The 1/2 race I had I really enjoyed, though I hardly saw anybody in 1 hour 25 mins of racing, as you can get on this track!
I had an awful start, tried to stay out of trouble to a ridiculous degree, then turned in on someone and hit them (not sure who, just a tap, first chicane) then I just got passed by going stupidly slowly past Chris who appeared to have pulled over? Hasslemoff, Scott, Jon, jammy - all went by. Quickly some of that was repaid and I followed Scott. The we caught Pekka who was driving a little drunk it appeared
- he tapped Scott onto the grass and I passed through. Then Pekka went away a little bit and I dropped to a gap to Bart of 1 minute! I was pretty shocked by this at an early stage in the race and started to knuckle down.
Ran reasonable pace and did a nice 8 lap stint to pit for the start of lap 9. Lap 8 itself was a little slippery but was still on for a 3'59 but with the pit it was a little over 4 mins. Can't really remember what position I came out in, but I think I had Jammy following me at that point with Jon behind him. Shortly after that, Jon was behind me. By this point I had gapped back to 48 secs down on the leader, so not sure if that was solid pace and longer runs without pitting, or what. I still saw nobody...had no drafting, made no real errors, just a little wide here and there, the most time I lost was when I paused to turn driver list on, which for some reason was turned off! I was just running my own little TT and it suited me fine
I felt like I was pulling away from the guys behind by a small degree and getting slightly closer to Mich, who I occasionally saw on the map in the distance, but his pace was at worst, as good as mine, so unless he made a mistake I wouldn't catch up (he didn't). I think I saw Stef just before the hour mark in the gravel at the Porsche curves as well, big off there it looked like!
Started to get dark and while driving, I couldn't quite work out on a 4 stopper if it was even possible to take the 5 min break at anything OTHER than pit stop 2, so I pulled in at 1:05 for pit stop 2 and the driver change. I followed jonas's advice to not pause too early, chose 55l fuel and then waited...then lollipop man, erm, he's waiting for the refuelling to finish.....erm....what is my actual stop time here? Is it when I halted in the pit, or is it when lollipop man lifts it up? He waited ages for the fuel to go in..... I ended up guessing and I think I over egged it AGAIN but not as much as at Spa. I hoped that I'd stayed a net 4th and ahead of Jon, but I didn't know and as it turns out, I never will!
Set off in the dark behind Mich again who had come in not too far in front of me, Mohit was leading I think. 4 laps on the dark and was just about to take 6th back and I crossed the line to start either lap 19 or 20 and was disconnected.
....and that ended that. I was really happy with my drive til then. I only ever do offline tts, no racing really, so I did ok given my relative noobness. This was only my second online race in GT5 and first with everyone in equal cars as opposed to a mixed class race.
Best lap was a 3'50.8, but more importantly, I was keeping myself in the game by doing sub 3'55s for the first 6 laps of both daytime stints. Pace was really solid throughout all 18/19 laps.
Hopefully another enduro will whet my appetite and I'll get another go soon
Matt