I've just watched your replay H - I see why you were so miffed originally now
I had a great setup for this race, ran all of the practice session on full tanks and didn't bother with my qually setup as no-one was close enough.
Come the race I had an 'OK' start, which was helped when H had an uncharacteristically good launch and went round the outside of Fulvio in T1 - this gave me a bit of a gap which at first seemed enough to let me inch away from the field.
Which is exactly what I did for the first lap or 2 till I ran wide and let H catch right back upto me
From this point in he was far enough up my slipstream that I had no hope of ditching him, but as he didn't have the power to be a massive threat at the end of the straights I realised that good clean consistent driving might be enough to hold him off.....
Needless to say that as there were still 30laps left I didn't manage 'good clean consistantly error-free driving' for that long, on lap 4 I ran a little to far onto the grass at Chapel and lost time catching a humungous slide - this let H through and into the lead.
Due to the silly torque of the 4 cylinder Climax (with a little help from the draft
) I reeled him back in before the end of that lap and settled in to watch him for a bit, after a few laps of no obvious weeknesses I decided to use the 'look very big in mirrors' tactic to try and force some errors.
As the race history graph will show this tactic did indead work, although rarely to my own advantage as I was normally so close I too would have to go evasive to avoid clouting him
Eventually I managed to get back infront on lap 9, only for Hristo to cruelly re-take the lead the following lap - this time despite successfully making H mess up a few times (Quite easy as apparently his car was quite the handfull compared to mine) I could never get by and make it stick - normally because I was getting caught up avoiding contact when ever he had a moment
On lap 15 I fanally pulled off another pass and this time made it stick, right up until lap 19 where he returned the favour to re-steal the number 1 slot.
Then on lap 20 disaster struck - H had taken a bad line through T1 while I'd (somehow) managed to nail it, as a result I had such a run on him I decided to take the inside line to T2 at Maggots. I knew it would slow us both, but it was also too good a chance at re-taking 1st to turn up.
H had obviously seen me pull out as he left me room on the approach, I in turn took a very tight line to ensure I didn't drift out into him.
Feeling decidly out of the picture for far too long this season the Lag monster choose this moment to strike - and he did so pretty much at the worst possible time sending H flying off of the circuit until he finally came to rest against someones Cesna loosing a wheel in the impact
From then on I had it too easy, what with Fulvio in 2nd being all of 10 seconds back, and without H's attentions I rapidly started to loose concentration.
I think I hit the inside curbs about 4 times at Chapel and Abbey. Several of these hits nearly ended in my rolling the car, and all of them allowed Fulvio to make great gains on me. Luckily I ran out of laps before I ran out of talent so took the flag unchallenged
Big shame about Hristo going out, as to be honest I wouldn't have cared if I finished 1st or 2nd after a race long battle like that (1st would have been preferable of course
), and it seemed like a kind of anti-climax to win after he'd been retired
Well done to fulvio and Clive for joining me on the podium, and also to all the other finishers - esp Goran for managing some more decent points for Black Night