This race was just one of those rare occasions ( for me) when everything just fell into place. I am a bit of an oddity because I enjoy the challenge of Monaco, I had a bucketful of tokens so I thought that I would treat myself with a good chassis and I was just "in the zone" last night.
I had retrieved an old setup for the Brabham from my archives and, believe it or not, I found it a little too aggressive and had to "soften" things to make it more comfortable.
To quote Jim Clark, it was a case of "the more I concentrated, the faster I went". But I think Uli and Tim deserve more kudos than I do. They had opted for wingless cars and were posting some WR times, I had some serious downforce available, which gave me a serious advantage and made things a little easier. Uli's qually time was a real scare and when he got within 0.4 secs of my earlier pole time
, I felt worried enough to have another run and secure pole. If he had claimed pole, I might have had a problem passing him around here!!
The setup I was using was one of those that allowed me to point and place the car wherever I wanted with absolute confidence, even when sliding between concrete walls. I think that I only brushed the barriers twice in the whole race, and yes Phil, I was enjoying myself
.
Grats to all finishers and thanks to those who allowed me to lap them....although there were a couple of buttock clenching moments whilst lapping, but no harm done. The only incident was 2 laps from the end when I had just passed a car out of Tabac, and was braking for Gasometer, when I galnced in the mirror and saw a missile coming down the inside
. Fortunately I was able to delay turning in and only received a glancing blow that did no apparent damage.
If all my races were this good.....life in GPL might get boring for me so I fully expect that next time things will revert to normal lol.