Would just like to apologise to everyone for the delayed start and very much appreciate everyone sticking around and being patient with all that was going on.
Qualifying was rather interesting with me being able to snag pole off BJ.
BJ was setting 1.18's left, right and centre during practise and I figured he had it in the bag for pole and race win. Lucky for me, I was able to set a low 1.19 (didn't get to record qualy times so not sure what it was exactly) and that was enough to keep Bruce's low 19 in check and grab my first pole of my ROOZ career.
Managed to have a decent getaway at race start with Bruce VARDZ in tow.
From what I could see, most everyone got a clean start and all those blue dots seem to make it through the first few corners in one piece.
Myself, Bruce and VARDZ were slowly pulling a gap on the rest of the field when VARDZ eventually spun one too many times and lost sight of Bruce, who meanwhile was breathing down my neck.
On lap 9 or 10? (I'm really bad at recalling details... will need to refer to the replay for correct details) I ran too hot into the first corner and BJ took an easy lead. Lucky for me it was only a brief visit to the beach and was able to bring it back on track to stay 2 seconds behind BJ. A few corners later I had another brief visit to the beach and the gap opened up to 5 or 6 seconds for the next few laps.
I put my head down and did everything in my power to keep calm and power on without going off track again.
Lucky for me, BJ managed to spin coming out of turn 2 which allowed me to take the lead again.
The rest of the race was bloody intense with BJ breathing down my neck again.
The gap between us seesawed between 1-3 seconds for quite a long time. Unfortunately for Bruce, the first mistake gave me a little more breathing room. Then came his second mistake, which gave me a 12 second gap without about 10 laps to go. This was much welcome relief and allowed me to turn down the notch and concentrate on clean and steady laps. Bruce then went on a mission to hunt me down again and the gap slowly whittled down to 5 seconds with 5 laps remaining.
I figured I could just keep doing what I was doing and I'll be able to lead Bruce right to the finish line, but alas, another mistake was on the cards and Bruce threw it away with a couple of laps remaining.
I don't think I've ever concentrated so hard on a race before.
The tiniest of mistakes here is what can cost you, and although my race wasn't 100% clean, I was able to minimise my off road explorations and keep it relatively tidy to bring home my first ever ROOZ win!
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