Also congrats to Erling on a 2nd championship & Clive & Ziu in 2nd & 3rd.
. Shame I had to miss a couple of races.
Don't you guys ever go on holiday! lol.
Well I have just had 2 weeks away!!, how much more holiday would you like me to take??? I'm sure my wife would be easily persuaded!!!
I am assuming that you wish to contribute to the holiday fund???
Grats to Erling..again....for a consistent series of races where he rarely drops points. I hope that Ziu will reconsider his retirement from UKGTL, he is always fast and seems to find the extra seconds that us mere mortals only dream of.
I have not seen the replay of last night's race so cannot really comment on what went wrong for Ziu, when he was a certain winner in that Uber Alpine. My start was not perfect but I was aware that Ziu's was bad, when I shot past him as I short shifted into 2nd. That was a little scary, because I was not sure exactly where Ziu was as we plunged into Eau Rouge.....was he in my blind spot??? I tried to leave some space just in case he was still there, but by the time I hit the uphill straight I knew I was alone.
Assuming that Ziu had just screwed up the start, I fully expected him to catch me within a lap or two and probably tow Erling and Geoffers along too. When I got through Malmedy and looked at the mirror and the positions behind, there was a moment of confusion because there was no Ziu???
Erling and Geoffers were following and about 2 secs back, so I assumed that there had been an incident and Ziu's arrival at the front had been delayed for a lap or two. With his pole lap pace there was no way that I could stay ahead of him for 12 laps!!
Then I saw that Ziu had quit!!!! and I was slowly pulling away from Erling.....oooooh!!
At 5 laps paranoia set in. I knew that the Cobra would be heavy on the tyres and, although I had tried to build a setup that did not consume rubber at a ridiculous rate my track record shows " heavy right foot syndrome".
Was Erling playing clever and driving to save his tyres?? allowing me to run away but burn out by lap 9, so that he could sweep past with all that extra grip on the final lap as I removed myself from the scenery??
I had a 5-6 second lead and I decided that I would drive to keep that gap and ignore my actual pace. The rate of tyre wear until half distance indicated that there would not be much left after 12 laps, if I maintained my early pace. So I watched the gap and just responded after each lap, trying to maintain 5 secs. Geoffers was not out of the picture either, as that Fezza is very gentle on it's tyres and he could be a serious threat in the final laps if things went t*ts up in the tyre dept!!
Short shifting......braking much earlier..... and just tickling the gas out of the corners, until the car was straight and then feeding in the horsepower very gently. By lap 10 I was reasonably confident that Erling's tyres were no better than mine, because he was not closing the gap. So I decided to sacrifice up to 2secs a lap from then on just to avoid any dumb mistakes with a very twitchy Cobra.
FWIW Erling. I find that the Cobra is like a shopping trolley on ice!! It almost feels like the FFB has stopped working and the steering is ultra light with a huge deadspot in the straight ahead position??
I genuinely work harder on the straights trying to keep the ruddy thing going where it is supposed to, than I do in the corners!! I dare not use the full width of the tarmac because it just wanders from side to side by about 2 metres when at full speed. In the corners, with a diff that gives me a little oversteer, both in coast or power, I can always pull the nose back to the apex and If I need to get aggressive, I can powerslide the beast through the fast sweepers. But that costs rubber.
