Wow that was quite something. The first race went okay, though I was really burning through those front tires. By the time the last lap came around, they weren't looking too flash though the track finally started to grip up a bit at the end.
Race two was very tough. Loaded up with fuel, the tires were really taking a huge beating - not being helped by me having a massive slide in T1, flat spotting all four of them. (Where is that FFB off switch when you need it?!). I nearly followed MMJ off into T1 shortly there after( mental note: don't get fixated on the car in front of you!) - so I passed MMJ who then quickly caught up with me again, really putting on the pressure! This caused me to run wide in T2 and I had to get off the throttle to prevent going off all together .. this probably took MMJ by surprise, who had his nose firmly up my gearbox at that point. Next thing I know, I see MMJ's car flying past - wrong side up - so that didn't go to plan I think?
Well before mid race, all tires were cooked so I decided to pit earlier than I wanted. While I didn't have a single untouched panel on my car by then, it wasn't driving too bad so I elected to skip all damage repairs - shaving precious seconds of my pit stop. This allowed me to jump ahead of Danman, getting into fifth. On fresh rubber, I did my best to catch up to Blackjack and Mike, who were 30 seconds ahead me. I managed to close the gap eventually to 14 seconds - seriously wondering if they were going to pit or not
... Unfortunately they didn't and the chase had really taken everything out of my tires so my last few laps were spend defending my position from Danman who was now catching up rapidly. That race shouldn't have been 3 laps longer or I wouldn't have been able to hold onto 5th place.
A second lesson learned was not to wear a warm jumper while racing. As it's freezing cold in Wellington, I was wearing some super thermal jacket thing which was okay during race 1 but half way through race 2, I was drenched in sweat and I was even tempted to just make another pit stop just to get that damn thing off! Pffff...
Anyway, what a fun race that was. This series is certainly shaping up to be something great.
Thanks for setting this up Matt and Riven for setting up the server and all!