Tough race for me yesterday. Offline experiments with setup had allowed me to shave a couple of secs off my pb from last year. However, looking at peoples remaining car choices revealed that Geoffers would be a tough nut to crack; too tough as it turned out. If he went with the Masser, he would surely be faster than me, and last year Bob kept pace with me in his Aston, so unlikely that Geoffers would be slower.
New pb in qual, by a few 10th. Could potentially have stolen pole, as my last lap showed -0.5 at the first split, but regrettably I tossed it away later that lap and had to settle for 2nd.
John made one of his usual blistering starts, and Clive squeezed through at Eau Rouge, dropping me to 4th. Got past again at the first serious straight, but Clive continued to make himself a nuisance in the corners for the first 1½ lap or so. Eventually got a small gap and could focus on chasing John. He ran wide early on L3, gifting me 2nd. Chase on for Geoffers, but couldn't catch him, and he slowly stretched the gap to 5-6 secs, while I had the same to John behind.
Followed Geoffers into the pits at the end of L8. Probably lost some time to him there, as I tiptoed through the long pit lane - didn't want to risk a S/G, due to the missing limiter in the Massa. Can't remember when I've last screwed up a pitstop, but yesterday I did! Pulled into my stall in front of Geoffers, got the pit board and started my selections: "No repairs", "No tyres", "a full tank of fuel", and then I just sat there waiting for things to happen. Geoffers finished and left - awfully quick it seemed to me, and only then did it dawn on me that I had neglected to hit 'Enter', to get my selections going!!
Probably lost some 15-20 secs by that mistake.
Exited in 4th, to what was one of my toughest drives yet in GTL. Trying to make up for the lost time in the Monster Massa on worn tyres demanded very high levels of concentration. Two laps later John did a late pitstop, where I passed him. Given my own bumbled pitstop, it probably meant he was changing tyres. Bad news, as that would make him much faster than me in the remaining part of the race. With 5 laps to go, I had an 11-sec gap, and was losing 2 secs a lap. This was going to be close!!
Went as fast as I possibly could on my increasingly bad tyres. At the start of the penultimate lap, gap was down to 7 secs. Lost time, when I went halfways up an embankment, but John must have had his own moment(s), as the gap was still 7 secs at the beginning of the final lap. Thus I could ease off just a little, making sure to bring it home.
Grats to Geoffers on a convincing win, and to John on 3rd - and of course to Bob & John on the other cups in the championship
Thanks to Tony for the organising; will be missing these cars too.
Cheers,
Erling
