I got struck by reality.
For the first time my times were in top 5, at the end of practice it wasn't unusual for me to have times 0.1-0.2s better than current best lap set by Ivo or Patryk. Each time I lost everything in sector 3; there was always a slower car in front of me then, but to be honest I have yet to figure out a good way to tackle those last 2-3 corners. When Gary started lapping the circuit I was nowhere near him, but my pace surprised me quite a bit.
Q1: In Q I wasn't able to pull of a lap close to those in practice. Connection timeout nullified my a-bit-better lap. Didn't mind it, but the timeout itself got me concerned, as it turned out rightfully so.
R1: Started out nicely, was able to move up to P5 with healthy advantage over P6 and trailing on the bumper of P4. Was setting my mind to "calm down now fool" when a restart struck (hate those things). After the restart I failed to pass Toby Davis like before and now I got stuck behind him (it was EXTREMELY odd to be faster than Toby. It just destroyed my concentration
). In the first part of R1 Toby was considerably slower than me, but he was losing it all in a place where passing was very difficult. Also his lines were... different. Sliding all around the place, pushing hard, got carried away on the inside all the time. Unpassable one, I got angry with myself for landing behind Toby in "mere" P10
. I don't remember exactly where I was at the end of the race (a place behind Toby IIRC), but the connection problems struck me again and I lost a lap because of that (simply got disconnected). P19 because of that, bummer.
Q2: Lag again. When leaving the pits entering a track where there was no car except for the tiny silhouette on the horizon suddenly Toby (!) appeared on my bumper going furiously fast. I was adamant that he left the boxes right behind (cause there was no way he was the silhouette) and got angry again, because it looked like he wanted to race in Q. It turned out this was all caused by a lag (mine + his combined, disastrous result) and as I said after the race - sorry again for this fudge-up. My ISP will receive a phone call from me ASAP.
At least I quallified on P5
R2: Toby always starts flawlessly. I don't like it, cause he was again all over me
. I was determined to be in front of him as early as I could, but this time around he already figured out the way around the track and I wasn't quick enough to pull it off. After one of his passes I tried too hard to attack (in a nonsensical place. It was all caused by being poked around, which my pride couldn't bear) and nudged Toby into the gravel in sector 3. We had to let a bunch of cars through to be able to rejoin, which resulted in us landing on P14 and P15.
The upside of the situation was that we were able to catch and overtake a few cars (I finally got an opportunity to pass Toby along with one of them) and in the end we were back playing the "Toby wants to be in front. Badly." game. This time it wasn't as bad and apart from me having to catch the rear that changed into a pendulum once and some poking in the last turns of the last lap we managed to not push each other of the track. P9 and P10 respectively.
To sum it up: "Toby-ish" event. And now I know that it's really tight near the top. I liked racing last week with Lee more TBH. Less "passing at all costs", but this was hugely caused by the track which doesn't have many overtaking spots.