DT Gardens II had lots of up and downs today. Matchmaking was putting stupid rooms together making it hard to avoid all the chaos, yet I managed to come out at SR 99 and the tiniest increase in DR overall after 7 races, 8 pts.
My SR suffered briefly from doing the daily A after I got disconnected at the start of the 8pm C race. I got hit twice in that race, dropped to SR 80 from 99... and finished almost last. Maybe the disconnect added 5 points as well. That only made matchmaking worse for the next race.
As usual I don't like qualifying so I drove from the back every time, making up 11 places, usually clean except for one race where I got sandwiched a few times. That race was very aggressive with dive bombs in every turn making it hard to get away from the back. Gardens II is definitely the better layout, much more fun than the 'normal' way around. Perhaps they mixed them up....However it's still a dive bomb paradise with a penalty system that often rewards the diver.
Gaining 11 places wasn't enough though. I kept finishing 6th with door number 5 (except the one race at SR 80 where I finished 2nd). So for the last race I updated my qualifying time to start 9th instead of 17th. Result, punted in T1 to 16th. I guess that's one spot better than 17th.... I finished 6th again with clean race bonus despite getting punted off into the wall in lap 1 and getting stuck behind a 1 bar connection for 3 laps that jostled me around a few times before I could finally pass and get far enough ahead. How can the game let that continue for the whole race, every corner erratically jumping around 50 meters in all directions.
This is where I passed him. I probably hit him on his screen as I imagine everyone must have been jumping around on his console.
I was keeping my distance for 3 laps already, so when he disappeared I kept going not waiting for him to reappear yet again. His car almost punted me in the next lap and a half, shooting forward at every corner then resetting back again.
That was not the only race with a 1 bar connection interfering. The safest place to overtake is on the straight yet you can't get a run on a 1 bar connection as they always stall in the corner before correcting to actually being way up ahead. Frustrating.
Anyway GR.2 on DT Gardens II, very fun to drive. The red part should be off limits though and ghosting needs to be fixed. It's another combination where the penalty timer starts counting down when you lift off the gas in certain places, inviting more accidents with cars changing ghost status all the time.
the RC F is certainly much faster, but I'm much more comfortable in the Vette
. I've just been struggling to get it to sneak under 2min. On the times when I did, I didn't recognise it because of penalties on the previous lap. Finally managed to get a 1:59.72 to stick, but I had a 1:59.30 that it didn't recognise. We can't all be aliens 
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. I qualified P6 on a grid with mostly DR/Bs, a couple of Cs and 5 Ds. At my current level I wouldn't have qualified any higher even with the best time I could manage. 
. My pit crew was clearly stoned 
. Finished P11. 
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