I enjoyed that, It's always good to have a tight and aggressive technical challenge from time to time - especially when a round I think will favour the Alfas actually seems to favour me for a change!
Due to having races the previous 2 days, my preparation wasn't to the same standard as last week so I couldn't quite get dialled in fully for practice - mostly it was brakes bias and modulation issues for me, later rectified about halfway through qualifying.
In the race Matteo got a terrible start, bad enough that had I been in front of him on the grid then I might even have out dragged him into T1
This gave Fabri a clean run at T1 and put me right on Matteo's tail, which was great until he ran wide at the left hand hairpin (T3 or 4 depending how you count the corners) and ended up in front of me on the outside of the track - sorry for the nudge but it was gentle enough not to trouble you at least!
I managed to get a run around the outside towards the
really tight right hander and was clear in time for the turn - I think this is where Matteo's issues occured as he left me some space and was then hit from behind. I haven't seen the replay properly yet but will have to go over the incident later.
That left me with a gap forward to Fabri who was making very good speed, and another gap back to Kai who then fell into Maxime's hands and had to start defending.
As I'm fairly confident that the Alfa gets through the mediums faster than the Merc (when I behave at least) I held pace with Fabri and waited for him to slow, rather than pushing hard to catch him.
When he did start to struggle and make mistakes I jumped immediately, put my headlights on and encouraged him to make some more mistakes
With this method of attack the pass for 1st was relatively easy, at least once I'd managed to position myself properly for it.
Race 2 started with me entering T1 in a close 2nd, but now with the added problem of Maxime behind me and already holding pace on his Hards.
I decided to reverse strategy as I was so close to Fabri and throw everything into gaining the lead and then using him as a shield from the Sierra (Matteos normal tactics with me).
After a few laps of harassment I got through and put some fast laps in while Fabri suddenly found himself having to deal with the Ford - This allowed me to drive the majority of the race a bit slower and to preserve my tires, I think I had much better late race speed Vs race 1 as a result. Although it also encouraged me to make a few small mistakes that allowed Fabri and Maxime to gain on me a few times.
All in all I really enjoyed that.
@Mark. Kurbs just require adjustment of your shocks and careful timing with your throttle pedal, you won't be thrown all over the road when you hit them then.
The BMW copes with them fine so you just needed some extra adjustments I suspect