What an absolutely nerve racking race. I had a lot of fun! I knew before quali my pace was a bit ordinary as Im still getting used to the controller. I found it was really easy to overdrive the car. Too much throttle and braking can really unbalance my little green potato. But I knew if i could keep it on the black stuff i could maybe climb a few places. After 8min of quali I think I was down in 11th. Final lap of quali I finally found my rhythm and placed my car in 7th 0.07 seconds in front of
@Matthyus and just behind
@LennonLegend1993 . Pretty happy to mix it with them.
Race:
Kept it clean for the first couple laps as others around me made a few mistakes. My plan to fuel save and do a two stopper actually came about during the week as I realised i could restrain my twitchy accelerator trigger if i short shifted and kept my revs low. This enabled me to really think about my lines and stay as smooth as i could, rather than overdriving it and most likely losing time in off tracks and crashes.
After the dust settled it became a cat and mouse game between myself, matthyus in front and lennon behind me. I was trying desperately to stay in touch with Matthyus as he grew his gap to 3 to 4 seconds. Lennon slowly was chipping away at me.
I managed to stretch my tank to 19 laps which gave me a good strategic advantage to come home strong.
After the first pit lennon found some great pace and eventually managed to catch me and pass me. I then tried to stay in his draft and see if we could make a dent into matthyus. We both kept within range, but it was like a seasaw.
Later lennon made a mistake which allowed me back past and this time i had no one breathing down my neck. I just had the bunny to try and keep up and catch in matthyus.
It stayed at 2 to 3 seconds for the rest of the stint. Very consistent. He wouldn't crack.
Then came the 2nd pit stop. I had done a fairly good job at fuel saving again but not as agressively. I thought i overfueled myself but coming out of the pits i ended up just in front of Matthyus. Well this is a happy surprise. But also made me nervous that I may have underfueled myself. Im not sure if you got slowed down by lapped traffic as well.
For the remainder of the race Matthyus put on the pressure as I tried desperately to keep the car on the road. It felt like the mountain was soon going to claim me. I had a few scrapes here and there but nothing major. I was getting jittery and I could hear deep breaths comming from others in the chat as they too were on the edge of it.
I think at one stage with a few laps to go Matthyus got down to .5 behind me after my nerves got the better of me. But with two laps to go i found myself pulling away and it became clear the he was fuel saving hard to make it to the end.
With the pressure cooker turned off, I was able to relax a bit and enjoy my last lap to the finish line to take a very happy 4th for myself. Thanks to Lennon and Matthyus to keeping me on my toes. I was sweating the whole time. Great racing.
Grats to the podium Macneil, banana man and ozglen. You guys were on another level.
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