Monza 385k

Well,
I Qualified second after finally connecting, After the first start aborted, we lined up again trying to reset the original qual order, while doing so I got rear ended, un-intentionally of course from a lag issue, ended up 6th, well after that it was time to clear the head and put the pedal down, my laps were respectable 44.5 to 45.3 and comfortably holding onto 3rd and comes the lazy spin, aarrgghh, and there goes Connor, well it took me 10 laps to catch back up to him and tailed him for 5 laps until I hit my lap pit number regardless of fuel left, well it turned out I had some left and that allowed for a shorter pit and that turned into getting me in front of Connor after the pit cycling was concluded and all I had to do is maintain my times and things will take care of themselves. The last 10 laps seemed like an eternity, but I am certainly glad I came home with the Win, great job to all the GT1 racers!!!

I can say that the Dunlops are now well tested :lol: ,both wets and slicks.. that's for sure :wink: . Turned out to be a very good tire on my taste , i have NEVER tormented tires like today and still they hold up 1 hour stints... absolutely pleased with 'em 8) . Rain tires specially were very good on long run and didn't have any major problems after the 1st lap coma on 2nd chicane... again :roll: .

Start was a bit messy and confusing , since almost every car seem to land on top of mine in grid placement phase :lol: and i was waiting that the situation would clear out a bit before moving , then it seem that everyone had disappeared and i even mentioned it in chat , but when i got into the back straight , i saw the other cars and almost got into my original place before the actual race start. Just now realized that i shouldn't have done that, i was prolly breaking some rule there sorry :oops: .

Dunno how i managed to mess that 2nd chicane again , just dropped the right side tires on the wet grass on braking and after some slips and slides i got it back to the track , but then it was too late to stop in time and deep into the gravel-trap i went :oops: ...

That wouldn't have been such a disaster otherwise , but the frakking GTR didn't count that lap and i was a lap behind everyone before 1st lap was over :lol: ..hahah how about that :twisted: ... Well , it was mentioned in forums earlier that that can happened in 2nd chicane if you go straight there, just didn't believe it can happened to me :P :roll: . Had so much speed thou , that barely got my car stopped before the wall behind the gravel-trap , so dunno if it would have even be possible to go back so long way , to find that frakking split time line.

There was more to come before 1st lap was over , i saw Tim's admin message after Parabolica exit , something about pits and staying in the car , so i started to slow down and almost went into the pits :shock: ... Somehow i had this huuuge delay on chat and Tim's message was prolly been written before we went into the warm-up lap , but somehow it appeared to me only after the 1st race lap almost completed ... 5 mins later :lol: . When i saw that the cars in front of me just kept on going , i thought that I'm not going to stop before i get an confirmation on that message and floor it again after almost stopping my car on pit entry line :P .

Well , figured what had happened after finishing the 1st lap and the pit-board said i was 1 LAP behind the next driver , i had missed the frakking split time line in 2nd chicane :evil: . Didn't throw in the towel yet , since i was hoping to go with only 1 stop and that hopefully would help me to get back some lost time. At least the car was working great and after some serious raging :mrgreen: i saw the 1st position car ahead of me and thought that I'm going to get back on the lead lap... bah , somewhere i had lost another lap but i just cant figure out where :shock: :o :?: .

But since i had come this far , i thought that ok...fine...so be it , at least i can beat the s*it out of these Dunlops and see what they're made off :mrgreen: . Continued the hopeless chase into the lead lap , but just 1 lap before halfway the rain stopped and it fit to my pit-stop strategy perfectly , had to do only one lap on dry with wets before my pit-stop and i really felt that I'm back into the game now.

Actually i was so excited about this new turn that I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE SLICKS before hurrying to hit the frakking ENTER button :lol: :evil: . As soon as i hit the key , i realized what i had done :shock: ... Shouted to the morons that i choose wrong tires , stop stop... i need slicks , but the pit-crew insisted me to take the new wets hahahah :evil: frakking idiots , whole team from driver to the tire-man :lol: .

Well , there i was with brand new WETS , heading out from the pits and cursing every living thing to hell :roll: , after only out-lap my tire temps were in 100C and back to the pits i went again. I swear i heard one of the crew member said to the other that ' i told you so' , while changing the tires to slicks :roll: :P .

Anyways , i was finally back on track with proper rubber and it was time to do some slick tire testing :) , again these Dunlops felt great and i could really go on the edge with them and sometimes a bit over too. I don't think i drove a single lap with 'normal' race-pace , every lap was like the devil itself was chasing me (or other way around :D ) and that gave me motivation to continue , car was just so great fun to drive that i couldn't gave up :twisted: .

Managed to get into the lead lap finally on some point of the 2nd stint and i think the 2nd place driver went into the pits on some point and i found myself from a 2nd place , with some 70 seconds gap on the leader or there about. Because tires were still working fine i kept on pushing and pushing , taking big risks anywhere i could. Gap narrowed down rapidly , but so were the remaining laps of the race and i think i would have needed about 10-15 mins more time to catch the leader , but the checkered flag got into way and i had to finally lift the throttle away from the floorboard :lol: .

Insane chase through the race and 2nd place is more than i ever would have thought , so despite all the crap that happened , i still had a good race and I'm really pleased that i didn't give up 8) .

Thanks for the fair fights and cautious drivers in lagging conditions , amazing where you can get through if everyone is co-operating a bit and taking care of each other , since pings were quite high sometimes. Saying that , i don't want to criticize anything , just that these things happens sometimes , I'm happy that everyone were cautious and we could race , even with somehow difficult conditions.

Congratulations to Finn for the win :mrgreen: and Barry for 3rd place...i actually thought that it was another-way around , but seeing everyone congratulating Finn here , i must have got it wrong in some point of the race (like everything else today :D ) :).

Thx for Tim about relentless efforts to get us a race tonight , even when the odds were looking very bad at some point. I rather race with some lag than not race at all :wink: 8) .

Cya on track....

edit: jeeez , i wrote a novel again :lol: ...

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Samuel