Heat - 1961 Championship - 2

We played the second of our three Heat championship races the other day. This time it was the USA track. Here's the starting grid setup, in order of  the total points. Catherine's yellow car was right at the back, and I was just in front in 4th place.

Windy weather meant that we couldn't slipstream on the long back-straight, but there were a couple of advantageous track effects in play that would help offset this.

Both Catherine and I started well, and as we came into a pair of tight bends Catherine slipped into the lead.

Coming out of the bends I managed to get an epic lead after I accidentally went round a corner far too fast but had enough heat cards to pay for it. Unfortunately this meant I'd used up all of my heat cards, which wasn't something I'd planned to do. 

On the next bend I misjudged it again and spun out. This allowed everyone else to catch up but also put a lot more stress into my deck, making my car's movement even more unpredictable. I slipped into fourth place whilst the red bot car, who had been well in the rear on the first lap, now took the lead. Catherine was in last place at this stage.

And yet after we passed through the bends, Catherine managed to push ahead and picke dup a photo-finish second-place over black

I was pushed into fifth place. I'd just made up for spinning out on the earlier corner, and was heading for a deft passage of the final corner when having to play stress cards caught up with me and I got an unlucky one in four bad draw caused me to spin out. There's no way of recovering from that on the last corner, and I ended up using all of the heat I'd carefully saved up for my final burst to the finish-line*.

Anyway, the standings are:

1 - Red (bot) - 13 points
2= - Black (bot)- 10 points
2= - Green (bot) - 10 points
4 - Yellow - 7 points
5= - Silver (bot) - 5 points
5= - Blue - 5 points

Looks like I'm set to finish last, whilst Catherine could top the table if Red does badly in the next race and she can pull off a win. The next race is the very fast Italy course.

*My intent for a finish is to take the final corner in second gear with at least two heat cards available to do an acceleration up to fourth and a boost to cross the finish-line. It rarely works out that way.