Sorry to see that you did not make the grid Clive, I was hoping to be able to hassle that green thing with a proper white car
.
For the first time retirement has helped me prepare for a race lol. A weekend spent away from home babysitting grandchildren with my wife, and today was an officially designated recovery day
. So this afternoon I had an hour to experiment with the beast that is the Honda!
Arnold was directed to solve the understeer problems and with the appliance of science (it looked more like a scaffold tube and sledge hammer to me, but what do I know? I just drive the things!) plus generous portions of shocks and springs. Mabel donated her suspenders to beef up the bump rubbers and a driveable car was born.
Practice was a chance to refine ( although that word does seem wrong when I was throwing the car into corners!) my lines, braking points and downshifts. All of this was done on race fuel, but even then I was a little in awe of the times being posted by the resident aliens in their Ferraris and Lotii.
It was obvious that for quali I would have to run on light fuel, so I dumped a tanker full from my race setup and promptly frightened myself!!!! The car was so heavy with race fuel that I was having to brake quite early and wait before I could get on the gas, but on light fuel it came alive and I found myself dicing with the aliens . I qualified the White Whale in 4th and expected to be on the second row, so imagine my terror when I joined the grid to find myself on the outside of a congested 4 car front row!!
I thought that I had screwed the start when the engine almost bogged down, but in fact the power of that Honda v12 pulled it forward with zero wheelspin and I was into T1 in 2nd spot!!! Maipor had got the best start and was flying, Ziu was very keen to get after him, but I was not about to make it too easy.
It was only a matter of time before he did make the move and once Ziu was past he pulled away, and I was left to watch my mirrors and hope to hold on to 3rd place. Erling and his Ferrari was a safe distance behind for the fiirst 20 laps, then he closed the gap and started being a real nuisance lol. He was almost close enough to benefit from any mistakes I made, and several times he closed to within 0.5 secs and I had to wrestle the Honda for a lap or two just to rebuild what I considered a safe cushion of 1.5 secs.
I was worried about my tyre choice before the race, but the decision to run soft fronts and hard rears seemed to be right as I still had 50% tyre life left at the flag and 100% on the engine, so maybe I could have been a little more aggressive. Probably my ambition would have exceeded my ability if I had tried to go faster for the whole race....that is what usually happens
Grats to Ziu and to Maipor, and to Erling for some great racing right to the flag.
