I'm feeling a bit miffed with myself this morning
.
I had hopes of actually participating in this race and actually battling with a few other drivers for a (welcome) change. With my other simracing and real life commitments I usually don't get to practice enough with PnG, so an hour on Wed evening is usually all I get. Occasionally on a wet Sunday I might download the track and do a couple of laps in 1 or 2 cars just to get a feel of what is coming, but generally the 30mins before the race is where it all gets sorted ( or not!).
For some reason on Wednesday the Capri just clicked and I found myself doing a PB of 1:31 after only about 15 laps and some tweaking of the setup, so when I saw that the pole time last night was only 1:30 I thought there could be some fun ahead for me.
I fluffed the start and got jumped by Phspok, but still in 5th and with a cumfy gap to the car behind after lap 1 as I waited for some heat in the tyres. Lap 3 and I was beginning to close on 4th spot when Phspok ran wide and I was promoted. Then SnrDan ran wide a lap or so later and I was 3rd, with a good 10 sec lead over GT?? in 4th spot. ( I kept waiting for GT to get out of 2nd gear and sweep past, I honestly thought he was playing it cool on the tyres!!
).
Then it looked like the whole field quit and it was just the 2 front runners (Geoffers and Clive), a 7 second gap to me and a distant Simon in his Mustang. I felt that I could have pushed harder to close the gap to Clive ahead, but my tyres were never going to last the race if I did, so I settled into a safe 1:32-1:33 pace to try and preserve them and 3rd spot.
With no car to race or any cars to even see, things got a little boring and I found my concentration wandering. That's when I put a rear tyre on the grass and ran wide which did not particularly bother me as I had a healthy gap back to Simon. But the relatively gentle "clunk" against the tyre barrier was too much for my engine and it broke
.
Grats to Geoffers, Clive and Simon for the podium and for making it to the flag.