01 - China GP (Shanghai) - Event Thread

Obviously a great start to the season.
Unlike other seasons, over the winter we spent a lot of time developing the car for race pace and it seemed to have paid off.
Despite getting pole, I was two tenths off and I don't know where that time went missing. Kudos to Joe, Tony, Tom and others who I didn't notice, who, technically speaking, qualified better than me by matching or being closer to their PBs than I was.

The race was well rehearsed so it was pretty straight forward, but because I was busy providing information to Tony, I forgot to take my second pit stop and had to coast an entire lap as to not run out of fuel. This kind of played out in Tony's hands because I came out just behind Joe and would have cost him some time as we fought for the lead.
Tony had some issues today with double downshifts, but like Mercedes in Malaysia, the pace of others was a wake up call. I'll be working with Tony on improving our setup to his driving style to hopefully make his life a little easier in the future. 

From what I've seen, the mod is very sensitive to tracks and setup changes. I don't expect many repeats of our result (we'd need 4 weeks of testing before each race), so bring on the great battles that FSONE always seems to deliver.

First of all congratulations to Adrian for win and Joe for podium.
My qualifying was good. Couldve been better in last attempt I was fastest in first two sectors which would end up being 31.1 time with my last sector from previous laps but I messed it all up in last sector somehow.

Race was good I overtook Joe in t1 on lap 2 and after that I was driving alone most of the time. Lap 6 I think I got first of double downshifts in last corner and spun out losing some time which could have costed me 2nd place in the end. Later I got some more double downshifts but managed to control them with steadier driving. In last laps I was fighting with Joe for 2nd place which was nice. I got some internet problems probably too because cars were disappearing from time to time. Im happy with result for the team and I hope we can keep on in next races although as Adrian said much work is needed to do that.

Well, the first race of the season and qualifying was interesting. Already times are very tight between drivers.

Qualifying was nice, I knew it would be hard to beat the Renault guys, but in the end i felt happy when by the end of qualy session I saw I got to split their formation, so whatever that show we can be there is a good motivation for the team.

The race was exciting (I started with a wheel spin despite the launch control which i thought for a second would end up with me facing the grid backwards but managed to control it), especially the first laps when cars go closer together and some battles between guys going on hard or softer compounds come up to fight for position. In this case i had some nice fights starting with Tony. He seemed to be on soft tyres so It was pointless for me to wear my tyres off more than neccesary holding him. Tom appeared too with all the power of his soft tyres and I couldn't do much about it either. Then I saw Arek coming fast too, decided to chase Tom which was gonna be good to me. Because I knew them both fighting would allow me to keep close to increase my chances of attacking in the right moment. After that I had some nice battles with Sven who caught me on the final laps of my first stint when I was saving tyres to be able to make it However it was cool because FSONE mod allows to have close fights and tight ones like on the hairpin at the end of the long straight of the China GP which make the races a lot enjoyable.
My teammate Sexy was also doing a nice race, with a consistent and strong pace despite the incident we had in the pitbox.
This season I think we both have chances for podium and score many many points. So all in all is good to see the team is strong and feels motivated.

Congrats to Adrian for the win and to Tony for the second place!

Looking forward to the next GP and I'm sure the Team will come back strong for the Bahrain GP looking for more! The EXHAUSTIVE pre-season training McLaren had, HAS to pay off