Not my most enjoyable evening ever, to be honest.
Wasn't going gung ho during practice or qual, just trying to make sure I had my lines right for the race and concentrating on those, and got up to a pretty good pace there with race fuel.
Then Nige had his disconnect issue - I saw him disconnect on my screen and immediately heard a player leave on TS, so I assumed soimething had come up.
Then when he suddenly started talking over TS again - it freaked me out a bit.
He just missed logging in on the quali session as he notes in his post above, and I didn't know what to do - I didn't know whether I could stop the race in time and vote round to race again (possibly denying people who'd got a few good laps in of their girdslots) or what. With GTL's 30 sec countdown time was limited - I dithered too much trying to type something quick into chat while on the grid - basically costing Nige his evening's racing. Apologies again Nige.
If something like this happens again - we'll scrub the start and vote round to race again, and sod the grid positions.
I felt pretty sick as the race started, a feeling compunded by being rear ended under braking in the second corner of the first lap.
Thing is, 8 corners x 38 laps - thats >300 corners for the evening. I didn't survive 2. Why people can't work out the maths is beyond me. Apology accepted Amir, we can't change things now.
Getting taken out and over the berm running alongside the track, which cost me a load of time trying to get back over, along with Nige's issue left me feeling pretty sick, but I got my head down and started driving back into the race - getting up to 4th with the pitstop window.
Unfortunately, my head still wasn't in the race, and I forgot that GTL selects repairs should be carried out by default. So very quickly selecting the fuel and hitting enter, and not turning off repairs, instead of making up time, I sat there for a world record 135 sec pitstop.
Set off again, by this time my mood was one of amused resignation rather than anything else, and as Warren gave Sam a push over the line, I helped Luc out for those final couple of hundred yards.
The actual driving I did was very enjoyable, but it was difficult to actually say I enjoyed it.
I hope for better CotM action @ Donington National on Saturday.
The sprints @ Monaco and @ Rouen during the week, if there's an incident, you've not got too long to wait until the next race, but lets think about the nature of the enduro events please, and let's see if we can get a whole minute into the 60 before peoples night are effectively ruined.
