Well that was an eventful day!
Nations
Had a little practice in a room beforehand and felt like I'd got ok-ish pace but was smooth, so fancied a long run on the mediums to mix it up a bit and jump a few spots with an undercut in the race. Picked a livery judging it from one side, which unfortunately turned out to be a crime against eyesight. But fortunately got disconnected when typing pre-race greetings so nobody had to see it! Unfortunately
@watto79 also got disconnected, and I think he's a bit useful with this combo. So that was that
None and done
Manufacturers
I've not hidden the fact that I've been looking forward to this, even in the FR Merc, felt I had real pace in it and could mix it with a lot of the Porsches. All I needed was a favourable split and not too many of the quick guys in MR cars. What I got appeared to be 2nd split, Derek-737 leading the way in his Peugeot, and just 15 MR cars in there.
Qualifying wasn't great, not terrible but not good. Couldn't get near my lobby best of 2:42.0 (which would have put me 6th) so had to settle for a 2:42.7 and 12th on the grid. Things should happen this race though.
I started off and I tip-toed around the first few corners, including Eau Rouge, fearing freezing cold tyres, much to the annoyance of a Porsche who got the tow and pushed past into Les Combes. Someone else in a Porsche has a mishap at the end of the lap and I was back up to 12th, with the race settling down and me feeling comfortable with the tyres. I set about chasing the Porsche but came across the problem I'd 'seen' on the deltas in lobbies. I was a match over the lap, much faster in the middle sector, but accelerating out of the bus stop and La Source would cost me half a second. Getting held up by what was beginning to form as a train of cars at the end of L3, the Porsche ahead made a mistake running wide out of Blanchimont, I saw an opportunity - and I got the braking wrong. The Porsche didn't see the Mercedes-shaped missile coming up the inside, turned in and we had a collision. I'm pointing the wrong way, he resets, I let him pull away when we're going again but I'm down in 18th and feeling rather sheepish, 'wifi password' takes advantage of my dirty tyres as I restart and pushes me down to 19th .
A couple of cars have offs (I think they were Porsches), and on L6 after wifi lost it out of Stavelot I was up to 15th, 3s behind the same Porsche I'd had off earlier. One lap later the gap was 0.8s but then the same problem presented itself and I was just losing too much time accelerating out of the slow corners to the Porsche to be near enough to make a move into braking zones.
Finishing 15th, I was disappointed with how it went - especially with my incident but I guess that's racing. If it had been a time trial I would have backed myself for at least a top eight finish, in the race though I was weak where you can overtake and strong where you can't - and that's not a great combo!!
The guy I hit accepted my apology after the race, he was definitely in a Porsche
Not been great so far today! Let's hope the race is good.
Good luck to you all!
