DIVISION 2

I think the championship result is already beyond doubt. Something drastic would need to happen for Firewind to finish worse than 6th.
But still, I'll have to pull my finger out and actually do some practice this week in case the unexpected does actually happen.

No way, get amongst it mate.

Looking forward to a good race, regardless of the result.

Oh, question for anyone who has a PlayTV..

Have you tried playing GT5 and recording something with PlayTV at the same time? Did it affect the gaming performance?

My housemate wants to watch something on telly the same time as this weeks final race. Might just be tough luck for her.

Ill try to be amongst it flood just won't be doing anything too risky. Neishy got play TV, he may be able to answer your question, but for risk sake not knowing if it will cause connection issues probably by her movie tickets.

Great news re revised start time, thank you to the guys who start work early especially. Looking forward to bringing out the white beast one more time. The dents really show up on it though.

I did a test run today and did 1 stop. 1hour 2 minutes. Put 2 litres in to be sure. Had a couple of brain fades and best lap 1.03:9XX. Won't be able to test any more cause i'm headed to the Gold Coast for the weekend and dragging the family back in time for the race.

Daymn havent turned a single lap yet. Looks like everyone is looking to put in a good finish to the season, I certainly wont be wanting to end my mid season form either. Should be exciting, bring it on! I just need a 3rd to complete the wiki rainbow.

i havent done any prac either. hopefulley do a couple of laps before the race on sunday. wouldnt wanna throw away such a good championship in the last race
at least i just have to finish 6th or better.
or if someone is interested in taking out flood during the race there is a case of beer in it for ya. :lol:

I do like beer, but the only chance I would have is when he laps me, and even then I'm pretty sure my car would ghost. So... Firewind, do your own dirty work .

Hopefully I can get some practice in this evening, otherwise it wont be til Sunday that I get on the PS3

Good turn out for the last race and lots of position swapping. Fire I have no hard feelings mate, it wouldnt of affected both our champs spots. Just would of been nice to have a clean drag to the line, I'll take a look at the replay later.

Congrats to the top 3 of the race and season, been a great season really enjoyed it.
/cheers

I was going out wide on my own there stumbles, dont think we touched really. Might of been someone else. I think you may of gave me a slight tap into the very 1st tight hairpin but that helped me get tap me passed m1k. Thats it.

Actually looking at the times im abit bumed about the lag hit i got out of no where lap 47, i was probably about 2 secs in front of Bonus and my tyres were good as i did my last stop lap 40. O well racings full of what ifs.

Awesome turn out guys!

Very close finish!, crazy after such a long race haha.

Well, a somewhat disappointing end to the season for me. Got into the room to realise that the hour or so of practice I put in was wasted - I had been running the track the wrong way. D'oh! So I got my head down and did some practice, found that I like the reverse version of the track better anyway.
Got into quali and put down a time that was only 0.36 sec slower than pole, and it was only good enough for ninth. Damn this close competition!
Off the line OK down the outside and I think I made up a place in the two-wide shuffle through turn one, only to get bumped off the track by Anon (I think)* and back down to 12th. Worked on getting back in the battle, only to come sailing into the tunnel through a cloud of smoke to found Dutch parked in the middle of the road*. In the infinite wisdom of the GT5 penalty system, I instead of ghosting through him a at a closing speed of 50km/h or so, I hit him and got a collision penalty. Last by about 3 secs.
Worked back up the field by my first pitstop, mainly due to other people spinning. At one point I was following Veno and Darko, who were beating the living daylights out of each other, I think mostly due to lag, because the cars were all over the road, and the driving looked totally out of character for what I've ever seen in this league. Sailed into the pits on lap 19, reset to the end of pit lane and had to sit in my pit box after the service was complete, great.
Got out and ran some really good (for me) consistent laps in the 1'04's and even managed to unlap myself from Floodsim, who was on wearing tyres. Spun and lost 7 secs the lap before I pitted a second time. Came out of the pits 11th, and managed to overtake Darko when he emerged from the pits a couple of laps later. Then we had a heck of a battle for the last 15 or so laps, where I was in front most of the time, but having to defend on the entry to turn on almost every lap. It came down to the last lap, aaannd I out outbraked myself into turn one. Game over. Good battle though Darko, well done.

