It's strange being in 3 F1-07 games at once (given that I only have 3 slots too XD)
CCYoshi's Vaguely Briefer But Still Better Than Sharky's Race Report:
Round 13: Monza
Race Wrap-Up:
At the Lights: Hayha, Horton, and Charkaoui, 3 men with nothing in common, all spun the tires off the grid and dropped nearly 10 places each. Relatively clean chaos ensued as everyone jockeyed for position, home race driver Nikolakopoulos would be the winner, up 7, while Davidson gained 5 in the Aguri. Meanwhile, Kawasie twatted into someone again and Machiels slipped into the lead in a Red Bull.
Lap 2: Graham pits as a result of KamiKawa's mayhem, and Haswell, after 2 laps, finally decides that storm tires are a bad idea on a sunny day.
Lap 3: Charkaoui, still fuming off the poor start, estimates Curva Grande as a much more grande turn than it is and ends up heading to the beach. He will remain there. Trendell in the McLaren does the impossible (except for in GTP-F1) and passes a Ferrari for 2nd.
Laps 4 and 5: Skywalker, driving a Red Bull, turns on the afterburners the wrong way and loses 3 places in one lap. Dubois in the Honda does the same one lap later.
Lap 7: The Dunstan-Trendell fight over 2nd place proves to be a good one as the Ferrari drivers takes back the second spot.
Lap 9: Taylor, who had spent the majority of the race shuffling around midfield in the Renault messes up the final-corner-that-shall-not-be-named and calls it a day.
Lap 10: Nothing happens. At all.
Lap 11: Davidson's Aguri gearbox loses top gear, which is deemed to be a minor (yet not terminal) setback.
Lap 12: Butler confuses the race reporters by messing up a curve without any noticeable harm to his lap time. AlMomen is the the first to pit on a light fuel load. He was up an astounding 4 places...to 18th.
Lap 13: Chang botches the first-corner-which-is-also-unnamed-and-should-not-be-confused-with-the-final-corner without harm.
Lap 14: Beyens agrees that reporting a driver error without actually doing anything wrong is ridiculously funny and claims something happened at Curva Grande, which was probably just him gawking into the stands.
Lap 17: Machiels suddenly finds himself in a Ferrari sandwich as one passes him for the lead and another is half a second back.
Lap 18: Ferrari suffers an incredible logistic error when their 1-2 running duo pit on the same lap. Not even the prancing horses, in their home race can bend the rules enough to manage to pit two drivers at the same time.
Laps 19 and 20: Machiels and Trendell both take a crack at leading a lap before pitting, at which point the lead is shuffled to Chang in the Williams.
Lap 21: Butler suffers karmic retribution for making me come up with a creative way to interpret 'seems fine on the circuit' and crashes out of the race. Skywalker shoots past Horton for second, 7 seconds back of Chang.
Lap 24: Ferrari continues it's miseries when Hutchinson takes Curva Parabolica a bit (very) wide, losing ground. Hayha proves that some of the KamiKawaism may have rubbed of from his incident with the Spyker driver from last race as he gets involved in a hard hit with Dubois, taking himself out of the race. The flowery power of nature keeps the Honda running.
Lap 26: And suddenly things go to hell for Williams as it suffers it's second retirement in 3 laps, as Chang shoots off into the trees. Unfortunate. Skywalker leads for a few seconds before pitting and shuffling the lead to Rees in the BMW.
Lap 27: Rees also pits on presumably a one-stopper, leaving Trendell and Dunstan to continue their heated fight for the lead.
Laps 29-33: Dunstan passes Trendell relatively easily for the lead before pitting on lap 33, leaving Machiels as the closest contender 5 seconds back.
Lap 34: Kawasie is distracted by his in-car anime viewer and begins to see strange (yet attractive)
characters in the stands. Moments later he is in the wall wondering why he has to drive into everything he sees. His 4th retirement in 6 races.
Lap 36: Nikolakopoulos spins for no good reason, or at least no funny one. He rejoins in 11th.
Laps 37-41: Pit stops come and go again, with Smith's Spyker crew taking him out of contention with a 24-second whopper. Also, Machiels stalls coming out, giving Trendell the lead by inches. This seems to set up a great duel for the finish. Meanwhile, the oil pressure gauge in Horton's McLaren, like the rest of the field, is conspiring against him and goes wild, albeit without harm.
Lap 42: Machiels gets past Trendell anyway. He begins to pull away from the McLaren. In a Red Bull!
Lap 48: Victory remains elusive for the unlucky Red Bull team as Machiels wipes the front off the car in an incident at Variante Ascari and is forced to pit for a new nosecone.
Lap 49: As a result Machiels drops to the tail end of the points, and for some reason Ferrari is beginning to run out of steam as Rees and Skywalker storm past Dunstan for 2nd and 3rd.
Lap 52: Mason is horribly bored one lap down in the Toro Rosso and does some impromptu donuts.
At the Flag: Nothing exciting happens on the final lap, as everyone is bored of McLaren winning. Rees takes 2nd for BMW, continuing a strong string of races, while Red Bull's Skywalker scores a good podium for once. Dunstan chalks up his first points since Canada, and Horton finishes 5th in what is a "weak" finish. Machiels finishes a dissapointing 6th in a race with so much hope, Beyens takes 7th in a good race from the rear of the field (and a BMW double-points finish), and Ferrari's Hutchinson takes the last point.
Championship Outlook:
Technically some ground has been cut into Horton's lead, now 18 points, but with the first and second drivers being from McLaren, who cares? Ferrari's Hutchinson is the first true contender, 27 back of Horton. Smith is one back of Hutchinson in what can be considered a typically outstanding drive for a miserable team. The Super Aguri Duo is still stuck at 33 points apiece (34 back), and Chang is the only other one above 30 with 31 points.
Will the return of Spa mark anything exciting for GTP-F1? We will see...
