NASRS Season 14 Race 5 (Paul Ricard)

Last night was race 5 of NASRS season 14 and it was at Paul Ricard. It was the season’s wet race, but thankfully the rain was light and steady and the track stayed in relatively good condition. Paul Ricard is an interesting track with some technical turns in the first and third sectors; the second sector is dominated by a very long straight. The track can get a little tedious when practicing, but I usually find it provides really fun racing. I did a lot of practicing during the week and while it’s sometimes hard to judge where you’re at pace-wise when it comes to wet tracks, it seemed like I had decent pace. That ended up being the case as I qualified P5 out of 27, which was a good result for me.

As for the race, although it was mentally taxing due to the rain, etc., it was fairly uneventful and I spent most of it alone, cranking out laps. I lost a postion at the start of the race – I was trying to be a little too crafty and get the inside line on T3. I slowed to let the car next to me by, but was too tentative in moving over and lost a place to a more aggressive driver. I had an opportunity to get the place back a few laps later, but misjudged my speed after making the pass, ran a little wide, and lost the place as quickly as I had gained it. I wasn’t able to get it back so was stuck in P6.

I had made some other small errors on some laps and, as you’ll see in the video, almost spun out going into the last corner. But the biggest mistake I made was taking tires during the mandatory pitstop. In this season’s races everyone has to take fuel, which is a fixed 25 seconds. If you change tires, which is optional, it’s an additional 5 seconds. Usually it makes sense to change tires pace-wise, but that isn’t always the case in the rain. I felt like my pace was declining after 25 minutes and because I had a 8 second lead over P7 behind me, I opted to take fresh tires. I should have noticed that the rain got a bit heavier and that was really the source of my worsening pace. Anyway, I came out of the pits in P6, but instead of an 8 second gap to the car behind, now had a 3 second gap. To make matters worse, my car felt a lot worse with the new tires and I was struggling a bit.

The aforementioned technical sections of the track make it really easy to get track limit violations, which can lead to a drive-through penalty if you get more than three of them. I had 2 warnings after about 40 minutes so I had a little breathing room, but not much. Fortunately for me, three of the faster drivers in front all got drive-through penalties so I moved up into P3 with 15 or so minutes to go. But I had P4 breathing down my neck and as I mentioned, I was struggling a bit. Luckily I held things together and was able to finish in P3, which is a pretty stellar result for me, given how quick the competition is on Tuesday nights. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than quick, I guess.

We’re at Watkins Glen next week for the last race of the season.

Week 5 final results (Paul Ricard)

• Qualifying: P5/27
• Race: P3/27

Here are a few highlights from the race. As mentioned, I wasn’t involved in much action so these are mostly just a few clips of me getting passed and making mistakes. :\