Honestly Jono's post about an easy win set this all in motion. Div 1
never gives away and easy win, yeah Warrior and Keeden have spent the last 20 seasons winning every time they took to the track, but it has never been easy, they've had to beat some bloody talented opposition week in week out. So with half the division in the mix, it felt right to throw my hat into the ring just to see where I stacked up in the evolved rooz field, and to cause a bit of chaos as people worried I was going to just waltz in and walk away with it like it S13 of GT6. I was never that good, and certainly am not today.
Before I start I have to say a huge thank you to
@Bryan_F . Before any of this got underway I asked him if he would be willing to offer any advice he had for Tokyo, and he very kindly agreed to provide insights when he learned them.
Edit: This thing is so long I'm using spoilers to hide the walls of text. If only writing essays in school was this easy!
Ran laps on RH last weekend and got to 37.9, splits for 37.6 but it was impossible to string a good exit out of the chicane, butter-smooth S1 and aggressive chicane all into the same 2 minutes. Sunday night started popping into people's pre-race testing lobbies instead of actually testing like I should have but had a great time running with
@ssman244 battling around the nord.
Ended up testing for Jono's W.E.T. during the week trying to find pace for that and finding none, all the while Bryan kindly informing me of interesting developments around fuel consumption and tyre wear.
Jumped in a test lobby tonight after the F1 to feel out the RS tyres, there was more grip there but not as much as I'd hoped, times were ok in the low 36s, but as the stint got longer the times kept coming down. I wasn't sure if this was driver or fuel load, so another set of RS on a full tank revealed that the RS optoin would have negative deg, the car would get faster and faster as the stint went on. Had time to run about 10 laps on RSS, car felt more understeery but just a touch safer in S1, didn't really have a feel for the deg so decided to leave my options open; out front run RSS and just be smooth look after the tyres, if in the pack RS and wind it up at the end to put pressure on the RSS runners.
Hopped in the lobby and saw
@xlxy90 run a 37.7 and realised that this was going to be a massive problem. Jumped on track to try and get my head right on RH to make sure qualifying went well, 1:37.595 out of the box for a new PB, but decided I'd peaked way too early as there was no way I was doing that again. xlxy went barely faster but it was on a lower fuel so I thought I could go with, until he ran a 37.2 and it looked like I wasn't even in the race for first anymore, but in shout of a strong podium with most guys only just getting to 37s or low 38s.
Qualifying starts and a sequence of scruffy laps, some ghosts in the final corner and 37.8 was the PB, xlxy went to 37.6 and when I went up by 0.001 I thought that would probably motivate him to go faster, before
@Russell jumped the lot of us to go to the top and I couldn't help but smile after calling him my smokey having seen him pull similar tricks in GT6. A 37.5 took me back to the top but it didn't feel safe, was trying to get a slipstream off ssman, didn't get there and with 7:30 on the clock decided it wasn't worth the risk of crashing or getting blocked, so backed out of it, had a little mental reset and launched for the final two laps. First one was promising but I made a mistake with jittery hands, I'm just not match fit anymore because god damnit the nerves were getting to me. Managed to get a good run out of the chicane to set up the final lap, first sector was really nice, purple S1, got a great run into and out of the hairpin and ho-ly crap was the adrenaline pumping my heart making huge blood pressure. Deep breaths, LOTS of deep breaths all the way up the back straight and I had barely changed the heart rate or pressure, purple S2, sweeping right hander hooked up beautifully, only the death chicane left, knowing that if I go deep I'll stuff it in the wall, if I back off early I'll blow it and managed to psych myself out of psyching myself out, hopped it nicely, landed the car, gassed it up, tiny slide, 4th gear, smooth last corner, PB by an absolute mile for a 37.2 and pole position. I knew it was going to be really tough to follow in S1, so if I was going to be able to run my race the way I wanted I had to be up front and ahead at turn 1.
