I had the suspicion that the 60 laps were shorter than we had for all the other races. It would create a boring race with only one strategy of 2 stops and going as short on the blacks as you dare (since the red tires last a full stint easily).
There was the option to go 1 stop but it would mean wayy too many laps on the black tires losing you too much time. And the 3 stopper would also cost too much time since the pitstop takes 41 seconds and it's impossible to regain this even with a lighter car.
I was afraid someone would mention this and change the race length to 70. This would be very annoying because then all the strategy testing that has been done throughout the week would have to be done all over again in 5 minutes.
For this reason I reacted a bit too annoyed when suddenly the race length was changed to 30 yesterday, and it was guess work as to what the exact rules would be with the tire rules gone suddenly.
But since the full tank could go to 28 laps, suddenly my mind did come up with an idea of doing the whole race on one fuel tank. I tested in the warm up that I needed fuel mixture 3 to safe enough fuel to make it, but it meant I was doing around 1.5 seconds slower laptimes. It would be tight. This also caused me to get a little impatient behind Callum and then eventually tried a move on him, seeing that Bruno was already far ahead of him. He defended well and I should have just backed off, but I braked at my normal braking point so this meant we would be going through the corner together at full speed. Alas, we both gave it our best shot but I was the car on the outside so I became the victim.
It gave me a weak moment of emotions where I left immediately, not wanting to have anything to do with a race that I always feared would change distance and mess up my preparations. And Callum was left behind in voice chat with guilt, which didn't do his race any good.
Callum apologized but concluded to me he thought it was a race incident. I fully agree and mostly blame myself to be honest. I could have gone down in fuel mixture and safe more fuel for the eventual time that Callum would enter the pitlane or would struggle more with worn tires.
Also my personal apologies to Alexandr for reacting harsh in the game chat. I don't think I said anything offensive or abusive, and probably Alexandr also kind of understands why I reacted like that then.
Instead I also want to say that I really liked the idea of this race length, as being 107% length of a fuel mixture 8 stint length. This race length really encourages people to try a fuel- and tire saving strategy.
For Laguna Seca I would like to suggest a full course competition caution around lap 33 (if race is around 57 laps). Maybe create a vote for people to select specific lap of the competition caution. It would really create an interesting choice how many laps before this caution you want to pit or if you want to drive a few laps on black tires and switch back to red tires during the caution.
Since both championships are already decided we can try to make this last race interesting to get people to join and help add to the grid. If the championship is officially out of my reach and Laguna isn't interesting to drive I will likely not show up, so this is why I'm proposing this.
Or, if you intent to shorten the race again like you did today, you can shorten it to the amount of laps we would have from competition caution to the finish, so everyone still has had a chance to look at the strategy they would otherwise use and go for this.
Next year I would like to suggest to remove the 3 tires rule and instead say 1 set of red tires (and unlimited black tires) for the qualifying. I really liked the rule but this league seems to attract mostly fun oriented drivers and not so much serious drivers so unfortunately this also means you have to make the rules easier to allow for a better experience for the lower end of the field as well. (Or maybe create a rule to grand more leniency to drivers outside of the title contentions)
В четверг, 16 мая, пройдёт Гран-При Италии! Информацию о гонке можно получить кликнув по данному сообщению. Приглашаем всех желающих принять участие.