NASRS Season 16 Race 5 (Misano)

Race five of NASRS season 16 was at Misasno for the night race. I was looking to get some confidence back after a pretty horrible race last week at COTA. I was able to spend a little time on the community practice server and was seeing that I was off the pace a bit from the top guys so figured a top five finish would probably be the best I could hope for.

I qualified in P5, but was just barely in front of P6, who’s undeniably a faster driver than me. So I was pretty sure I would be under a lot of pressure at the start and would most likely get overtaken. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. But, we had a nice wheel-to-wheel battle for the first few turns of the race so that was fun.

You can get a significant time advantage by using all of the track at Misano, but you need to watch out for track cuts. If you get more than 3 warnings, it’s a drive-through penalty, which is basically race over. Unfortunately, I got a warning in lap two and another in lap three. There was almost 60 minutes left in the race at that point so I really needed to get a bit more conservative on my driving.

I settled into P6 and basically just ran laps till I needed to take the mandatory pit stop about halfway through the race. I over-shot my pit box and had to reverse, which cost me a few seconds, but otherwise I had an OK stop. I came out of that about four seconds behind P5. I managed to whittle that down over the remaining laps and caught up to him with about five laps left in the race. We had a really nice battle, but I just didn’t have enough pace to make a clean overtake so I ended up in P6.

The five drivers who finished ahead of me are the fastest drivers in the Wednesday split so I again finished about where I should have. I sometimes get lucky with others having accidents and or making mistakes and can make up a few places that way. But when that doesn’t happen, I’m most likely going to end up around P6 or so.

All in all I was pretty happy with how I raced and how things ended up. Sure, I wish I had a bit more pace, but given how much practice I put in this week (not a lot) and how good the other drivers are (very), I’m OK with the result.

We’re at Mount Panorama next week for the last race of the season. It’s a very unique track that has an incredibly scary and dangerous middle sector that can end your race in a heartbeat. It’ll be a nice challenge to see if I can survive without putting the Lambo into the wall. I’m guessing I’ll be a bit off pace again, but am hoping consistent, clean laps will help out results-wise.

Week 5 final results (Misano)

• Qualifying: P5/16
• Race: P6/16

Here are a few highlights from the race