Grats Sean for another well deserved victory and to Tim for mixing the podium a bit this time.
Of course all finishers are winners in such conditions.
Qualy (3rd):
Already in practice I had no clue how to drive as fast as Sean and David and I noticed I would have to fight hard this time with Tim, Guus and maybe others.
Qualy started also in damp/wet conditions. I decided to take slicks, which felt good. I managed to put in 2 good laps and to make the second one better than the first one. A 1:30:2xx was my limit and good for 3rd, while David took pole with 1:29:7xx and Sean 2nd with 1:29:9xx, so I knew race would become hard to compete with David and Sean.
Race (2nd):
scheduled strategy: 64/60/60 Slicks all time
final strategy: 64/60/55 Slicks all time (still too much fuel left in the end
)
I had a good start and managed to get next to Sean quickly and passed him into T2. Unfortunately I couldn't avoid big power oversteer exiting the slow middle sector chicane so Guus and Tim slipped through and I had to defend hard against Nicolas for a few corners.
Tim and Guus had a good pace so it wasn't easy to make pressure on Tim, also because of the wet conditions. Here and then I saw Tim strugling to get the last chicane well. After a few laps he finally missed it and let me pass him (not really necessary I'd say
).
I could open a small gap to Tim but wasn't able to close the 3 seconds gap to Guus. Later David, Sean and Guus pitted earlier then me. My stop went well and suddenly I was close to David, who had a 12 seconds gap earlier, so he must have had a problem because the gap decreased slowly. But before I could pass him, he pitted again.
Now I was 2nd, 13 seconds behind Sean. All the race I was unsure if it would increase or decrease and how much fuel to take of from the preset. Then Sean pitted much earlier than me for his last stop and laptimes slowly got better, so rain seemed to decrease a bit.
My last stop again went perfect and I came out only ~ 7 seconds behind Sean. In some laps I seemed to be quicker, so I hoped to have the better Setup for dry conditions but I made slight mistakes here and then so I couldn't really catch up with him. However, the Feeling I could catch him, made me drive as hard as possible, so it was enjoyable all time.
Finally I finished 2nd with only 3,6 seconds gap, so I was happy with the result, which didn't seem to be realistic after my bad first lap.
thx Nico for hosting and see you all after holiday