Well done to Firewind for winning overall, and thanks everyone for giving this division the best turnout all season. See you all next season in a different car (hopefully one that doesn't want to kill me).

*Racing incidents - not blaming anyone, just stating it how I saw it.

Ahhh... that explains it perfectly. It was quite funny and frustrating to watch, especially since I felt I was a little faster at the time and didnt want get involved in a demolition derby.

EDIT: Updated wiki, still need to get pole and fastest lap though.
EDIT2: OK, Neishy for pole

Great race to finish a great season, had a good time in ther McLaren on these tracks and this last track surprised me for the race it offered. The pit strategy for this race was the opposite to others as the stay out and only pit once was a bit slower than the 2 stopper. I had a couple of offs and some wide berths and still managed to catch the one stopers in the end.
Had a good start to qualifying and got a 103.5 in my first real hot lap and that held for a few laps till fire got his 103.4. Then nearing the end I noticed my time drop to third and expected flood to appear at the top but it was Neishy, i ran of the track as i did the double take look thingy. So i sat there giving him the well done smash into his car thing and flood comes through with his best time and bumps me to 4th. Top lap Neishy and so close for qualifying 103.33 to 103.5 for the 4 at least, dont know the rest but sound like it was just as close.
Got a reasonable start to the race but Miki was that bit better and had the outside run through the first bend, I managed to hold the inside line and get on to the back of the front 3. Had a few laps running in their draft just trying to keep it clean and on the track. Had a couple of scares on lap 16 and decided to pit as I had already slowed near pit entrance, but still hit the lane to quick and was opening my next stubby and missed the ok button for a few secs, cost 40 second instead of 30.
Settled into a couple of faster laps to try and claw back my mistakes and keep up with Tek who was looking to get my third spot on the ladder, he made a little mistake and I had a bit of a gap til the very next lap I ran wide first corner and hit the sand trap. He caught up and a few laps later I couldnt hold him off any longer and made a good pass on me, he was clearly pushing some fast laps. By lap 28 I had a gap of 16 secs on the leaders with the one pit strategy who had just pitted, in testing thats exactly what I needed to make the 2 stoper work to my advantage. Sitting in 4th thats where I thought I could finish just behind Tec if I maintained the 104s with no mistakes for the rest of the race. After my last pit it was put the head down try to do some quicker laps but dont make any mistakes. Tek in front and Neishy right on my tail it took all my concentration to just stay with Tek, he got a bit of a gap 2 seconds on lap 47 when some glitch flash I could see ahead, put him in the wall, super bad luck tek. Neishy looked like he was going to pass me and the way the race panned out that would have nearly got you third in the championship.
With about 5 laps to go I could see the gap from the leaders coming in fast, at first .8 a sector and the 16 second gap was down to 8, then with 2 to go it was 5. I could see Miki up ahead right behind Flood and Wind, this slowed Miki down a bit as he tried to find a clean pass and that helped me catch up. Got Wind on the straight heading into the last lap and got within a second or 2 behind Miki and Flood who did a miraculous job to hold Miki off over the line on those tires. Great win Flood and great race Miki, thats the Miki I new from our first season, and great run Neishy held connection this week and got the poll. You had me Tek great race m8 enjoyed the battle, look forward to many more.
Congrats to FireWind for the championship and Flood for runners up.
Had some of the best races Ive ever had on Gt5 this season, and thank you all for making it so enjoyable, great races by great racers and we had a good turn out every week.
Thanks Stumbles for a great job hosting and all drivers for the great write ups over the season, its good to hear the battles throughout the field.
Next season nows the time to get testing of the recommended garage cars to see what you would like, Im thinking a race car this time, Ill be testing all available and have my pick up soon after the Ferrari race is done.

