Won't deny that this was the one race I wanted to win this season. Started practicing back in January and it immediately became an obsession - I WANTED to complete a lap, but kept wrecking the car and starting over again and again and again. While I repeatedly wrecked my virtual car, I also slowly but surely wrecked my very real life back. I suffer from RMI (Repetitive Motion Injury), and all the hours spent tensed over the steering wheel wrecked havoc with my condition. Original plan was to get to a level where I could complete a lap with reasonable certainty, and then do a couple of laps each week until the race, to maintain the gained knowledge of the track. Had to drop that, due to my back problem. Back has only slowly gotten better over several months after my much too intensive practice.
Picked up practice last week, to discover I had become exactly as rusty as I feared. Numerous tries again before I finally completed a (slow) lap. Had done a 34:30 lap in a 412P back in January. Tried the 330 P4 instead, which should be faster, but initially (again) couldn't even complete a lap. With practice this changed though, and it did prove faster, with my alltime best being a 33:54 offline.
With Dominick joining us, winning suddenly seemed a far off possibility - it would have been hard enough against our regular bunch, but a Targa expert, how could I hope to beat him ? But then fate intervenes in a cruel way, by sabotaging his steering wheel (No, I didn't stick needles into a Voodoo doll representation of it..
) Real shame Dominick
Out of curiosity, what sort of laptimes would you have been likely to post, just to know how impossible a task winning would have been, with you present
With Dominick neutralized and Ziu conspicuously absent, things did look considerably easier. Posted a laptime in praccy as the only one, but the game didn't care and put me 3rd on the grid. Jumped Tony at the start and set off after Geoffers. Tried slipping past after a few corners, when he had the rear kick out, but got a nudge as his car straightened itself, sending me up on the grassy shoulder, fortunately without hitting anything. Got a new chance when he entered the next corner too wide (may have been on purpose - thanks if it was!). Got past and could start to open a gap. Watched with sadness as one message after the other announced people dropping out. Hats off to Matt for getting so far on a first attempt; I needed countless ones, but then my driving may have been more rash..
Eventually only Tony and me left, and then Tony ran out of fuel. Grats though to him and Matt for filling the podium and commiserations to all the victims of either track or technical issues.