Fastest lap: Alain Prost, 1:28.650
Sophie Fabron wrote:Mais oui! I won the Monaco Grand Prix, and my team mate also got on the podium! And the last two thirds of it were surprisingly easy. The start saw Brundle, Brabham and Martini stall, and on the tight Monaco main straight that meant chaos. All cars ahead of me except the McLarens and Gugelmin's March collided, so I was 4th by the first corner. I then kept with the pace of Gugelmin, but couldn't challenge him until on lap 5 he hit the barriers at Nouvelle Chicane and spun right in front of me. I narrowly avoided the collision and was on 3rd place! However, the narrow escape left me mentally shaken for a moment and so Pirro (who had also benefited from the start chaos) got past me at Rascasse, but I quickly recovered and outbraked him into St. Devote, so I was back in 3rd. I knew that my pace was nowhere near the McLarens, so instead of chasing Senna I concentrated on keeping Pirro behind me. Then on lap 16, Senna made a mistake very similar to Gugelmin's, and I just barely managed to get past him as well! Having noticed that I could easily benefit from other people's mistakes, I decided to try keeping my gap to Prost as small as possible. However, on the next lap I braked too late to Nouvelle and overshot it. Luckily I didn't break the car nor get a penalty for cutting the track, but while I had to correct my position Senna and Pirro got past me again.
As it turns out, that was the last time I lost positions in the race. Prost had caught up with Piercarlo Ghinzani, but for some reason the Italian didn't move over despite being a lap down and even more oddly Prost couldn't get past him at all despite the massive difference between the two cars. Soon Senna and Pirro joined the line as well, and Ghinzani Express circled around the track! They lost so much time that already by the next lap (18) I had caught up with them and got past Pirro again just after Piscine. Next up was Senna at Loews, and on lap 19 just after Piscine I overtook Prost and was 1st! Ghinzani then let me past very easily right after that - was this planned all along? I started to suspect that even more as it became clear that Ghinzani was still holding up the rest of the pack, as in just six laps I had an almost 20 second gap to the 2nd place. How he did not get black flagged still remains a mystery, but eventually Prost got tired of him on lap 25 and literally punted him out of the way. However, this also cost Prost a couple of positions and he dropped down to fifth, so now it was Senna who chased me, but Ghinzani had cost him almost 20 seconds so I had a comfortable lead and didn't feel threatened at all. It didn't take long for his brakes to fail, so for a few laps Pirro was second before he hit the barriers and was forced to replace his front wing. Suddenly Alesi found himself in second, albeit about 50 seconds behind me. During that phase Alliot, who was 4th at the time, had a frightening accident which saw his car land upside down after its brakes failed at - you guessed it right - Nouvelle Chicane. However, he was OK and the car got cleared out of the way very quickly.
It didn't take long for the same chicane to claim yet another victim as Alesi went wide and lost his rear wing. He managed to limp to the pits but the car was damaged beyond reasonable repair so the team decided to retire him. Then it was Piquet's turn to be second, but by then the gap was already over a minute. It was in fact so long that even though I was given a stop-and-go penalty as I again overshot the Nouvelle on lap 38, by the time I had finished my penalty there was no visible reduction in the gap between us. Apparently Alliot's accident had frightened other drivers and they hesitated to overtake lapped drivers, which made them lose huge amounts of time. Around lap 45 I already overtook Piquet, so I was a lap ahead of everyone else! I made my only actual pitstop on lap 58 as I made a mistake at Tabac and lost my front wing. At the same time my rather worn hard tyres were replaced with fresh soft ones, and I was soon back on the track. Meanwhile, Piquet was doing a whole bunch of mistakes which eventually cost him the second place as Pirro retook it. Meanwhile, Prost had not gained any positions as he struggled with a suspension that had been damaged in the collision with Ghinzani. The problems eventually became too big and he had to retire from 6th place. For some reason no-one even attempted to overtake lapped traffic, and there were basically two packs of cars circling around the track at slow speeds while I had the time of my life and lapped them again. And again. And again. And all this time Tarquini was making an excellent job as he rose through the ranks from 10th to 3rd in just twenty laps. Perhaps Pirro was the only driver besides him who actually overtook cars, given that in the end he was two laps ahead of the others. At around lap 73 I felt that my tyres were nearing the end of their cycle, but even though I was literally laps ahead of everyone else I decided to get to the finish without another pitstop. So, I won with the largest margin in F1 history, and a brilliant day for AGS was made even better when Tarquini got home third!
I just can't believe it , me and my team are leading both championships with ease! How long can this continue.
Most of that is based on assumptions, because the game won't save full replays as it CTDs every time I exit a race. So I had to rely on instant replay and pausing the game every now and then to go through all the cars to see their positions.
So yeah, as it turns out reducing aggression also reduced the quality of racing a lot, as the AI decided to ensure its ROTR for this race by making the AI cars very hesistant to overtake each other, even if the other one was a lap down. Also, almost every lap at least one car spun at Nouvelle Chicane and they had to replace their front wings so often that the world market price of carbon fibre rose. That further slowed them down. Meanwhile I was posting 1:30 lap times and still caught up the others by a lap time and again, so it was actually too easy.Next track will be Mexico - there I can again use more AI aggression and the fact that the track is relatively new to me means that I probably won't be that good there. Probably.
Some pics:
Start chaos, I'm on the far right.
Ovetaking Senna (for the second time) at Loews in the middle of the Ghinzani Express:
A triumphant win:
Driver's championship standings
1. Sophie Fabron 22
2. Christian Danner 9
3. Andrea de Cesaris 6
== Philippe Alliot 6
== Emanuele Pirro 6
5. Michele Alboreto 4
== Gabriele Tarquini 4
7. Roberto Moreno 3
== Olivier Grouillard 3
== Nelson Piquet 3
10. Eddie Cheever 2
== Ivan Capelli 2
12. Ayrton Senna 1
== Satoru Nakajima 1
Constructor's championship standings
1. AGS-Ford 26
2. Lola-Lamborghini 10
3. Rial-Ford 9
4. Dallara-Ford 6
== Benetton-Ford 6
6. Lotus-Judd 4
7. Coloni-Ford 3
== Ligier-Ford 3
9. Arrows-Ford 2
== March-Judd 2
11. McLaren-Honda 1
