Oh boy, I figured I wouldnāt do too well in this format. But I was rather pleasantly surprised with my spevsi attempt only a few seconds behind my previous personal best, no big crashes, I think I went into the wall at the first segment of square turns which almost always happens. I felt like I held out well in the mountain roads, even took those long wide 2 turns with some confidence.
Heading into Monaco I made my first big mistake, from previous experience there I changed my gear ratios to be a fair bit shorter than standard. Turned out great for Col de turini and I absolutely crushed it, in fact I beat my previous best with 12s and even that was with a few wall scratches and coming in too hot in the first pinhead turn again, as usual. : )
I knew Oberstein would screw me though, just not by how much. Started out of course being stuck with those shorter gear ratios and this time the max speed penalty was going to be a problem. I managed to crash not once, or twice but three times. First time tossed into the audience for an instant reset and 15s penalty a few turns after the be brave corner. Then I hit a rock in the left 3(?) bad camber space a little after that and having misjudged the hairpin around hay bales on my previous run and stopped far too early I tried to do better, judged it all wrong and found myself stalled and spun out on the far side of the corner.
I had a 4th placement going into Oberstein, I think if I didnāt lose more than 10s off my personal best I had a chance at taking 3rd from @doomy. I figured that would be unlikely but it could be possible. Instead Iām now 5th 15s behind @m00.
Well this was nerve wrecking but fun, certainly not my strong side and Iām going to have to do some research into event setup for future events.
Thereās still 2 days to make an attempt for this week. @DontBeSilly and @Strifeborne if you intend to try please be advised that you need to join the league and for me to accept your application before you can make your attempt So please do not try to join at the last minute even if you still want to wait to do your runs. Anyone else who wants to join is of course also welcome.
The link again just for your convenience.
Now Iād like to talk a little about format and solicit thoughts and ideas from the rest of you. The way I structured this thing from the start was with the goal of fostering competitiveness and the strive to improve yourself by having something to compare to. I do not feel that this weekās league event quite fulfilled that, evident by how quiet this thread has been this week. We have not had the back and forth for the top placement or the rowdy but steady climb of us on the bottom half.
The reason I chose to start each week on Saturday morning was because I figured some people would only really have a few hours available to them on the weekends. Events tend to be more lively at the start so this would allow them to be there while the first entries to populate the tables started coming in and be part of the early activity. We could instead start things off on Monday, but I fear that weād then have a mostly dead thread and inactive score board for most of the week with a last scramble of activity as everyone finally have some time at the end of the run.
Another option is to make this more of a bi-weekly thing and start a run on Saturday morning, just like now, but run each event for a full week plus a second weekend. We would then take 5 days off until the next weekend and not start another event until then.
Iād love to hear your thoughts on both race and time format going forward. Did you prefer the league setup of several tracks at once or do you enjoy spending time practicing a single track at a time?
Of course one does not necessarily exclude the other, we could possibly run two events side by side. Setting up a league with weekly events isnāt much work, just gotta figure the setup out first so we know what weāll get.
Let me know how youāve enjoyed these past 4 weeks and if thereās anyone here whoāve not participated yet but might want to, what can we do to make your participation possible?