[Russell Sobie]

It's a new set of series, and I thought I'd stay up late to participate in the first Audi TT Cup. A good hour of practice before hand let me grab pole position during qualifying! Woohoo! First pole on SRS!

And then lap one happened.

1. Someone hit the brakes a good 5 car lengths late on the INSIDE, and then thought cutting the corner would slow himself down. I get T boned and drop to 3rd place.
   
2. A few corners later, and someone gives me a PIT maneuver trying to follow someone that I had to let passed on a fairly aggressive attack. I've already been T boned, so now I'm timid as hell and trying to avoid everything.
   
3. Because of the above, I spend the next few faster corners having to let people going way faster than me pass by.
   

In the span of 1 minute and 20 seconds into the first lap, I have dropped to LAST PLACE from pole. 

Look, if you had a shit qualifying round and are looking at my pole time and thinking "sheesh, I'm way faster than pole AND everyone in front of me!" then I can understand your impatience at trying to safely pass everyone over a span of 20 minutes and wanting to get as many positions on the first lap.

But you gotta fight that urge. It isn't fair to me, nor anyone else that is going to get taken out in the carnage you are creating by racing as hard as possible in the first two minutes of a 20 minute race.

I know the frustration... because I LITERALLY had the best lap time this evening, and then had to spend 19 minutes trying to claw my way passed everyone in the field. And had the race been more like 2 hours, I might have eventually done it! Sadly 19 minutes was only long enough to pass 3 people. 

And if you are looking at your qualifying time and comparing it to everyone else in front of you on the grid and thinking "wow, these guys are fast!" then you should go into lap one with the following goal: Don't ruin anyone's race, including your own. 

Don't pass anyone at all. Maintain your position by taking careful corners (especially if you are side by side with someone), keep clean lines into each corner until the grid stabilizes. Only THEN should you start racing people.

Do you really think you are going to pass 5 people that have qualifying times 2 seconds ahead of you and then proceed to defend your position for 20 minutes? That's not how things work in reality.

Read the first post. Watch the video. Watch Empty Box's video. Stop trying to pass people on lap one. That is all.

p.s. And then to cap it all off, I was right on the guy in front of me's bumper crossing the finish line and he thought it would be a good idea to just add one more incident point to my total by slamming on his brakes just after crossing.


I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!