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Hi VisionRacer fans, The last month has been pretty hectic for me! I’ve had the first three events in this season’s GP2 Series and I guess it’s been a case of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly! Let’s start with the good. I had my best performance and results of the season so far at Istanbul Park in Turkey. This was my first ever time at this track and it was a great help to use the VisionRacer to learn the circuit before I had to drive it for real. I qualified within a second of pole and just missed out on scoring some points with a 9th place finish in the feature race. I got 11th place in the sprint race on Sunday as well, so all in all it was progress from the earlier rounds and will help my confidence going through the rest of the season. Now the bad - Barcelona back at the beginning of the month. These were the first races in the championship and I was disappointed to only get 16th and 18th place finishes there. I never got the car to feel right all weekend and although I worked hard with the Ocean Racing Technology engineers to find a good set-up, we didn’t achieve it. It certainly wasn’t a question of not knowing the track – I’ve done hundreds of laps of Barcelona both real and simulated on the VisionRacer, so I know where it goes! And as for the ugly, well hardly a word you associate with Monaco, but that’s how I should describe my first race there this year. I found my picture spread across the pages of several European newspapers, but not for the reasons I’d hoped. Basically I had a big shunt – hit the back of a car in front and was launched spectacularly through the air and into the barriers! |
It doesn’t hurt when you experience that on the VisionRacer, but it does in real life! I got over my pains and embarrassment for the Sunday race though and came through from my start at the very back of the grid to finish in 14th place, not too shabby round the very difficult Monaco street track and I did actually enjoy the race in the end. Now I’m seeing out the rest of May in Italy at a training camp. My Ocean team mate, Fabio and I are here with our trainer for some hard work. I will be cycling up mountains, running on the coast and doing other things the coach dreams up. All in the cause of physical fitness. June will be a much quieter month; I’ve only got the one event at the European Grand Prix around the street circuit in Valencia, Spain. Again I’ll be trying to learn it with many sessions on the VisionRacer! Hopefully I will be able to report on some good results in my next blog. Cheers for now. Max Chilton. |
GP2 Driver Max Chilton's Blog |
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