Round 3 Results - Paul Ricard HTTT Twin Sprint

Rough round for me.

I didn't load enough fuel for Race 1, had to back the fuel down to #1 "safety car", short shift and lap at part throttle to make it to the end, plummeted from P2 on lap 9 to P11 (last running car) by the end. Checking the finishing time, I would have been better off pitting for fuel but probably not enough to finish higher up in the order. Losing the points hurts but missing out on a good race to the end, more so. I had a nice fight going with Brandon Smith (#900 CDC Evol R&D Bentley Continental) until I realized that I was low on fuel. He'd gain in some spots but I was able to keep enough of a margin on the back straight. One mistake by me, though, and I'd likely lose the position.

Race 2 I had a comfortable lead thanks to starting up front, started thinking about what I was going to say to the troops post race regarding the old and new forums and downshifted twice when I only wanted one and destroyed the engine. Less than 5 laps in...

Seeing that I had nothing for Dave Hutton (#316 Mercedes AMG) whom I believed would be in the 1:46s by the end of qualifying, my goal for Race 1 was P2 and simply to finish as high as possible in Race 2 without taking any significant risks.

It wasn't looking good in qualifying P2, P3 and a persistent P4 shown in my HUD until I realized late in the session that I was about 0.1 sec from leapfrogging to P2. That helped my focus and on the last lap, I was up a little over 0.4 sec over my previous best. I gave up a chunk of that in the last two corners but still up more than the 0.1 that I needed with time for one more lap. Or so I thought, the checkered flag was displayed and the standings showed that Brandon had bested his time to keep P2. I am certain that during the lap, I saw that there was enough time to cross start/finish so that I would have time to finish the current lap and start another but maybe my math was off. I was clearly off throughout the race program so yeah probably fucked that up, too.