I guessed ( wrongly) that at least a couple of the alien elite would take the option of the heavy metal cars for this race at Goodwood, and I did toy with idea of taking the RS1600 or even the 1300GT Escort.
But, I have always liked Goodwood especially in cars with an excess of power and I seriously fancied my chances for a podium at least.
I was therefore quite surprised that neither Erling or Geoffers were using their Mustang drives ( I had checked and knew that Ziu had used all of his
) but Matt was in a Capri along with a couple of other drivers who could not be ignored. I did Qually on full race fuel because I wanted to know how my times compared to other cars and did I have the pace to compete?
My first run gave me a high 1:20 lap and although I knew it was messy I waited to see what the other guys were doing. Geoffers and Erling might have installed turbos on their Escorts, although their qually times were comparable with my offline laps in the RS1600. Also Matt looked quick in that Capri and I was sure that his car ( and foot ) would be kinder on the tyres. Times got closer to my pole slot so I went again and got a low 1:20 lap, again far from perfect In fact I think I had to find a way past another car on a hot lap.
A third run got me into the 1:19's but there was certainly more time to be had and I went for a banzai lap which was promising a mid 1:18 until I reached Woodcote and made a complete Horlicks of the downshifts for that corner.
I was VERY aware that tyre wear would be my biggest challenge, I seem to have a poorly educated right foot??! but we have been attending evening classes and things are improving in that department.
I had not done a long run in the Stang, only a couple of 10 minute sessions to compare Escort and Mustang laptimes, so I was basing my rubber usage on the evidence of a 5 lap run.
It was pretty certain that I had at least a 1sec a lap advantage over the other cars at 100% race pace, but punishing the tyres like that would make me a sitting duck in the final laps. So a hastily concocted plan was formed to blitz the first 10 laps and see how much of a gap I could generate and then manage the safety margin.
At the end of lap 1 I was gratified to see a 2.4 sec gap back to Geoffers, closely followed by Erling who were both keeping Matt and his potential threat in the Capri bottled up. For thr next few laps I just pushed hard and grew the margin until I hit 10secs, then I tried to find a rhythm that would manage that comfortably and save my tyres for later. Even though I consciously eased up and braked earlier and more gently, easing the gas on out of the corners, I was still easing away....until Matt suddenly popped up in 2nd spot!!!! Suddenly he was taking chunks out of my nice comfy cushion!!!
By now we were around lap 20 and a quick check of the HUD showed that the tyres were OK and still showing at around 60%, but as expected the lefts were a little more worn than the rights.
I upped my pace, but tried not to panic, keeping things as smooth and gentle as I could. Destroying what rubber I had left would certainly drag me back to Matt Geoffers and Erling and a battle with them over the final laps could prove difficult.
Lapping cars was proving the biggest problem ( no fault of those guys who moved over and gave me room) but I was closing on them at such a pace that it would have been easy to make a BIG mistake, so I picked my places to pass very carefully. Each time I lost around 1-2 secs of my lead but that was OK as generally I was still pulling away very slowly.
With about 8 laps to go I had used up all of the green section on all tyres, so I guess that I had about 40% of the rubber left. I could certainly tell that I no longer had optimum grip, but things were still predictable under braking and acceleration............so I wondered if I could put in a quick lap just for fun?
Managed a 1:20 on worn tyres with about 0.5 lost through minor mistakes which was a good feeling.
" laps to go and the gap was up to around 20 secs with a couple of cars ahead to lap before the end of the race....passed them easily and relaxed too much and forgot to downshift at St Mary's??!! My only "off" of the race!! My lead was cut to around 7 secs by the time I recovered, but no damage done so I was able to cruise to the flag and take with win.
I do enjoy the muscle cars and was pleased to take max points with this drive. Still need to work on my setups and right foot though.
Grats to Matt and Erling and Geoffers and to all finishers. And thanks to Tony for this series,,,,,,so many permutations for each race
