I'm trying to fighure out how D2 ended. Who DC'd? Fastest laps?
Mini race report:
Me and my incredible team mate Remy_K had a practice session last night to try anf find a good strategy.
He had 120 kg ballast
so in order to make him have a shot at the higher places, we had to work together. Don't get me wrong, he's an alien. But 120 kg ballast is not a joke.
So our strategy was that I was going to lead, and he could catch up in my slip. Sometimes, especially in the late parts in 2 out of our 3 stints (Yes Wardez, we did a 2-stopper) I even lifted my throttle a bit to make him reach my slip.
So how was we going to pull this off? Wel, frst of all, we had to brake loose from the pack. We assumed that the batteling in the pack would cost a lot of time, and potential damage as well. What was a bit of bad luck for us was that GTP_CSL had to leave the room as we was about to start the race because of lag.
(I feel really sorry for you mate. You showed great understanding when you decided to leave. And that's VERY honerable.) So instead of 5 cars batteling eachother, the front pack was only 4 cars.
However, me and Remy_K pitted already after lap 3 (2nd race lap). We had to do a few more laps than one to be able to conserve our tires thru the first looooong stint. But we had a bit of a misscommunication. I ment 3rd race lap, but he dove in to the pits after 3rd overall lap. But I thought that he might had damage, and that he wanted to pit early because of that. But after watching the replay, I can see that that was not the case. A pure isunderstanding from our part.
But after our first pit, we started pulling good times. Mostly high 28's-mid 29's for the first 8-9 laps. After that ourr tires was about to loose grip, and our laptimes crwled up to 30...31's.. And the stint seemed to never end.
We had some trouble passing some GT300's as well that cost us a handful of seconds I guess. But in when we was at lap 16ish or so, we passed the leaders that went to their first pit. And by that time, I knew that we had 7 laps to go with bad tires before we could pit again.
And when we had 2 more laps to our pit stop, at lap 21 (total) we got cought up by Wardez and C-Falcon89. I knew that they had pretty fresh tires, so my goal was to just slow them down as much as possible. I managed (with a bit of help from a few GT300's to stay ahead of Wardez all the way to me and Remy_K's pit stop.
We then pulled out and started to pull fast laps again. Pretty much identical times as during our 2nd stint.
And by lap 30 (7 lap later) when our tires was stil in good shape, we passed the entire field while they were in the pits. And by the looks of it at that time, I thought we had a big enough gap to get a 1-2 for team XANAVI. But RedReevos wanted something else. We kept him behind us for about 3-4 laps, but by lap 34-35 I noticed that he gained on us and I was really worried. I really needed the points here. And around lap 39 he was up our rears. I noticed that Remy_K had big trouble, and when RedReevos passed him and me on the bid straight I had to leave Remy_K. Afetr all, he should finish 4th was my thoughts, since I knew he wanted to get rid of some ballast. So I gave it my all to try and stick to RedReevos, and perhaps just slip past him on the straight. But my tires was almost completely done after my long 3rd stint together with Remy_K, so I had no chance. I just made sure to not do any major mistakes and bring home 2nd.
Remy_K finished 4th, and can now, finally, remove some of the heavy load.
All in all, a good strategy from us, but I overestimated the time the guys in the pack should loose. Part because they were only 4 cars instead of 5 I guess.
I'm also a bit dissapointed with a few smaller mistakes that I did, that cost us about 5 seconds over the entire race. And if I add those 5 seconds to the seconds we lost trying to pass some of the GT300's, I had a huge shot at the number 1 spot. My distance to RedReevos was only 4 seconds when we crossed the line.
In this championship, the margin for error is... small, to say the least..
A huge step up from last round in all areas for me, and for the group as a whole.
Well done!
And congratz to RedReevos, GTP_Aderrrm and SupraPhant0m for winning thei respective races.
👍 👍
I'm looking much forward to Suzuka!!
We were pushing ourselves around but since most of the D1 field had lots of ballast it was hard to get a good tow going. We didn't even break pole time xD.
