WOW! What a return race it was for me!
I feared being completely off the pace, having not been behind the wheel for the past 4 months, but was surprised at what I managed to achieve. Not to mention that I had great fun! It was just like old times, only with a lot of new faces which was fantastic to see.
My race was essentially one long battle from start to finish. My fight with
@Marius Neverauskas was brilliantly exciting; Marius, in his Porsche, and me in the F458, were almost nose to tail for large parts of the race. Whilst he would pull away in the first and third sectors, I would reclose the gap in the middle sector, resulting in a real ebb and flow battle for position.
@Joao Fernandes, with his blinding pace, was quick to join the party, and we had a fantastic three-way skirmish on our hands. As they began to pull away, after I made some mistakes under braking due to a misconfigured brake-bias, I found myself in a fight with fellow veteran
@Stefan Woudenberg which was shaping up quite nicely before he inexplicably lost all power and was out of the race. Fortunately, after making my way through some traffic, I begun to make some headway and was soon back in a scrap for 5th with Joao and Marius - I'm not sure if you were struggling with tyres, but it appeared as though you were low on grip. Nonetheless, the battle continued, until Joao and I had a coming together when we decided it would be a good idea to go through Eau Rouge two wide; apologies for this mate, it was completely my fault - you were in my blind spot, so I couldn't see where you were, and ended up accidentally squeezing you in a little. Fortunately the incident wasn't serious - just a slide across the track - and we were both able to resume. Joao then pulled away again, leaving Marius and I to battle it out until the end for 6th and 7th.
At this point I would also like to apologise to Marius, firstly for the little incident at Campus where we had a slight coming together, and also for the scare into the Bus Stop chicane a lap or two before the end of the race. With the latter I tried to be brave on the brakes, but unfortunately I locked up on the marbles and was sent in to a spin. I don't believe there was any contact, but I'm sorry if there was.
All in all it was a successful race, in spite of the minor incidents and not managing to overtake Marius.
Last night's fight is probably the closest and the best that I have ever had in all of the years I've been sim-racing.
Thanks to all of you who took part! To those we lost during the course of the race, it was a shame, and hopefully you'll be back again for more next time.
I would also like to thank all of you who were on TS last night - Stefan,
@Tal,
@Yuri,
@quicksilver384, and the rest (sorry, I didn't get all of your names, so apologies if I've missed you out) - for the advice, and most importantly the banter!
It was great to be back again. I had forgotten what I was missing, but the desire has returned! So I shall hopefully see you all again next week for some more racing!