I finally got around to doing some practice last night for tomorrow's round at Spa. I just did a 20-lap stint in Free Practice with each of my chosen manufacturers - Aston Martin and Renault.
As far as I can tell, the weather is an exact repeat of the race we had last season, with three stages of weather:
- Dry track - Laps 1-5 - Guaranteed no rain at the start of the race
- Dynamic heavy rain - Laps 6-15 - The rain is dynamic/random, so it could range anywhere from none to heavy. In Free Practice, if it does rain, the moisture gauge will hit the second tick and likely go slightly higher into the blue stuff. In the actual race, with the additional cars drying out the track, the moisture levels can fall into the middle range when the rain is lighter.
- Dynamic light rain - Laps 16-20 - Again, the rain is dynamic/random, ranging from none to light. In Free Practice, if there was heavy rain the previous stage, the moisture gauge stays pinned, or at least close, to the second tick mark. In the actual race, with more cars, the track can dry below the first tick mark, if memory serves.
When we had this race last season, I won a rainy one in the Subaru BRZ when I was the only driver to switch to W. Everybody else picked IMs. The Ws were great for the second stage and I was able to build a 15-second gap to the cars behind, but as the track dried out -- much more and much faster than I expected -- the Ws became horrible and I only just managed to eke out the win by 0.45 seconds. I'm not sure the Ws were in fact the best choice.
As far as the cars go, the Aston Martin is awful at this track -- at least in my hands. On the dry track, it just wants to understeer off at every corner. I've to lift around so many corners that can be taken flat out in other cars. It has good brakes, though. I'll give it that. My best lap was 2:22.0. In the rain it seems to do okay -- 2:40s on IMs and 2:37s on W in the heavy rain.
The Renault feels much better on the dry track. Best lap was a 2:20.6. Not stellar by any means, but probably good enough for mid-B American lobbies. In the rain, I was surprised at how difficult the car was to control on the Ws, even when the moisture gauge was in the blue range. I managed a 2:36 in the heavy rain, but that was only slightly better than the IMs. I was hitting 2:37s on those, even in the heavy rain. I feel like IMs are going to be the way to go in this car if I get rain in my race.
As always, good luck to everybody racing. Hope to see some of you in my races tomorrow.
That's good to know, even if it is unlikely. I didn't do Manufacturers in the last exhibition season so seeing this for the first time.
