Blog A Day - Day 19: A Difficult Week...

Good morning.

As the old saying goes, “you win some and you lose some” and this week, it was certainly the latter. Three pieces of bad news in just as many days. Quite the end to the year.

To start off, this week I found out my neighbour is moving out - being pretty much the only one I saw or spoke to in any depth, yeah, it’s sad.

He’s moving closer to work - I have no idea who will be moving in or if anyone’s looking at the moment.

Then on race-day Wednesday, I booted up iRacing and as I sat on the grid for the first race of the season - and indeed new year - everyone around me dissapeared and I quickly found out I had been kicked from the session due to internet connection gremlins.

As I had started the race at that point, it counted as a “DNF” - and I was walloped with a -97 iRating loss, plummeting me back down to 1169 iRating. Nice.

There's something to work on for the new year.

On Wednesday morning, I awoke to being informed that my holiday request had been rejected due to so many of my colleagues being off.

That being said, the Christmas Holidays weren't totally off the cards, they would just be...different - a "hodgepodge" of holidays and days off - I'd have to work with these to try and see if and when I could see my family - and for how long.

In slightly more positive news, my oval career got off to a killer start!

iRacing - Oval

Earlier in the week, I was worried that my first oval race would be "overpopulated" - making it very difficult to race - but I should have been more concerned about the opposite. Having NO-ONE to race.

Come Thursday morning, I'd load up my very first oval race session...and it was just me.

It gave me half-an-hour to get used to everything - switching the car on, turning engine on, starting - and completing - my first oval lap and then increasing pace as time went on.

Here's how I progressed.

Lap 4: 0:18.364 (18.4 Sec.)

Lap 41: 0:17.773 (17.8 Sec.)

Time Found: 0.6 seconds - may not sound like much, but over a 18-second lap, that's massive.

To my utter surprise and delight, I was joined by one other competitor during the race - as two rookies, we had no idea of each-others pace nor skill-level but I lapped him twice.

By the end of it, despite the race being unofficial (iRating unaffected) - my safety rating went up by 0.10.

I started off at a safety-rating of 2.50, now I'm at 2.60.

A safety rating of 3.00 will get you promoted (to D-Class) at the end of the season

A safety rating of 4.00 will get you promoted instantly.

So, I'm 0.10 closer than I was - and with another strong result next week - I'll be yet closer still.

Next up? USA International Speedway!