schumacher me into the wall down the pit straight LOL. I decided to concede the position but ended braking a bit too late and going into the back of him. No damage to Lemar (I think), but I lost some front wing. At this point I decided to continue on with the damage until my next scheduled stop.
(0:40:00): Had another good little battle with Micko, he slammed the door on me into turn 3, but I got passed him into braking after the back straight. I now had about at 22 second gap to Boothy so I set about trying to set fast laps and chase the leaders down.
(0:50:12): I think Boothy had an incident somewhere because I caught up to him all of a sudden. He then had another incident on the exit of turn 12, so I managed to pass him through the final corner.
(0:58:20): I think Karl had his issue here to I got passed him and then went hunting down Mitch.
(1:03:00): Mitch either had a slow exit issue from turn 12 or just let me through.

After that my race was relatively uneventful. I just had fun trying to beat my lap times and chase down the 1:44 lap, I almost sent myself off a few times going after it. Finally set it on lap 52.

Well done to those who survived through the rain to the end! Congrats to Neale and Mitch on the Podium. A healthy fight back in the constructors for Mercedes!

Video to come later.