I thought it was going to be my best race ever but it was snatched away in the end.
Terrible qualifying, I was too fast through the corners to successfully tandem draft with anyone I was around so I qualified a mediocre 14th. At the start for some reason a big gap of around 5 seconds opened up between 10th and 11th so I was worried that was it, the second pack was stuck finishing in the back half of the order. I ran around in 13th with map 2/3 for the first stint as everyone else was. Pitted when the cars in front of me pitted, think it was lap 13. I put in 12 laps of fuel thinking that would be plenty since there was only 10 laps left. Didn’t change tires. And then it got interesting.
Came out, and noticed I was around a bunch of different names. Went flat out and slowly passed all of them. My position kept going down and then I was suddenly in 3rd. Then made it three wide and took the lead in turn 3 with 4 laps to go I think. Somehow I had erased the 7 second gap I had to the leader when I pitted.
But then I looked down and I had 2.9 laps of fuel remaining. So much for that. Switched to map 3/4 and slowly got shuffled out but didn’t lose touch since everyone got really aggressive as they should. Had 0.6 laps left when I got the white flag so switched the map 6, dropped to 11th and drove around with no one to draft since the pack left me behind. Almost made it but ran out exiting turn 3 coming to the checkered. Luckily two or three other people ran out earlier so I coasted by them and got 9th for 150-something points. That’s just good enough that I’m not going to risk running again since I know I’ll end up in the wall.
But it was so close to greatness. I was inwardly jumping up and down and then my heart just sank as soon as I looked at the fuel gauge. That’s why I hate running maps other than 1, the calculation when you pit is way off because it bases it on how you’ve been running to that point, which is wildly inaccurate when you’re going to switch to map 1.
Oh, and I got another clean race bonus despite hitting another car at least once every lap