I was not expecting to take the win here, especially in the Connaught!!
A week away at Centre Parcs with the grandchildren is NOT good preparation and with only a few tokens left I decided that the Gordini was a challenge too far ( I have not driven the little French car at all), so blew my last 5 tokens on the Connaught and hoped just to survive and score a few points.
Quite a surprise to find myself amongst the front 2 rows in quali running on full race fuel... so I figured that this was one track where a proper low fuel qualifying run was worth a shot
Front row alongside Tim and his rocket powered Gordini
...how many of these guys are sandbagging??
I was praying that he would have trouble getting his car off the line quickly, which is the curse of the Gordini, so I was able to take the lead into T1 and give myself a clear track to play on. I pulled a small gap before Tim got the rubber band fully wound up in his car and so was able to control the gap for the first half of the race until he dropped back. The biggest problem after that was staying focused and I lost count of how many times I hit the bales at T3!!
Uli was a safe distance behind in 2nd place and provided that I did not make any big errors I felt that I could keep him far enough away to be safe. ...... until I looked at the fuel tank with 8 laps to go
It showed just 2.5 galls?? Was that enough?? The last laps were a case of short shifting and avoiding max revs, but it did not appear to affect my laptimes too much, at least not enough for Uli to catch me.
So, a win that I was not expecting around a track like this.
Grats to Uli and Tim, plus all those who survived until the finish.