GT1 slot 1, 7PM EDT, in the Americas. All A/S lobby. 160 up for grabs. I was in door #12, driving the Dodge.
Qualifying was uneventful. I posted a time of 1:26.480, which put me in Q7.
I started on RMs, like most of the drivers. For the first seven laps, nothing happened. I just chased the Porsche ahead, trying my best to stay in the slipstream. At the end of lap 7, though, the Porsche picked up a track limit penalty exiting the hairpin. I'm not sure why, but they went off the racing line and lost the slipstream. I was able to get past them on the front straight for P6.
I pitted for RSs at the end of lap 8, and came out to clean air. The P5 car pitted the next lap and came out just ahead of me. I chased them for a few laps and challenged them in a few places, but wasn't able to get a move done. Meanwhile, the undercut had worked. By lap 12, when the pitting was done, I was sitting in P4.
The pole-sitter was fast and was soon on my bumper. I managed to hold them off for a while, but at the start of lap 14, they got by, putting me back to P5.
Eventually the Porsche that I was chasing for the start of the race caught me, too. On lap 17, they made a nice move on the corner going into the first tunnel when I went wide. Back to P6.
But a couple turns later, they hit the curbs wrong and kindly gave P5 back.
Behind me, a Ford GT LM was gaining on me fast. My tires were pretty much shot so I was just trying to hold on to P5 to the finish, which I did by a hair.
That's how I
wish it had ended, anyways. In reality, I had picked up a track limit penalty going into onto the back straight so I was awarded a 1-second penalty at the end, which landed me P6 and 127 points. Good enough for me!