Given my current obsession with the GR Yaris, the Season 2 Nations season opener seemed too good for me to miss out on. After managing one test lobby on a no-stopper, and later improving my FP times with the help of
@Mistah_MCA's guide, I entered the 14:00 slot with a new personal best of 1:33.366 added to my belt.
14:00
Later found out that this was in the same lobby as
@ionstriker, so great to see you on the track!
Qualifying went relatively incident-free. After dropping to the very back of the queue on my out lap, I first set a 1:34.675 on brake balance +5, then a 1:34.548 to go 9th fastest ahead of the Belgian 'wifi password' guy. This I hadn't expected with the high tyre wear, but the lack of traffic (save for a Frenchman who had re-entered and exited the pits towards the start of my first lap), probably helped me out a lot. Pole was only 4 and three-quarter tenths away...
Had a good launch off the grid, pulling well clear of 'wifi password' and covering as much of the inside as I can. Going into Turn 1, there is a row of three cars all trying to squeeze each other into the apex. The green car furthest on my left pushes me and 'wifi password' out to dry, somehow not getting a penalty, and in turn allowing a Russian driver to take another place from me. Fell to 12th by the end of the lap, got mugged between the wind turbines and the final corner on the next and between Laps 3-4 I started getting connection issues which saw the grid around me acting very strangely. Had to back off just in case I got collected, and ended up sitting second-to-last as 'wifi password' gets a good run on the back straight.
On Lap 4, a Frenchman dives up my inside at the wind turbines; later on, he and proceeds to force me onto the grass as I try to get the slipstream past him into Turn 1. Despite this, we gain a couple of places due to others going off at Turn 8, and before long we are at the tail of a long queue for 12th. Smacked the barrier at Turn 6 so lost a bit of time, but eventually climbed back up to 15th at the expense of the one-stoppers. My front tyres were in slightly better condition than those of the Spaniard up ahead, so the next few laps were spent catching up to and passing him into Turn 1. The British driver in 12th was struggling even more, his times dropping to around a second slower than my high 1:36s-low 1:37s.
Had a poorer run through Turn 8 on the penultimate lap, so had no choice but to concede 13th to the Spaniard and let him have a shot at my British compatriot. The result is that we end up three-wide as the Swiss driver on the one-stop tries to follow the Spaniard through; I took to the outside, knowing that them squabbling would give me the chance to try and pass all of them under braking. While this resulted in me getting squeezed out by the Spaniard, I made up for that by diving down the inside of him at Turn 5. Harried the other Brit right up to the line, eventually finishing 14th on the road just 48 hundredths behind.
16:40
After gathering notes and making a few adjustments to my livery (which will be released as soon as I get the gradients on the driver's side door right), I next entered the 16:40, which turned out to be in the same lobby as
@Hasnain282.
Again, qualifying was fairly solid. Hasnain and I waited for the queue to clear before we set out on our runs; my times were a 1:34.841 and a 1:34.806 respectively, the latter of which was only good enough to put me in 14th this time. Had I not gone in too deep at the final S-bend on the first lap, I might have been able to extract a bit more as I ended up setting a purple second sector. By comparison, Hasnain started 7th with a 1:34.447, so I'm pleased that my times for the 14:00 weren't far off his pace.
Wasted a demon start by again hitting the barrier at Turn 6, the impact this time sending me into a quarter-spin. Picked up a track limits penalty coming out of the final S-bend which did not help my frustration, but gradually climbed back up the order as others quit, pitted or had other mishaps. Set consistent 1:35s and 1:36s to catch up with the trio of cars fighting for 13th, before diving past the Hungarian on Lap 9 as he served a penalty near the turbines. Found myself in a similar situation to the last race with the Italian camouflage car, which I cleanly dispatched at Turn 1 two laps later.
By this point, Hasnain (who got pushed down early on and was on the one-stop) was not far behind and running faster on fresher rubber. Knowing that he was going to have to pass me sooner or later, I spared him the hassle of fighting by letting him through on the approach to Turn 4. Up ahead, a Russian gets squeezed into the Turn 6 barrier and slots between us; I slip by when he goes wide and does a bit of rallycrossing on the exit of Turn 11. Ultimately finished 14th on the road, which became 13th when another Russian received a track limits penalty shortly after clearing the turbines.
Still, got some clean passes and consistent lap times out of those. Glad that Mistah_MCA's guides have come in handy once more. I'm open to doing the 19:20 slot, but will see how I feel within the next hour.
