GT Sport Season 2 Division 4

Johno is @Matthyus

Did you drink enough water?

Cranew is @Inzyman

Great race all.

Heart started racing as I came out of the pits in 7th? or so, just in front of Ant. Incey must have pitted very late, or been a pit stops worth of time in front of me! I was 2nd when going in to pit. I pitted late, as I was still only 0.5 slower than my FL on 15 laps of RM, but after 2 near spins I ended up pitting with 2 laps of fuel. Ended up taking 1 lap of extra fuel to be safe...but that ended up being 2 laps I was left with by the end of the race, guess I was more fuel efficent at the end? I seemed to have a good comparative lap time on RM, but most ppl blitzed me on RS - guess I need more practise on RS, it did feel a little faster but maybe I should have used some different lines/ much later braking spots.

I got a clean race bonus, despite rubbing sides with Ant after i was drifting a little out of T2. I decided to actually use radar just in case, though still didn't notice @Antmeg26 as I was drifting across the lane to prep for T5.

@Inzyman was catching me steadily for a while...<almost> sad to see him overshoot Warsteiner in my rear view mirror. That gave @AroGantz a chance, having someone catching me seems to do wonders for my lap times! I saw Angry on Aro's tail, I wondered if Angry would catch up if Aro passed me. Slowly people dropped off as they lapped, I figured despite my tyres looking worn, since I was still lapping 0.5s behind my FL, I would get another couple in - wondering if more laps on the faster RS would mean people were gaining on me. I figured this would be offset in the last few laps, where people would have a worn set of RS and mine would be fresh - meaning I could sprint home fast. Coming out of pits in 7th, I wondered what Ant was doing back here, given his great laps times - perhaps the second or 2 per lap of RH didn't pay off after everyones pits? He followed close for quite a while, I thought he had me a few times, especially the last chicane that I braked late and went deep at least twice. Again, was <almost> sad to see Ant drop off somewhere, I later wondered if he got hit by lag from Angry? I forget whether Angry overtook me when I made a mistake, or if he overtook me while I pitted. Either way, I followed him for a while, watching a huge amount of lag - I have seen lag in youtube clips, but never raced behind it, crazy stuff! Was hard to see where he was, shooting back and forth and left and right, after a lap of following I figured I could outbrake him into Dunlop, took a gamble and it paid off. I had 5 seconds of so to catch up on Aro, which I got down to 2 at one stage, but small mistakes saw the gap vary between 2.5 to 4s for the last few laps of the race - knowing he has been on his RS for longer than me I thought I had a great chance...but on the last lap I made a few small mistakes and saw the gap increasing and figured 6th was for me.

Well done to the newer of the newcomers, extra kudos to @Dosy, after watching the replay of the first few turns and seeing a good redress to @fezza after T4.

On that note...I did see a bit of racing done outside track lines by some. No protest here, I didn't end up any worse for it, but some might - perhaps we should be posting a screen shot pre race of contentious corners, eg going wide from T4 - we are the Div4 newbie class after all. All of this of course, should be well tempered by a good dose of reality - why do we race? To have fun? To win? To enjoy ourselves? Did someone going over the line impact your ability to do any of this? However, not for me to call

Will be interested to see the replay tonight of this one.

I kinda knew what this race was going to be like, so I'll put this down as my drop round and look forward to all the other upcoming tracks that I'll enjoy

@incey called it early.

I didn't see anything too obvious, a lot of wide lines from mistakes entering the corners including myself, no one I was racing near was missing the lines constantly at same places every lap. As you said Div4 we are far from perfect just as long as no one was doing it on purpose to gain constant advantages.

*may not be actually true

What a first nitght as a room captain. Leadig the race end of lap 1 and someone is stuck on the grid.... Host goes 'should we restart?' I am thinking "I'd really rather not, I have a nice gap after moving up from P2", but then the ROOZ spirit took over and I said "of course we will restart" It was good because angry got a chance to join the race as well after a dsc from the first room.
There's lots of theories about stuck on grid and I still don't know what is true or how to fix it. Bit of talk about lag as well. If everyone could check the port forwarding thread and maybe minimise devices sucking off the router during the race that would good.
Anyway, the restart, turn 1 didn't go as well for me as race 1 but i managed to hold onto P2. @skintsaint seemed to be braking fairly cautiously and I managed to tap him going into turn 3. I backed right off willing him to recover faster as the field bore down. @Jcp managed to slip up the inside of four but i held him off into 5. Then it was a matter of putting maximum pressure on skint while trying not to hit him. We were slow on different parts of the track which it made it very interesting. He finally made a tiny error on the tight chicance which gave me a window (more of a peephole actually) to try @arakasi- 's patented pass that we had discussed earlier in the day. Worked a treat, especially with skint giving me plenty of room. After that it was a case of "no mistakes and you got this". Couple of times skint would be closing the gap then make mistake and it would open it up again.
I had done 4 complete races during the week so i knew exactly what the tyres and fuel would be like however i hit the button too early in the pits and didn't quite give myself enough. Managed to make it last though and ended up finishing with a bit spare. Had fastest lap a couple of times but when @skintsaint put up the 2.02 I thought it might be possible but i knew I would crash if i tried too hard for it, so i tried to ignore it. I doubt I would have got anywhere near it anyway, that was a blinder.
Well done to everyone for a good race, didn't hear any sportsmanship complaints which is a great start to the season. Good job hosting too @Matthyus especially when things didn't go to plan and we got under way again quickly.
I don't think I'll be able to do as much practice this week as I was starting to get some "spending too much time on it" vibes from mrs but we'll see how we go.

Ditto re the restart! I was so clean first time, then drifted wide (replay doesn't seem nearly as sideways) out of T2, then was almost in chaos from behind after T4.

Somebody mentioned holding accellerator on full may perhaps contribute to getting stuck on grid - there may be something to this, I was holding it when a "take it to the streets" race was on...and is the only time I have ever been stuck. Maybe post a warning about the possiblity, otherwise I might do some testing to prove it! Sometimes breaking the system is fun