Finally some time to write few thoughts about the race.
It's been a while since last time I did a quali for an endu race and this one was a huge fun. After managing a really good lap of .31 I was shooting for that .1x or so as I thought that'd be enough for pole, but unfortunately I hit another .31 and couple more of .3x, since every mistake was really costly on this track. Car was really great with high wings and R2's, so we transferred wings into the race as well.
The initial start went really great, but Engel just slid before me which gave a chance to CoRe guy to sling past me into T2. By the back straight I was hoping for the draft to get my place back, but instead CoRe guy just pulled away with Engels sleepstream and by the last corner a green beast appeared in my mirrors mowing everything before him. I'd manage to resist for lap and a half, but significantly less fuel helped Joku bigtime and to cock it off he had to park right before me with his handbrake in the hairpin and trow me to clutches of ever coming spdo. Really shaken I would give the place and just hope for some release and regroup, but no such thing was in sight as the XRR monster top speed appears at my back and there I am at 7th wondering what the hell just happened and how did everyone get past a full car even before the end of the straight. I'd find answers after the race in fuel and wing amounts.
From then on I wouldn't give it up without a fight, perhaps I shouldn't have given the places so easily before either, but that's another story. I got myself in chase after Bert of TDRT, who also managed to get past in all the madness. In the meantime he managed to get past CoRe for 6th and again the CoRe guy would pull away from me on black-straight thanks to draft of man in front, but I would have a chance to make a move on TDRT on the following straight, but Bert closed the door at the very last moment and I'd have to lift off. As I would follow the battling pair Rose closed in on me and he would have to learn the hard way to leave more space between cars whilst passing. He nearly got into a huge accident as he just kept it flatout all over the grass... Talk about feeling of danger and sim racing, boy is having non of that. So I would close in on CoRe again before he finally head his slow ass to pits way too early. I wonder how different my race would have looked if T1 was different or if I wasn't so unlucky with loosing draft twice to him...
Anyway Ruben, the drifter used all this to close in on me and after quite a long follow and one shoot GT2 car from his side, he would eventually launch an attack thanks to another gt2 car in our way. He'd overtake me into the corner with a nice dive before the back-straight, but I got the place back immediately on the straight. He tucked in to the left behind me to try for another go, I would go right and then back to my original line making a defensive manover, which got him all confused and he followed me to the left, just clipping me slightly and spinning it out, because his right foot was just way too heavy. Thank heavens I was focused enough to slow down and not send him into oblivion after he kind of went roadblock style in front of me. xD
Finally some clear air laps and a chance to make the lost ground up. I earning two places over CoRe and PLZ thru the pits, before PLZ rolled it over, giving the car over in 6th to Piotr. Unfortunately spdo exited just in front of him and mitz would have brain fart devastating our race. Piotr tried few more times, but it's like mitz trew a curse on us sending Piotr down the grid again and what should have been podium ended up in 9th thanks to Gunzelmanns shortish waiting till the last moment to present us with GT2 car. We didn't protest on mitz in hope that he will learn from this race and that crash, as he is still very inexperienced. But if this happens again we certainly will have to make an official protest.
Other than that incident with dmt, racing was real top class. Most of the drivers very really unbelievably good under pressure, so good that silly things like more wings cost us this much.
Oh wow this turned out to be quite a novel. Good track I guess.
I just want to add, fantastic work on broadcast guys. Cars look amazing with these super high res skins, perhaps even better than some of the iRacing ones. Also commentary was very entertaining with non stop action. Keep it up.