Just ran the first GT1 slot (6PM EDT) in the Americas. I was in door #3, driving the Citreon GT in a low A/S lobby --
@Kermit_2142 was there, too -- with 172 points up for grabs. I needed a P7 or better to improve my season point total.
Qualifying couldn't have gone better. I booked a time of 1:56.887, matching my best lap in Free Practice. That landed me Q7. I was 1.5s off of
@Kermit_2142's pole-setting lap.
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The race got off to a clean start. I survived turn 1. You can just see the wing of
@Kermit_2142's car in the lead. It was the last I saw of him before he broke away. I came out of T1 still in P7.
From there, not much happened for quite a while. I managed to keep up with the P6 car for a while, but eventually they pulled away. I had a nice gap behind me, too, so all had plenty of space to focus on running my best laps. Midway through the race, I got promoted to P6 when one of the cars ahead crashed.
I pitted on lap 9 to replace my RMs with RSs. When all the pitting was done, I found myself in P5 with a healthy gap behind me and a Porsche up ahead that I was gradually reeling in.
My opportunity came at T1 on lap 14. I had the run and the inside line. All I had to do was get a good exit out of the corner to take P4. Did I?
View attachment 1378057
Can mooses fly? Of course not. I got it all kinds wrong and immediately gave the spot back. Back to P5
From there, I gave up on attacking the car ahead just focused on running clean laps to the finish. P5 was way more than I had expected for this race. I just had to take it home.
The driver in the Porsche behind me in P6 had other plans. They were steadily gaining on me. On the final lap, they got a run on me through the Schumacher S.
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So, of course, I panicked, getting RTL Kurve all wrong, and dropping down to P6, where I finished for 136 points and a slight boost to my point total and DR.
Despite being a bit miffed about the final-lap mistake, this is about as good a result as I could have hoped for here with this car (and this driver). It is a happy end to the season for me.