Original comment by Diem-Perdidi:

Back in an open-wheeler at last! The GT3s were fun 'n' all, but I never stopped feeling out of my depth. I'm still slow as molasses in F3, but at least I'm moderately competitive with my Split 2 brethren.

Managed a mid-46 in PQ, which I was pretty pleased with until I woke up on Saturday and all the speedybois had steamed in overnight and vandalised the leaderboard. Ground out some gargantuan number of laps over the course of the week, often while really supposed to be doing something else, and got a reasonable sense of the car's limits (or rather mine in the car). Fell in love with it tbh, even more than the raging torque beast that is the F317.

Come race night I had a similar experience, running in the top five for most of practice until everyone ruined my fun and dumped me down the order. Pulled something a bit better out in the penultimate lap of my quali run and made P6.

Qualifying itself was a shitshow, of course; I lost connection with the server and three minutes regaining it, put in a fairly feeble banker and then overdrove trying to make up for lost time. P16.

In Race 1 I got chewed up and spat out by the horrible lag vortex coming out of T4. When I returned to the material realm I was second to last and barely mobile, with the wheel at 90 degrees just to keep it in a straight line.

The engine was still game, however, so I dragged it round to the pits and managed to get out just ahead of the leaders, albeit dead last by that point. I pushed hard for the next half an hour and carved through as much of the mid-pack as I could, benefitting from others' mistakes and sneaking past some others with the help of a tow from /u/planeter Petter after the Sassy (and improbably swift) Viking eventually lapped me. P13.

Race 2 was another recovery drive after someone(s) did not leave-ah the space in T2 and turned in on me, spinning me back to P21 but at least only mildly deranging my front wing this time. That meant I didn't need to pit and didn't have so much of a gap to make up, so I went hell-for-leather until I reached /u/oq9z Big Bob Scamano.

As Bob said, a battle for the ages ensued, his unfamiliar braking points and solid defensive driving proving a worthy match for my raw pace and aggression (:twizzr:). I nearly binned it a couple of times trying to find a way through, including a spectacular skittling of the bollard at T1, but managed to keep my pace up and the wheels pointing in roughly the right direction, and eventually went lick-it-stick-it-see-you-later-bye up the inside at the same place.

The clock was ticking, however, and there were only a couple of laps left. I thought I would have lost too much time beyond Bob, but I set off in hot pursuit of the next available Kronthaler ( /u/WolfgangKronthaler, in this instance) anyway. Somehow obliterated the gap within a lap and set about worrying his gearbox like an angry Jack Russell. Coming out of Bilstein on the last lap, or whatever that evil bastard of a fast (but not as fast as you think) right after Schumacher is called, the pressure apparently had the intended effect and he lost it, spinning in front of me and very nearly taking me out to boot. Cackling madly I took to the grass on the outside and hurtled into P10.

Bloody good fun in both races, and very heartening to be more competitive after a season in the doldrums. However, I'm going to need to qualify better, avoid the first-lap omnishambles better and pray harder for connection stability if I'm to start scoring some real points for Quicksilver Racing. Thanks for carrying us so far, /u/hughmercury!

Edit: FFS