Now while Tuesday's was nice, this was more of a proper return to racing
Hadn't practiced in the Minis at all, so I went on early to both get
some speed and to try
@Reik Major's setup posted earlier. While it was nice, my usual setup plus some gear and tyre adjustments seemed to work better - got into a "practice laptime battle" with
@Nelson Ullinskey,
@Damo and
@EireGreen™ but when qualifying came, I managed to keep both of them behind me.
Didn't last for too long, though
Starting rather good, I closed in on
@Reggie Blain but trapped on the inside, I then wasn't able to stop Nelson from stealing P3 from me. Soon enough, the Top-5 consisting of Reggie,
@Aaron Channer, Nelson, myself and Michael pulled up a bit of a gap and some nice battles seemed to converge.
Indeed, it wasn't too long until Reggie pulled away at the front and Michael lost some metres at the back, leaving the three of us on our own - which made for a nice fight with close encounters (at least on the "infield" of the track).
Unfortunately, Nelson was then claimed by the tyre wall of doom, leaving me hopelessly chasing behind Aaron until he went for an early stop.
A lap later, Reggie was found pitting, as well and with the de-facto P4 about 11s behind me, I chose to go for 4 tyres as I was pretty sure both Aaron and Reggie got 2 only, so there might be a chance to catch up a bit once their rears would wear off. Unfornately, I then missed my box and had to back up. Duh.
While I was making the smallest progress on catching Aaron, who was about 9-ish seconds ahead, it was far from enough, considering the remaining time. Thankfully, he helped me out by losing control in that high-speed right hander and only just kept the position.
Another great battle then ensued - while I pushed hard, I didn't put everything into going for the actual pass. Knowing he was on worse tyres, I chose to wait for an opportunity.
And behold, it came - though quite unexpectedly
In a weird coincidence, I clipped
that kerb, and at the same time, Aaron got sideways on his own and killed his engine - kept me rather puzzled for a moment, but once it became clear those were separate incidents, I carried on (rather safely) to take home P2.
Congrats to Reggie & thanks for racing and the phenomenal 100% TS attendance, everyone!
@Damo - first starting to make liveries, I'd suggest you go with
Paint.Net (+
psd plugin) as it's far more user friendly than
Gimp (in case you're using that one right now). Assuming you're using the Mini template from
this pack, you can then open up the PSD file and change the base color at the very last layer named, well, base color - just click it to select it as the active layer.
Everything else (sponsors, shapes, names) should then go onto the layer above (often already prepared, here: "paint here") or multiple layers above (for the sake of being editable later on).
Racing numbers are often already prepared from 0-9. In case you want to race a different number, identify the layer containing the number's background and place your digits in a new one above it by creating it using the button (marked with the red square)
If all else fails, and this is a shameless self-promotion, you could try using
Simplivery 
