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My 2006 Season
Formula SimRacing is an exciting and professional online championship using ISI's rFactor and mirroring the championship of the pinnacle of motorsports. The World Championship is a Professional SimRacing League reserved to 11 licensed teams for the best 22 SimDrivers of the world. The first round of the 2006 Formula SimRacing season took place in Australia. It was a race to forget for me. After a spin and a problem with the fuel I spun another time right into the chicane and lost my rear wing. After repairing it, the car was a nightmare to drive. I finished with 2 laps behind the leader in 9th. Due to a disqualifcation of a driver within the top-8 I was officially scored 8th and took my first point. Australia was followed by Malaysia. The race started bad. Right after the start I got turned around by my own teammate and found myself on the last position. Than it was my task to get the car back home in one piece and within the points. In a thrilling drive including many overtakings I was able to finish 5th to score another 4 points. Round 3 of the 2006 season took place in San Marino. After a midfield position in qualifying and hard fights during the race with Champcar World Series driver AJ Allmendinger I finished 6th. The pace of myself wasn't fast during the whole weekend. A better result wasn't possible for me this time. The first of two home grand prix this year were scheduled right after Imola, the European grand prix at the legendary Nuerburgring. Starting from 4th, I was the only car that was going for a 1-stopper. Due to the fuel load, I was slower then most of the cars in the beginning of the stints. I had to hard fight to defend my position but still finished in 3rd. As the race marshalls decided that I was fighting to hard, I had to take a 25 seconds race time penalty and lost 1 position to finish officially in 4th. The most glamourous race, the Monte Carlo grand prix, was next. Technical problems forced me to skip the qualifying and start from the back of the grid. Fans of Formula One know, that it is nearly impossible to overtake at this slow and tight circuit. Nevertheless I was able to bring the car home in 4th and missed the podium by less then 1 tenth of a second, going side by side over the line with Dennis Hirrle. Round 6 of 16 took place in Great Britain. I was able to score my first podium position ever in FSR. After many fights, especially with Patrick de Wit, I finished in 3rd. It could have been my second podium finish, if I wouldn't have suffered from that race time penalty at the European grand prix. After Silverstone, the North America tour started with the Canadian grand prix. As the circuit is pretty hard for the car, especially for the brakes, we were running with maximum cooling systems for engine and brakes. Nevertheless, I suffered from a technical problem in lap 55 of 70 when the left rear brake disc exploded. For safety reasons, I had to park the car for the first time in my Formula SimRacing career. No points for me. This years bad North America tour continued with the United States of America grand prix. After a great start, I was already in 3rd before the first corner. Right before I wanted to turn into corner 1, I got a heavy hit from behind and lost my rear wing. The rear suspension was heavily damaged and I had to park the car for the second time of the season, getting zero points in two consecutive races. Now it was time again to travel back to Europe, as the French grand prix was next. This race turned into a nightmare. Beside a spin in the beginning of the race, there was also a problem with the communication between the pit crew and me. When I was coming in for the first time, the crew wasn't ready and I had to drive through the pits. With 2 laps to go, I lost the car in the first fast right-left chicane and lost my rear wings while running in 4th. After repairings I was able to finish 6th. The following race was the second home Grand Prix of the season for me and took place in Hockenheim, Germany. After my best qualifying of the season, I was starting right behind the leader in the second row as 3rd. For the race, I was hoping that an aggresive 3-stop strategy would let me have a say for the win. In the end, it didn't pay out as planned and even without mistakes, I lost a position and finished in 4th, about 20 seconds behind the race winner. After the second race in Germany, the Formula SimRacing World Championship traveled to Hungary. After a qualifying to forget, I had to start from P17. As the Hungaroring is a very small track, overtaking is pretty hard. But still, I was able to pick up a lot positions during the race to finish in 4th with a 3-stop strategy. It was one of the hardest races in my simracing career, as I had to push the car to the limit every lap. Considering my qualifying position, P4 in the race was very good. The Turkey Grand Prix was a very interesting one. First of all I have to say, that I’ve never driven on that track and had to learn it while most of the other competitors already raced there last year. The small disadvantage and a small mistake in qualifying led to a P12 in qualifying. The race was very eventful. I had lot’s of fights with my own team mate Dominik Binz. I think we’ve seen some of the best overtaking maneuvers throughout the season there. Anyway, while being in 5th I got wheelspin after turn one and spun. Bad think about that is, that I spun right into the barriers and damaged my suspension and my front wing. I was racing back to the pits but it wasn’t worth a try to keep going on. The car was pulling heavily to the left. The Italian Grand Prix started very promising for us. The time in the free practice sessions were very good. We were able to fight for the win as we had the fastest package for this race. In qualifying, I had a small mistake. But on tracks like Monza, even small tracks will have big consequences. We had to start from 9th. Of course, this position isn’t good. Especially when you think on that pretty tight turn one. Our bad feelings for turn one were correct, as our race ended there already. I got involved in a start collision with Steve Kasimatis and had to retire immediately. The first of two Asian Grand Prix took place in Shanghai. Because of a grid penalty I had to start from 19th. We knew it would be very hard to race into the top-8 to score some points, but our 2-stop-strategy turned out to be successful. In a very eventful race with many overtakings, I was able to score 1 point by finishing in 8th. Round 15 of the 2006 Formula SimRacing season was the Japanese Grand Prix. We lacked speed the whole weekend long. That’s the reason why we qualified for elefenth only. The race wasn’t better for me. During the first few laps, I was involved in lot’s of fights. One of them with sister team mate David Greco. When I was about to pass him, I came into the dirty air and suddenly lost downforce. I simply spun away, right into the pit wall. Severe damage at my suspension and a broken front wing was the consequence of that. Another race over for me. The last race of the season took place in Brazil. The Carlos Pace race circuit is my favourit track in the Formula SimRacing schedule. The qualifying was okay for us. We qualified fifth, just about 3 tenth of a second behind the pole position. The race started pretty good aswell. I was in third after a few laps only and was going for a 2-stop-strategy. Anyhow, something got very wrong then. I was driving to carefully and the tire temperatures went low. Because of that, I started to slide everywhere and lost time. On my first pit stop, I pushed the pit limiter button too late and was punished with a drive-through-penalty. Just a few laps later, I lost control in the fast double right corner and drifted into the barriers. Race over for me.
Results and statistics can be found at the Statistics page. |
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