I made my first foray into the FIA Championships today (I never entered the Pre-Season races and didn't have time to join the fun in Season 1), and I think it went alright all things considered. I'm currently sitting at C/S (though I entered with C/A due to my attempts at Race B last night), and I started with the manufacturers cup. I got some good open track during qualifying and managed a 1:32.8 by my second lap, but sadly overcooked it a little on my next two attempts and never improved, there was definitely .5 to be gained at minimum at my skill level. Landed P9 of 19, and the field was fairly diverse - I don't think there was a single Renault on the grid.
Here's the summary if you don't have ~25 mins to watch:
Race started (2:30) and I took a place real fast, but overcorrected at Surtees and knocked myself back down to 12th (3:33). From there I managed to keep it clean, and by lap 3 I'd already grabbed 8th as people lost their cool and went off. I held that spot until the start of lap 6, when a BMW punted me off in turn 1 (10:49). In the moment I couldn't tell if it was intentional or not, I didn't feel like I braked too early, the shunt wasn't too hard and it's possible he just missed his braking point, but the post-race results displayed him with a incriminating red SR-B amongst a sea of blue S's. Needless to say I got shoved back down to 11th. That kinda irked me, but I ended up having a nice battle for 9th against a Corvette for the next two laps before he hit the gravel at Westfield (14:58). Pitted at the halfway mark, and dropped back down to 12th. Climbed up to 8th eventually as people ahead pitted and made mistakes, but I took a bad line at the start of lap 14 and dove into the gravel (23:45), cost me a place and all the progress I'd made catching up to P7. From there the Corvette I'd been battling earlier caught back up with me and sat on my bumper, and I started cracking under pressure. Overcooked it a bit out of Sheene's on lap 15 (26:30), didn't spin, but picked up a ~.6 second penalty and now had three guys riding my butt. On the final lap I hit the grass entering Stirling's (28:09), saved myself from spinning but the speed loss opened a door for P10 to catch me and overtake me right before the finish line, and then the 1-sec penalty put me in 11th by 0.075 seconds. 259 points in the bank.
A really fun race, but overshadowed by mistakes and the knowledge that I could've placed better if I'd kept it on track. I'd bet I could've placed up to 5 positions higher if I'd ran without mishaps. I'm concerned about the future races in this series though since I'm signed with Lamborghini, and I'm really struggling to keep the Gr. 3 car stable in the corners.
*video uploading*
Nations cup was a gamble - I haven't properly learned the racing line on Nurburgring GP, and on top of that I picked a car I don't know super well (in general I haven't been using Gr. 3 much in GTS), so I set myself up with a double whammy of unfamiliarity. I didn't really get a "good" (even by my standards) lap before getting dive-bombed and bounced off during qualifying, but amazingly my 2:03.654 was enough to place me 12th of 19 on the grid. The start was bit messy and after shuffling through positions for the first half of the lap I got punted into the gravel and thrown into last. My lines sucked but my strategy worked, by lap 4 I'd grabbed 16th and ended up in a 5-way battle for 13th for about a lap, but then got knocked back down to 17th when I got caught in turn 1 chaos on lap 5. I slowly got my act together and found a groove by about lap 8, where I got thrown into another battle for 13th. Going into lap 10 it turned into a battle for 10th between four cars, and a guy in a pink pig-liveried Porsche started causing trouble, fighting way too aggressively for position and bumping people almost every corner. I hit the gravel again halfway through lap 11 and had to crawl back up from 16th, but miraculously the pink pig Porsche caused enough chaos to hold the group back for me, allowing me to battle for extra positions going into the final lap. I caught a 1 second penalty in the final 1/3rd of the track for going wide on a corner, and I thought I'd just killed what little extra finishing opportunities I still had, but alas - I'm in 15th heading into the final corner, someone way up ahead spins into the pit entry and re-enters in the middle of the corner, takes out the guy right in front of me, and then the finish timer hits zero just meters before I hit the finish line, my penalty no longer affects my race time, and I take home 13th. Only 82 points.
It's not a great finishing position outright (I even qualified higher), but considering how unprepared I was going into it, I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad result (though my DR may disagree...

).
Outside of a few bad eggs my first run of championship races had largely good fun racing, and luckily my work schedule is shifting around so that I can actually participate in a majority of this season.