RDRC S9 Round 2 - Rally Sweden (15th February - 21st February 2021)

Finished the rally albeit with a damaged engine again but wasn't a crawl like in Monte Carlo, a few rolls and a landing on my side plus snow blindness in the early stages that just blurs the road and the snow into one lol were my major incidents, puncture near end of 3rd stage but could carry on without changing. Escort Cosssie is feeling really sluggish for me, heck some of the lower class cars feel more more powerful . Not gonna score but good too reach the end. Them snowbanks made me take it easier than i should have.
 
Finally got around to starting Sweden today.
I was off to a relatively slow start, dropping back 27seconds in the short first stage, position 12(of 19 starters). I knew i was not going to be in the fight for the podium in the Renault turbo but this result hurt my confidence. I did pick up the pace though, position 6 at first service. Only 2 minutes worth of body damage was a win in my book. The rear end of that Renault does not like to stay behind the front.
After 1st service, the fight for 5th position was tight, around 6 people only seconds apart. But a spin at the night stage had me drop to 9th. 5th was gone though. At 2nd service, just a couple minutes of damage. So i decided to just replace the dampners. They had a rough time in those 8 stages.
I had a much better time on the Hamra stage in the daylight. Back to 7th, 0.1sec behind 6th. But 8-9-10th where only up to 20 sec behind. 6th had an issue on the next stage so i was gifted that position. Even after i barrel rolled the car, i landed on the wheels and continued on like nothing happened. "Bluespearman" behind me closed up to 2.1sec ("Haris" in the cosworth was +5.3s). On Stage 11, Haris jumped us both, going to 6th, 2sec in front. Bluespearman closed 0.4 sec to me.
On the Special stage, "Haris" had some issues and dropped behind us again to 9th. He got jumped by "Hrmstealth" in the Stratos, who had been slowly gaining on all of us, but in the end, came short 1.5sec of "bluespearman" in 7th. I had a good stage, but had 6th stage time, 0.1 sec slower than the stratos of "Hrmstealth" and i think? missing out on special stage points. But i ended up in 6th in class.
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Oh by the way, i dodged the bullet. Racenet error after stage 9, couldn't continue to the next stage. But i got into the leaderboard. I checked the clubs website and my time was there, so i eventually alt f4'd and i got to keep the stage time! Was it luck? Did reconnecting my ethernet cable help idunno, but i got all my times in. Barrel rolled from frustration in stage 9 because i thought my rally was over...
 
I was right in the middle of doing the event and it forced me to stop cause the event ended. I'm so pissed off I was sitting 23rd in class going into stage 8.
Yeah, racenet is pretty ruthless like that. Not only do you have to be done driving at the deadline time, you also have to jump to the next menu for the times to be registeted and saved to the leaderboard.
 
Provisional Results are out! You can find them here!

As always, we have some unknown RaceNet-names, they will be listed in this post.
Drivers on list list, have until Wednesday 24th February 01:10 UTC to notify us about names to be included in final results. Names with an asterix was also unknown in the previous events and will be removed from RaceNet leagues if the driver(s) notify us(as we now have a way to find them on RaceNet as well, thus no removal between Monte and Sweden).

Code:
Unrecognized RaceNet: blade31887
Unrecognized RaceNet: FinnKKristiansen*
Unrecognized RaceNet: GilOM*
Unrecognized RaceNet: JaimeGamer*
Unrecognized RaceNet: Jose_Guilherme31
Unrecognized RaceNet: Mário Castro*
Unrecognized RaceNet: Matt19
Unrecognized RaceNet: Nicklas.Hansson
Unrecognized RaceNet: Racer_Dead2*
Unrecognized RaceNet: RaidoMartin1996
Unrecognized RaceNet: rallyman42*
Unrecognized RaceNet: Ronny2000ras*
Unrecognized RaceNet: Ru432
Unrecognized RaceNet: skoti-a* **
Unrecognized RaceNet: skoti-a* **
Unrecognized RaceNet: SpeedSensei
Unrecognized RaceNet: Szeregowy_89**
Unrecognized RaceNet: Szeregowy_89**
Unrecognized RaceNet: XONDER

* Will be removed if not fixed/entered in the championship
** Will be DQ'd anyway due to participating in more than one class
 
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Yeah, racenet is pretty ruthless like that. Not only do you have to be done driving at the deadline time, you also have to jump to the next menu for the times to be registeted and saved to the leaderboard.
Yeah it's pretty lame but the worst part is I don't even get a DNF it basically just DSQ's me so I don't get a final total time.
 
yep, both Müllers in the top ten, epic! my team mate and me get price for closest bond: we are again only separated by one other player but we swapped positions as compared to Monte:

39TOMAS R.FORD ESCORT RS COSWORTH07:42.098+01:19.08001:13:07.001+13:24.795
41EVONGLANLANCIA DELTA HF INTEGRALE08:34.962+02:11.94401:16:24.810+16:42.604
 
Well ... I finished. Got my share of practice runs in on Saturday and even did a few tweaks to the suspension of the Cossie which made it a bit more stable.

