I narrowly snatched the pole from a very fast Tom (KingHiro) and Al, so I wasn't expecting to have it easy in the race. Sadly my expectation were proven wrong right on lap 1...
Tom had the better start or his Lotus performance did it, whichever it was (I think I had a good start actually!), so he powered through to the lead on the entry to T1 and then defended the inside line after running wide a bit before that and opening a gap for which I went.
He kept the inside line as I moved over to the outside and we started braking together for the first hairpin. I attempted to go around the outside of the corner, but suddenly I saw Tom's car drifting wide just in front of me and into the gravel, so the lead was now mine.
For whatever reason the other cars behind dropped back and now I was running on my own and extending my lead to about 2 seconds from Fulvio. Fulvio had a very good pace, in fact he was closing up on me in some laps, so I was looking forward to his challenge.
This 2 seconds gap remained for a very long time and I was thinking "come on Fulvio, you can do it" because I was getting a bit bored with the repetitiveness of the laps. It was good that we had separated fields though as there were no backmarkers and it was much easier to stay focused and keep your rhythm.
Sadly Fulvio went off or something, because he disappeared from my mirrors and now I had Al at about 10 seconds behind, but he couldn't close up the gap, so in the final laps I really went for it to get the fastest lap if possible.
Happy for the win, but hopefully my competitors won't hand me the victory on a silver plate on lap 1 next time.