Picking a car for this challenging track wasn't easy. Lola, which served me so well on The Ring; too skittish. Alfa, too skittish - and I really like this car, so wanted to save it for a track I like better. 917; predictably fastest, but too unstable and way too prone to spinning when entering the sharp turns. My feeble setup skills couldn't tame this behaviour. Haven't been friends with the 512 on the previous tracks, but surprisingly, it worked well here, being very stable. Only snag was its cold tyre understeer driving me bonkers. Softened up the suspension considerably, to make the car more compliant over those tall curbs. That worked well actually.
Knocked over 1 sec off my previous best in qualify, but still - by a long shot - only good enough for 2nd.
Didn't look like it in the race, but I spent over 1 hour yesterday practicing race starts and cold tyre laps. Still all went tits up on the first lap. Got off the line ok, but then the rears let go and I started fishtailing. Went onto the grass and down the field. Rejoined - rather clumsily - in front of a group of cars; sorry guys, no mirrors and didn't manage to look behind in the heat of the moment. Then at the hairpin, things went from bad to worse. Now having both cold AND dirty tyres, meant I slid onto the grass left of the track, couldn't stop and dove into the kitty litter, as deep as I could go. Stuck against the wall and had to reverse to get out.
Passed Bill & Kurt who had an incident too, on my way out and was in 6th. Charged up through the field and soon was in 4th. Roger and Tony obviously let me through, so thanks for that guys
Had a decent gap to 3rd, but was biting chunks out of it each lap. Eventually caught up to Clive in a Lola, who most courteously fell off the track at Tamburello, so I swooped into 3rd without problem.
That however, was as far as I got. The gap to 2nd kept increasing, despite my best efforts. Think I lapped everyone behind me, and all gave me plenty of room to pass, so thanks for that guys.
Had hoped to keep up my string of 2nd places, but not to be, with the blistering pace of Mark - and my own fumbling at the start. GT as usual was completely beyond reckoning - anyone have a photo of him in his non-human form ? (In fact, does anyone have a photo of him IN human form ?
)
Still, grats to GT and Mark for a very well executed race. Shame we lost Postal and wheel gone kid; hopefully you'll both make the next round.
Cheers,
Erling