That was one drive and a half!

After qualifying a modest I took a quick leak break before the race, which took longer than I wanted to. Result: I missed the initial start!
So off I went, starting through the pits with a 25 second deficit.
With an empty track for myself I got going, and measured how much I could recover. Just a couple of laps in I felt very good in the Lola and could see from the gap to the leaders that I had the pace to catch up to the leaders by the late stages of the race.

The positions came to me quickly and before the halfway point I was back on the podium already. From there on the progress went a little slower. I was catching up to Patrick and Tristan though progress went a little slower. Nonetheless I got closer every lap, got past Patrick, and had a good bunch of laps left when I was right at the back of Tristan.

But things got a little tricky from there. With 6 or 7 laps left my fuel gauge already went red. This gave me a bit of a scare as at this race, I would not make it to the line without my engine gasping for fuel. With that, I settled myself behind Tristan, shifting a little earlier and taking some corners in one gear higher to save fuel.

With two laps left I saved enough to go on the attack. I overtook Tristan in the Hairpin, but he had enough tow on the straight afterwards to pass me back Esses. To avoid a repeat, I overtook him at Riches on the final lap and built a gap so Tristan didn't have enough to get back to me at the Hairpin. And by then, I got the race sealed, finishing with 0.5 gallon in the tank!

I provided myself with quite a challenge but I drove one heck of a race so I'm very happy with it.

Well done all finishers, see you on the next one.

I have been refreshing like a madman because that finish with Clive had me so excessively excited. One thousandth of a second.

One-frickin'-thousandth of a second!

For this race it would be between me and him, and in the first few laps we set the pace, driving low 2:02s. But then Clive let me through. I was a bit baffled by it. I certainly wasn't that much quicker. The big reason I was properly keeping up was the tow. After just driving two laps I saw the pace dropped by 1.5 seconds and it made way more sense for us together that he stayed out in front with his +100 BHP stronger engine. And the pace picked up again.

Few laps later, Clive tried again to let me through, which I refused. If I were in front it'd have given the chance for driver in 3rd, maybe 4th, to get a chance of catching up. The main thing for me early in the race was to build up a gap, the racing coming later.

With just a few laps to go I was still in Clive's tail and the gap was substantial enough that I began to properly push. Passing would be very difficult, but if I could take advantage out of a mistake out of a slow corner. That would be my best chance, as the low speed acceleration of his powerful car was the weak point.

It just so happened on the final corner that he somewhat overshot it and I took the chance to get him on the line. And as the flag fell, there was no fingernail between us! The moment had me so thrilled, we were actually looking exactly side by side. I thought we were witnessing the most BIBLICAL thing in the 26 years of GPL's lifespan... only to be one-thousandth, one-frickin'-thousandth, being between me and Clive.

Somehow, this has disappointed me a little. I kind of hoped that that one-thousandth of a second was not there. That someone would have to come up during the podium ceremony with a big chainsaw and cut the first place trophy in half and split it between the two of us. I really had my heart holding out for that to happen. But unfortunately it was not to be...

Great race, Clive. I had a wonderful time and a fantastic memory to come with it. Thank you.
Well done to all finishers. See you next race!

Quiet a fun outing. Highlight for me is powersliding my car a little through the Caroussel. Works wonderfully with the CanAm '66 cars!

The car felt rather edgy in the braking zone especially, so I went with pretty soft dampers for this one.

I haven't really noticed what happened at the start but I did see Enrique and Greg's name suddenly drop off from my Pribluda's Track Position. Seeing this I decided to slow down to rough 80 mph to get them a little more time to restore the grid. From there on it was standard procedure.

I drove at relegated pace throughout most of the event, avoiding mistakes and make sure the braking was pretty cozy.
It wasn't until I noticed Greg was pushing with approx. 6 laps remaining that I began to push harder in order to maintain the gap.

Thanks for racing guys, well done to the podium!

Post-race it only dawned me it was only my first race of this championship.

I went for the coins rhis race so drove the BT14. I feel I was strong in the corners, but the car was an absolute sitting duck! With the speed disadvantage I relegated to the midfield.

This proved tricky in the race, where I had to do the passing through cornering or lucking out of others' mistakes. I had one move on Pete down at the Esses I felt pretty proud of

In the end I'm happy with sixth. More was probably impossible.
With plenty of tokens to spend now I'm surely looking to get a clean sweep in the final few rounds

It was great battle indeed, Evil. No complaints on my part in terms of fair play. A little shame it ended the way it did. I must add the note that I didn't require a Shift-R in the accident.

With the M1B you had a significant power advantage, which was very noticable on the back straight. No matter how good the exit; the additional BHP is so substantial compared to the 333 cu. Chevy engine that I was hopeless on the straight!

