4
I’ll keep this short and sweet. My first voyage in the van was awesome, I effectively just tossed everything in the back (including a full foam mattress!) and left. So much better than the VW hatch puzzle game.
Saturday morning was a bit stressful, I missed first practice getting tires put on, then missed second practice due to having the wrong sticker and trying to go out with the wrong group. This left me starting my day with GTL on tires that I had never tried before (switched to Dunlops). Holy hell, GTL is tiring. I think I barely made it through. I got lazy near the end and basically just dropped the clutch after downshifting into 11, and came the closest I ever have to highsiding as the rear came around and then hooked up. Slammed the boys onto my tank, but managed to recover and make it onto the straight without losing a position. At what turned out to be the end of the race, I was focused on drag racing either #192 Stephen Biehl or #521 Mohmed Kadam to the line (I cant remember who it was, just checked results). I missed the checkered flag and had no idea that was the end. I stayed on it and went balls-to-the-wall into one, and made a really stupid pass on an Expert who had NOT missed the checkers. Woops, my apologies to whomever that was.
GTL was really the last bit of drama I had for the weekend (aside from swerving around the T1 disaster in LWSB), just good racing all around after that. Did AM GTL, LWGP, LWSB, and LWSS. Had an awesome time dicing it up with #110 Dan Pletea, #240 Roland Fahnbulleh, #192 Stephen Biehl, and #514 Noel Guidone. Looking forward to some good racing with these guys, although it looks like we have a lot of work to do to catch the front pack. 110, 240, 192 and I finished relatively close in LWSS, and TrackIntel is telling me I had a 16 second gap to the next guy in front of me, #103 CEO. Yikes.
I finished in the back-middle of the pack every race, best lap of 1:28.X, about 2 seconds behind my PR. I wish I could blame the cold, but I really wasn’t holding back at all. I need to work on my starts, as I end up stuck in traffic until 4-6 and my outlaps are consistently in the 1:40s.
Overall, I’d say it was a successful weekend. My laptimes weren’t what I wanted, but I think pretty much everyone else would say the same (except the Novice that was running 22s on an SV, he should be happy). I didn’t crash, didn’t run anyone off the track (as far as I know), and had a damn good time annoying my garagemates with constant anxiety-induced babble about my impending death-by-Dunlops (all said and done, I am actually quite happy with them).
It's good to be back, I can’t wait for round 2!
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Originally Posted by hondarider102
