Group 2
Practice
Meh. Not comfortable with the car
at all, particularly in the braking department.
Qualification
I elected to stay in the pits for the first 10 minutes or so and watch how people were getting on in order to apply it to my predicament, but I spotted a few people lagging and spent the rest of the session discussing various procedures regarding what to do when you're seen to be lagging - more on that in another thread.
I will take this opportunity to apologise to Steve Emmons though; I really didn't mean to come across as a lag nazi, if I had been aware of your ongoing situation beforehand I wouldn't've chased you up on it - It's just that
usually it's a case of people forgetting that they're running something in the background or somesuch. It's very difficult to know if you're lagging unless you're told (due to the fact that only your upstream can be affected), and it's everyone's duty therefore to point it out - we need to have solid procedures in place. I really do hope you can find a way of getting on top of the issue.
Anyway, I went out with a couple of minutes to go and ruined my outlap, and only got around half way around a hot lap before the session changed, so I started last - P17.
Race 1
In a tremendous display of 'square peg round hole' syndrome, I totally forgot to put fuel back in the car - so; that, combined with the fact that my car felt like it had the stability properties of a ball bearing on top of a running washing machine in the back of a ford transit with broken suspension trying to do the paris dakar rally during an earthquake ... <inhale> ... under braking, and the fact that I was right on the arse end of the grid really made it rather a done deal before the lights even came on.
Not that that would stop me having some great battles, mind. I got a decent enough start (wub clutch) and tried to keep as much out of the inevitable tamburello silliness as was possible. I had a couple of super close laps with Broxman, unfortunately tapping him twice - once due to him slowing more than I expected when he hit a bump a bit wrong (which I ironically did on every lap other than that one), and another because I didn't quite react as fast as I would like to have done; sorry mate! No harm done fortunately.
I ended up pitting twice for fuel and ended up P... 12 or 11 - last.
Race 2
I got a reasonable start off the line and again tried to avoid the sillybuggers at tamburello with reasonable success, ending up scrapping with Tepa up near the podium places, until he was very unfortunately taken out at the chicane. From then on it was largely a case of defending against ocin in a BMW - something I'm very familiar with in an Alfa; remember Brno?
Ultimately I believe a mistake was made somewhere and none other than Tepa, in a great comeback drive, replaced the BMW in the mirrors with a Honda, and his late-race speed was just too much for me in my boat to defend against, so I ended up crossing the line in 4th position. (or 5th. Brain like a sieve tonight
)
