One of my really hated tracks, so had done the minimum practice I felt I could get away with. Going online, I found a few, to me, unknown names, but judging from their laptimes, clearly of the alien category...
Way off the pace myself, and it was only very late in qual for race 1, that a remark from Kurt about gaining 3 secs by using the highest possible tyre pressure, that the coin (kind'a) dropped. With race countdown in progress, I maxed out my tyre pressures, but then got cold feet - could not chance running with such extreme setting among other drivers, without having tried it before, so with 10 secs left, I reloaded my original setup. Better start than some, but a lot of haphazard sverving around slower starting cars.
Leaders quickly disappeared, and I trundled around in 5-6th place, one eye in the mirror and sverving from lane to lane, trying to ditch the freeloaders behind
Then around mid-race, in about 200 meters, I suddenly went from 5th to 2nd, due to a lot of mishaps ahead of me. Quite surprised when I also caught up to the lone leader, but Hristo's explanation that he waited, clears that up. As I see it, he's the real winner, as he could just have continued instead of waiting. As it was, we had some slipstreaming in the final laps, and I got lucky in being the one ahead on the final lap. Grats to Hristo & Roger, and commiserations to the victims of invisible booby-traps.
Race two, Increased my tyre pressures a litttle, but didn't have enough practice time to go for the more extreme settings. I gained a couple of places in a more controlled start, and then some more into and out of the hairpin. Regrettably I lost the tow and thus couldn't keep up with Dan & Hristo, so concentrated very hard on preventing the chasing pack from catching me. Grats to Hristo & Dan.