24hrs later to reflect on it and I'm furious, but less in the flailing-about-angrily kind of way and in a very cold and deliberate way.
Factually; the safety car came in too early. There was confusion and that left me without the information needed to make the right decision. The primary beneficiary of this was Mich, since he was able to pit and catch Cloud, but of course being as how there are all those examples of bias out there, people turned on cloud. The literally least deserving punching bag ever.
The fix is easy for this, though there's a huge drive in Strategy Group to over-analyse it since a good, thorough technical discussion is an excellent distraction for a person who might not want to address their shitty behaviour and bad sporting conduct.
Basically, it acts like the fig leaf does here for the prudes of an earlier time, covering up the shame:
See? Totally
not nude in the same way the "real" issue here is the safety car and not unpardonable rudeness.
The fix going forward is that I
could try and recruit a spectator who can act as race control does - yes, that might spawn peds, but the real worry is the mob going after them if a decision is made which might not be the most popular one is labelled as "bias".
In which case, I will just close the SC under the pits. It's just too hard to coordinate given the limits of the GTA engine and mechanics. Nice idea, but just outside what the game can do for us. That way we don't end up with the confusion and errors of yesterday.
The thing is, as angry and hurt as I am, the things I am today my time that I was not yesterday my time, are indignant and stubborn. I am still proud of the guys, but where a post yesterday celebrating our win would have felt as hollow and bitter as the victory tasted, today it needed to be said. Because it's just not right that cloud was a target.
Oh_Darn , it feels like Season 2 was an age ago, and since we stopped working together in S3 we've been trying to get back to this point. When I first found you in NoDo you were quick but the confidence piece wasn't there. The mental attitude was still suffering from setbacks. I needed to do a lot of work to keep your confidence up and to tune you out from the noise of other drivers.
Now at S6, you're a completely formed champion who has the mentality to write off a bad race as unavoidable and to find the positive lessons from it. I am proud of you, because this title was yours and yours alone; and you did everything necessary each race to bring those points home. It was my honour to work with you this season, and I'm really proud of your result. Nothing, including shots that are taken at me but hit you by mistake, can take that away. Well done, mate, you are the Season 6 champion.
cloudmcshort , when we put this together this was what I set as our expectations:
Season minimum 6 targets
Team: 2nd in constructors behind Iceman/Ovivo
Oh_Darn: 2nd in drivers
Cloudmcshort: 4th in drivers; 2+ race wins. Then, when you had a choice of teams ahead of you, I said this:
"
For me, I want the challenge of taking on the two best drivers we have. I want the Progen name to be up there as a great team. I want to out-think Ovivo, who is not just fast but very, very clever as a driver. I want to work with Darn again and see what we've learned from 2 seasons apart.
And I really want to see you get a win. And I will make it a goal for me for this season to give you everything you need to get there.
That's what we offer you. We want you here. We will support you as a team and we will be the best hope in the battles against Ovivo and Iceman. And we want you to get on the top step of the podium because you have the raw talent for it. "
This was back on 21 Feb 2017.
We had confidence, Darn and I. We knew each other well, we knew the competition would be stiff, and we knew there was only one guy we wanted in the second seat in the team. And, we knew you had the talent to win; it just needed to happen for you to see it.
Parson's Loop had issues. You finished down in P10, where we'd expected P5/P6 to be our likely maximum finishing position. Darn got up there, you didn't, and you were a bit down. I said to you on steam, "no, this is good because you start up the front later." It was the first part of our shift in your attitude.
If you remember, at Montreal the whole thing was "Cloud, you need to jump Obi at the start". That didn't happen, so we waited and watched and boxed you straight away, Darn a lap later.
The result? The undercut, and the first race win. By managing you away from the disappointment of Parsons and by getting you out past Obi's Banshee, into your first race win, we set you up to win 4 more times. You had the speed, you just needed the rest and I'm proud as fuck that we could be a part of it. Well done mate, so proud!!!
Whomever you work with in Season 7, they're getting a solid quantity in the racer who can deliver results time after time.
xoxoxo
