I had a frustrating one today. Whilst I wasn't on the same level of pace of the winner, I could have had a reasonable mid-pack result if not for being taken out early on.
My race had a very strong (11m/s, 40km/h) northwestern wind which was a bit scary to see, but it ended up being not so bad. It made 100R and the hairpin after it a little sketchy, but it could have been worse had it being going in a different direction. I dread to imagine what turn 1 would have been like if that was acting as a tailwind...
(Side note - the weather effects were nice. I've not done much in the way of wet races but the combination of wind and rain looked really good. Seeing the massive spray coming off the cars (and going in the right direction at that) was cool!
)
I qualified P10 with a 1:36.738 in an almost one-make lobby. The only non-919s were a single LM55 and a GR010. Lap 1 started off well after cleanly surviving turn 1 (whilst watching P11 behind me overshoot it) and then picking up a position from a German who ran wide at the hairpin after 100R. It went downhill at the start of sector 3 though, as the German and I banged doors going into the Dunlop Corner, pushing me wide and costing me some positions as I dropped down to P13 through the twists and turns.
The hybrid on the Porsche helped me get one of those back in sector 1 as I blasted past the LM55 heading into Coca Cola. Things seemed even more promising as a French driver overcooked Netz Corner and went sideways after unbalancing the car on the kerbs, which also took out the German from before. Back up to P10 in spite of my bad lap 1. However, I could see a bit of a divebomb with contact behind me on the radar as I exited Panasonic Corner and that should have been a warning as to what was to come.
The French driver had qualified P5 and didn't seem to have any qualms about doing whatever it would take to get back there after making that mistake.
On lap 3 I went a bit deep at Panasonic Corner, forgoing the dry-ish line on the track and taking the line that's fairly common in dry conditions to get a good exit onto the straight. I saw the French driver approaching on my radar and stopped going for the apex to leave room, but apparently that wasn't good enough as I just got ploughed into and spun out. Checking the replay back, I don't think any effort was made to avoid the collision. It was very much a case of "I'm putting my foot down for the straight and I don't care who's in my way" IMO. Not impressed, especially because he went on to cause more incidents afterwards with very aggressive moves throughout the rest of the race.
On lap 5 I ended up back fighting for P12/P13 as the German (poor guy) had accidentally spun out a Brit and then showed good sportsmanship by waiting for him to recover. The Brit seemed to be struggling a bit for consistency but the dirty air and rain made it hard to pass. When me and the German both did get past on lap 9 after capitalising on a mistake in sector 3, we started to increase the gap quite quickly.
I ended up P11, with the French driver that took me out in P5 about 19s up the road. I'd lost about 14-15s from the incident so I would have been hard pressed to beat him. However, I could have potentially been fighting for P6/P7 going by the final standings if I hadn't lost all that time.
www.gran-turismo.com
