Finally Catching Up With Life...

Good morning!

After a week of writing 5 different blogs covering the best part of a month, I am overjoyed to finally announce that we - or at least, I am on the final week of "catch-up" blogs, and should soon be able to "report live" again.

Tuesday 14th June

On Tuesday, iRacing members woke up to a brand new season of iRacing - new cars, new tracks, new series and new adventures lay ahead.

Being the first day of the iRacing week, it's very common for this day to be a "miss" day for many - as nobody's had any practice.

For me in particular, I've been trying my best to always race on a Wednesday - I don't know why - it just became a bit of a habit and worked well for me.

Wednesday 15th June, 2022

That day, I had a tough choice to make: GT3 or GT4.

GT4 was during the day, but at the Circuit Gilles Villnerve (a tight and twisty street circuit), and GT3 was at Hockenheim....in the pitch black.

Hockenheim had all the luxuries that CGV didn't: run offs, gravel beds, wide straights...but in the end, after doing about 15 minutes of practice at Montreal, Canada - I realised a very important thing: This GT4 series ran open setups, as opposed to the GT3 series which ran one fixed setup for all competitors.

I told myself that I had to stop running from my fears, and that I couldn't just run away every time a race I liked started/was held during the night, so I left Canada, and took a 15 minute flight to Germany (of course!)

The first week of the GT3 Challenge (at Hockenheim) was the only night-race that season - so even if I had gone for an experimental run in the GT4, I could have quite happily done the remainder of the season in GT3.

Anyway, the past is in the past.

After qualifying 13th (after a little bit of a shabby lap due to it being dark) - I had a pretty decent race, finishing in 8th with 4 incidents, pushing me up to 1221 iRating - not a massive amount, but certainly a good start to the season - and with the Glen 6 Hours that very weekend - I wasn't planning to stay at the number very long.

Unfortunately - for the third time in a row, I forgot to save the replay (it was also pitch black) - so, I remember very little, other than being very relieved when a car was near me (lighting up the track) - and it was bitter-sweet being overtaken, as I could use their car to see where the track went.

Thursday 16th June 2022

Thursday was a very, very long day.

Just the day before BeamNG.Drive had released a MAJOR new update including a new car - now, I don't know why - but my laptop's internet works perfectly fine and incredibly speedily, yet my computer's...isn't so fast (although I'm not on Windows 11 on that computer)

The computer itself is fine (as far as I'm aware), it's just loading internet-based stuff it struggles with.

Anyway, for the most part of the day, I was procrastinating, waiting for BeamNG.Drive to load this new update - playing all sorts of different games (on steam, iRacing/UI also suffers from my computers weird internet-dislike) - anyway, that evening, it's eventually loaded and I give it a go - and it's pretty darn decent (I wouldn't expect anything less!)

Admittedly, these past few days haven't been too interesting - I've been struggling a bit with stress and mental health, but I've been powering on through, I have the Watkins Glen 6 Hours later today (Saturday) so that will be a nice escape.

Since arriving on Monday, I haven't left the driveway, and have only really been outside to eat meals - but that's my choice and I'm fine with that.

I've got an ever-growing to-do list to tackle and day by day, I'm ticking off one item.

Friday 17th June, 2022

Friday was a busy day. It was the start of the Canadian Grand Prix Weekend, it was the 12th Birthday of "Airplanes" by B.O.B (one of the first songs I properly got into), the Isle Of Wight Festival (that I didn't have tickets for) and it was also the Weekend of the iRacing Glen 12 Hours - here's what I did for each.

Canadian Grand Prix: I usually only watch the race/qualifying highlights on YouTube

Isle Of Wight Festival: I tried different methods of watching the Isle Of Wight Festival online - but only one seemed to work reliably: Listening to it on absolute radio, unfortunately, I missed the slot that Lewis Capaldi was playing - but it should be on YouTube.

Glen 6 Hours: On Friday, I put in my first proper laps - also testing out some setups. Due to the time-zone of my team-mate, we had to slightly re-organise the time-slot of the race we were doing, so that it would suit the both of us. "Airplanes"'s 12th Birthday: Posted a link here and on my Facebook.

Saturday 18th June:

I woke up and wrote this blog. More to come later.