Interesting race last night, toughest for me since Mugello in many ways.....
Practise revealed Geoff had found some form again, and frankly I have spent the whole championship waiting for him to be easily faster than me because he always used to in FWD cars, always.....
He repeated the trick of being too quick in quali, but I had closed the gap a little. To my mind though the setup didn't feel as good as it had at other circuits, and I had no pace left to respond to his quick lap. I did get a good start though, and took the lead into turn one from that outside run that Dan was dreading me being on for some reason....Went flat out to try to pull away, which worked for a lap or 3, but then made a couple of errors at the same time that Geoff sped up, and he was then all over me. As he said, he did get through on the first part of turn 1 once, but I had seen him coming so cut back under when he went a predicted amount wide. But then he had another run at it, this time with just a little contact, very hard to avoid there to be fair. I think we may have both got away unscathed, but it sent me far enough off that I hit the barrier, more of which in a mo.....
Recovered to the track, just in front of DD, and Geoff was fair enough to have waited, which meant he was now 3rd. Watched him try to follow DD, and then go off, at which point I thought 'this may be my moment to pull away'.....but the car was just not right, and I just could not get the same pace out of it at all, a mysterious 1 second had been added to the laptime, and it just was not responding as it had been, so I suspected a little damage had been done. Then, to make it worse, I just tried too hard, I was wide on the kerb at turn 1, and ended up going off to the right and spinning, with another nudge into the armco. Hmm, now in P4 and with Erling very close behind, things looked ominous. Gave myself a talking to, and then reeled in Ziu for the final podium place, which we debated for a while with me applying pressure. Car was now 1.5 seconds off the pace of earlier, and it was tough to hang on to Ziu in some laps. This then became over 2nd place when Dimitar went off, and after a number of tries, including one very near miss into turn 1, I made it on through. Felt confident I was quicker, so was thinking I would pull away, but Ziu upped his game and the gap never got more than 1.8 seconds for the next 5 laps or so as we raced to the line. Good fun.
Championship? Just lucky I seemed to sort the setup out fairly quickly I think, and I very much lucked in on at least 2 of the races as well without question. But, Salzburgring and Silverstone were good for me for sure, as was Zandvoort up until I blew it all by myself, so I have had some pace to burn in this car it seems. Apologies all round