Whew, finally I can relax. Bad luck Edam, at least we made it a close one!
With one eye on the race and another on the championship, I was pretty worried after the pace of the Masters race last week. Barcelona is one of my least fav tracks and I couldn't get below a 39 on my race setup. After working on it on Friday, I was a little more satisfied with it, but still couldn't match Kerr's best from the race. I knew it was going to be tight and wasn't confident at all before joining.
Then Edam scared me silly by running low 38's in practise - I thought that was your race pace! Before qualy I thought it was going to be Kerr disappearing and me and Edam fighting for 2nd and the championship, so was very surprised when I pipped Kerr for pole. Neither of us got the best lap in (traffic was quite bad in Q2) but that calmed me down a bit
The first half of the race went perfectly for me. Trying to be gentle with the revs and especially the left hand side tyres, me and Kerr were pretty much glued together, rarely more than 2 seconds apart. The car felt great later in the stint and the kindness to the tyres started to pay off. The stop was OK and we came out with the same gap as we had before (about 3 seconds). I then got it into my head that now would be a good time to push for a few laps to take advantage of my fresh and hot new tyres. This looked good for a couple of laps, pulling the advantage out to 6 seconds, until I got complacent and made a silly error into that 2nd gear left (no idea of the name for it). I was very lucky to not completely spin, and only half span into the gravel - Kerr was now 2 seconds behind and gaining fast. Having to push even more the front left really started to go and hit over 105 degrees. Now I was in a vicious circle - back off and cool the tyre, or push and make it even hotter. It was now I also realised I'd overfilled at the stop by about 15L
It was no good, pushing just had me making more mistakes and Kerr was now all over me. Another mistake left the door open onto the back straight, and that was pretty much it. I thought about pushing like crazy to stay with you, but straight away the gap was 1.3 seconds, and then I realised that 3rd was over a minute behind. From there it was short-shift bring it home time. Congrats on your first win!
Feel a little bad to snatch it at the end, then again I lost 4 points on a technicality in China, and hadn't joined UKGTR in time to race the first 2 rounds, so am pretty chuffed to take it. I didn't think the championship was possible half way through the season after having torrid first and second enduro races @ Spa and Zhuhai, then things started going my way. Good consistent results from Edam nearly took the prize
The only time I ever won a race meeting in real life I ended taking it on countback as well...I'm not sure if that's a curse or a blessing!
Not sure what fun races I can make, but whatever.
Roll on Sprint race
Edit: Forgot to mention:
Well, congratulations Freq, you deserve it - great driving!
Thanks very much! Very gracious in defeat - it'll make you stronger for next season
I doubt Dave will be putting me and Kerr in Academy next season, you and Nug may well be the favs for S5
And hope my pace lap was better than last time! Concentrated soo bloody hard on it!