Hrrrm, bit of a mixed bag on my return really.
I spent the prior week practising at Silverstone, failing utterly to break the 1:30 barrier reliably in the Fez. Finally, I remembered I was missing the GPL Racing Line program. Installing that to change the painted groove really helped me find my old lines, and I managed to post 1:28s reliably.
The day of the race Phil put the server up early for practice and I had a short race with Iestyn Davies. He was driving a BRM and blew me away with sustained 1:27s! I wasn't confident for the evening after such a beating! Coming into the actual practice session in the evening, I would have been happy just to make it anywhere but last on the grid, having no real idea of where performance levels were at. I was immensely surprised to find myself on pole at the end of the session!
For the race proper, I was expecting to do a lame start and end up at the back of the pack, but by some fluke I got away quite well, and was able to settle down into a reasonable rhythm for the first half of the race (minus a "small" glitch on Farm straight that I mostly got away with). Then things began to unravel at a quick pace!
At the end of lap 12, I lost all sound in my headphones. This proved to be a major distraction, as I now had to drive with one eye on the rev counter and back off to ensure control. As a result, I slid off again in Club and allowed Al into the lead. Oddly enough, this turned out to be a help as I could match my pace to his for a few laps to ensure some kind of reliable driving. At this point I was praying nothing else would go wrong and I could come in second.
However, fortune wasn't going to smile down on me. As we came up to lap a Cooper (who it was I cannot remember), I got into slipstream and was about to make a pass. Then, all of a sudden, my screen went blank! I knew the game was still running, as the force feedback was still going through the wheel. After about 10 seconds of wondering what was going on, I pressed a mouse button. All of a sudden I got the picture back and the sound. It then dawned on me what had gone wrong. Vista had kicked in the power saving, having assumed I hadn't touched the keyboard/mouse for a while. This had taken out my sound at first and then the picture.
What also dawned on me was that I must have punted the poor Cooper driver clean off the track during my spot of blind driving. I apologise if I spoiled his race!
All in all, I'm glad to be back and I learned some important lessons on system setup for future races. Well done to Al, who was consistently quick and deserved his win.
EDIT: Just realised Phil had the same problem as me with the Vista shenanigans! Stupid OS!