great event again
yesss, EU3 was terrific, 26 guys in one session, loved it!
s01 just carefully trying to find my rhythm after some bad starts to other rally events, was shocked when out of the blue my co said: trouble with the gearbox ... must have been his idea of a joke, nothing came of it.
s02 enjoyed this stage immensely, after one training run I aimed for a 6:00 and finished in 5:58, happy
s03 felt worse than the first run but was actually 8 secs faster, never trust your feelings, no matter what the Jedi say
s04 another run 8secs faster than first time round, really getting into the swing of things now
s05 nice run crashed out just as the voice off declared the stage finished, lucky.
overall a well-controlled first day with no CFHs and no serious mistakes, pleased with myself and positioned in 15th of 26 which is more or less what I expected.
here come the horror stages, the idea was to just survive in one piece
s06 I had trained this one the other way round, took me some secs to realize what was going on; still haven't figured out how to do hairpins downhil in wet, an embarrassing run, had to reverse three times out of the bushes, but car thankfully only a little scratched
s07 a great run uphill with some fine drifting but a dreadful one downhill with another two hairpins overshot, car still fine, crossed as many fingers as possible
s08 first small incident of the night, hit a small tree with 7.1 km to go, which is a long time if your radiator is making this mean hissing sound, a 180 degree turn close to finish rounded off a not so good stage, but basically happy to survive the first half of day2
s09 safety first, not spectacular but keeping the car intact for the long afternoon ahead
s10 a good run until I overshot the very very last hairpin (lack of concentration as my brain said "brake" while my foot was clearly asleep / somewhere else) and got stuck between two trees, had to CFH with all of 30m to go
s11 nice clean run, especially the uphill part which I invariably like more on all the French stages
s12 funny feeling with gravel inters on tarmac, lost 10 secs compared to first run
overall an almost clean rally, probably a little too much on the safe side for points but hugely enjoyable nonetheless, looking forward to results, thx all concerned and my 25 fellow players in EU3!