As luck would have it, I'm gonna miss this week as well. Sorry guys, but real life just doesn't follow schedules as well as we do in here. I'm quite disappointed as well, I've worked hard at a competitive Motegi setup.
I didn't use my points last week to save them for a the chase, but missing two races pretty much eliminates me which, in turn, kinda makes the points useless. Not sure if it matters if I use them now.
I think you have to. There are 11 drivers from 5th to 15th place all within 10 points of each other. That's a very tight race. Every point is absolutely going to matter. Plus, if your sub driver can run the whole race, you have a better than average chance to beat a few drivers, since some might not run the full distance, or could suffer disconnects.
The Power Rankings could look very interesting with this (brief?) change of top guys
If you look at last week's power rankings, almost everyone on the list had a terrible week, if they showed up at all.
Matty, obviously wanting to adhere to the rules. There were times where he could have cut lots more due to under braking but made conscious efforts to correct himself not to cut when he could have just run over them.
I also noticed Knelly, Tom, and ACDC making the same effort. Even when they overshot the first part of the Chicane or Ascari due to late braking, they would do anything to get the car back on the proper line for the next part of the series of turns, even if it meant bringing the car way under the normal speed. Either the HMS team was the most rulebook-aware team as a whole, or Niop put the fear of death in them before the race. Either way, you could see the extra effort being made to stay on track, and it was quite refreshing to see.
I also want to say that while watching other drivers, I noticed how clean and respectfully smuffy and kartman were during the race. Smuffy drove behind Tom for quite a few laps, and resisted several chances to dive bomb him going into corners. Smuffy would usually let out extra early, making sure there was no pressure going into a corner that might cause an accident. Gokartman offered the same respect to Spurgy and Niop at various points in the race, letting out, rather than forcing the issue, when many other drivers probably would have gone for the tight pass.
I'm sure there were other drivers also driving like this, but I didn't see anything from the Matty/Carb/neljack/RPH area of the field, as they were pretty much behind the breakaway lead pack I watched earlier in the week, and ahead of the cars I watched last night.
Well done sorting all that out Drop, couldn't have been an easy few days for you.
Onto Motegi, and can I ask, are there any rules around pit entry / exit, as there are clear lines where to do both? ~ducks for cover~
I'm not going to require drivers to use the apron for pit entry (mostly because I don't want to have to watch 100+ pit stops over the course of the race, especially since Motegi will probably have 5-6 lap rewind and fast forward increments since it's a 200 lap race). But, I will suggest that it is probably a good idea to pull down on the apron going in to turn 3 when you are pitting. Coming down off of the banking out of that sharp fourth turn on old tires could be a bit tricky for some. Also, you are not required to run the apron all the way out of the pits, but you should try to remain on the apron if a driver is approaching turn 1&2 with a lot more speed than you. Please be respectful of the other drivers on track as you enter and exit the pit.