I guess that I was more lucky than I deserved for this race, any one of the 4 who broke got clear of the field could have won.
Getting a front row position was a freak lap where i picked up the draft at one point and was lucky in avoiding traffic in the stadium section. To be honest, I think anywhere near the front 5 or 6 places is good enough around Hockenheim because of the immense slipstream effect. The only advantage about being at the very front is that there is less likelyhood of getting caught up in someone else's spin or crash.
I did not save the replay so I am not sure but I am assuming that some sort of incident allowed our 4 car group to escape??
The very fact that a 4 car group got clear improved the chances of a podium finish for all of us, but with 3 medals and 4 cars someone was going to be disappointed!! It soon became apparent that without a major mistake by one or more of the other cars no-one was going to romp away into the distance, although Jason seemed intent on proving how fast his Matra was at every opportunity!! lol we all had great fun picking up the draft and sweeping past the others, but sometimes with cars 2 abreast in front it was prudent to back off and avoid any possibility of contact.
At about half distance I had drafted into the lead past John and we were approaching the braking zone for the Ostkurve, a quick glane in my mirrors showed John about 15 mtrs back and I was just about to take the line through the apex when ....John hurtled past at warp factor 10 with apparent brake failure and promptly disappeared across the grass outfield. And so there were 3.
I could see on prib that John had not trashed his car and had in fact rejoined, but he was about 4-5 secs back and out of any slipstream, all we 3 had to do was work together for a few laps and draw away even further. Instead of which we conspired to put in lap times about 2 secsonds slower that John
.... 3 became 4 again!!
We were now getting down to the final 10 laps and I did a quick check to be sure I had enough fuel. It was marginal so I stayed in the slip stream for a few laps and saved an amazing amount of juice. It was all going to come down to the last lap I felt and slipstream was going to decide who ended where.
Then John and Jason had a demon braking effort into the stadium section and Tom was caught out on the outside of the first right hander with me behind him. I'm not sure if there was some warp contact between Jason and Tom or if Tom suddenly braked hard and junked out to the left, but either way , despite my attempt to avoid him I managed to clip his rear wheel and both he and I had a spin. I got away again without any apparent damage and had a 200 mtr gap to close up on Jason and john with only 2 laps to go.
I blitzed the stadium section in an attempt to hang on to the draft down the straight and just about got close enough to hold on. Then jason and John got side by side into Ostkurve and a wheel on the grass lsft Jason stranded and John in the lead. But now I was well and truly getting the tow
.
The last lap was a case of being sure to make the pass where it would stick and lead into the Stadium section, which I did but John was hard on my tail. I had to keep it clean and fast throught the tight bits to take the win.
A shame that the spectators were denied a spectacular last lap dice between 4 cars, but I can only say that from my viewpoint I was extremely grateful that it was not such a tight finish!!!
Big grats to John Jason and Tom for some epic slipstream battles.
