TSA F1 2012 Championship Round-Up – Week 3

We’re just over the half way hump in the TSA F1 Championship with the third week’s coverage, brought to you in association with the lovely folks from Elgato Gaming, creators of the Game Capture HD box, and Insert Coin Clothing, makers of many a t-shirt and hoodie based on popular game franchises.

The commentated videos take a lot of time to get organised and uploaded, so we’ll be adding those in as they come along. Some tonight, some tomorrow, and beyond.

Right, lets get to the track!

First up for Sunday’s group was Silverstone, and here I hand over to Jambo for his quick race reports:

In the biggest surprise of the championship so far, the qualifying session for Silverstone was wet! Shocker! Some of us took it relatively easily but Tomjakes landed a strong pole position ahead of Lee in second. Camdaz too had a great qualifying to finish third followed by Chuggy, whilst the third row was made up of DiF and CBC.

The first video this week is commentated with DiF and Tomjakes teaming up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE768MB3BfM

With a surprisingly dry race, the start was pretty clean until an incident occurred between CarBoyCam and myself out of the Arena. We came together, spinning CBC and sending me to the back of the field with a puncture, so that was that for me! CBC had a good recovery drive, moving through the field to 4th at the end of the race. Lee didn’t have his best race, taking a spin on lap 2 and then a further incident after opening his DRS through the Arena kink for a pass attempt on DiF, leaving him down in 8th at the end.

Camdaz had a tough race following his good qualifying, taking front wing damage which led to an incident with a wall after over-correcting, putting him out of the race. In contrast, Rob followed a tough qualifying on a dry setup with a great race, moving up from 9th on the grid to third place at the chequered flag, but Tomjakes had a completely trouble free race to the win, cementing his position at the top of the championship table.

At Austin it was a dry qualifying and a familiar line up filled the front of the grid. Tom took pole from Lee with Chuggy and CBC on the second row.

Here we now have commentated video for Austin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0gBbO4GgP8

The first corner on this brand new track was, as expected, a bit of a mess. I think I was hit about 6 times myself! The big winner from it all was DiF, who moved up to 2nd place following a spin for Lee through questionable network performance and some imaginary collisions with CBC. In turn two CBC then had a coming together with Sam right in front of me, which allowed the front group to get a large gap straight away from us before I span later in the lap, damaging myself to the extent that I quit.

Tom again had a quiet and trouble free race at the front, taking his second win of the weekend and moving further into the lead of Group A. Chuggy recovered from the turn one tangle to catch and pass DiF, whilst DiF held onto third to fill the podium. Rob had another great race to finish 4th and Lee managed to recover to 5th to take some important points. Sadly, Camdaz’ bad luck continued, being taken out in an incident and having to limp back to the pits, leaving him in last position.

I guess we now have a few desperate racers heading to Spa needing a strong finish to make it through to the finals!

The Monday group’s trip to Silverstone was all nice and dry, but surprisingly a few people struggled with their qualifying lap anyway. It was nice and close at the top, though, with AshGraham taking pole a couple 10ths ahead of James_m2603 in 2nd and myself, Teflon, in third.

We hop onboard with Manorhowze for his race video:

The getaway from the line seems to have been really rather clean most of the way down the track, although Freezebug stalled on the line with a few people having to take avoiding action, and DimJim managing to spin on the exit from turn one, but magically didn’t seem to take anyone with him. At the front, James got an awesome slipstream on Ash down the long straight into Brooklands corner, making a supremely audacious move round the outside and taking the lead with the inside line through Luffield.

As James held off Ash, I was trying to hang onto the back of them in third, but kept on running wide and slow through Becketts and Chapel, which let Sitorimon through to chase after the leading pair instead of me. Further back, Heedbaw was up in a very strong 5th place with Manorhowze driving in 6th, coming from the rear of the pack after he struggled in qualifying.

It all looked settled until James mistakenly stayed on Mix 3 fuel for too long, and ran out with half a lap to go! As he dropped back from the lead, he just about managed to hold onto 6th place, but let Ash take the win ahead of Sitorimon and myself. A cruel twist of fate, but an excellent show of pace which he hoped to take forward to Austin.

Austin had another lovely, sunny qualifying session too, which saw Stanley take pole ahead of Manorhowze and myself in third again. However, none of the front runners had bothered to check the dynamic weather conditions for the race, and when the heavens opened and we had a horribly wet race to contend with our dry car set ups!

We go onboard with Freezebug:

The first corner in such tricky conditions was always going to be messy and I misjudged things and ended up punting Stanley off the track, robbing him of the lead. It wasn’t just me, as people all down the track were bumping into each other or just spinning off the track of their own volition.

Manorhowze was able to get away from all the carnage, and drive carefully to the finish in the lead, with Sitorimon recovering from a collision with Heedbaw to hold second position and manage the gap back to Heedbaw and Freezebug. Heed was having another cracking race, capitalising on lots of people spinning out to get up to 3rd and hold it well for the podium position.

Fourth went to Colin, with another strong drive from him to beat Freezebug in 5th and Ash in 6th to the lights, but it seems to have been a fairly subdued race as the field spread out with individual errors affecting everyone at one point or another. My own race saw me trying to get a handful of points after a horrendous first lap, setting the fastest lap as I came close to chasing down Deadpool, who held onto 7th ahead of me.

From all of this we have a number of drivers who are already safely through to the finals, so head over to page 2 for the various championship tables, and to see who they are!

The next last stop for these championships is at the famous Spa-Francorchamps circuit, for a 25% race. Quite a few people are in make or break positions, so it should be a good race!