That was an unbelievably good race to end the season on - I was naughty and yet again didn't really do any practice before race day
This was telling through practice as I was rapidly having to learn the best lines and adjust my setup to suit in about 30 minutes before doing my fuel calcs for the race...
I was pleased to get pole (It turns out I needed that to win the championship, although I didn't know that at the time!), and utterly livid with myself when I then managed to make 3 separate mistakes in the first 2 laps and drop myself back to 4th briefly.
I was fairly lucky in re-passing Lorenzo but guessed Adam would be a different matter once I got back to him. This turned out to be very much the case as none of my attempts to get by succeeded until he made a slight mistake himself and I was able to get a good run.
Once by I was slightly worried Adam might try and re-pass in the first few laps as he was only lapping slightly slower and would have a few opportunities while we remained close.
Eventually I pulled away enough that I could concentrate on lapping at qualifying pace in order to start to reel Darren in - for the first 2 laps this worked nicely but then I think he realised I was pushing and so pushed harder himself.
This resulted in a much slower gain - and even slight drops when I made errors - until there were about 20 minutes left and I decided it was high time to pit before Darren did
This timed nicely with a stupid error on my part that dropped me back enough to not make it too obvious I was about to pit, although it did drop me back into the field a bit resulting in my having to make some very quick passes to keep my lap speed up.
2 laps later and I was barrelling down the S/F straight just as Darren exited the pits ahead, luckily for me I had some heat in my tires and T1 is very fast - this allowed me to close right up to his bumper while he was still fighting for traction.
The next couple of laps are possibly the hardest fought laps for position I've driven since my GPL days - Darren was fully aware he needed to finish in front of me to take the championship and so did I
I made (and failed) at a couple of attempts, scared a few backmarkers to Death while charging down the back stretch alongside Darren, and eventually sneaked passed in the same point he'd re-taken the lead from me after my first failed attempt - the short straight leading to the chicane when he ran slightly wide.
By this time my tires had just got to pressure and I'm guessing Darren was still a bit low, as I was able pull out a big enough gap to become 'safe' within a lap. After that Darren hung on for dear life a little over a second back until he made friends with the wall in the chicane.
That dropped him back about 4 seconds and allowed me to stop fretting, with 2 to go I caught the fighting combo of Syd and Goldtop. Initially I thought of passing them but then realised as I was closing the gap that I could leave them to their scrap as Darren was too far back to catch us. I thought this worked right up to the point where GT fell off just before the chicane
Well done to Darren for taking 2nd in the Championship (I found in the rules section that in the event of a tie the winner is first determined by number of events won and then number of Poles - so I got lucky!) and Adam for 3rd. A big thank you to everyone who participated - it would be rubbish without you!
As these were so popular I will be looking at the Fulvia at some point and seeing if anything else can compete, they will be returned to for a longer series at some point in the future.
Best wishes to Pete and Maxime, Hope you'll both be back in the seat soon
Next week will be the Maserati 250F's (6 cylinder). I want to try and get classic Zandvoort to work after our failure last time, if that still doesn't work then I'll use Donnington '36. We should know by Saturday afternoon so keep an eye on the forum and the server
That will be followed by a super-secret highly explosive fun event prior to the first round of the Formula Easter series - If you haven't already, make a point of trying the cars and registering your choice and skin over on the
series thread