AAL F1GP Race 1

I had a very odd race... I qualified 4th and I thought I'd made an ok start until we reached the first chicane. This is where I decided to go through the sand trap instead of trying to force my way back onto the racing line. To make things worse I was checking to see if it was safe to rejoin the road and accidentally pressed the speed limiter, so when I did rejoin I wasn't accelerating (not used to the button layout on my new wheel). When I worked out that it was on I quickly disabled it and spun, but this wasn't helped by the taps from behind. So at this point I was in last place and I think at least 20 seconds behind the leader.

For the first few laps after the incident I was checking the car over and making sure I hadn't done any major damage. The car seemed to be ok and the tyres didn't look that bad so I started to push a bit harder as I was catching some of the back markers. The goal for the race at this point was just to make sure I finished and got some points.

Over the next 27 laps I slowly worked my way up to about 6th place. I could see I was gaining on PS13t who was on the tail of Shaun and they seemed to be slowing each other up a bit. Just before I pitted PS13t must have made a mistake and ended up only a second away from me. The only problem was that I had to pit a lap earlier than PS13t because my tyres were going off and making it hard to drive. Once we were back racing again I caught up to PS13t and managed to get passed when he made a mistake coming onto the banked section.

A few laps later, as I was pushing to catch Shaun who was 13 or so seconds ahead, I made a mistake and spun on the exit of the turn before the first split. This must have scared the crap out of PS13t, forcing him to take to the grass to avoid an accident (sorry about that). This spin killed any hope I had of catching Shaun (not that I really had any) and put me a few seconds behind PS13t. I now had to push harder than ever to catch PS13t.

After a few laps of crazy driving I managed to catch PS13t and then pass him which put me into 3rd. At this point Shaun had to pit again for fuel and soon after that he was disconnected. This was a shame because he deserved 2nd place and had been driving a fantastic race. So now all I had to do was drive clean and finish the race to take 2nd place. Although I did scared myself on the last lap as my tyres cooled off and I almost spun coming out of the hairpin (sorry again PS13t).

So that's was my race and I have to say I had a lot of fun driving it.