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[eh~AAssie]

LE6 round 8: eh vs SFO

After round 8 had been postponed one week, we were finally ready to go last Tuesday. At this point in the season, such delays really puts a blow to the motivation to keep the maps alive. Wity didn't have any time to train during the weekend, and I was still hangover from my ski 'n drink weekend in Hemsedal. But enough with the bad excuses

We started on desert, SFO with ikar, Riptor and Doubledor, eh with Gandos, t!m and me. Riptor took the first round in front of me and Gandos. t!m managed to finish 5th, so eh took the lead. The next round was also decided by the two last players, but this time it went in SFO's favour and it was 1-1. From this point on SFO started some good team performence, while eh drove more and more appaling, making stupid mistakes. Riptor and ikar often drove around 1.00.00. Not incredible times, but indeed high quality with regularity. I kept on crashing, partly because of strong opponents, partly because of low focus and partly because of wheel trouble. At 4-1 to SFO they were nice enough to let me restart the game (Thanks ). This fixed my technical problem and we started the rest of the map. I won the next three rounds closely followed by the SFOs, thus resluting in only one point to eh. In the last round I crashed early on, and SFO only had to cruise in to victory 7-2.

Next we went on to a classical map, which is one of the most technical maps thoughout LE. Doubledor substituted with Dridri, while eh continued with the same team. eh got off to a good start again, with Gandos leading the way in front of me. Gandos continued in the next round, and I followed closely untill I made an unforced error, cutting a corner too short. ikar, Dridri and Riptor rushed by to take the point. It's fair to say that all players crashed a lot during the next rounds, and the teams switched on taking the points till 3-3. In the rounds from this point I have to apologize to my team, because my amount of stupid, unfocused errors was incredibly high. It's one thing to crash on a difficult jump, it's another thing to crash in the easiest turn of the map And then you have the domino effect: When I keep performing below my normal level, I drag my team mates down with me. This also works the other way, in that when one player keeps playing very good, the other team members also start hightening their performence. So SFO started driving better, and eh worse. SFO won the map 7-4 or 7-3 (don't remember).

Last it was rally time. Here Tututte and Vp joined ikar, and Wity took t!m's spot. ikar won the first round in a high 2.19 in front of Tututte and me. In the next round Tututte did a superb 2.18 with ikar and Vp closely behind. I jumped around in some tunnels and stuff and finished last. Then ikar won in 2.20 followed by his team mates, while I bounced into another time in the 2.30s eh was demotivated on this map, while SFO performed at an incredibly high level both individualy and as a team. Their display on this map is probably the best I've ever seen in all my matches! SFO took another 1-2-3 in the fourth round. In the last round I decided it was time to show that I wasn't a complete doof, and I tried to focus. It was an intense fight with Tututte, ikar and me. Passing two laps we were all on top of each other, and in the hard left turn early on the map we all made mistakes. Fortunately mine was a little smaller and I got a lead that I was able to hold to the finish and win a few tenths in front of ikar and Tututte in 1.19. Vp was not far behind either so SFO got another point to win 5-0. Gandos and Wity also did ok. But when in most other matches 2.23s would be more than enough, against this SFO performence they had no chance.

A huge GG to SFO. They are really worthy winners of LE6. It's too bad that my team played its worst match this season and I was at my worst since LE4. But even if we had been at our very best, I still think SFO would have won on Tuesday. Allthough the snow map could have been really close

AAssie