That was an unexpectedly good race! (I say unexpected as I nearly stayed dozing on the sofa in front of the fire with the dog).
I wasn't sure how well I could qualify as I was gambling on a half decent finish using a low point cost car. The Lotus 25/33 isn't terrible with the BRM lump but it isn't as good as the BT11 - which I expected to see Clive driving.
As it turned out my qualifying place was good enough for 5th with out tow, but near the end of the session I got lucky and found myself behind Fulvio in his big Cooper.
I wasn't too happy with my lap behind him but it was enough to promote me to 2nd.
I bogged down slightly at the start of the race but managed to beat Axel's Eagle to Tartan.
Then it was a case of hanging on to Lalethor until my tires came up to temp.
Once warm I had no difficultly keeping up with his Ferrari, but I'm not convinced I could have made a pass and stayed ahead without help.
Which he kindly gave me on lap 10 with a trip into the dunes
That put me 9 seconds clear, but with 20odd laps to go. And I was pretty sure he could run faster than my Lotus when out of the draft. Sure enough I was right, every 2 or 3 laps my lead would drop by a second - I was frantically calculating if I could reach the end of the race before I was caught and decided it was unlikely.
Then I got my 2nd break, Alessandro made another trip into the dunes and increased the gap to 12 seconds!
Great I thought, but no, I went and put a wheel into the sand with 2 to go and also span.
Prib showed 250yds to the 2nd place car and I was in trouble - but Alessandro chose that very corner to spin on again and I managed to get away to a safe victory.
Despite not seeing another car for 27 laps that was a very hard race, I couldn't stop concentrating throughout.
Well done to Alessandro and Fulvio for the podium and to all finishers for finishing. I'm also impressed by the pace of the field here. The only car I lapped was a struggling Phil, who crashed shortly after I lapped him - I hope I didn't help that off in anyway.