Small grid, but the pressure was sure there!
Downloaded 3 setups the night before & had some offline spins around here. Got around the same times, but wasn't totally convinced so dumped them come the race proper.
Joined for qually/practice session & the leaders were a couple of seconds ahead. Hmm... Started lapping & luckily the times were slowly improving.
Until the final moments, it all seemed rather close with hundredths of seconds in it [although of course, this is just a single lap & all sorts of trouble can occur come race time]. I really got the impression that BadBlood wanted that pole
Then the other 2 joined in & there was a big half a second difference!
Sorry to hear of your woes JP, I rather think things would have been rather different had you been there too. But that left a nice big gap to the right of the track that was just asking to be driven in.
I expected Rog to be off like a shot & away; was not disappointed. The plan was to hang on as much as possible. Was also wary of the other Honda power too; particularly DaveR who was right there. However, was good to see that a slight gap seemed to be opening up behind him.
Although he's a team mate, it felt as if some pressure had been removed once he'd lost a bit of time with some sideways action.
Then was following Rog round again & again & again. I was fairly happy doing that, especially if we were edging away.
I think there was a slightest hint of wobble/twitch out of the last left hander & that just about appeared to be enough to let me edge past. We then seemed to have a who-can-go-the-slowest-on-their-side-of-the-track-round-the-last-corner-to-definitely-guarantee-no-contact competition. I'd call that a draw as we both won that one
Then was a case of just trying to drive consistently & hopefully creep away. There were a couple of minor braking-too-late moments, but nothing serious. Nearly made 100% ontrack, but never mind.
From the GPLRA report, looks like there was some stuff kicking off behind.
Was sure that my DSL issues would come back again at any time, but it held out for the duration.
Thanks all; quite an event. Apart from JPs unfortunate DNS, looked as if no dropouts/no lapping/potentially no resets?. So that at least is positive...
Cheers all,
Dave.