Get some coffee. I’m gonna flex.
There are a few of you who know from pre-race practice lobbies about my lack of consistency and self-confidence coming into this race. I’ve generally avoided this track and, as a result, have a hard time finding a rhythm. But I kept running laps.
So I am completely stoked about the Bathurst race.
Race #1 I was quite nervous about starting 5th worried my race pace was going to be much slower. A clean start thru T1 as the sand bagger, I mean
@Harry Rowley , led us away. 😙😉 My opening lap was anything but smooth. Small mistakes added up and on lap 2
@Noob01_lmdead /Raul got by going into T2. He quickly made up the ground to
@Megabytesize /Moby and started battling which allowed me to catch back up.
One of my main goals for the night was not to kill anyone. I did not meet my goal. I still wasn’t in a rhythm and then missed a braking point quite badly punting Raul on lap 3 at the end of the Chase, T21. Incident Report submitted but damage done. Raul would have had third. Massive apologies. 😖 I don’t think he could have caught
@socalnatv and Harry colluding together up front.
After he came back on track Raul had to let
@scarecrow937 by as I fell in behind and tried to protect Raul from the closing
@JDMKING13 . Unfortunately Raul fell back again at the top of the mountain so I set after Scarecrow. I was able to get by at the Cutting, T3/4, at which point I was almost exactly 3 seconds behind Nova on lap 5.
Nova put car #45 between us for five laps but I caught Moby going down thru the esses, got a good run out of the Elbow and made the pass. By lap 15 I’d closed the gap to Nova and was only 0.8s back at the top of the mountain. I made a mistake in the esses, gave him another second, but closed it down again by the time we went over the top of the mountain on the last lap.
Practice pays off sometimes.
After I watched the replay, in spite of The Incident, those early laps in Race #2 will remain an amazing memory. A beautiful group start on Race 2 with the right lane giving better draft out of T1 to coast by
@MrDonovan. Scarecrow had drifted wide into the grass and did a great job keeping a tight inside line on his recovery allowing me to pass on the outside. I tried enticing Moby into a brake mistake after he kissed the wall at the top of the mountain but he didn’t byte. During all those practice laps I worked really hard on the exit out of T18, Forrests Elbow hairpin, giving me a run to finally get past Moby.
I’d found a line out of T1 that gave me purple in sector 1 in nearly every lobby race we did. Another coast past
@GTR4MROD. Remember the poetry of me, Gtr and Donovan going thru T2, Griffins Bend, on lap 2. Some battling ahead eventually gave me a chance to catch up and put a pass on jdmking13 up thru the Cutting in T3/4. I was fractionally wide and might have heard Calvin Fish over the speakers about some “argy bargy” thru there. 👊🏻
Another good exit out of the Elbow gave me a run on teammate
@IceWarden . The helpful lift by Ice was a surprise and my too-close draft pass nearly had us crashing each other out. Maranello would have been furious. 😱🤬. At the ArmorAll bridge
@Fudman420 had a 1.2 second lead. One lap later I was on top of him when the caution was called.
And then The Incident. Several of us stayed in the party chat after the race and talked about the caution/restart process (thank you again; really appreciated everyone’s views). Anything further on that comes from the race director. We also pulled up the replay and talked about different time stamps after the restart. How I wish it could have been like the poetry of lap 2 when I, Gtr, and Donovan went thru T2. I’m not calling anybody out. My small tap of jdmking going into T2 fortunately didn’t disrupt his car but my deceleration was one of the things contributing to what happened next.
I closed 4 seconds on Nova in Race 1. In Race 2, from 12th, I’d have been past fudman in another lap. The #6 car in second place was only three seconds up on fudman.
@Rob Brown, with 13 or 14 laps left I am not sorry to say that you were gonna go down my friend. But I think there would have been no catching
@Stryker13. Nice win.
Second place was there for the taking.
@llNovall please add the appropriate 1% success ballast/hp to my car before the next race.
Man up
@Harry Rowley 🤭
@stelephant
@Rotary_Pilot
@fruitloop31
@MikeGrove
@Yugofan
@Beeg Brady
@Roman_GT23
@aedenmaddok
@Deal24
@Kgffy
@Trickybrewer