Well, my race started of just fine: avoided the T1 (seemingly) inevitable, settled into a good rhythm following Flow, building a gap over Cookie behind, and prepared to watch leaders disappear into the distance. Then engine made the unhappy noise coming out of the hairpin on lap 4
. Bah. Find a safe place to pull over, wait for Cookie to pass, shift-r, get going again, head for the pits, enter just a smidgen too hot, and give the armco at the entry a good clout which bounces me over into armco on the other side to give it a good clout, too. Double bah, but at least I still have four wheels attached so let's see what we can recover from my now 12th place.
Stationary Ronnie is easy to get by. Next in sight is Piero who seems to be going slowly, but then accelerates well onto the straight so maybe he just had a bobble. Nope. Come through the bend on the straight and here's Piero BRAKING HEAVILY AND 40 MPH OFF THE PACE WHILE STILL ON THE RACING LINE?!!? He's already missed the pit entry so what the hey is going on and oh, there he goes, right through the armco and into the pits. Hmmm.
Got past Fulvio and Marco without much issue, bit of a fight from Tom but not much, Andreas more of a struggle, looked like he was struggling too, poked my nose in a few times but had to back off to avoid contact but then get clear and start chasing down Cookie for the placing that I had before the engine went south. Unable to make a move on the straight (due to damage from my clumsy pit stop earlier, probably) but gaining ground hand over fist in the twisty bits. Get right up on him, he's defending cleanly, taking nice consistent lines. Bit over ambitious in T1 sees minor contact, only I suffer (a few seconds loss, and my fault, so all's good), gain it back in two laps. Line up for another pass attempt into the hairpin (where he'd been in 3rd gear through and out of previous corner, moving to the right every time, for the seven laps prior), and he's really slow and stays left (watching replay, he'd downshifted and then stayed in 2nd
). Contact that I could not avoid sees him off to the right.
Passing a very slow Florian with less than 2 laps to go got me an unexpected podium, which I'm happy with in this crowd.
So into the midseason break in 2nd place in standings (3rd corrected). Have good one, cyas next round.