Good to see you back Rupe. Hope you are recovering nicely m8 and look forward to seeing you on track or teamspeak soon.
The race night was pretty good for me. I had done quite a few laps around the track practicing and setting up the cars so I was fairly confident of good pace. With this in mind (and with Rupe in hospital) I decided to try and keep the forum thread updated and not to qualify for both races. This also had an added benefit of allowing me the chance to work on my race craft (overtaking and such) because I am fairly weak in that area.
So, race 1 started with me near the back of the field and as the lights went out I managed to get a fairly good start enabling me to make up a few places but a little further down the track I made the wrong decision to overtake on the outside and my wheels just caught the grass on the right and dragged me in to the outfield.
I decided to stay on the grass rather then rejoin straight away and risk causing an accident and this put me dead last. Oh well. Never mind.
I just got my head down and pressed on and as luck would have it @
Ken Hunter dropped a clanger on the main straight which caught out about half the field
Thanks Ken
This brought me back into contention and I was quickly up to the front runners. My race was going fairly well up until about lap 8 or 9 when I caught up to a late braking, always tricky to pass @
Roland Warmenhoven who effectively arrested my forward progress until the last lap when I finally managed to figure out how to make a safe pass taking me to a 2nd place finish. Nice one Roland.
Race 2 started very similarly to race 1 with me getting a fairly good start in the Lotus and yet again, after gaining a few places, I clipped the grass on the outside of the track and it dragged me into the outfield. That magnetic grass is a pain in the arse
So, after rejoining the track safely and not losing too many places I set about working my way through the field again. I was quickly behind my old nemesis Roland and yet again found him hard to pass.
I found that I was missing my braking points a little when driving close to another car which meant I was making little mistakes and not being able to capitalise on any speed advantage I might had made. Eventually I missed another braking point and went wide giving the closely following @
Markus Hakamo an easy pass. It wasn't long before he showed me how to overtake Roland and soon after that Roland made a mistake and gave me the easy pass that I had given Markus
With the lap count at about 6 or 7 of 12 I settled down to try and do some consistant laps and rapidly caught up to Markus and that was as far as I got. I found him incredibly difficult to overtake and we had a fantastic clean close battle until the last lap. I think markus tried to keep too tight to the inside curb in the fast left at the end of the main straight and slowed a little allowing me to carry my normal speed in and drive around the outside of him giving me the inside for the next corner. This gave me a hard earned 3rd place finish and well done to Markus for resisting my pressure and thanks for giving me such a pleasurable race.
Also a big well done to @
Denis Betty for a well deserved 2nd place podium spot for him in round 2.
I said that I would make a video about this race and I will, but it's just a question of finding enough spare time. I'll post it up as soon as it's done.