Congratulations Clive, the first win since your comeback and well deserved, although Bastian made it a close run thing.
I am still kicking myself for throwing away what was a safe 3rd place finish. I actually used a qualifying setup, which I normally don't bother with, just to try and get near the front of the grid and the faster cars. Slipstreaming around IMS is a must and I was hoping to attach a tow rope and get dragged along.
The Maserati 250F is a nice car to drive, but just lacks the outright grunt to bother the Merc or the Lancia and there were a couple of Ferraris giving me problems in the early laps too. John suffered contact with the wall and dropped out of the leading group leaving Bastian, Clive and Doni + me.
Bastian then paused to inspect the concrete wall and an unhassled Clive was in danger of escaping. Until then I had been happy to sit in 3rd and watch and wait.
Clive raised the pace and a small gap to grew between him and Doni. Sorry Doni, but I had to make the pass and chase after the leader before that gap grew too big. Fortunately I hooked up the tow again and slowly closed down on Clive just as a recovering Bastian brought his Lancia back to the battle. Doni appeared to lose a little ground and so it was a 3 car group going into the second half of the race.
I wanted to sit back and enjoy the slipstream, but Bastian and Clive continually disputed who had the right to which corner and compromised their pace. I was forced into making a pass on several occasions when their corner speeds dropped so much that I was in danger of having to lift or brake ( or rear end someone!!), something that the setup did not like, so I simply ran through on the inside line and allowed them to use their power to retake the position later.
Without one of them making a big mistake I just did think that I had the power to outdrag them to the line on the final lap, but I thought I would give it a trial run with about 15 laps to go just to see if it was possible. So I stuck my car down the inside at T3. I held a tight entry to T4 and gave it max beans.......bad move.
The car slid just a little too much and I clouted the wall on the exit ( the first contact with the concrete up to that point!) everything felt fine until I got to T1, where whatever damage I had sustained snapped the car to the left as I turned in and then back to the right and straight into the outside wall.........ouch!!!!
Like I said, if i had been content just to sit and wait I would have been towed along to a comfortable 3rd, but the lure of poaching extra positions in a last lap swoop proved too much.
