I hadn't done a lot of practice either but I knew mid Ohio from the official Rad race there a couple of weeks ago but I seemed to get up to speed pretty quickly. A 1:10 in qually was a surprise though.
At the start I tried to sneak past Karsten into the final turn but he was wise to it and I slotted in behind. I soon settled down in a little hole a second or so between Karsten and Ian til about lap 8 when I screwed up the right hander over the hill. Usual thing, too much power too early. That turned into a perfect 360 and I only lost one place. Problem was that I wasn't going as quickly round the following left hander as usual so third gear was too high and I lost the rear end. Brendan had nowhere to go and hit me.
That actually straightened me up and I was going straight away, Brendan 5 or 6 seconds back. I noticed Andy was stopping so I'm guessing he got caught up in it too and spent the rest of the race feeling guilty that I'd taken a quarter of the field out in one corner.
I'd fuelled long on the basis that this is a low fuel track and there was a small chance I'd get there on one tank. If not then I'd set it up for a splash and dash without tyres. That all went out the window when the rear end snapped out round T1. In putting on opposite lock I smacked my left elbow a good one on the side of the race frame giving me no chance of saving it and I hit the wall hard.
The tow took over two minutes because I was only just past the pits. It topped up my fuel so I set off to finish the race without a further stop but by then I was already two laps down. I settled down after that and got to the finish only a lap down due to other people's stops. I did unlap myself from Brendan but there was never a chance I'd catch him for 4th, even with his stop.
Congratulations to Mike, Simon and Ian who all drove beautifully.
I'm starting to believer that league racing is dying. We blame the choice of tracks but which tracks should we be using? When I chose the tracks I looked at which ones people turned up for in previous SRO series, these were the more popular ones!
The iRacing league structure is beginning to work as designed now and people are concentrating on that more and more. I for one aren't going to do extra practice to race in a single figure grid. Even the endurance series is losing people and that's at prime time on a Sunday.
It's not for want of trying. Maybe I could have advertised it more on the main forum but I have limited time. I've PM'ed people inviting them and never miss an opportunity to try and bring new people in. The net result? Zero. Not one new person has arrived.
I'll carry on for the rest of this season but after that I'm going to concentrate on the main leagues.
Paul
