I am so disappointed with myself.
To be perfectly honest I wasn't really taking the race very seriously. IDNet have been having routing and DNS resolution problems for a few days (not of their own making, but very annoying nevertheless). Combined with an ADSL loss of sync I got disco'd twice from practice and didn't expect to last the race, so spent all the time working on single lap pace (on race fuel during practice) hoping to at least get the glory of pole position and not worry too much about race pace.
I didn't really make any setup changes from my old setup, just dropped the back one click on both sides to account for the lower fuel load as I planned to do 8.5/8.5 - probably too much but 7.1/7.1 looked far too little based on my calculations during practice.
I have to say even I was surprised by just what good pace I had in qualifying, knocking half a second off my PB - but my optimum being a good half second better yet showed just how little consistency I had.
The race started well and whilst I wasn't exactly zooming away, I was just eeking out the gap over everyone but Mike, who was hanging with me about 2 seconds back. The lack of race preparation was starting to show, though, with little mistakes all through the opening laps, until eventually the inevitable happened and coming down the hill I caught the big bump wrong and slid off, dropping back to third behind Darren.
Rather than get risk getting held up, or worse still distracted into another mistake, I decided to roll the dice and pit very early, taking 7.1 gallons (which turned out to be 2 too many).
It wasn't a bad plan, but the setup tweak that lowered the rear end now bit me in the bum; with the car running both heavy and very low at the rear for the first few laps, I got caught out again, this time at the corkscrew. That let even more people past and I dropped to tenth whilst struggling to extricate myself from the sand without collecting anyone else.
After that I couldn't see how I could possibly finish better that 4th, even after all the stops, and only really kept circulating for a combination of team points and the knowledge that I'll use up both my drop scores whislt I'm in the southern hemisphere, so it was a big surprise when I saw Gary leaving the pits after his stop and realised it was going to be nip and tuck between us at the pit exit.
I got a great exit from turn 2 and managed to squeek ahead into turn 3. There followed an intense battle as I tried to pull away and Gary harried and attacked repeatedly. Lap upon lap I was sure he would figure out how to get his car inside me into the last corner and that would be that, but lap after lap I managed to claim the apex and remain a few tenths ahead.
I knew I was slower through turn 6 and up the hill, but it's a tough place to make a pass work at the best of times, and you have to take big risks in T6 to get the perfect run up the Rahal Straight, and indeed the temptation eventually proved too much and Gary caught the curbs wrong and spun, leaving me to cruise round the last couple of laps with an immense sense of relief - though not until he'd pressed me into setting the lap record.
Very well done to Mike for a great win for the team and Darren for a very solid second place. It may amuse you to know that I was working the wheel so hard I've stripped the skin off part of my right thumb - it went through blister and directly to raw skin in the course of that race!
I don't know whether to feel elated at salvaging a podium or deflated for throwing away a win.