Congrats to Reik and Jim even though we never really saw each other on the track.
Quali: P22. Had a very sloppy drive being caught out by slipperiness off the racing line.
Race: P2. It should have been a disaster starting last position, but I prepared a lot (not for starting last), and I got pretty lucky. My race strategy was 3 stints on Hard slicks, 67/64/64 fuel.
When the lights went out I just drove casually and tried not to get into any trouble, but I still had a little incident rear ending Anthony M in the first lap. There must have been a lot of first lap trouble, because I was already up to P12 after lap 1.
On lap 4 I come up to Peter Marshall, I was over 1 second per lap faster, and hitting 215mph in his slipstream, but on lap 8 I spun braking too late trying to pass him at the last chicane. Another small mistake on lap 9 left me in P7 about 4-5 seconds behind Peter.
On lap 10 I notice I am being followed by P15 Tim McIver, so I try to drive a good lap to see where our relational speed is. My lap was pretty good pace, but he stayed right on me the whole time. It's not worth it to get distracted, so I let him go on the pit straight, trying not to lose too much time.
Around lap 14 I could see Peter again, and I wanted to make a very good pitstop so I could pass in the pitlane, so when he pitted I went around one more lap and pitted on lap 17 so I could have a free pit entry. At TS1675 you can see the dangerous stop I made. Loving the new pitlane rules, definitely trying to take every advantage there.
Lap 18 I exit the pitlane P5, 5 seconds behind Nicolas Rouge and 3 seconds ahead of Gaetano Zizzo. Now I feel good that my pit stop worked so well, and I heat up my tires and drive 8 straight perfect (for me) laps, until I have caught up behind Nicolas Rouge.
Lap 29 I misread fuel on my telemetry screen, and get so distracted trying to think of what lap I was supposed to pit on, that I miss a braking point and slide through the gravel and then backwards into a wall, destroying my left rear suspension. Now I am forced to crawl back to the pit much earlier than I wanted, and I also missed my pitbox this time too.
Lap 30 I exit pitlane P11, about 3 seconds behind P10. I think to myself it's not so bad, with about 19 laps left and one pit stop ahead for everyone else, I can still overtake maybe 2-3 more people and maybe hold on to the end if my Hard tires last.
Lap 32, Peter Marshall exits the pitlane ahead of me, and I recall the start of my race where I could not get past him, and decided I had to overtake him right away or get stuck for a long time. By the time we got to the hairpin, I was on his wing, and I tried to time my apex at spoon curve so that I could get on the power earlier than him and catch his slipstream down the straight and hopefully pass at the chicane. Instead I caught him too early (low downforce, long gears) and made a little crazy pass on the inside of 130r to take P8. Maybe not something I'd try again.
Lap 34-35, this is where it got weird for me. I jump from P8 to P3 when a few people stop for their last stop.
Lap 42 I take over P2 from Sean Greenlaw who suffers a terrible accident, Peter Marshall follows me by about 5 seconds, and my pace is kinda terrible on all this last stint.
Lap 48, I make a little mistake and have a slow sideways slide into the gravel, and Peter Marshall instantly erases my gap and we have a drag race side by side down to the hairpin where Peter brakes a little too late, allowing me to get P2 back. From here on I just drove like he was right on my wing, but I found later that he didn't have the car setup to catch me even in my slipstream. I also thought there was one more lap, which I was dreading until the game took over control when I crossed the finish line P2, one lap behind Reik.