As Mike and Paul have said the Radicals were excellent here and we had a great race.
I really didn't do any practice here until Sunday night due to work, family commitments and some bloke pestering me about Japanese steering wheels - only kidding Iain.
After practice I thought I might just be able to pip Dave but knowing he's a wiley old bird that he might have more speed than he revealed. Lining up fifth on the grid I twigged pretty much straight away we were'nt going to do a full lap. The start was ok and on the lead lap I was pestering Dan, lap 2 and I pretty much hitched my front spoiler to the back of his DP through Eau Rouge but I made a mistake on lap 3 and got a slow down penalty which let Paul and Mike through. The 1x etc are really bad here and I hope iRacing sort it out.
I was six seconds down on Paul and Mike and set to work on catching them. I got Mike with a classic slipstreaming move coming out of Eau Rouge onto the straight and set after Paul. He was quicker through Eau Rouge and it was harder but I thought I'd show him my intent but it went wrong on the exit as I clipped the kerb and span.
This dropped me behind them both again and Rob in the DP. Rob and I had some close but fair racing over a couple of laps and I was off again after the leading Rads but now 16 seconds down. A quick check of the number of laps left and the pace I thought I could run showed it was worth a spirited drive to see if I could catch them. For once my pitstop worked like a charm and I took a couple of seconds out of them there and just as I got on their tails they swapped places.
I got Paul at the top of the hill and realised he hadn't fought too hard and then it took a little while to close on Mike who was now pushing on. As I got closer he just turned in too early, clipped a kerb and whilst controlling it I was through. Shame as it would have been a thrilling battle to the end.
Congrats to Darren and thanks to Mike and Paul for a great race.
I actually like the DP better than the Rad but wanted to see how the latter would fair against the DP over a season, its a real blast at Spa so I'm more than happy to run it again. As for the practice sessions I think we should run them if we aren't using one of the official weeks tracks as they help people get used to running with others on the track.
Regards
Gary