... but overall it turned out way better than I had expected it too. One and done tonight.
The Alfa's actually a cracking little car in those conditions
.👍
North America Manu
Slot 1:
Well, that was a
whole lot better than I was expecting! As I said earlier, the Ford GT LM Test Car looked like being at a major disadvantage compared to the likes of the Alfa I'd raced in EMEA, as its braking distance was so much longer. Qually went not too bad though, considering I'd only practiced for 10 minutes tops. There was a concern that a certain driver who had behaved atrociously yesterday was in this race too, but he was at the back. I recognised a couple of other drivers too.
I started
P8 (Door 12) and was
P6 at Turn 1. however the Renault I would battle for much of the race cut in sharply and I was once again penalised with an Orange SR! He bumped past on the inside of Turn 2, so I was
P7 until Turn 3 when the other Ford LM in the race (P5) hit the P4 Porsche causing it to stop, facing the wrong way whilst both cars ghosted. Through I went into
P5.
More on that crash later.
It was a procession, with the top 5 cars pretty evenly spread out over 8 seconds until I passed the P4 Porsche on Lap 5. The P2 Mercedes had picked up 0.5s for cutting the final corner on Lap 4 and promptly disappeared 49s into Lap 5, so I was now
P3 with the Renault ahead. We then spent Laps 6 to 10 trading places (and he wasn't averse to trading paint either!). He lightly punted me at Turn 1 on Lap 9 and got a 1s penalty at the same point next Lap as I repassed. That was the 7th or 8th position change between us in those 4 and a bit laps but the penalty gave me a little breathing room and he was only ocassionally within 2.5s of me for the rest of the race. I finally finished in
P2 about 40s behind the winning Beetle and 3s ahead of the Renault.
43 Points in a wet race was enough to tell me to quit while I was ahead rather than risk a divebombing nightmare in later slots.
Cockpit view:
Back to that Lap 1, Turn 3 incident. After the race, the Porsche driver who'd been tapped into a spin by the other (black) Ford, called
me out for a *** move. At the time, my response was "Huh?" as I had no idea to what he was referring, having not only been still to come round the corner when it happened, but totally unaware of causing any accidents all race. He told me to watch the replay which of course I have. I messaged him to see if
he'd watched it and as yet, almost 2 hours later, I've had no reply. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he's busy racing other slots to try to finish better than the P10 I think he finished in. He's obviously made a genuine mistake thinking it was my Ford which hit him (easily done) but I'm certainly due an apology. If I get that, I'll be perfectly happy to accept...
I botched T1/L1 pretty badly though and almost ruined the whole race right there, but I somehow managed to keep it on the track and only lost a couple places by T2. Then I followed what looked to be a pretty good race right ahead of me while trying not to lose the draft, I had no chance of getting involved. 
