Once again I employed a purely scientific car selection stragety....and seem to have ended up with the wrong car lol.
I did try the DB4, and it was the quickest in my clumsy hands, but it appeared to be consuming rubber at an alarming rate
, so logic dictated that as I had more Healey drives left, I should use one of those.
My few practice laps in the DB4 had shown a best of 1:20, so possibly I might have trimmed a second off of that, but I doubt that I would have got close to Erling, or that tentacle waving alien who purports to be human and calls himself Geoff!!!
So I found myself on a grid surrounded by DB4's, which I knew had a better top speed than my heavy Healey, but for all of it's faults the Healey did feel very solid through the corners and some offline laps and calculator had shown that I might get 16-17 laps on a tank of fuel. The first laps were a fight against Fulvios fast DB4 where I was just quick enough through the important corners to stay ahead. Gradually I built a nice gap, then threw it all away by missing my turn in point on a corner and lost 4-5 secs getting off the grass and back up to speed. Fulvio upped his pace when he saw me ahead, and for a few laps I thought that he might catch me and drag Bob with him. But I guess that Fulvio had his own incident and he suddenly dropped back.
So a set of tyres with a splash and dash was the plan and I was watching the fuel and tyres carefully after Geoff and Erling pitted at around half distance as I pushed on until lap 17 . I did consider risking the "no tyres" option as, despite heavy wear, the Healey still felt quite stable, But another 6 laps might just be a lap too far?
Geoffers and Erling powered past whilst I was in the pits, but I was very suprised to emerge from the stop with the gap back to 4th place almost doubled??? Most cars had stopped around the 11-13 lap area and got fresh rubber, I had been driving very steadily on used tyres and somehow extended the gap.....I'm not complaining about that!!
It was a lonely last 6 laps and I rolled in 3rd. ( although GTL stopped my car right on the finish line yet again?? it did the same at Thruxton where my Mini was catapulted into the scenery?? )
Grats to Geoff and Erling and to all who finished, these cars make me smile
.