F1 2021, Co-Op, S01, R06, France

I just realized that I wasn't correctly logging retirements in the round-by-round sheets; I will fix this but I'm not going to go back and edit the images. You get the picture, and if my home-made F1 wiki is still working you'll see it corrected there.

On to France. This is a track I thought I disliked, and in previous editions of the game that maybe was true. But even though there is virtually no elevation and the surface is smooth as glass, there's something very racey about the place. I have a lot of fun hustling the car around here, and even though there are two long DRS zones, it doesn't feel quite like Monza where if you're in the front of a train you're a sitting duck.

Now there's a result I can get behind. My first point since my debut race, when the difficulty was far too low and we hadn't yet adjusted things. I suspect we had it turned down to 75 by this point but I'm not positive. Our results seem to suggest that, though.

Brett I'm sure is not as enthusiastic about it as I am, but he had a fine race here too. He was catching me in the latter stages and I developed a train behind me as I started to sweat my situation. I think he said that evening that he dove it in there a bit, but I just didn't have the spatial awareness for it and wasn't ready for him to be there. I suspect he was only barely alongside but he certainly deserved the 11th place finish, if not the last point-paying position. 

Looks like I was running 6th for a moment during the pit sequence, but was just steadily moving forward all race. Same thing for Brett, no more than a few positions and a few seconds behind me the whole way.

I think this explains my train at the end of the race; this was the first time I felt like the performance difference between medium and hard tyres was too big to be worth the lower wear rate. Thing is, on 25% races the field doesn't get strung out that much. Maybe on a full race the hards would make more sense, if only because you wouldn't constantly be fighting a losing battle against softer-equipped runners. I think I made this mistake another time or two later in the season but the differences started to be too habitually noticeable.

Hey, look at Leclerc; hards for him too. That Ferrari strategy team always knows what they're doing. As much as I want to drive for them, if I ever manage it I'll have to be careful about the suggested strategies.

Apart from Alonso's retirement, the field all looks pretty normal and believable relative to our other races thus far. The DeJong Train is the biggest stretch, and it's not that bad.

Great day for both of us here. Tons of fun.