As expected I got alongside Shark at the start courtesy of his lardy M3 and a nice slipstream. I was too late on the brakes and went onto the grass, letting Shark by and Purdie. I
LOL. The only thing I bother warming up on the pace lap is with a few corners to go I get the brakes red hot with 1st/2nd gear trail braking (full throttle and full brake at the same time soon warms them up). The M3 with a full tank of fuel, 25kg car ballast and 60kg success ballast was not at all a thing of beauty on lap 1 which gave you a great run up the first straight, but I half expected you to not quite make the corner, so just stayed cool and took the place back when it actually happened. Nice try.
Ok onto the rest of the event...
I have to say that was one of my best ever qualifying performances. Managed 3rd on the grid, but it was the fact that I eeeked the last bit of juice from that M3. I really believe there is no way I could have gone faster with the extra ballast and interesting damp conditions, which is something I don't normally say after qualifying.
I would actually say that Spa is the M3's best circuit. It just seems to suit it 100%, you get great drive out of the corners, it's got a lot of corner grip and it's good down the straights. It was an absolute joy to drive and however I'd worked the setup it was just spot on and so easy to drive. The setup rode the curbs, it wasn't lairy, it was grippy, just top notch and made my job a lot easier. With the extra ballast my biggest problem was the new bus stop. I was losing time there every lap cause I had to brake that little bit earlier and the extra weight made it harder to chuck around the twisty tight chicane.
At the start of the race I had Adam and Purdie in close attention, but after I got confident I slowly pulled away and eventually built up a 10 second lead to the next car. Nearer the pit stops I think Truetom had made his way up the field and had closed to within 6 seconds of me. I pitted at half distance to top up to 60 litres and put on a new set of mediums. The pit crew did an excellent job and I was out in good time. Unfortunately for me Truetom's crew did an even better job and he jumped me in the pits (great job TT!). This left me with a deficit of about 3 seconds.
From that point on the race just got better. At first I stabilised the gap at about 3.5 seconds and wanted to see how fast Truetom was capable of, not wanting to ruin my tyres early on in the second stint. We were running almost identical pace so it was tenths here or there and went up and down a little as we lapped other cars, but still it was at about 3, 3.5 seconds. Eventually I started thinking, well he's not getting away and there's 10->15 minutes to go and it's only 3 seconds, so I drove like an absolute demon from then on in. I really threw caution to the wind and drove an exciting last 10 minutes trying to close him down. Slowly but surely I was taking the time off him. Boy was it fun pushing as hard as I could. Normally I'm quite conservative in my driving in Endurance, but this time I gave it absolutely everything in an effort to catch him, I really could not have gone any faster.
Eventually with 2 laps to go I was really getting close and I could almost sniff the bad cologne
. 1 lap to go and I was right on him. However, I'd spent the whole time catching I hadn't really thought out what I was going to do if I did catch him and with 1 lap left it was the grand showdown.
2 corners to go and I thought about a move into the bus stop as I saw him lock up there the previous lap. It wasn't quite on so I backed off to get a run into the final hairpin. With superior exit speed from the bus stop I pulled along side, Truetom went defensive and blocked the inside and I went to the outside to try and go the long way round. We exited La Source neck and neck but with TT having the inside advantage and less distance he just edged ahead and then the final run down to the start finish line as I powered down and awww oooohh it was just sooo close, I think I lost out on the 2nd place by half a car length.
It was an absolutely thrilling finale to the race. Hats off to Truetom who didn't buckle under the pressure and a deserved 2nd place. That was another of our classic battles.
I absolutely enjoyed every lap of that race. I had 2 overtaking moments the entire race so it wasn't exactly action packed, but it was just an absolutely thrilling race and exactly why I love endurance racing. Spa really is the king of current F1 circuits, the only blotch being that awful bus stop which just kills the flow of the circuit.
No idea where the leader was at the end, but with 80kg difference in ballast there was no chance to fight for the win. Deserved win to Roadrunner who showed great pace, congrats.
Also grats to Backo for the GTC win and Pete for an excellent 2nd position in GTC with Ruskus a very creditable 3rd in the 350Z (this is about the worst circuit for the 350Z, it really doesn't suit Spa at all), that's a fantastic and well deserved result to you all.
Finally well done to Madd-RIP on the GT3 win, SBG for 2nd and an excellent 3rd for Priberio in the BMW Z3M. That's an outstanding result for that car at Spa.
Unfortunately I'm on holiday for the next round, so my lead will certainly be severly reduced come the round after. :'( Almost certainly the team title in GT2 is a foregone conclusion for the Legends with me missing the next round and only one Team Shark car to get points anyway, I will congratulate you now on an excellent team effort.