AC Multiclass Abarth500/MazdaMX5@Mexico Gran Premio, Wed 5th April 2023

P10 qualifying, p10 finish but far from boring race.

Decent start but tagged turning into the corner before the hairpin so lost a few places. Caught up to a three car battle and had a great fight with Dave, who I couldn't get past.

At some point I hit the bank and came across the track and nudged Steve (I think) apologies for that.

Pitted early but made a couple of costly mistakes but had some nice battles along the way, particularly with Paul.

Last 20 minutes I found myself 10 seconds behind Dave and Ernie. Hung in and Dave lost a chunk of time which meant our fight was restarted. Still couldn't find a way past but in the last sector I got the run into the last corner, up the inside which gave me track position but compromised my pace so the drag to the line was so close. Dave finished 0.004 behind!

Well done, everyone, especially Dave as you found some great pace.

Thanks to Han for organising.

Medilloni said:

What happened on the first lap? Got home and turned on the live lap thingy on 2nd lap, seems a good few ppl out of place? WOuld love to watch a replay if anyone has one.

Click to expand...

You can download the replay file from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrQuYOLS5pKNonn2Cu_eQybFHXnux7si/view?usp=sharing

I wondered if I had imagined it all.

Great racing everyone.
Next time I will keep my mouth shut until the 1st lap is over. I was very happy that we all got safely through turn 1 and expressed my joy. But in T3 I got a little tap on the back and went off.
Well, what's new. Certainly for me not driving in the back after the first couple of corners.
After that I had a nice race with a couple of battles. It's a pity that only in my second stint I found out how to take T1. That improved my laptimes (and my PB) with almost a second.

Congrats to the podiums (Fulvio: if you had done a 2.19 I would have given you a 30 day ban for humiliating us). Thanks all for joining and hope to see you next week in the Wellington Harbor.

Well that was quite disappointing in the end as I threw 3rd place away with some poor driving after the pitstop

Qualified well in Q3 and couldn't believe my luck when Jason and Allan swapped paint on the first lap and I managed to find a gap in the middle of the spinning cars to come out in first. I was feeling quite hopeful of my first win until I remembered Fulvio was in a Mazda! Managed to put in some good lap times and just keep plugging away to keep a gap. Andre was also catching me but he did and early pitstop so he was a problem for latter on.

Obviously Fulvio came in to view after a few laps and sailed past - so I then thought I could at least keep 2nd place. However, after my pitstop I popped out behind Alan, Richard and Andre and my laptimes then seemed to go to pot.

I had a look at the simresults data to see how bad I was...



In the graph I've taken off 2:3.50 secs from my lap times to just concentrate on where I lost time.

Fairly good before the pitstop - with a slight mess up on lap 13 but pretty terrible pace after the pitstop - losing about 14 secs in total. Not enough to have caught Andre for 2nd but easily enough to have kept 3rd.

I can't really explain why it happened but this is a confidence circuit and you have to really commit to some of the corners to get a good lap time. The left hander after the hairpin is a good example. I can take that flat but get the line wrong and you can flip the car.

I thought I'd have a look as some other drivers lap times to see how they compared with me.


Mega laps from Fulvio - Han, can't you BOP him to slow him down?


Great set of laps from Andre. Very consistent.


Robert, steady consistent start and got quicker as the race progressed. A blip on lap 24 but otherwise a great set of laps.


Richard, another consistent set of laptimes - very similar to Robert. One bad time on lap 8 and some special fuel added after the pitstop as he just got quicker - probably the thought of passing me spurred him on

Thanks as ever to Han for organising

Well, I pretty much lost everything in sector 2...

well good race and congratz to the podium not much to say had some good fights until i found myself somehow p1 . pace i didnt know what to expect improving lap by lap . ty Han as always for hosting