Round 6 of the SpeedTavern's AC:C league took place in Misano and it was my first double header race, with the previous race happening only the week prior. And truth be told, I didn't have a lot of track time on Misano circuit and this would also be my first time racing here. This will surely be an interesting one.
Pre-Race Practice
Since I didn't have a lot of track time, I knew my setup work for the race would only be some minor tweaks of either the safe or aggressive setup. Which of these to use, I didn't know yet. After a few session testing out both configurations, I found that the aggressive setup was too oversteery for me on corner exit while the safe setup was too understeery on corner entry.
I felt much more comfortable with the safe setup as I could push the car more without feeling like I could bin the car unexpectedly. To remedy the understeering characteristics I changed the front toe to match the aggressive setup value. And what a change that made! The car turned nicely and had no oversteer on corner. Before committing to this setup, I checked again the aggressive preset. It was here that I found out that apart from the toe setting and the slightly stiffer springs front and back; the only other difference was from the aero which was significantly more front biased compared to the safe setup. This explains a lot the oversteer tendency of the car. With this in mind, I switched to the aggressive setup and moved the aero balance to the rear. Making this change, the car now felt as comfortable to drive as the safe setup and I was confident enough to push with this new settings.
Apart from doing setup changes, my main focus was to try and be consistent around the track. As this was a new track for me, my main practice session was focusing on memorising my brake markers, turn in and acceleration points. My best time during this practice was 1:36.2 on a fast track. I felt the car could dip into the mid 35s but I also knew that the driver is most definitely the limiting factor here.
With the car feeling good and my consistency improving there wasn't much time left to do anything else. Onwards to race day it is.
Qualifying
Qualifying was a bit of a hit and miss. I managed to do a couple of good laps but in between those good laps I had to back out a couple of times due to traffic.
During this session I noted the car was sliding more compared to my practice rounds but this was because the track was green. I decided not to mingle with the setup and soldiered on setting my qualy times. In the end, I managed a time of 1:36.633 which was good enough for 9th. The gap between 6th and 14th was within 1 seconds of each other and this meant a close race is on the table.
Pole time was a 1:34.746.
Race Plan
My race strategy for Misano was relatively simple: extend the first stint as long as possible, drive as fast as possible and survive until the end of the race. Going long in the first half of the race is my default go to strategy. Why?
For an hour long race, the pit window is between 25 and 35 minutes into the race. If refuelling is allowed, I would start the race with enough fuel to last me until 35 minutes as I believe it would give me the most flexibility during the race.
If my tires fall off early but not to the point where I cannot manage my race pace i.e. to still be within 2 seconds of my planned race pace, I would pit as late as possible. This is to avoid the same scenario of having my tires falling off again at the end of the race.
If my tires do not fall off, I believe pitting later reduces the chances of me exiting the pits in traffic and potentially ruining my tires earlier in the stint. I stand a better chance driving my own pace in cleaner traffic
Since for this race we have mandatory tire change and refuelling, I started the race with 60 litres of fuel with the plan to add 45 litres during the pits. This would be enough to run the race until the 35th minute and to finish the race.
Race Report
The start of the race was a little bit of a nerve-recking affair as the car starting P7 had an oversteer moment on corner exit of T1 and was unable to save the car. Luckily for me, his spin put him out of the racing line and into the T1/T2/T3 run off area. Luck was again on my side a few laps later, as I had a similar moment at this very same corner with another driver and managed to escape any incidents.
The next few laps was very exciting as I was in the P3 - P8 group who all had similar pace in the mid 36s lap times. I did get too caught up by this excitement of being with the lead pack, and ended up being very aggressive with my driving. This caused my rear tires to fall off quicker than I anticipated. Within the group I was mainly trying to race #135 Mclaren 720s (driver: Ariff Imran) who was in front of me. I was slowly losing time to him as my rears begin to fall off, causing me to slide all over the place. A few clicks on the brake bias did help minimising the slide on corner entry, but did little to help with lighting up the tires on exit. Raising the TC would have helped but I was too caught up in the moment to realise this then.
As the pit window opens, I was running in P6 and my lap times began to slip to mid/high 37s while the gap to the #135 Mclaren ahead is now 4s. As I came around to complete my lap, I noticed that the Mclaren had gone into the pits for a new set of tires and to refuel. Knowing that my car could at least match the Mclaren when the tires were in good condition, I decided to proceed with my pre-race plan of overextending until the end of the pit window. My chain of thoughts during the race, was that I could try to catch him in my second stint, or be close enough to strike in case he has any off track moments. I could also be as aggressive as I was at the start of the race to achieve this as I only had to drive for 25 minutes instead of 35 minutes like I did in the first stint.
At the end of Lap 20, I came into the pits for a new set of boots. By the time I came out from the pits, the #135 Mclaren was about 6.5 seconds ahead of me. I lost 2.5 seconds by overextending my first stint. I pushed the car to its limits, and were lapping in the low 37s. The circuit grip level had changed from green track to a fast track, but the change did not seem to improve the lap times. Gutted by not being able to go into the 36s, and that the gap to car ahead was not decreasing quickly enough, I decided to back out from chasing the #135 Mclaren and just bring the car home - a move which I regretted. Coming into the Misano hairpin in sector 3, the #135 Mclaren had a spin and was off track. Since I had backed out from trying to close the gap, I finished the race 4.6s behind him. It could have been much closer if only I did not back out.
Race Strat Debrief
After the race, I wanted to review if it was the right call to overextend. I knew I lost 2.5 seconds from pitting later, but was I gaining enough on the car infront to overcome this deficit? Because of the magnificent work of Eka Syabireen - who set up the servers and also set up SimResults for all our races, I was able to download the lap time information for both myself and for car #135. I wanted to check if on average my 2nd stint was faster compared to the #135 car and if I had/could have regained the lost time from overextending.
For this analysis I took every lap time from the race except for the first lap and both the in- and out-laps from the pit. I did this as I wanted to compare the "true" race pace and not have them skewed for these three slower laps. I also analysed the lap times with respect to car #135's first stint (between laps 2-15) and with respect to my second stint (lap 22-36). Finally I did a comparison of our average lap times when we were both in the pits e.g. my averages when he was in the pit, and his averages when I was in the pits.
My first stint was slower by 0.3s but I was faster than car #135 by 0.4s. This was mainly because he had two off track moments (the first occurred in the first few laps of him coming out of the pit and the second at the very last lap). Both of this incident pushed his times to 1:40s, and hence why I was on average faster in my second stint.
If I remove this off track incidents, we could see that car #135's pace was actually faster prior to and after we had pitted. If he did not have his off track incident, I would have fallen far behind irrespective of when I pitted. And interestingly, I was loosing 0.8s a lap for every lap I overextended. This meant that he could have been a whopping 3.2s further ahead by the time I came out of the pit. The only reason this did not happen was because he had an off track incident during this period. As they say in F1, the undercut is a very real threat.
So what does this all mean? Was it the right decision for me to come into the pits as late as I did? Would it have been better for me to pit earlier, say in lap 16 before my times drop to the 1 minute 38s? In hindsight, I should have pitted slightly earlier by maybe a lap or two as I was losing too much time trying to drive in the 1 minute 38s. On the question of is overextending the right call? I would say it was marginal. If I pitted too early into the pit window, I would have come out amongst traffic and would have lost some time there.
All in all, I was very happy with how the race went. I got an unexpected top 10 finish in the race and had the pace to sustain that position. Thank you all for you time reading this blog, and I hope you found something useful in this race report. As always a big shout out to SpeedTavern.my for organising this racing series, and for the fun and clean races you guys provide!
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