It's done. Again in one sitting, which seems a bad idea on this rally as the anticipation starts to wear. Despite no punctures, I'm disappointed by my too many mistakes -- specially on the rally I was most looking forward to!
After resisting the danger of a time trial run on S1, ended spinning on night stages while (sillily) fighting for 2nd place with hrmstealth and kiedry. This made me fall back in both S4 and S5, letting hrmstealth's Stratos flee by 33s.
After the 5th stage, bluespearman's mean green lead and kiedry took a break out of timetables, so I tried to chase hrmstealth's Stratos new leading still on softs. Slowly and steadily in the last rain stages, the 33s gap was reduced to 23-24s by stage 9-10.
By the 11th stage, the final choice of softs bit me in the, erm, middle-rear. I put too much hope on reduced wear in the wet stage + the short nature of the "long" stages. Then started to struggle with grip by mid-stage 11, and lost all time recovered by the second half. Two spins set me back +13s by the end, failing to capitalize on the lead's early stage small mistake.
Facing S12, I was still comfortably away from larst's recovery, but had to further slow the pace to avoid punctures, as an ugly accident+reset+tyre change could quickly deny that -- any hope was lost to catch the NZ Stratos. S12 went without ugly crashes or spins, but a lot of hickups as I was starting to go too wide everywhere and failing to countersteer my way out of trouble. Lost 4 extra seconds to the temporary lead, finally setting me 42s behind.
Again, thanks to all involved, and specially the brave souls that set their times early.