So I had to rely on my cornering abilities but there was no real space to pass. The best chances were around T6, where I tried to switcheroo a few times, only to be beaten out by the M1B's monstrous engine.

In the end, all I could do was pressure Evil to a mistake, which happened with 3 laps left.

Very fun race, great mod/track combo. See you next race!

Really enjoyable race from my end.

I thought I'd spice things up after winning last race in the cheapest car, knowing that many will opt for the two-liter cars here, I go the opposite direction and take the Cooper, which I reckoned would be just about rightly balanced against my peers, and I think I wasn't off on that assessment.

I had to push for qualifying but got no further than P4, but I think I could get by the others at the start. In the end I got by only Tom. I almost had Tristan but I but got spun in a 360. Think it's on me not giving much space. I would get by using my power on the straight, but lost it couple laps later on inner kerb of Vias.

That's where the fun part started for me. After dropping down to P6 I had a recovery drive in the making, and it wasn't an easy one, as the smaller cars were faster through the twisty bits, but me with the power advantage. It got particularly fun chasing Tristan and Tom, as our pace often seemed level.

Eventually I did get by them to reclaim P2, but that wasn't the end of it, as Tom kept pressuring me until the end as I didn't enjoy the pace like I used to with the slipstream was gone on my part. However, I could keep him behind and I took the flag...

...many miles behind Lasse who absolutely destroyed us all. Great pace!

See you next race.

Guess who forgot to have his setup applied to both qualifying and the race? 

Big cars on a narrow track 

I did had a few pinball moments, especially early on, but I got it together at the latter half of the race, reeling in on Tristan but by then was already much too late.

It was a quiet race at the top. Both of my fellow front-runners made an error on lap 1 which put them down the order on the track where overtakes are so difficult.

On that note, I almost made one myself as I didn't account for Leo being next to me past T1. Sorry for that, entirely on me. Luckily netcode was being friendly for once.

See you next race.

Pretty fun event from my end.

I beat Tristan narrowly in qualifying but he got the better start. It didn't take long to get first place back, and that was the position I would stay in the for the rest of the race. The gap was never more than 3-4 seconds so I was kept on my toes throughout.

See you next race.

Quite an eventful race.

Willow Springs also seems a little shorter than it is in my head. I thought it was a power track but it's more balanced than that.

So the start... it all began when Leo and I tangled. From my POV, I got my car about half a car next to his in the braking zone, but he began to turn towards the apex whilst I was still there. I couldn't exactly vanish and as a result we collided, and big chaos ensued.

I dropped down the order outside the top 10, but made way up as incidents happened everywhere, and I could use my power advantage on the straights through several multi-car battles. Due to theb raffic, I had to be patient when trying to pass, so I was generally cautious. Especially Doni in his Japanese whale was not easy to just waltz by. I had only one more incident when Tris in front of me had a collision trying to overtake someone and I had no chance to avoid.

Lasse also had a phenomenal move on me on the outside of T1. We had a good brief battle until he ran wide at the slow left-hander.
Eventually I got through traffic to challenge Evil, who had quite the gap until he had an incident and I overtake him a bit later. Evil briefly got it back after I spun myself out in T2 but was short-lived as he dipped his wheel in the dirt and spun himself.

Afterwards, it was a straightforward drive to the finish line, bar one off track excursion.

A lot of stuff happening this race but I enjoyed it. Well done to Tris and Dono getting on the podium. See you next race!

A new track for me. Well, I have driven it in AC, and the other direction in GPL. But this direction in GPL... don't think I ever touched it.

For the first bit of the race I battled with Tristan until he spun and I was left to drive on my own. Two resets today.

Thanks for racing.

Like is common with racing at Monza 10K, many crashes and incidents early in the race did shuffle the field around,
and all in all, Tristan profited greatly and got a strong win under his belt.

I had hopes to gradually close up to him by the end as the amount of competitors around me shrunk. Unfortunately, no one really seemed to get the bigger picture and just focused on fighting one another and sabotage the efforts... 

I have driven the 1935 variant, but I don't recall having raced either chicane variants.
It's a real buzzkill, if you ask me.

Dueled with Greg for the first half of the race until he dipped a tyre in the fast left-hander before the twisty section and made a long desert trip, giving me a pretty strong gap to work with for the latter half of the race. I had two moments myself where I undid some of the advantage I had, but had plenty spare to take first.

See you next race!

Bit of a clumsy period I'm having. Jeez.
Earlier the evening I cut my race very short and this one wasn't much better for my feeling. Partially because I do not vibe with this track much. Partially just pure stupidity on my part.

Big sorry to Uli for the hit. Don't know what to say... empty head moment.