I wrote this now, so I don't forget what happened. Amazing finish
Also written on our forums.
Our race was interesting and enjoyable. It was decided that James would take the first and last stints. At the initial start, James had a good chance of getting into the top 10. But because of the failure of the Master Server, the race was restarted. Unfortunately he spun on lap 1 and dropped to 24th place. Not to worry, we had plenty of time. As he got to the first pitstop, he was in the top 10, but around 14th on on the track (I can't remember). Anyway, he pitted and I took over. I was driving slower than usual because I was so nervous. I was passed once, but was pretty happy. I was catching Timo at a fast rate but on the lap I would have passed him, I spun and caused big damage to my car. This was where the race started to go a little bit wrong.
Because of the damage, I needed to pit. But to make sure that james could make it to the end, I drove a couple more laps on the broken car. Unfortunately, we forgot about the 75% rule, assuming that we had already met the target. You're not allowed to drive for more than 2:15 in this league, which is 75% distance. I had driven for around 41 minutes which meant that when James finished, he would have driven 3 or 4 too many minutes and we would have been disqualified. We decided that James should pit with 7 mins to go, just to be sure. In the laps leading up to the pit stop, he was blocked by a back marker and we lost around 5 seconds over several laps. Once the stop was made and I was back in the car, the craziest last laps of my LFS career took place. I was passed by a few people as I exited the pits and was 17th place. As I came through turn 2, a car which was a lap down decided that this would be a good point to pass me. Only after he had passed me did I realise that he was a lap down. At the same time, I was being lapped and going through turn 4, the car lapping me made contact and pushed me into the gravel. This was frustrating mainly because this allowed the other XRR to pass us and meant one of my targets would be lost. However, there were some happy moments to come. With 2 laps to go, I was fighting with an FZR and swapping positions with him. On the final lap of the race, it looks like he realised he didn't have enough fuel, and started to slow. I initially hit him up the rear because he was travelling so slowly. It was after I passed him that James noticed that Laprovotte was very slow ahead of me, and that I had made 10 seconds on him in a single lap. Coming into the final corner, he was very wide and I stuck my car into the gap, getting totally sideways on tyres that wouldn't last another lap because they were freezing cold. Amazingly, I got alongside and used the XRR's grunt to beat him by half a second. This was an amazing end to the race! It turns out that Laprovotte had had a puncture and was struggling. He was very unlucky to be caught by us where he did, because he was having a hard time turning left and that final corner is a very tricky left-hander.
So, we got 15th place. BUT, 3rd place was disqualifed and 1st place was the guest car of #low so we ended up 13th. This is a 5 place improvement on our previous race. Coming into Fern Bay, we are extremely confident of another top 15 finish. And, who knows, maybe even better.....
Big wall of text is big.