09 May 2018, 10:06 am
I found this track to be very interesting. There are a couple corner combinations that you want to make sure you navigate correctly, but then there's also a lot of flexibility in where you spend wear in other sections that can net you similar results.
Curva 3 and Curva VIP are a first obvious combination. You need to make it through those two corners in two moves or you've lost significant space. We can see the results of that in Turn 16 with what happened to Jeff. He ultimately caught back up to me at Esses, but had to spend a lot of wear to get back there.
The other less obvious combination is Orehla and Esses. I felt pretty strongly that I needed to get through that combination in two turns. I didn't like the play where you finish Orehla and then line up in front of Esses. Because in that scenario you have to spend too much wear in Esses and Parabolica (like Mike did in turn 23), or you have no momentum in Parabolica.
Which brings us to the other type of corner on this track: corners that don't really hurt if you don't complete them. Parabolica Interior, Parabolica Main, and Curva 1 are all very interesting in the sense that getting "stuck" in the middle of them doesn't really hurt.
With Parabolica Interior, the amount of space between it and Orelha is such that if you spent a wear to finish in the middle, you can accelerate out at 120 and still be in good shape to complete Orelha/Esses in the next two turns.
As for Parabolica Main, I think you want to spend at least 1 wear in there just to make sure you can keep up your speed heading out of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say it feels like a trap to try to actually complete the corner in one turn. In terms of wear expense, it makes way more sense to get to the last 120 space and then accelerate out of the 140's next turn. You're essentially going the same speed but you saved a wear.
Lastly, Curva 1 is an interesting one because of that tantalizing green line. I saw a lot of people go through for free, but I spent wear in there twice, and I felt like it was well worth it. Heading one or two spaces into the corner at 160 for 1W nets you several spaces on the other side that you wouldn't have if you slow-played it on the line for free.
Now, some of what I've pointed out is definitely specific to the car I raced. But I liked my car build and I think it was the right choice for me on this track. The spaces between Curva 1 and 3, between VIP and Parabolica Interior, and between Parabolica and Curva 1 all screamed 60/60/160 to me. I was hoping to leverage my beefier car from the front and I feel like I did that pretty successfully.
That said, I certainly got lucky several times throughout this race. My starting position on the grid was 6th, but I had already moved to 4th by Turn 2, due to an unfortunate no-plot by Doug. Had Doug actually plotted, I would have taken the outside lane for an extra wear and been another car back.
Again I got lucky in Turn 5 by another mis-plot, this time by Marshall who gave up inside position to me. That put me in 2nd, albeit briefly. A few turns later (turn 9) I let Jim pass me through Orehla in order to save some wear and because I knew I could still get through Esses safely and that's what I cared about. I felt that I could eventually catch him just by leveraging my better car.
That opportunity came quickly in Turn 13, where I headed into Curva 1 with the wear expense while everyone else lined up ahead of the corner. I feel like this is the real move of the race here, because not only did I get separation immediately, but by the time you get done with the Curva 3 and VIP combination, I've gone from one space in front of Jim and turned it into 7 spaces. That's basically a full turn on the chase pack, which I never really gave up for the rest of the race.
The only car left at that point to contend with was Tim, and I felt with my better car I could eventually chase him down. Of course, that came a little earlier than I was expecting. After what happened in Turn 13 with Curva 1, I felt like I needed to beat Tim to that spot in lap 3.
So despite what I said earlier about not needing to finish Parabolica, in Turn 22 I choose to spend the extra wear to get through there and line up next to Tim. All of this was done to try to leverage my better car to beat him out to the line in Curva 1. I even went so far as to push top to 180 under the assumption that Tim would be racing me for that spot, which turned out not to be the case. Tim clearly had a line for his 40/40 car and he was following it. But that was my thought process at the time. To overspend my wear early in order to take away the line and the initiative.
But then I was out of wear for the second half of lap 3. Initially I was planning to roll chance on Parabolica Interior because recovering from a spin at 60 would still let me finish that corner and still be ahead of most of the pack. But plotting it out some more I realized the over decel was the much better choice since the odds were considerably better. That was the *other* reason for the 180 push in Turn 23. The extra space I got out of that move, putting me directly in front of Parabolica Interior here in Turn 28, allowing me to run that corner for free at 80 with a pretty safe decel push.
The rest of that race was just leveraging my 60/60 car to run through the Orehla/Esses combo for free.
Overall, I think this was a great track for my particular style of racing. I like 60/60 cars and I like racing from the front and leveraging my better car in the final lap once I've run out of wear. I also tend to like to split my wear as evenly as possible, and this track certainly demands quite a bit of wear per lap in order to have any sort of decent line. You pretty much need 3 wear through Curva 3 and VIP at the bare minimum, but really a little more than that. I did the final lap in 4 wear and I think that's about as much as you can hope for with that style car.
Anyway, big thanks to Brad for stewarding a great race, and big thanks to everyone else for a great race. I really enjoyed this one.