Congratulations to Reik for winning the most exciting race of this season, and to Helder and Dino for podium finishes.
I was expecting a good race, based on practice races before the event.
Qualifying: 1:43.8 (5th)
An ok lap with no risks. Even though the lap time was ok, fifth spot was a disappointment, especially as this is not the easiest track to overtake.
Race: 4th
I followed one stop strategy and started the race with 100L of fuel onboard.
1st stint: I kept my position at the start. In the beginning of lap 2 Dino was able to overtake me, when I had to make evasive maneuver to avoid crashing with Reik. I then followed Dino for a couple of laps, before I re-overtook him. Soon David spun out of the race and I was in P4. Soon catching Reik, and then overtaking him saw me rise to P3 on lap 16. I then pushed to be able to overtake Helder, but I spun at T9-T10. I then had to push again to catch Helder and I managed to take the gap between us down to 1 seconds before he pitted on lap 20. I then pushed one more lap, after which I had to pit myself. Reik pitted in the same lap as I, but the stop did not change our gap that was around 2 seconds.
2nd stint: During pit stops I managed to overtake Helder, and was now in P2 around 3 seconds behind Sean, and 2 seconds ahead of Reik. I soon started to eat up the gap to Sean, and when he had some difficulties getting past lapped cars, I catched him on lap 28. I then tried hard to overtake him, and on lap 31 we had a slight touch in T1 when Sean went a bit wide and I immediately tried to use the given chance. I was able to overtake, but decided to compensate the touch for him by letting him re-overtake me, but some other cars got between us before executing this move. I then decided to let cars by one-by-one until Sean would get past, but on the same lap Sean hit me from behind in T8. I spun and dropped behind Reik, Sean and Dino to P5. I then pushed hard to be able to make up the lost positions, but spun once again at T9-T10, and was finally only able to finish 4th behind Reik, Helder and Dino.
Conclusion: Racing in the front is extremely tight at the moment, and in this race we had 5-6 cars capable of winning the race. The battle for win lasted for the whole race, and pit stops mixed up the order nicely. If we can slightly reduce the amount of incidents without losing any competiveness, we have a splendid package for the rest of the season. Once again my race pace was good enough for winning the race, but some extra moves (spins) on the track with some incidents slightly dropped me out from the winning battle of the last laps.
Thanks to Nicolai, Daniel, all the drivers of Presto GP, and RaceDepartment.
See you all at Barcelona!