What a thrilling race. With the teams neck and neck and the drivers so close everyone was trying so hard.
I was really struggling in qualifying to put anything decent together, then with 4 minutes left I went out with some large changes to the setup and it worked. Managed to take about 0.7 off my previous best in the session, although not moving me past the enemy it gave me a boost for the race.
Race started great, I passed Pops when he left the door wide open into the hairpin and then eeked a little tiny weeny gap out whilst Leuven and TT faught it out amongst the faster NGT drivers and Paul stomped off into the distance. Then disaster of disasters.
My screen just went black. I thought the race was over, but realised all my frantic wheel sawing had knocked the power cable out the back of the monitor (it's a dodgy power socket on the monitor). I could hear my car crash in the background and I realised it was just the monitor power. I jumped up, ripped the back of the monitor off and shoved the lead back in. Sat back down and got my barings. Worked out where I was, but had lost a lot of time and damaged the car.
I got out of the sand trap just behind Priberio and we had a raging battle for 7 or so laps
. (Connection looks good now btw
). Eventually when I got by I realised my laps times were dire and I had to come in at half way. This was a change to my strategy so I had to think fast and get ready to have the fastest pit stop I could. I came in and my mechanics did a great job fixing the damage quickly whilst I stopped on the money to get my tyres changed very quickly. I had no idea how much time I'd lost in the accident, but it was plenty enough and to my absolute shock and joy I had managed to leapfrog Pops in the pits. I can only guess you had an incident Pops for me to make up that much time as I had to get damage repaired?
After my pit stop my car was flying again managing to dip into the 1:44s briefly, which was 2 or 3 seconds faster than I was before the pit stop. This gave me a nice little gap to Pops. Meanwhile in the team battle I was trying to locate TT over the team comms to find out where he was in relation to Leuven. Nev not long after came out of the pits just in front of me and I briefly toyed with the idea but he clearly had the pace on me and by that time I heard where TT was and if we just stayed in the same position the team championship would be ours.
By the end, I was really starting to struggle with tyres again, but I managed to cross the line just ahead of Pops and then I watched Leuven come home in a team parade past the chequered flag with Jeff and the victory was ours!
That was a really tense race and well done to everyone, especially the Legends and my team mates for a job very well done. Grats Paul on the race win, well deserved.
A big congratulations to Leuven on the NGT drivers title and thanks for doing a great job to lead the Team Shark comeback to take the NGT team title. Also well done to TT for his great 2nd in the drivers on a close run thing. Commiserations to Jeff on the GT drivers title, so close, just to be pipped at the death by CJ (congratulations CJ!), but you and Jon did a great job to take the team title, well done both.
Thanks for an exciting season and a really great championship this season.
P.S. Best of luck to Gizmo and Picnic in the Academy next week, hope you can bring back a load of trophies for the now Team Shark cabinet.