Replay and results posted.In qualifying I just couldn't get the Zed working on softs and wasted most of the time trying to work out how I'd managed to transplant the 360 GTC's evil snappish braking oversteer onto the 350. Went back out on medium slicks and immediately felt better. Most odd. In the process I completely forgot to practice the pit entry, so that was going to be an adventure in the race!
During the formation lap I realised that I hadn't opened the radiator vent - it was still at 1 from qualifying.
The 350Z isn't bad for engine temps but I was still driving with an eye on them and short shifting a little before the rain came and saved me.
Early race pace was okay, though I lost a fair bit of time when I had to stop to avoid running into Legzy's spun Viper, and traded paint with Michael Boylan's Elise and Gomes's Vertigo, which had gone off along with Ade's Elise, and which unfortunately I bumped into the sand at Stavelot whilst we tried to run through the corner side by side.
Despite all this I soon caught JPS, who as usual was frutratingly slow in the corners and even more frustratingly fast down the straights. Eventually I got a run on him out of Eau Rouge, having dropped back over a second to do so, and once through was able to build up a gap of 4 to 5 seconds before resuming my short shifting regime.
All this time the clouds were getting thicker, and when the sun turned into a watery ball I knew that rain was almost upon us. Luckily that was whilst I was on my in lap so I cancelled my stop and held out until the tyre temperature was dropping rapidly.
Wasn't sure what tyres to change onto but my slicks had remained just about viable so I decided to go for hard wets and risk the rain getting worse. For 20 minutes they were perfect and I was reining in API's 6th place pretty quickly, but with 10 to go the amount of water on the track meant that I was struggling to keep them warm, and had to back off to avoid a major off. Still managed to get 6th when somebody else pitted (Lazlow I think).
Very nice to be back in a car I can actually drive.
Not sure whether this series is going to be viable with just 16 cars on the grid though.