Q – 4th. 1:49.6 Put in a banker lap on my first run and then came in for a quick change before going out again. Had a few laps where I was up enough to get into the 48’s but on one occasion lost time at turn 11 and then on the other two came across spinning cars on the exit of turn 12 which was just enough to keep me from improving. No biggie as 4th place had me sitting nicely behind Neil on the second row.
R – 1st. Got off to a decent start and pulled past Karl on the run to turn 1. Closed on Neil just ahead and spotted Boothy making a run so stayed to the inside to prevent him getting down there but as I was about to turn in got tagged in the rear which sent me off track, damaged my rear end and gave me a double slowdown penalty :/ Rejoined the track ion last place and after the penalty was through started on my way again. I think it was Mike and Boothy had offs at turn 4 so I was quickly up to 6th place and then managed to make a move to pass Peter S around turn 11/12 to move me up to 5th spot with Neale up ahead in 4th place. Either the start of lap 2 or lap 3 Neale had a moment coming off the final turn and as his car spun to the inside I was through and up into 3rd place with Rob and Karl next on my radar. Closed down on Rob over the next couple of laps and had a nice little battle until managing to get past down the start/finish straight and into turn 1
Karl was now ahead with a gap of about 3 seconds and Max had checked out at the front with a lead over Karl of 14 seconds so he looked to be safe out on his own. Had my best spell of the race over the next few laps closing the gap down to Karl’s car, I was closing particularly through turns 1 and then 11/12 but he was getting a good exit out of the final turn. Then around lap 9 he must have drifted wide through turn 11 and caught the gravel so I was able to make my way past and at this point had a very healthy 9 second lead in second place with Max now about 17 seconds.
Things took a bit of a strange turn from about lap 10 onwards.. my pace dipped alarmingly and I could not seem to get it back. I thought maybe it was the tyres and I did have a couple of close moments, once through turn 1 and then through turn 11 but just managed to save it each time but did lose a second or so each time and the gap to Karl as I started lap 12 was 6.9 seconds. I pitted at the end of that lap taking on fresh tyres and 65 litres of fuel (a bit more than needed but I wanted to be sure there were no hiccups) and re-joined the track surprised to find I was in second place and Max was now back in fourth!! So knew he had had an incident or two somewhere. On cold tyres I almost dropped it at turn 1 but saved it without too much loss of time and got round the rest of the lap cleanly so was very surprised to find Karl pulling out of the pit lane ahead of me as I made my way down the start finish straight!! Despite the fresh rubber my lap times were still poor and remained that way throughout the rest of the race. Not sure I got below 1:51 during this time!! I was keeping in range of Karl but not able to close and Neale was closing fast behind setting fastest laps so I knew I was soon to come under pressure. I had a big wobble coming out of turn 12 but just managed to keep it together and then Karl lost it exiting the last turn promoting me to the lead of the race with about 5 laps to go. Neale as expected closed on me, helped when I had another close one at exiting turn 11 which put him right on my back fender. I held him off by keeping to the inside line the following lap and forcing him to go the long route around the outside but the following lap he got too good an exit from the final turn and past me about three quarters of the way down the straight this time. With 3 laps left it then became clear he had a fuel issue so I just kept as close as I could but mainly was just making sure I was error free and when he pitted at the end of lap 23 I retook the lead and with Max far enough back it was just a case of staying calm, making no mistakes and bringing the car home to the flag. Phew!!
That was a fun race, one of those where you could never be safe of your position no matter how far ahead from the next car you were. I pretty much lucked into the win with Karl, Max and Neale all having problems of one sort or another while apart from my first lap off after contact with Boothy I ran a fairly clean race, no offs and just a few wobbles along the way. My drop in pace for the last 15 laps was odd, maybe the early damage became more of a problem the less fuel was in the car who knows but I’ll take the win
Good race everyone. It was a fun challenging car and I agree with Max that this game is the nuts!! It has it problems that we all experience at different times but it is just fun and challenging every race. I still had bad stuttering at times but on a longer track it was less of a problem that two weeks ago.
Looking forward to the next one which is Karls Imola \ Ferrari choice which I will post up mid-week.
Mixer unfortunately failed to save my race again .. it seems to be failing about one in about every three recently I have been in touch with the Mixer support but so far they have not come up with a solution so I will probably revert to using Twitch instead which hasn’t had these sort of problems.