Still way too much nervous energy on the grid, only done 3 grid starts in GTS since false start check came into being, and I forgot that I'd done practice starts during testing to try and work out how to launch the car. Got away fantastic and pulled on Russell, saw Risky was catching him and realised too late I needed to be giving Russell slipstream if I wanted them to go 2-wide into the first corner, having the pack go 2-wide while I was clear out front would be a dream come true and after I committed to driving my own car instead of the guys behind, braked for turn 1 and everyone got a lot closer, fearing a mistake tried to focus on the apex and exit of the corner, have no idea what transpired behind me as by S1 I had a nice 9 tenths lead, just had to nail the hairpin and this race was mine to own. Got clean enough through the hairpin and away we went, the pack just out of reach and the perfect race ready to play out. This joy lasted about 20 more seconds before xlxy appeared on the leaderboard in 2nd place, and any dreams of having a fighting pack hold itself up were quashed. That problem became a different one when xlxy jumped into the pits on lap 2, risky following him and I had ssman behind me. Contemplated dropping in on lap 3 to fight the undercut but decided to stick to the plan and go lap 4, and trust that fuel saving was going to cost too much time. Didn't really do a good enough job in the opening laps, high 37s were not the pace that was needed to battle those on an undercut, had I run qual laps I felt I'd have been in better shape, but upon rejoining the circuit I found that only xlxy had passed me, and risky was just out of slipstream now in 3rd, with ssman seemingly closer than when we entered the pits, but in 4th. Decided I wanted the RSS tryes to stay away from the pack, but with xlxy ahead I didn't really want to follow too closely or get into a hard fought battle that brought us back, so I settled into 2nd place with the intent of channeling Bryan and looking after the tyres to attack in the latter stages. This plan also came to a premature end, having followed xlxy for a couple laps it seemed I had more pace except for the death chicane, and frankly I had no problems giving up time there if it meant I stayed safe, I was pretty sure xlxy was saving fuel and by not pressing him I was making a mistake as we were doing mid-high 36s instead of low 36s, but on lap 6 he got the death chicane wrong, touched the wall on exit and got spun as had happened so many times in testing. With the lead now mine I just kept being gentle holding the same gap to risky knowing he also had to save fuel, but it wasn't long before ssman was up into 2nd and the plan had to change again. About then I had a look at the fuel gauge and laps remaining, and they showed me a number that was far smaller than the one I was expecting. With ssman a few seconds back and not really gaining, I decided to start playing with mix 2 to save some fuel so that if a fight did break out I could run mix 1 and not worry. At first it was just in S3 after the sweeper into the chicane, then I added in the sweepers in S1, all the while ssman was just slowly inching in, my pace was not great in this phase, still doing meh laptime as I was spending too much brain power fiddling with the dials, so I started just putting mix 2 for the sweeper, and leaving it through S3, through S1 and only going back to mix 1 at the hairpin. I had no real idea what the laps remaining value was because with each change of the mix switch the calculation would start changing, but with the reduction of distractions the laptimes dropped to 36.2-36.4, the fastest lap having been Hat at 36.0 and then xlxy at 35.8, I knew I would be able to fight those laps when the fuel had come off and the tyres were still good. Lap 15 or 16 ssman got to within 1.0 seconds and I swapped back to mix 1 at S1 and decided that this was now enough fuel saving, because no matter what it had to be if I wanted to avoid a battle. 36.2 became 36.0, 36.0 became 35.8, and the gap started creeping out again, hopefully ending the hopes of ssman, but as usual he hung on in at a similar pace not letting the gap grow too much, before on lap 25/27 I got a great lap of 37.5 on the board to take back fastest lap, my earlier tyre saving paying off beautifully. After that lap I noticed ssman had either made a mistake or realised he was short onfuel, the gap out to nearly 4 seconds, and I immediately tried to stuff it in the wall in S1, and managed to lose 8 tenths in S1 alone, a conservative chicane and lap 26 was +1.0 on lap 25. However with ssman now clearly nursing an issue, a clean final lap let me come home by 4 seconds for a very stressful way-too-heavily managed win. In the end I think I saved way too much fuel but it didn't really matter, as my error didn't cost me too dearly.
It always looks easy when you take pole, fastest lap and the win. I can assure you, nothing about that race was easy. The layout is extremely tough, any mistake is punished for several corners and sometimes a single mistake can hurt splits across multiple sectors, the death chicane is a challenge every single lap you take it. Huge congrats to ssman on a hard fought 2nd place, you pushed me all the way, just as it was and apparently so shall be forever more.
@Viperzed well done on carving out your first podium in Div 1, I have no idea how you managed to round up risky, xlxy and Bryan then BREAK FREE from them, but doing that on this track makes you worthy of that podium no matter what.
Thanks for having me once again, thanks again to Bryan for his help, Hat for hosting and to Russell, xlxy, Risky and ssman for at various stages either getting ahead, being faster or putting on pressure forcing me to lift my game in the strategy, race craft and outright pace departments, proving as always there is no such thing as an easy win.
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