I'm calling that a day there. That was a rollercoaster of emotions and quite frankly, I'm exhausted. I think participation must also have been pretty low because the lobby was mixed A/A+ but only worth 238 points. It must have pulled a really wide spread of DRs.
I started P6 as I couldn't quite get my quali lap nailed (still pretty good though) and started on the Mediums. That seemed to be the common thought, as it seems like everyone else also did that briefly scanning over the replay.
I failed to get to grips with the dirty air off the start and laps 1 and 2 turned into a disaster. I went a bit deep on turn 1 and ended up having to take a very narrow line through turn 2 that cost me. I then lost some more at the first hairpin due to being forced off the racing line, and then went deep at the last hairpin. Horrible, horrible start. And then just to top it off, I outbroke myself at turn 1 on lap 2 and went onto the gravel. Trying to get the car back on track and pointed the right way, followed by sliding around on dirty tyres ended up costing me about 15-16 seconds that lap and dropped me down to P15. Thankfully, no damage.
At that point I was fuming because I'd just completely blown it, but decided to get my head down and see whether I could recover anything. Fast forward to the end of lap 14 and I come in to the pits running P5. I was fully expecting to get dumped right back down coming out of the pits but... no. I came back out in P6.
I then catch P5 and make a move into turn 1, so back up and running in actual P5 again. I'll need to go back and try figure out what on earth happened for me to make up so many positions after such a crippling mistake.
Going ahead to lap 23 and I'm once again in P6 as I come in for my second pit stop. P5 is a bit further ahead this time, but I manage to catch up by the start of lap 25 and we start fighting. I can't get any moves in, but then get a much better run out of the last hairpin and take the position at turn 1.
Nothing much else happened from here onwards other than lapping a couple of people, but the big surprise came at the end. Four people missed the two-compound rule for a whopping 4 minute penalty, and two of them were in front of me. P3!
However... think back to how much time I lost from my lap 2 screw up...
I potentially had the pace to win that. Either the pit stops were shorter in the actual race than in offline custom races or I was on fire after I finally got my act together, because I'd have been on for at least a 41:30 or so? That's a lot, lot faster than my practice runs.
218 points will do nicely. Now I'm off for a bath, because I've been sweating buckets.