Right. Watched the replay, didn't want to comment on what can hardly be described as a race (on my part), more a series of mistakes and stupidities.
Had a s****y quali session but didn't care too much about it since I knew my pace will be near to/a bit slower compared to Jonzo and Picnic (already knew from GT1 sprint Kerr and Backo will be in league of their own). To be honest I expected Picnic to be in front of me but that changed in lap 2 anyway.
Mistake no.1: end of quali, off I go to the toilet for which there was plenty of time. But then it hit me I'm still in my shorts and nothing else (hot as hell here
) so I went into my room to grab a T-shirt just to return when lights went green and warm up lap already started. Sat down (chair in wrong position, TrackIR hat not on my head, headphones not on my head) and off we go. Of course I nearly lost it getting off the line and few more times during warm up lap (adjusting the chair and putting stuff on my head
) Apologies to Picnic for scaring him (probably
). Almost hit Jonzo entering S/F straight during warm up lap while being on pit limiter (huh?), turned away to avoid him an got collected by Picnic. No worries, our warm up laps will be perfect... by the end of year 2027.
Lost a place to Picnic going wide into T2, then made a huge mistake (still on cold fronts) going into triple left hander and went off track to rejoin behind leading gt2 porker. Same off repeated itself few laps later.
Climbed back, had a nasty little fight with Ossie, then passed him due to his off track adventure.
Taking my time (had 100L of fuel onboard, medium fronts, hard rears, wing 11), hoping for attrition in front of me and a late&short pitstop which would (that was the projection) put me either into P4 or P5 at the end.
Then.. oh well, I'd rather not comment on my behaviour, it's all self explanatory if you watch the replay @ 1711 and @ 2054. Incident report filled in, go read it, I'm still p****d off at myself ATM. Taking my time with all the cars I caught and passed only to do that? Argh.
My sincere apologies to both drivers involved.
I'm glad this track's behind us, it gave a whole new meaning to the word understeer. Haven't driven a track that caused me so much trouble and, in retrospective, caused loss of self confidence which is to blame for all the stupidities I did. You know, should I or shouldn't I, that sort of stuff.
Anyway, I'd love to say "bah, it's just a game", but, well, it isn't. It's a hobby of ours and I ruined other drivers fun at it. Finishing on podium is a clear case of perverted poetic justice if I ever saw one.
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@ Kerr and rest of you guys with disco problems. My guess is you're all on dynamic IP. MAKE IT A RULE/MANTRA: "I WILL RESTART MY COMPUTER AND MODEM PRIOR TO RACE". Your IPs are changed by your ISP every 24 hours or (here's the trick and a cure by itself) each time you login. Hence login prior to race so your IP won't be changed during racing. I do it all the time, flying sims taught me that.
Same goes for auto updates. Either turn them off (which will give you a better control of what's going on with your computer anyway) or manually check for updates prior to race start (but that does not mean autoupdate won't turn on @ given hour. Most of auto update programs can be tweaked as per time-of-auto-update goes. Tweak it - early in the morning comes to mind
)
