What a race that!!!
I had practice a lot and tried several options regarding which tires to use. The softs were faster, but with high temperatures was very difficult to make them last the whole race. And with temperatures close to 30ºC the medium tires have a good performance. So when I saw that for the race the temperature was 23ºC, there was no doubt that the tires to use were the soft ones.
The qualify went good and I got a decent time that gave me the third place in the starting grid.
When the race started I had major wheel spin and had to lift the accelerator pedal otherwise I'd have spun. With that I immediately lost 2 positions.
Then the pace settled and I realised I was faster then the cars in front of me. In the initial laps Gavino and Matteo had a moment and I managed to pass Matteo. No to long after I managed to do a late move on Gavino and got the third place. Again my pace was faster then the 2 cars in front, but there was never an opportunity to pass unless there was a mistake from the guys in front. That happened a few laps later and I passed Maikel into the second place. For the rest of the race I tried hard to not make mistakes and try to pass nsfw, but again without a major mistake it was almost impossible, because I lacked the speed to try it braking for T1. During this time I had to do some defensive manoeuvres because from time to time Matteo was getting dangerously close, but I knew I had pace to keep him behind as long as I could pass nsfw.
In the late stages of the race, my tires were getting really worn out and I started to have to defend from Gavino, which had medium tires and his pace was, at the time, the fastest of the field. Because we were close to the end I tried to defend, but it was very difficult. Specially with the, famous, power and top speed of the Lambo Gavino attacked braking for T1 from the outside. The fight lasted until T2, but then he had the inside and there was nothing else I could do.
My only hope now, and because Gavino was way faster then me and nsfw, would be if Gavino and nsfw had some sort of incident while Gavino tried the overtake for the first place. That kind of happened in the second to last corner of the last lap. I think they touched and having was a bit wide. I tried to keep the inside line and maybe I could pass him in the next straight. but Gavino, probably unaware of my position, then closed the gap and I ended up bumped his car. Maybe I should have beed a bit less ambitious but when you see the car in front going wide and you're 2 corners to the end of the race, I just couldn't resit...
I feel bad for Gavino losing the second place because of that, but the gap was there and then... there wasn't anymore
I wanted to wait for having and give my place to him, so I slowed down. But I got a bit confused and I forgot that the finish line is close to the start of the straight and not further to its middle. I ended up third when I should have been fifth.
At the end of the race I was dripping in sweat. I could feel it in the back of my head during the race. It was that intense. 40 minutes of full concentration without a single lap on my own. Just bloody fantastic!!!