Dom
12th-December-2011, 22:33
A race that was perfect until Atze figured out he made a crucial mistake.
Quali:
In qualification Atze scored his 4th pole of the season. Spending time on the public servers at his home GP, he clearly set the pace for the week.
"My banker lap was a safe good lap where I did a 1.12.39, this was good for a banker, but with a 11.0 pb I was able to do a much better lap than that. So the 2nd attempt I took a bit more risk, being 0.2 sec down on my fastest lap I hit a bump on track which caused my car to slide and lost my lap there unfortunately. Lucky for me, the banker lap was good enough for pole"
Race:
The race start was amusing, Atze had a clear launch and immediately took a 2 second lead after the first lap. Emil Spindel took 2nd position and was able to start chasing Atze down, however things were close! Both were matching each others laptimes for the first stint, in a way it was deja vu of the last races where flawless consistency was key.
"Emil was on a great pace, but there was no reason to take unnecessary risks for me. With a 3 second lead I was comfortably able to answer any attempt from him to decrease the gap"
After the pitstop Emil got a bit closer to Atze, he was lighter on fuel and got within 2 seconds at the end of the stint. With some backmarkers shaking up the gap, it was Atze who pitted a lap later than Emil, going into the last stint heading for his 6th win in a row.
Calculation fail:
This is where things went wrong. Atze had to go into fuel saving mode, after slowing down his pace over a second per lap his 8 second lead was soon eaten into.
"With some 12 laps to go I was doing a standard check on my fuelload, the gap to Emil was increasing surprisingly quite much, while I wasn't near pushing the limits. I thought he just backed off a bit, but when I saw that my prediction amount of fuel laps was 2 laps less than the amount of laps to go in race, sweat drips appeared. How was this possible?? I couldn’t believe my eyes and for 2 laps I was in complete denial, this couldn't be happening.. The way I calculate fuel, leaves no doubt and I was 100% sure I was correct. After doing some math while trying to save lots of fuel by going to fuel mixture out of space and shortshifting, losing 2 seconds every lap, I figured out I was really short on fuel. There was no way to save it. In the end I saved a whole lap of fuel, but an extra pitstop in the penultimate lap was inevitable. Emil had closed the gap and this was the moment I realized I just had to give this win away."
With Emil taking the lead in the last lap, Atze fell back after his extra pitstop to p6 behind Samuel Libeert. A very painful mistake that cost him his home GP win, after dominating the race from the beginning.
"After 5 wins I was completely aware of the fact that a stupid mistake was easy to make. Even when I tried to focus myself for a 100% on doing the right thing, 1 small detail of a changed file taught me a great lesson. Probably I'm lucky this happens to me now instead of next season when it matters way more."
After this big disappointment, Atze still leads with a 100 points over p2 in the overall classification Martin Kronke. A wake up call perhaps to not fall asleep during the holidays.
"I'm sorry to my team for my mistake, but In the end I'm still happy about my performance on track. I have lead everything I could lead and I think I showed a good performance here. 6 races with 0 incs is something to be happy with.
Busy study weeks coming up, so I might use my dropweek soon to focus my focus, VIR will be interesting to see nevertheless."
Quali:
In qualification Atze scored his 4th pole of the season. Spending time on the public servers at his home GP, he clearly set the pace for the week.
"My banker lap was a safe good lap where I did a 1.12.39, this was good for a banker, but with a 11.0 pb I was able to do a much better lap than that. So the 2nd attempt I took a bit more risk, being 0.2 sec down on my fastest lap I hit a bump on track which caused my car to slide and lost my lap there unfortunately. Lucky for me, the banker lap was good enough for pole"
Race:
The race start was amusing, Atze had a clear launch and immediately took a 2 second lead after the first lap. Emil Spindel took 2nd position and was able to start chasing Atze down, however things were close! Both were matching each others laptimes for the first stint, in a way it was deja vu of the last races where flawless consistency was key.
"Emil was on a great pace, but there was no reason to take unnecessary risks for me. With a 3 second lead I was comfortably able to answer any attempt from him to decrease the gap"
After the pitstop Emil got a bit closer to Atze, he was lighter on fuel and got within 2 seconds at the end of the stint. With some backmarkers shaking up the gap, it was Atze who pitted a lap later than Emil, going into the last stint heading for his 6th win in a row.
Calculation fail:
This is where things went wrong. Atze had to go into fuel saving mode, after slowing down his pace over a second per lap his 8 second lead was soon eaten into.
"With some 12 laps to go I was doing a standard check on my fuelload, the gap to Emil was increasing surprisingly quite much, while I wasn't near pushing the limits. I thought he just backed off a bit, but when I saw that my prediction amount of fuel laps was 2 laps less than the amount of laps to go in race, sweat drips appeared. How was this possible?? I couldn’t believe my eyes and for 2 laps I was in complete denial, this couldn't be happening.. The way I calculate fuel, leaves no doubt and I was 100% sure I was correct. After doing some math while trying to save lots of fuel by going to fuel mixture out of space and shortshifting, losing 2 seconds every lap, I figured out I was really short on fuel. There was no way to save it. In the end I saved a whole lap of fuel, but an extra pitstop in the penultimate lap was inevitable. Emil had closed the gap and this was the moment I realized I just had to give this win away."
With Emil taking the lead in the last lap, Atze fell back after his extra pitstop to p6 behind Samuel Libeert. A very painful mistake that cost him his home GP win, after dominating the race from the beginning.
"After 5 wins I was completely aware of the fact that a stupid mistake was easy to make. Even when I tried to focus myself for a 100% on doing the right thing, 1 small detail of a changed file taught me a great lesson. Probably I'm lucky this happens to me now instead of next season when it matters way more."
After this big disappointment, Atze still leads with a 100 points over p2 in the overall classification Martin Kronke. A wake up call perhaps to not fall asleep during the holidays.
"I'm sorry to my team for my mistake, but In the end I'm still happy about my performance on track. I have lead everything I could lead and I think I showed a good performance here. 6 races with 0 incs is something to be happy with.
Busy study weeks coming up, so I might use my dropweek soon to focus my focus, VIR will be interesting to see nevertheless."