Congrats to David for another great win and to Tim for making it from the back of the grid into 2nd!
Qualify (4th - starting 3rd in restart):
I had two big mistakes in my lap so I ended up in 4th with a 1:12:0xx. Top 3 were all in 1:11:8xx. That looked cool.
I have to give in that I left the track in the final corner with all four wheels.
I know it cost me some time instead of gainig something, because I had to lift and couldn't accellerate as early as usual. So my initial thought was that this time loss is punishment enough. Crossing the line I was a littel bit unhappy that it still was a 1:12:0xx. Please let me know if I should have lifted a short while on purpose after the mistake or if the time loss due to the mistake itself is punishment enough.
Race (3rd - same as last year): softs 58 l / softs 58 l / softs 58 l
I was a bit afraid of the start due to my long 1st gear which I needed that long for other turns. So my start was ok but still slowly. Jim came up on my inside and Marko got a little bit blocked as there was no room between Jim and me. Jim took my 3rd position through T1 but I had a good slip stream. So having a long 7th gear I could make it to his inside on the long straight and regained P3 then.
Sean, David and me had a nice, close pace. I could see David pushing hard on Sean for a few laps. I calmed a little bit to see what would happen. A few laps later David got a little bit slower, so I could catch him on the long straight and overtake him on the inside into the quick right hander.
There was a small gap to Sean and I wasn't really able to close it at this stage. Later in the stint I lost a bit of speed due to tyre wear, so now David made pressure on me. In lap 14 or 15 I had to defend on the inside for the slow right hander after David got very close through the fast right hander. I missed the corner, got into a drift and David had no chance to avoid a little contact which send me into the wall. Sorry mate!
Luckiely David went on unharmed and I didn't loose a wing or wheel but received minor suspension damage which slowed me down by ~ 1 second or so. I think I lost ~ 12 seconds or so and Jim in 4th had closed the gap to me again. Due to the damage I pitted one lap earlier in the end of lap 17.
I don't remember in which position I rejoined but I think one lap later Tim and Jim came back from the pit close in front of me. I was able to catch Jim again on the long straight, so I now was in P3 behind Tim (2nd) and David (1st). Sean had mistake in the pits so I think he was 5th close behind Jim (4th), right?
Through the whole second stint I consistantly lost time to David and Tim. They were just quicker.
In the end of the stint I struggled with the worn tyres which were one lap older than Jims and Seans tyres. In addition I made slight mistakes, so Jim and Sean came very close. To cover myself I already pitted in the end of lap 35 instead of scheduled lap 36. Jim and Sean followed me into the pits very close and parked further in front of me.
When I left my spot, Sean left his one in front of me, too. Jim followed close behind. Now we had three thrillimng laps with two hard attacks by me on Sean, which he covered very well. Once I tryed to go deep onto his inside into the ultra fast right hander. But Sean didn't give in and held the outside line. Due to braking into the corner I was close to fly off. But later I made it next to him there and was able to claim 3rd position then. Again he held the outside for a while so it was very tough to overtake him. Very good racing Sean! It's good to know you can trust in someone when fighting him very close.
David and Tim were far away now and my small gap (~2 sec) to Sean kept consistant. So I was hoping for some rain in the end of the race to get a slight chance for a better position. But it didn't happen so I finshed in 3rd position which seemed to be a fair one for me this day.
Finally I'm happy for Tim that he held the championship fight alive. And I'm happy for the innocent victims of start 1, who got a 2nd chance for a nice race. A good choice in my opinion.
As always I like to thank Nico, RD, MMG and Gunthar very, very much!
See you in (rainy?) Interlagos...