Started SS1 and did alright, having decided to bring the car all the way to the finish rather than park it in a tree. Then there was a bit of trouble connecting to Racenet ... so I feared the worst. It did save my stage time, though, and after a reboot of everything electic in the house, connection was back. Phew!

It did however affect my performance on the following stages. SS2 saw me shooting over a crest and continuing through a snowbank into a tree in the second sector. Punctured left front tyre - well done mr. Cautious! I decided to complete the stage with the flat tyre and make my co-driver change it before SS3. After all, it was his fault we hit that tree.

Five stages without any service can be quite tough on a car. Especially piloted by me. Nearing the end of SS4 (which went alright btw) the engine temperature started rising, so I started short shifting. Halfway through SS5 the engine light came on, but I managed to complete the stage and make it to the service area. I did receive a few rough words from the crew, but I can't remember the exact wording, as I was a bit occupied opening the pack of chocolate bars laying on the table.

The guys did some emergency repairs to the engine, radiator and other stuff, but as they said - "you may lack a bit of power after being so brutal to every bit of the car..." They were right.

The evening segment went surprisingly well for me. I had almost no scary moments whilst still being only 5-10 seconds slower than the leader on every section of the stages (...). Great. This meant that I could actually mend more parts on the car as we went into the final leg of the rally. My strategy would be to keep it safe rather than fast on the final four stages as they were all long, and I knew that other drivers would eventually f*** up and retire.

And I was careful. Until the penultimate stage, at least. I felt FAST after the first third of SS11, actually managing the tricky and narrow section quite well (after my standards), so I thought it would be no problem to push just a bit more on the fast section through the villages.

Yeah. After the first bridge, I went a bit too far to the left, came through the snow bank and tipped over on the side of the car. A 13 second penalty for having a strange looking Swedish guy pulling the car back on its wheels sucked. The time lost by crashing out on the absolutely fastest piece of the stage? Devastating. Suffering yet another puncture after the off? Well at least it wasn't the rear tyre. Or, wait. It was.

So. SS12. The final push for the finish. Spare tyre mounted and four cans of Red Bull chucked into the throat of my useless co-driver (who, of course, was also responsible for the SS11 misery because things), what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing! Almost. Mentally, I knew that I would be fighting very hard with a broken car to have a shot at a points finish, so i just tried getting the car to the finish. Which I did.

Sweden was tough. And, if I am to believe what my crew is telling me, it will be hard work to bring the car back to running condition before Argentina. Which also looks to be an ugly m... of a rally. We'll see if the car (and driver) will be ready for the challenge...
 
The Müllers are close, you are close with your teammate. The Missed Apex guys are close. I wonder if it's a German thing? :p

Of course! Finishing in close vicinity of each other is actually something we discuss pre-rally, this is precise german engineering of our results! It does certainly not have something to do with randomness. :D
 
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I really shuld start meditating before racing or something, can't help my mind wandering :D.

So this happens to others, good to know. :D I struggle a lot with focus when rallying. In circuit racing, I am the guy who chats the most - can't help it :whistling: - but can keep focused even when talking or when drivers are around. Once the circuit layout is in my head, all good. It is especially true during endurance races when you have done like 6 stints already and can do one lap after another without thinking about it.

But in rallying, even though I don't know the stages (just little bits here and there), I easily start thinking about other stuff and when I realize it, half the stage has gone by. I still manage to drive, but of course this leads to mistakes. Turning left when it is right, going flat out on a 3 because I think it is a 6, and so on. I really can't find a way to really focus for the whole stage, even the short ones. :confused:
 
I struggle a lot with focus when rallying.
I'm so with you. try as i might there are always passages where i stop listening to my virtual co-driver and i always "wake up" regretting to have done so ....
Actually i would love to do just one stage in real life with a real co-driver to see if that sort of solves the problem, which i think it should. cannot see a real life driver having that problem.
 
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