F1 Fanatic

Season 1 – Race 6 – Circuit de Monaco – Marussia
P1: 1st (soft)
P2: 1st (soft)
P3: 1st (super soft)
Q1: 1st (soft)
Q2: 1st (soft)
Q3: 1st with a 1:14.0 (5 tenths faster than Webber in second)
Seems like the AI is rubbish at Monaco, or I have an affinity for the circuit.

Strategy:
Start – super soft
Lap 7 – soft
Lap 20 – soft
Lap 31 – super soft

R: Made a rubbish getaway but the run to Ste Devote was short enough for me to stay in 1st. For most of that stint I was lapping at the same pace as Alonso in second, about 1 second behind. On the last two laps of the stint I pulled a gap of 3 seconds, and pitted at the end of lap 7. He went a lap longer, and lost a lot of time in so doing. After the first round of pitstops I was 10 seconds ahead and increasing the gap. Most of the race was spent seething at backmarkers who made no attempt to move aside (although Timo gave me a nice DRS boost down the main straight at one point). The recommended strategy was ss-s7-s17-s28, but I couldn’t do that because my third set of softs was worn down after Q1 and Q2, so I had to do the final stint on super softs, which meant running longer on the softs. I managed to eke out 3 extra laps on the first set of softs with very little loss in grip (although they looked absolutely destroyed) and pitted on lap 20. Ditto for the third stint – the team said I should pit on lap 28 but I ignored them and came in on lap 31. Curiously, the game changed my recommended strategy at the end of the third stint, and on lap 35 my RE was yelling at me to pit, after 4 laps on the super softs. I ignored him, of course. On lap 33 I turned fuel mix to 3 and pumped in a FL of 1:13.9, which stood until the end. The rest of the race was rather conservative, but I know those tyres had a few more laps in them. I finished 1st, 43 seconds ahead of Alonso.
I almost scored a Grand Chelem, but I didn’t lead every lap as I pitted first on lap 7, and staying long on the first stint proved to be a bad decision for the guys behind. Add that to being fastest in every single session, usually by a large margin.

Drivers’ standings after 6 races
1: Mark Webber – 81 pts
2: Kyle Puttifer – 76 pts
3: Fernando Alonso – 69 pts
4: Felipe Massa – 69 pts
5: Nico Rosberg – 57 pts
6: Sebastian Vettel – 50 pts
7: Jenson Button – 45 pts
8: Lewis Hamilton – 38 pts
9: Sergio Perez – 30 pts
10: Sebastien Buemi – 22 pts

Constructors’ standings after 6 races
1: Ferrari – 138 pts
2: Red Bull – 131 pts
3: McLaren – 83 pts
4: Marussia – 76 pts
5: Mercedes – 63 pts
6: Renault – 37 pts
7: Sauber – 30 pts
8: Toro Rosso – 25 pts
9: Force India – 19 pts
10: Williams – 4 pts
11: Lotus – 0 pts
12: HRT – 0 pts

The team want me to qualify 6th and finish 4th in Montreal. Good thing I love that circuit as well.

Season 1: Race 1: Australia HRT

After qualifying 20th, a solid 17th looked on after early collisions for front running cars. A race long battle with Timo Glock led to me spinning and losing my front wing. With only 2 laps to go I persevered, got passed for 18th. Not so bad 19th being the target. However on the last lap I was awarded a time penalty for ignoring blue flags. So came 21st. A disappointing start.

After round five, season one with marussia, my results are as follows:
Australia
Q – 17th
R – 2nd
Malaysia
Q – 1st
R – 1st
China
Q – 11th
R – 1st
Turkey
Q – 18th
R – 6th
Spain
Q – 19th
R – 4th

I’m playing on the hardest difficulty, with all sim options on, no flashbacks and only assists I use are traction and abs (playing with a controller and the game doesn’t use analogue for the ps3 buttons, so accelerator and brake are just switches, lots of tapping required to control traction even with traction control on.). The reason for pole in Malaysia is the ai seems badly flawed on this circuit, especially in quali, and even in the marussia I was 1.5 secs faster than p2 lol. I only drive for back marker teams in this game, as when I drove for ferrari, even on hardest difficulty, I was able to lap the entire field in every race, pole time at Malaysia was I think about 4 seconds faster than p2 in a ferrari, makes for boring and pointless racing lol

Guessing you weren’t on the highest difficulty @pielighter, I just set a quali time of 1:12.898, which was only good for 13th, .9 off pole, ai seems good on this track to me. Not worried though, I have the marussia set up worked out perfect for race pace :)