Woke up a little late again & rushed to the PC, flicked it on & went to make a cup of coffee.
When I got into the server, which worked perfectly fine (thanks Dave) I loaded up an old setup from Albert Park & went straight out on track. I didn't even make it to the end of the first sector when it moved to qualifying (Superpole!!)
So, with a car that had possibly too much downforce I set a pretty good first lap time of 1m9. something and that got me into 5th for the start.
I had a fantastic start and moved quickly up int 3rd position. But then going into Turn 3 I was tagged & spun and had to rejoin back in 8th. No Damage, and apology was made after the race and all was fine. It's a fun race after all so we can't be taking these things too seriously
So I put my head down & tried to focus on what parts of the track I could make up time. As the guys started to pit I decided to stay out as long as possible on the soft tyres I chose for the first stint. I saw that the tyres were wearing exceptionally well & so changed my pit menu to supersofts for the stop. I came in around lap 11 & changed tyres. Soon after I found myself in 2nd place and catching the leader in the dying laps. I tried to place pressure on Martin as I didn't have enough straight line speed to pass on the straights. Although we traded places several times, Martin didn't buckle under pressure & on the penultimate lap I went a touch too deep & gave him a tap, causing him to spin. I waited for him to recover & resume the lead & we had a lare enough gap to stay in front. Then, on the same corner and the very last lap I was caught out under brakes and decided to go dirt rather than make contact again & lost my 2nd place. Rejoined the track in 4th & finished there.
So, Race 2 with the reverse grid I was once again in the 5th grid spot. Had another fantastic start and settled into 2nd place behind Adam. We were both in Teamspeak and chatting etc as we went. The gap behind me to 3rd was quickly opening and on the 1st lap alone we were 1.5 seconds clear. I was staying with Adam and applying pressure right up until he made his pitstop a lap earlier than me. I pushed hard on the inlap and tried to maximise the clear track ahead. When I stopped at my pitbox the message said "Waiting" I killed the engine in case they were waiting to put fuel in and the crew put 1 single litre in :-(
When I exited I was 7 seconds behind Adam & 9 there was only laps to go. Almost by mistake I managed to shave a lot of time in the final two corner sequence & remembered that it was how the turn was supposed to be taken (from the F3000 league) and so I was able to set a fast lap time of 1m08.436 and take over 1 second per lap from Adam's lead. I was cathing fast and started to put some pressure on again but I ran out of laps and Adam finished with0.2 seconds to spare. Phew, that was exciting.
Thanks to all for the race - see you at the next one.
