Assetto Corsa Comp Round 5 Bathurst

What a race! After my 2nd place finish last time out I was expecting a world of hurt just finishing cleanly, let alone finishing well from so deep in the field - I couldn't believe my luck when loads of our missing drivers turned out to be in front of me on the grid

Starting 6th was a great boon, although there seemed to be a considerable amount of confusion ahead about the start procedure - so by the line I was now behind Gavino (who was clearly doing what the app said) because the 2 cars ahead of me were out of place and below speed as we came to the start.
I managed a better start than the car infront as when it was obvious they were going slow I dropped back enough to then get upto the correct speed for when the lights changed. The car to my left had also had a clean start so we ended up 3 wide into T1, slightly scary but everyone drove cleanly so it worked out.
That put me on Janne's left as we entered Mountain straight and with a slight speed advantage so I chose to stay there.
As I don't mind cars moving around under me I generally have extra pace on the opening laps, so as I have successfully passed through Quarry bend before and trusted Janne I went for an outside pass. This didn't fully work in the corner but gave me the inside line into The Cutting - anyone who watches the V8's will know that it is impossible to pass on the outside through there so this then allowed me to take the spot from him cleanly.

Then I found myself on Gavino's tail, the decision of the VDA guys to fight each other worked well for me as the fight between Matteo and Gavino made it easy for me to catch them - on around lap 3 a passing attempt didn't work and left Gavino open - so I pounced and took 4th from him on the S/F straight.
A few laps of alternately defending from Gavino while simultaneously attacking Matteo eventually ended when Matteo had a traction issue through the Dipper and slid off towards the left hand wall, I already had a slightly better exit line so floored it and went right.
While I made it through cleanly Gavino wasn't so lucky and was collected by Matteo as he re-bounded from the concrete.

That gave me a 3.5 second gap back to Gavino and only a second or 2 to Simon and Simone, I knew I had the pace to catch them - it was just the business of passing that looked to be hard here.
Luckily for me Simone had a fishtail moment out of Hell corner which also held up Simon slightly, that was enough that I could cleanly pass on the run up the mountain before even reaching Quarry.

From there it was a matter of pushing hard enough to keep Gavino static behind me (Practice showed our race laptimes were likely to be very close - so my lead was enough I considered winning posible if I made no big mistakes by this point).
My only error in the entire race was a love tap to Stefan's car when lapping him at the top of the mountain - I'm not sure if you were lifting to try and let me pass or if you just didn't have a setup that could accelerate early from that point, either way that bump was my fault so sorry about that

I had a play through the replay and must say Bathurst is very photogenic in the replays, even if the depth of field options suck a bit Vs AC when trying to do shots of the entire grid :
https://postimg.cc/gallery/hGQ2ZGL

Thumbnails aren't working for some reason - sorry about that

 

Seems like there was a lot off action in the race. Sorry to have to abandon a pole position they don’t come often.
But all for a good course, and it seem’s like I will be back sooner than I thought.