Such a fun race, even with everyone but the Californians (@
EDK and @
Strop) DC'ing, still had a blast! Bummed I can't make it to the WW race.
We decided to not try and do results for the NA race due to the DC's.
Was surprised to quali in 2nd in front of Bart
, and even more surprised when I stayed there for a lap or three.
Around lap 3 or 4 @
msgt-sd in 1st took the right side of the straight and Bart got the line to be in his draft before I could find it, so dropped back to 3rd. Next lap or so Bart got the lead and immediately binned it into the invisible wall leading into the double-right in T2.
I had nowhere to go even trying to go around on the grass, so braced for impact and spun Bart around so he was facing backwards, oops.
But I was able to stay ahead of the next pack of cars, Tenderly and Patrick. They caught me shortly and we had about 10 laps of back and forth turn 1 action, while Patrick waited for us to crash each other out. Tenderly came out of the pits about 5-6sec ahead of me, but I ran a bunch of low-mid 1'18's and caught him, and then more multi-lap battles happened. Eventually Bart caught Tenderly while I was leading, and then started hunting me down. With 5 laps left he was getting close to catching my draft and as I was staring into my mirror -- DC.
Oh well, I expect these to go away at some point.
Here's some first few laps action (the last pic is from later, with Patrick/Tenderly):
Great super-close racing everyone!