I was really looking forward to this race , since it's one of those tracks what suits for F575 imo. Wet weather made things a bit dificult thou , but i had a somekind of wet race setup and only made some minor adjustments to it. Qualifying was exciting and top 4 was very close , i was pretty pleased for my time and 3rd place on the grid.
Early parts of the race was really exciting and i felt pretty confident following my team mates in close approximity , coz the rain equalized things alot and it made it all very intresting. Mo was chasing our trio in striking distance too and race couldnt have been much more exciting at that time.
Then CJ and Darin had a collision in T3 and i literally drove under Darins flying Ferrari , man that was scary...
. CJ decided to wait him and so i got the lead , followed by Mo in close distance. Managed to pull a small gap but then we hit the trafic and gap went down again. After few laps there was again car infront and when i was driving behind Mark through T5-T7 , there was a unfortunate misunderstanding where Mark was slowing down to give me some room to overtake outside in T7 and same time i had decided to follow him on the inside line and do the overtake after T7 . Didnt have time to brake and our cars collided , resulting Mark to spin off the track. Bad luck there ,but not much i could do to prevent it , sorry anyway for the lost time.
Amazingly Mo had some problems with T6 at excact same moment and the gap actually went bigger between us. About 2 laps later i started to have some tire problems and went off in T5 (1st of the numerous off's there
) , Mo got past me and Claus had done amazing recovery from early problems , running allready behind me now. Half a lap later i had another big slide and lost the 2nd place there for CJ , tried to hang on there and then Mo went off in the excact same spot were i did (T5) , so i got the 2nd place back.
Lap after that it was pitstop time for me , took some fuel and fresh set of soft wets again . Even thou i knew i could have some troubles again in later state of the stint with soft wets on rear,hard wets would have been a jump to the unknown and that was a risk i didnt wanna try. Tried to push really hard on fresh set of tires and to my surprise i saw Mo still in pits when i went past there , lap later i saw Nakano driving in 2nd place in front of me , moving quite slowly and had to back off some , then tried to get inside in T7 , but took it too tight and car bouched from the curbs , tapping slightly Nakano's car , but in these conditions it was all what it take and he spinned off. Allready apologied for that , but i say it again... Very sorry about that , should have waited a bit longer before trying to make a move , my mistake. Decided to wait and let him overtake me back coz it was clearly my mistake , after about 30-35 seconds Nakano got his car out of the grass/graveltrap and we could continue our race again.
Then we continued our battle and overtook him again , only to gave it back a lap or two later in T5 for a change
, again some close fighting and this time i managed to keep in front of him after yet another ovetake. Mo had built a nice gap while we had our come together with Nakano and it was looking impossible to catch him anymore , tried to push few laps anyway , to see if the gap would start to shrink and it did , quite fast too. Then it was again time to have some tireproblems and time was running out , did my best but car was slipping and sliding very badly and again in T5 i was on trouble , had a nasty 4wheel slide and Mo got slightly away again. 2 or 3 laps to go and gap was looking too big to catch Mo anymore , but then he had an off in last part of the track and i got the 2nd place for present. Tough luck there Mo , i think the 2nd place would have been yours otherwise...Amazing run if you didnt change your tires at all.
So , that was my Brno race , not really what i was hoping for , result is ok , but driving was messy and tire problems at later state of the stint made it very dificult. Speed was there but consistency was missing... :|
Thanks for the race again , allways intresting to do some wet racing and most of the time it was good fun anyway
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Congratulations for Claus (GT) and Shark (nGT) for wins , well done all survivors too
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Cya in track...