(Posted ages after the fact, but interesting as some well-known names were at the time making their début. You know the drill: this is a biased report form the perspective of the dragonstar team.)

The Dragonbourne came out of warp at the first waypoint almost at the same time as Scavanger and Takashi. Almost, however, meant slightly behind, so Kayleigh punched in the Gistii and threw herself at the asteroids. Unfortunately, she did it a little too literally. Swerving this way and that to avoid the worst of it, she still cringed when her beloved Firetail clipped an asteroid and then drew a gouge in a smaller rock.

She gritted her teeth, calling herself all kinds of stupid for losing time like that. She wasn’t the first to the can, but she’d be damned if she would let a rookie such as Takashi leave that place in the lead.

Race 18 of the League, in Kor-Azor, saw few of the DS racers line up, unexpectedly. I see I’m going to have to fire some people… ;P But the race was nevertheless interesting, with an unexpected challenge from Takashi and a first-timer’s persistence.

Preparations

Not many. Scav was getting the blue screen of death often before the race and just tried to fix that in the hour leading up to the race. I was having an issue or two with my connection, but was fortunate enough that it held through the race itself.

Taco, however, was nowhere to be seen and Nakatre was not responding to our calls, so it seemed there would only be two Dragonstar racers in this circuit.

The Race

Beside the DS racers we saw Takashi Kurosawa show up at the start line as well as first-time rookie Quintrala. After some pre-race guidelines and advice for the new girl on the League we finally set off.

I actually managed not to have a horrible start, for a change, and was toe-to-toe with Scavanger and Takashi on the dash for Waypoint 1. I’d be hard-pressed to say who was ahead at that point, but I could have sworn Takashi actually warped into Waypoint 1 ahead of me.

Despite sloppy navigation which made me bump into pretty much every single asteroid between the warp-in point and the can at Atarli, experience paid off and I actually left Waypoint 1 ahead of Takashi. Ahead of him, but not by much.

All through the first half of the race Takashi kept up with me, dropping very slowly behind until he was almost half a jump behind me, surprising both of us veterans in the DS team. Scavanger tried every trick in the book to overtake the rookie. At Waypoint 5 he finally got the chance to warp to me, instead of the Asteroid Belt itself and that gained him some precious seconds, but it still left him behind the rookie.

Waypoint 6’s warp-in point was 120kms form the can itself. Knowing I had a bit of a lead I didn’t bother going away from the can in order to then warp to it, trusting my Gistii to take me there fast enough anyway – if I’d been racing against Nakatre where every millisecond counts, I might have done differently. As it was, Scavanger did do it differently while Takashi sped directly to the can. That finally made the difference and Scavanger left Waypoint 6 ahead of the rookie at last.

The rest of my race was pretty much uneventful. I kept a bit of a lead over Scavanger and kept letting him know if and when he could warp to me so he might keep his lead over Takashi. Takashi, justice be made, put up a brave fight that had both racers and organisation quite impressed!

Toward the end, though, on a stretch of 4-5 jumps between waypoints we suddenly lost all sight of him. Although at first he suspected he’d lost time in such a stretch because we might have rigs while he had none, after-race chat revealed he had instead forgot to set his auto-pilot to shortest route, so he ended up going another way and doing a couple more jumps than we did. A pity. And a mistake I’m sure he won’t make ever again.

However, the most impressive story in the race was actually Quintrala’s. Without ever losing a bit of her good humour, the Gallente made her way through the circuit all alone at the back, taking her time and living through a few newbie mistakes, I’m sure. At Waypoint 4 (a nasty asteroid belt in Pananan) she lost her Executioner and also a costly Gistii A-type to belt rats.

Not willing to give up just then, she docked and quickly acquired a new frigate so she could continue. 4th place does guarantee some nice points and a race completed is also valuable for all the lessons learned. She went back, managed to recover some of her wreck and after some creative warping eluded the belt rats and got her bookmark.

By the time the podium was complete she was still tackling Waypoint 5, half-way through the race. To much encouragement and tips from the pilots docked at the finish line in Keproh, she persisted and seemed to be making headway despite a lack of a MWD until she hit Waypoint 8.

Waypoint 8 in Ami not only had four frigate-sized belt rats hanging around, it also had a pirate character hanging around – coincidentally or not, one who had already harassed Ms Gyra Rho when she had been busy setting up the course. Poor Quintrala in a simple Executioner was simply no match for so much aggression and once more saw her ship blow to pieces.

Frankly I thought she would have had it by then. But no! She fetched another Executioner from the market and was brave enough to go back there to claim a bookmark from the race can!

Fortunately this time around the pirate was gone, and Quin did manage to leave in one piece. Somewhere along the way in Fensi she actually saw the aforementioned pirate hanging about a gate in a pod, to much glee from the whole racing channel.

Aftermath

Quin did make it to the finish line, to much applause from the other pilots. Much respect to you, Quin! Hope to see you in future races!

Takashi was quite the surprise, making the DS Racing Team have to keep on its toes and actually have to pull some team tactics in order to assure the top of the podium. As I said in previous reports: we love a good challenge. It’s good to find new faces posing challenges.

Notes to self:
1) Can approaches were generally crap; must work on navigation a little more.

Kayleigh stood in front of a holoscreen, on the finish line station in Keproh, in a clean racing suit after having left her pod, watching the last racer tackle the circuit as she waited for the podium ceremony to begin. Out on the track only the new girl, Quintrala, remained.

She winced and hissed along with the other spectators as Quintrala got caught by the pirate in Ami. “Nasty business,” she thought, fully expecting the newbie to call it a night, seeing as everyone else had already docked and this wasn’t her first loss of the night. But no! Much to Kayleigh’s surprise the University of Caille student announced she was going to find herself another frigate.

Frowning slightly in concentration, Kayleigh followed the new one’s adventures on the holo. She chuckled when the offending pirate was spotted in his pod by a gate and nodded in respect when Quintrala finally crossed the finish line, thinking to herself, “I like this girl.”