Firstly thank you to everyone on the Congrats - although I must say they feel a little on the undeserved side as Iestyn was able to make clear in the race that he was the faster out of the two of us. I mearly had the wider car and the advantage of being in front
While i'm still shocked at recording pole I was over the moon at my qualifying time - over half a second up on my old PB from 5 years ago despite the time off over the last year or two. I'm seriously wondering if I should put my current improvements in pace (Ignoring East London as I was much slower there
) on the new diff for my track car - it's basically the same type used by the cars in GPL and has forced me to learn properly how to drive with it
Onto the race Rob very nearly got me at the start - we seemed to react at about the same moment but his BRM hooked up much better and made up some time on me on the run to the 1st turn, where I promptly ran slightly wide in my attempts at out braking him
I originally thought some of my odd lines were responsible for Robs' accident - and have to admit releaf after watching the replay to see it wasn't me!
After his visit to the harbour wall and the spin from Ray I found myself with an ever increasing gap as Ray tried to hold off Iestyn in his flying BRM.
At one point I was up to a 7 second lead according to the pit boards and then promptly span exiting Tabac (Lap 5 for anyone wanting a laugh). After that I was working hard to maintain the now 3 second gap backwards as Iesty let off the pressure a bit to allow Ray to put some decent laps in.
This all lasted until somewhere around lap 10/15 as i remember it when suddenly Iestyn appeared in 2nd on prib and started taking chunks out of my lead. By half distance he was on my gearbox and annoying me
I made a number of small mistakes during this but somehow kept it together - Helped by Iestyn dropping back for 5 laps or so to try and soften me up before a last dash as we approached the 30 lap point.
Eventually i was saved by the penny pincher's at BRM who refused to put more than 50 Francs of 5 Star into Iestyns' car leaving my clear on the last lap - obviously I was unaware of this new event unfurling behind me so pressed on hard to keep the new gap as large as possible - nearly crashing in Casino square as a direct result
After what felt like the entire evening I crossed the line, still at the front of the pack with Iesty just behind - well done, you deserved a win more than me in my opinion after that drive!
Equal congratulations to Clive peddling the BT7 into 3rd and to all the other finishers. Commiserations to the victims
As a bonus I also discovered that I have a pair of world records (different mods and circuits) from when i updated my times on GPLRank, annoyingly 1 of them has been mine to claim for about 4 years now but I didn't know
So as I still have the replay of that session I've sent that one in. i swear the other was a race here (F2 at Hockenheim) but can't for the life of me find any evidence of it occurring in the race history or even my replay collection