(WARNING, THE LONGEST ESSAY/RANT/RECOUNT TO DATE)
Still very mad about that one. Did a bunch of long runs before qualy with fuel and was very comfy with what the car was doing, ran no fuel briefly before qual and didn't run again until race day, had entry oversteer but had forgotten to reset ABS to default from weak so figured it was just some rear locking causing problems, dismissed it and got into the race back on correct settings.
Great launch with the hybrid in the first start, battling and overtaking behind gifted me a 3 second lead out of tetre rouge and knew I was away and just had to not be silly and it would be straight forward. Got down to Mulsanne on lap 2 and ended up in the wall on the inside and couldn't work out how I'd managed to get there, made up a few spots until the lobby crashed.
Restarted 4th and deployed all of the hybrid to steal back the lead into turn 1 for the restart, had to go harder without the nice cushion on the first lap and found myself nearly backwards through the entry to the first mulsanne chicane before making the gravel and being backwards, and then in the middle of the track, and not ghosted, then in the wall with engine damage. A bit more oversteer later, came across
@FILO at Indianapolis as he drove across the track to rejoin, and was promptly un-ghosted perpendicular to the road on the racing line as I arrived, so backwards with more engine damage.
By the time I'd worked out how to stop half spinning in every corner the gap to Mint up front was 57 seconds. Driving pretty tentatively the gap wasn't really extending, and spent the rest of the first hour trying to feel out how hard I could attack the entries to try and find more time. Taking my stop on schedule gave me a sort of undercut netting low 3:20s/ from the 3:21-22s in the first stint, very far off the 19-20s I had been doing on full tanks, beau/Jono disappeared from my game, and after a quick discussion with the internationals worked out that they were still running and the race was still on.
Enter the 2nd hour and I've worked out I can hit the braking zones a bit harder, and started catching the rest of the field, most of which running a strategy that let me run my strategy without forcing on track action which worked nicely as I had no bloody idea how the car was going to react. Caught Itz in the back half of the mulsanne and had enough time to ask Filo how the Tomahawk was under brakes but not process the answer before having to take avoiding action that ended up being an overtake into mulsanne. Running the inside of the run to Indy netted me dirty tyres somehow and went off at Indianapolis losing 10 more seconds, all of the time I'd managed to close up on Mint since things stabilised 30 minutes in. Somewhere in this hour I worked out to trail a bit of throttle to cure the oversteer and the consistency was back on, the pace was barely under that of the leaders but there was still time, and it was maximum attack.
Entering the last hour a podium seemed possible without mistakes, Storm seemed to have strategised himself back into contention for the win and that settled in my mind that I probably couldn't catch both of them from so far back. Pulling in for my last stop with just over half an hour to go the gap still felt big but there was no other option available than to stay on it from 15 seconds behind Storm, and after Mint emerged ahead of Storm it again felt like it just wasn't going to happen. I was too busy tracking the gap between Storm and Mint praying they'd battle to notice I was closing on Mint, until I caught a glimpse of Storm physically on track only 8 up the road, with Mint not far beyond that. A few laps later and I'd caught Storm with mint about 10 seconds up the road, a great slipstream down the mulsanne and it was 2nd place. Continued chasing Mint and got the gap down to about 6 seconds with 5 laps to go, nudged it down to 5, then 4, with laps to go, then made an error, got dirty tyres'd leading to another, gap went back out to 6 seconds and despite it not being possible about 5 times already it was finally just not going to happen this time. With the relief in pressure Mint seemingly backed it off, as a good lap got me back to 4.5 behind, and as Mint cruised home on the final lap caught back up to 2.0 short at the line.
I'm still not sure what was different between updates but it doesn't matter. To come from so far back should have been massively rewarding, especially considering how hard I worked to keep the car pointed straight but I could not let go the massive frustration of being sent back to Narnia and well off my own pace for the entire race. I love endurance racing for allowing the opportunity to fight back and turn a shocking first 30 minutes into a solid result, but my own personal standards of execution and performance simply were not met.
My massive pile of salt aside:
Congratulations
@MINT_GTR for holding it together for 3 hours to come home with the goods, you drove the best race on the day and earned it.
Congratulations to
@Storm_SP17 for turning around an average qualifying and turning it into a fantastic race, one where you were in the picture for the win with 30 minutes to go, finishing only 16 seconds shy after 3 hours against a champion of Gran Turismo.
Congratulations to
@KeedenMcdonald for a blistering fastest lap, usurping my effort in the first race and easily defeating my best lap this race.
Applause is absolutely due to
@FILO for finishing 3 hours while somewhere between still drunk and hungover after a massive Friday night.
Thanks are in order for
@razor4797 for hosting (twice lol) and keeping the lobby up while we all did battle until well after midnight.
Commiserations to
@ajh_1990 for suffering hardware problems I am all too familiar with costing him the opportunity to go the full distance and take some pride away from a rough start to the race.
Similar sentiment to
@Toranafan-02 ,
@ItzRacing95 and Razor for running out of people to race with the small grid and retirements, its tough to pound around solo for that long.
Most importantly, a huge and whole hearted thank you to
@JonoStan96 for putting on the event, (again!) allowing us to have a great race that went the full 3 hours even with the issues we had. I agree that it is a shame the event was absolutely cursed AF, but even then there were some great moments, some great racing and another fantastic event across 3 lobbies over 2 and a bit months. I'll see you in the next one regardless mate, these are fantastic.
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