A night of "nearly, very nearly" for me.
R1 - Skyline
Got the car feeling nice and predictable, which is the best way for me - I'd rather have it predictable and a fraction slower than that fraction faster but walking the tightrope between on track and on fire.
Saying that, I clipped one of the Tyres of Champions on my quali lap and started dead last
Decent enough start and made up a few places, which became a few more when there was an incident or two (and also when the fickle finger of Controller meltdown afflicted Eck). Settled into a rhythm and started catching up and passing the people in front. Then, after I'd got into a decent enough groove, I got spun in a ridiculous incident that really annoyed me, hence my little "ffs" in chat, and was right back roughly where I started. I'm not going to go into details here as it's not allowed. So I started the fight back again, got back to 6th and was closing on Bob, but ran out of laps before I could get close enough to try and get past. Had the pace to be a little nearer the sharp end, but that incident ruined that race for me, both in terms of position and in terms of enjoyment.
R2 - CS2800
The talk on TS was about how much slower the Beemer was, and (Warren will be pleased to hear) how much Steve P hated the car. In a typical Palmer moanathon, he was banging on about being so slow, car being rubbish etc. and then got pole. He also owes me a fiver.
I had a decent enough quali, high midfield, not too bad.
Once the race started, I lost a few places after having to brake heavily to avoid someones wobble, but soon settled down into the race. Got stuck behind some cars that were slower, and it took me a few laps to get past safely. Once past, I built a decent buffer that way pretty quickly, and turned my attention forwards to Tom in 3rd. Managed to stick in some pretty fast laps, including the fastest lap, and closed up on him with about 3 or so laps to go. Got some great traction out on to the long straight on the penultimate lap and snuck past via some slipstream and late braking. By this time, Steve & Paulo (who were about 9 sec up the road when I started chasing Tom) were now only just over 1-2 sec in front, so we'd (Tom & I) made up some pretty hefty ground. As Tom describes, he was close behind through the Esses, and into that never ending right hander. I knew I had to get on the power early, or he'd slipstream me the same way that I'd done to him the lap before, but went just a little too early, got a little slide on, and knowing that Tom was on my outside and not wanting to take both of us off for the sake of a single place, I had to back off for a sec. That was enough for him to get past, and I wasn't quite close enough to get a tow, and so brought it home a close 4th.
As I remembered from when I drove it in the 72 full field season, the Beemer feels slow, but is deceptively fast - I got 3rd fastest lap in the Skyline with a 2:03.5, and my best Beemer time was only 0.3 slower than that - a 2:03.8. Another pair of well matched cars, but it was a nice change for Carlos to mix it up into some single class racing.
WD to Prib on the double, and all the other podium finishers.
Thanks Carlos for another good event :good:
