Across the Panthalassa

 

SRO Saleen Mustang Series is complete. Congrats to Fabio Lozio, series champion! He took 5 wins out of 7 rounds and was competitive in every event. As for me, I finish 5th of overall. I thought I would do better as I felt good about the car during preseason and could hit consistent lap times. I even did a tour of all the tracks and got the car setup to my liking. However, when the series started I found out I was about 1-2 seconds a lap behind the fast guys. I was still optimistic, but I knew I wasn't going to be a frontrunner. I shifted my focus to the DTM series because I was having a difficult time with that car. So, I suppose a 5th place overall finish is okay for a less than 100% effort. I'm just not good enough right now to run two different series at the same time and with two very different cars at that. 

Full series results here.

Well, now I can direct my full attention to the upcoming Racin Nexus F1 2004 Series. I have been running a lot of laps, trying out different setup configurations. It's been going well so far, and I think I will be in a good level of preparation when this series starts next year. So far it has been just hotlapping, but soon I will move to full race stint practice. 

Lag Rider : The Nth time

 

Preseason testing has begun for Racin Nexus F1 2004 series. We will be using RH2004 mod that has been customised by Dragan Djuricic. I was having problems with the car at first, but with some help from Dimitris Giannopolous, I now have a workable base setup. I'm still behind the fast guys, but I am confident that I will reduce the gap in the coming days. Just have to put the laps in, familiarize myself with the car, and nibble away. 

It's been awhile since I drove a full-on F1 car. I have to re-acquaint myself to the acceleration, the cornering speeds, the braking... Gotta be lighter on my feet and more precise with the steering inputs. Everything goes by so fast it is so easy to miss my marks. And the noise! These monsters got them high revving V10s. It can get tiring after a few laps with the sensory overload. I have to work on my stamina as well.

Here we have the driver list for this series. Most of these names are familiar to me now. And most of them are faster than me. We have a full 20 car grid, but some other drivers who are not on the list have been testing as well so it could be a different grid on race night. Looks like it will be Dragan and Dimitris fighting for the series championship. Maybe I can finish as high as 5th in the final standings.

Range Anxiety

 

Racin Nexus DTM Series - Post Season Review

Full results here.

I had a very tough time in this series, I never did get a hold of the car and couldn't find a good base setup. I also had connection problems, resulting in 4 DNFs late in the series. But somehow I finished third overall in the standings, mostly because some drivers abandoned their campaign and the fastest guy, league owner Djuricic Dragan, decided to not score any more points for the second half of the season. I did get 3 pole positions and 2 podiums so it wasn't all bad.

Certainly a great learning experience, not liking the car but somehow running in the sharper end of the grid. A nice confidence booster as we prepare for the big F1 series next year. Congratulations to Djordje Kovacevic, RN DTM Series champion. He wasn't the fastest, but he did well in all the races and took 3 wins in the latter half of the series. Stefano Colleta won 4 of the first 6 rounds, but abandoned the second half. His early domination was enough for him to hold on to 2nd place overall. 

The rest of the grid had an intermittent attendance. A shame really, as we had 33 drivers registered initially, but during the races we mostly had a grid of 10 or less. I can only think that the poor attendance rate was because the car was difficult to drive.

a castle made of regolith