that was fun in the end, although I spun trying to close down 2 and had to wait for the entire pack to re-pass. I had a nice fighting race to finish in P10, good fight with John Walters I think
.
Ok and now for the bad....I realise that I should have waited before re-joining the server, but we hadn't been told to wait yet and so I went ahead. I can take the jovial comments fine, but someone (Paulo I think) used the F word, which I think is a bit out of order.
I haven't heard bad language on UKGPL before so it was a bit surprising and I hope it was in jest.
Anyhow a fun race, I wish I hadn't spun out of P2 cos I had a reasonable pace but I guess I deserved to!
I overshot someone with a crazy late braking move as the door was left open....well done for leaving it open as shot off in a haze of tyre smoke
Jim
Well, I (and others) said a couple of times in chat we're going to join in Qualifying order, so you must've not been looking, James. Anyway, not much harm done, because the race was long and passing (in equal cars anyway) is not too difficult here.
As for Paulo, I'm not sure if he's rude or just expresses himself like that. Not sure what or who he referred to at the end when he said "f**king noobs!!!", but anyway, just ignore... He thinks he's the best in the world just because he won in the fastest car, apparently.
Personally, I had a fantastic race, hadn't had such in a LONG time. Started 7th and Evil politely let me by while we both passed a slow starter, so I was up to 5th, but then someone almost came to a stop (for no obivous reason) at the hairpin and I had to go off to avoid hitting him.
That dropped me to 13th or so, which triggered my red mist mode and I went on a crusade against all. Sorry if that included some of our teammates, but as far as I could tell from my pitboard (not using Pribluda anymore), it was mostly GPLRACER drivers who I fought the hardest. Some of ours let me by easily, for which I was very thankful.
There was one particular driver of the opposition, who, after having lost the inside line in the chicane, pushed me towards the gravel for no reason, but I refused to just go off. So he took himself off by hitting me and luckily it didn't affect me much.
After some laps I was up the order and challenging the top 6, most notably Clive, Thor, Stefan and Julien. Clive had an off after a few laps and dropped a bit back. After passing Thor, who sort of yielded his position freely, our titanic battle with Stefan began. It lasted until the end of the race and included tremendous amount of outbraking, side by side racing (including a whole lap side by side!!!), dicing under braking zones and what not. While doing this, Thor kept us in our sight, but was not close enough to make any real attack. At the same time, the 3 of us closed in on Julien who was in 3rd place.
I had the impression Julien's BT7 was slightly faster in straight line speed, but overall I was faster than both him and Stefan. That said, I had no real opportunity to pass Stefan, let alone stay ahead of him, and it all became even more difficult when I had to fight the two of them at once. At one point Stefan gave a slight nudge to Julien, which dropped him behind me. Then I braked a bit too late for the first hairpin and dropped behind Julien and Thor, but that only refueled my fire.
Passed Thor again and then fought Julien for a couple of laps before finally edging him out, but it was very closely contested. Stefan was just in sight at the point and there were 3 or 4 laps to go. I tried my best to create a chance for an attack, but Stefan didn't make any mistakes and so he finished half a second ahead of me.
Great, fair racing, some of the best I ever had in GPL. A pleasure to race with such people and an example of how it should be done. No blocking whatsoever, just a single change of line on the straights, and each of us leaving enough room when having another car on the side to account for warp.
It seemed like GPLRACER have won it in the points department, so congratulations! Grats to UKGPLers as well for giving their best. Lorenzo's 2nd without having practiced much is a great result, as well as the others down the grid.
Cheers,
-=Hristo=-