[Marco Monitto]

My target for this race was only to go through first corner without accidents! Then, I race only to ma rain my position. I didn’t practice so much for the race, in fact Dominic was to hard for me. This has been the most beautiful championship since a drive on SRS. One hour race with f1 car is awesome! Next championship unfortunately I’ll can’t race more than 3 race because I’ll go away from home. But I really hope for this new series here. The one hour f1 weekly series. Bye bye to all!

[Simon Meisinger]

Dominic, I definitely noticed that drift. At first I thought you had a very interesting line into T3, but then there was smoke and I knew that wasn't on purpose

That race was really great apart from somebody forgetting to the brake into T1 (I'm not mad, it wasn't Monza ). Most people seemed very well prepared.

Even though I missed two races and was much more off pace as I would have wished, it was among the best series I participated so far. I really really hope the 1hr F1 races will become a regular thing. But maybe keep it to pre 1995 era, for some reason I'm faster with those cars

Congrats Marco, Dominic and Simon, a well deserved top 3.

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I was quite nervous at the start of that race, especially after qualifying in the front row which I didn't expect. I tried keeping it very clean and passive at the start as while I wanted to do well in the race, I didn't want to ruin the championship for those involved at the top by taking them out in a stupid crash or giving them some incident points. I had mentioned to Simon (Speth) in a PM after last weeks race that I don't get overly fussed or upset about getting incident points, although I do me best to try to avoid them. However in the time between that conversation and this race I remembered that they take away championship points. I had raced only dailys before these last two F1 races, so in general you could make up for a race with incident points by driving clean in the next race and having a better result for the overall standings. In general chances are you should get at least one clean race in the week for a daily series, and even that includes when racing at Monza (although the stat in that other thread about T1 on lap 1 at Monza were pretty damning), so I tend to move on pretty quickly from a race where I get incident points when it was not my fault (unless I think it should be reported). However for a series like this one, there is only one chance for each track. So each incident point, even if its just a light touch with no damage and no positions lost, could possibly have a huge impact on your standings in the championship. I enjoy this type of series where there is only one race a week for each track as it makes each race feel very significant, but man does it increase the pressure tenfold.

It took me about twelve minutes to properly settle down and feel comfortable with my driving in this race. I was lucky to catch the start of a spin at the chicane at the end of lap 5 and I only lost 1 second instead of spinning into the wall on the left, but it left me a bit edgy for a few laps. I think this showed in the timings, as Dominic kept increasing his lead for those first 12 minutes. Once you got about a 7 - 7.5 second lead, I managed to keep up pace then as I relaxed and found my groove, combined with the fact you weren't pushing as hard as the first few laps as you said. I was surprised when Marco let me by on lap 2, but it dawned on me afterwards that he probably had the bigger picture of winning the championship and didn't want to risk an unnecessary crash battling for second, which he didn't need to win the overall series.

I have to say from my perspective it seemed like a very fair race, although I was pretty much racing on my own for the majority of the race so I didn't see any or involved in any of the battles going on. Anytime I was coming up to a car that I was lapping, they pretty much always gave way early on leaving plenty of space and time for me to go by and I really appreciated that. There was only one very close call where one driver spun out just in front of me at T1 and I had just enough time to break a bit harder and squeeze by in the space between him and the apex of the corner. There was just enough room to avoid contact and it was quite the butt clencher.

I was quite physically and mentally worn after that race. I had done a few of 1 hour races in the Audi VLN and the 90's DTM during a two week period a few weeks ago. I found doing this in an F1 car incredibly more demanding as you have far less time to react to how the car is behaving and this requires so much more concentration. Even though I was pretty much out of the race before I got to Eau Rouge in lap 1 of last week's race at Spa, I still really enjoyed it as just the task of trying to do lap after lap at a consistently fast pace for an hour is very satisfying in these cars and the longer race gives much more time to recover and climb back up the pecking order after a bad start. Lapping well at the Nurburgring without a huge mistake of spinning out or getting in a crash felt even better and I was ecstatic when I finished second. Even though I was exhausted, I still couldn't settle down to go to sleep until a few hours later as I was buzzing with excitement. I definitely hope there will be another F1 series where the races are 1 hour as they really are something special. It certainly helped motivate me to practice as much as I did, although I probably went a bit too overboard and might need to tone it down and do other real world things, can I still use lockdown as an excuse?

Congrats to Dominic on the race win and Marco on the championship.