Staying out of trouble and next week’s training schedule
Before I tell you how the race went, there is something you should know about how I view the Nations Cup.
For me, time to race is limited, so I don’t drive dailies during FIA and most of my championship races are done on Saturday’s, which are much easier to plan around work and family life. That said I regard Nations as the “fun” playful sibling to the “serious” striving brother Manufacturer. Nations is under the radar and it’s my playground to have some fun with stuff I don’t bother with online, like karts and the upcoming mini race. I also practice these much less and the results are a mixed bag to say the least.
That also has its upsides; After a race I'll know were my “natural” level is at and therefore these races normally set me back in DR, which is fine since this way you will organically move in the right direction of easier or harder lobbies.
It’s also a place where I dare to experiment and that’s what I did in this race. I did not go into the race wanting to do so, but if you watch the first 2 laps you’ll see all kinds of bad and/or vindictive driving al around me. So my first instinct was: “get away, find some clear road and keep it that way for as long as you can”.
I started 6th on meds and that was good. Kept up with the squabbling front and stayed clear from the followers (well, for the most part). So during my second pitstop watching my fuel, Logan (the playful one inside me), said: “don’t refuel and you’ll get away from this madness, go ahead it will be fun”. Seth, being more down to earth went along with it as it would give me: “a good training opportunity to practice heavy-full-saving-while-being-under-pressure-all-the-time”. And so I did. Of on an adventure trying to save 1,3 rounds of full while running 8 laps on softs.
Now I don’t know how you have placed your full map but I flick between X for the menu’s and “square” for down and “round” for up… That is not an easy thing to do while going through the esses and chicane, trying to hit apexes, not run wide and managing fuel at the same time, ‘cause that’s where I figured I’d have the best chance of saving fuel. What do I know, never done it before haha.
But it worked, sort of, I managed to find that clear road, get away from the bad/angry drivers and keep it relative easy for a long time. Even going to 2nd place near the end of the race.
The only thing I mismanaged was noticing my laps left was adjusting as I was driving. Which meant I was running very-short-on-fuel in the final sector. I got a little too eager I guess and instead of just letting the Porsche in 3rd go by and claim a podium, I thought I could make it work. I didn’t. Ran out fuel and crawled my way through Casio and the finish line. Got passed by 4 cars (just) but got one position back after penalties for tyres.
5th overall. Not bad, not bad at all with such a risky strategy and much better than I was initially going for (P-Steve would have been da bomb, if you’d ask me prior to the race). Learnt a lot, again. Among other things I need to practice the use of my buttons.
Hope you do! it's a nice environment.
On to next week. I liked training with you all, so much so I’ve decided to set up a schedule for next week as well (to be honest, the training sessions are even more enjoyable at times than the actual race). It’s easy going and amendable. If anyone wants to add 3 or more races (with different time slots and/or different races on offer) feel free to PM me with times (time zone) race days and type of race similar to the placeholder question mark. It’s important you can volunteer more than a race or two since I have to make the effort to edit all of this during my normal activities and I need that to be manageable.
So for this week’s schedule starting tonight:
View attachment 1011317
Watch the video to see me struggle with the buttons. The fun starts after the pitstop in round 8.