What a race! I really enjoyed the racing last night, and that was an amazing finish..

To win what is probably the hardest race of the season, against a full field or drivers was very satisfying. Much more so than my win at Trial Mtn last week.
That was easily the highlight of my season, if not my entire GT5 career. My goal for the season was to reduce the number of errors I made, and last night it was almost perfect; that was probably the best race I've ever driven.

Wasn't expecting too much going into quali; I'd done about 30mins practice earlier in the day and I could see the pace was hot. Alot of guys were bringing their A game to the track.
Did a 1:03.8xx which I was pretty happy with, much better than my previous PB, and only .4 off pole, which only put me about 5th. So I pitted and was waiting for the race start, then my place kept slipping down and down as everyone else went quicker. 0.5 off pole and i'm in 10th!!??! Thats how tight quali was.
So I had to go out and do some laps, wasn't sure if I'd even have time left. Managed to put in a good one, not sure of the time now, but put me 3rd on the grid.

First few laps I was hanging back watching Firewind and Neishy have a tussle for the lead. Neishy made a mistake and dropped back, so then I was battling with Firewind for a few laps until he ran wide into the sand at turn 1 which gave me a 3-4s lead. From there I just drove my own race, trying to conserve tires, yet continued to pull a gap.
I was surprised to see I was quite easily opening a gap to Firewind. I thought for a second he was trying a 0-stop, but soon realised that was impossible and that maybe he was struggling.
The gap was out to 10s before I made a small error into turn 2, closing it back to 8s.
Pulled it back out to 10s when I was distracted by a ghosting barra trying to unlap himself. I was behind him into turn 1 and I guess watching him too closely completely missed my break mark for turn 1. On my old tires there was no way I could carry the same speed as him into the corner, ran wide into the sand, got back on track and was then given a ridiculous shortcut penalty. My fault barra, no hard feelings.
The gap was gone, Firewind was now in front.

I still didn't know what pit strategy I would use. It came to the time for the first pit stop if I was to do a 2-stop, but with the lap times I was doing I couldn't justify pitting, I decided I would just have to carry on and do the 1-stop, even though I hate worn tires in this car yet I seemed to be taking care of them alright.
Firewind pitted a lap before me, but must have had a terrible out-lap as I found myself comfortably in front of him after my stop.

From there it took me a while to get back into a decent pace, I was still driving like my tires were finished rather than new. So Firewind caught up. We then had a big battle, probably 15-20 laps, constantly swapping the lead. I was surprised that Firewind didn't learn and adopt my line through the right-left after the tunnel; it was clearly faster and always put me in a better position for the run into the final hairpin.
I was so focussed on this battle that with about 5 laps to go, all of a sudden we had Miki on our tails. "Where the hell did he come from??"

The race was on.. I had the lead. Luckily for me the Firewind vs. Miki battle let me get away a little bit, but with Mikis better tires he eventually prevailed. Pretty soon my 2s lead was getting smaller.
Final lap. Miki right up my trumpet. All I could do is defend, defend, defend.. Until it all came down to getting a good run out of the final corner to the finish line. Miki had the slipstream but not enough straight to use it in. I got a nudge right before the finish line, I'm very sure I kept on my line though, so i'm not sure what happened there.
55 laps, completely different pit strategies, separated by 0.08s.. Epic..

Big thanks to everyone for showing up, and for the racing all season long.
Shame the championship didn't go my way, as I think I scored more points overall, but the drop-your-worst-round rule has gone against me. Firewind said the pressure was all on me, and I delivered.


@ Firewind
Your attitude after the race was pretty poor. You gotta realise that in a race you can't just stick to your line and expect everyone else will get out of your way; especially when that line is different to the normal racing line.
You drive like every lap is a time trial. That's fine when you're out in front, but you can't do that when you're racing other people.
Also, a bump is not a legitimate overtaking maneuver. I thought your performance was sloppy.