Division 2 Season 9

Folks, as promised, I will now explain how I turned 5th on the grid into almost being lapped...

Was happy enough with my qualifying, 1'44.8, which was a PB. Good for 5th. Managed to get a false start penalty (my first ever), but didn't seem to matter much. Got down to turn one nice and early on the brakes, ready to creep around the inside of the first part of the chicane then thump! I go straight ahead, ghost through couple of guys, then spear across the track and nose into the end of the tyre bundle. Find reverse and get going, 11sec down at the first split. Not impressed. As it happens, I looked at the replay and saw that turbo got me and was ready to come here raging, but saw that he parked and waited for me to pick the grass out of my grill and get going, so all is good.

Concentrated on putting down some decent laps to catch the pack, which I just about pulled off. Nearly T-boned Nat when he got into a tank slapper. I got lucky and chose the right direction to go around so only lost a tiny bit of time. Caught up to the battle that was Stumbles, Dutch and ??? and was just getting into the slipstream of Dutch and all of them started lagging, then at the end of the main straight on lap nine, Dutch lagged all over the place, which knocked me into one of those stupid immovable distance markers. Heavy engine damage, plus all 4 wheels. Got going again, then a couple of laps later, caught up to Cob (I think), but then ran off at Lesmo 1 cause I couldn't see through the smoke screen. Pitted a couple of laps early for hard tyres to get away from him, but then got left behind by the guys who were still on soft tyres. Cruised to the end after that.

Frustrating to say the least. Turn one I can hanlde, and I was still doing OK til I got done by the lag on lap 9. The only thing that has change for me connection wise is that I turn on the wireless on my modem because we bought a tablet which needs it. I still have the PS3 wired, and the other half has been on the net in the other room during 95% of the races I have run in this league.

I won't be here next week - moving house on Saturday and the chances of having my interwebs reconnected are somewhere between slim and none. Hopefully back on deck the following week, but if I keep getting lag like I did last night, I wont bother. I really am running out of patience with this network held together with duct tape and shoelaces.

Spoke to my internet provider. Since Telstra own all the hardware, and I am not a Telstra customer, I get to wait ten working days (from today) before they will reconnect my service. Means I will have to miss two races. I guess I will be doing an offline 24hr race next week.

Asked about that Trent. Because the 10 days is just Telstra being *&^%$s and delaying becasue they can, the lady said it is a 10 minumum.

I will get a text tell me when they are coming, but since it one company servicing the customer of a competitor, I dont think they will rush. At the very least, I will be in the queue behind all the Telstra customers

I wish i could practice, im still struggling with injuries. I think I need to change my race setup to something more ergonomic. Im on the mend but racing last week was quite painful and I paid for it monday, its why I wasnt competitive at all. I was actually thinking to pull over on lap 10 and was resinged to last but then I started catching a few when I was on softs so stuck it out.

I'll be there sunday but I may not race just spectate, i hope to be racing properly by about halfway through the season....Shame as Suzuka one of my favourite tracks.

I stuffed my lower back at work about a month ago, could hardly walk. Its no where as bad as before, but driving for extended periods agitates it.

hope you get better tek

Maybe there was a small update that came out while we were in the room, you then cant connect cause you have slighty diff version. Dunno but that happened to me once, with aussies room. Signed in and an update was just released 5 mins earlier but everyone else in the room hadnt got it yet.


Unlucky stu either way mate.
Top 3
Nugs
Nats
Tek close for 3rd with 4 of us in with a shot

wow i picked the right startegy for a change hahaha....

so Qualified 2nd on hards and then it was strategy time..... talking with Nat during the week i had a feeling we had come up with the same strategy but didnt say hahaha... so yep into the pits we both went at the end of lap 1. got rid of those useless hards and started the chase. right on each other when i pitted again on lap 12 and a lap later we were side by side as Nat exited the pits after his stop.

bad luck Nat with the penalty i think it would have gone all the way to the line between us. after that i just kept a safe pace going and watching the gap back. felt good to put in 23 mostly solid laps hahah.

thanks fellas cya next week

Grats on picking the only viable strat Nugget. I did pretty much the same thing, easy win.

I was thinking the same thing before the race Nugget, but i ended up going 5 laps on the hards as I wasnt sure how long the softs would last. Then 2 stints of 9 laps on softs.

Maybe we should change to softs/mediums or medium/hards, I'd go with softs/meds.

With so much going on at home ATM, no practice time meant another struggle round for me. I've come to grips with the car I think easy enough, but Suzuka is not a favourite of mine by any stretch and I knew it would be tough.

I did enough on the hards to qualify 6th and I was up to 5th by halfway through the first lap when a couple when spin-a-roonies in front of me, but I then did the same on the last turn before back straight (always a bad turn for me) sending me back to last.

Having no idea what strategy to use, I did toy with the idea of ditching the hards early on and running the softs, but I didn't know how long they where going to last, so just did 13 laps on the hards and then ran to the end on the softs.

I was lapped by Nugget and Natman midway through the race, and then on my softs I eventually caught back up to them but kept screwing up, running wide or doing loop de loops.

My goal for this season now is to finish at least one race in the top 5, but that will have to wait as I will be missing for the next 2 rounds as I will be in the UK! Bugger I miss Fuji, I reckon I could have been fairly competitive there with all the practice I did at it last season!!

Have fun guys and I'll see you Round 5!