Grats to Dean and Fran, they were way in front by the end of the race.
I think I was the last guy on to the server last night. I had selected the 3 litre BRM because I had rarely used it before and I wanted to tweak the handling to suit my driving.
Just as I arrived at Monza10k, qually finished and the countdown to the start began, so I just had to grab a setup and go to the grid
and that was right at the back of the grid!
All I had time for was to lengthen the top end ratios for slipstreaming...and that was a total guess!!! When the flag dropped i found myself passing several cars on the run down to T1 and I began to worry that my ratios were all too low and all I had under the bonnet was acceleration, and no top end.
By the end of lap 1 I knew that 5th and 6th were not quite right, but at least I would not be blowing the engine, even if they were a little too high. In fact I could run the bankings in 5th and only needed 6th for the very end of the straights
The handling was a bit unpredicatable too which resulted in a few offs in the early laps until I learned to adapt the braking and cornering.
At one point I was back to last place again and chased down Andreas in his Cooper, but when I caught him he seemed to respond by speeding up!!
Together we closed down Phil and Bastian, who were having their own battle in Ferraris and I was surprised that we had the pace to catch them. Then Bastian had some problems and dropped out so it was Phil, Andreas and myself in a ding dong battle of slipstreaming and close racing
We caught and passed a limping Axel, so our three way battle was now for the bottom step of the podium with about half the race still to go.
It was very clear that both Andreas and Phil had more speed than I did, and I was trying different ways of getting off the final turn for the drag race to the line, but whatever I tried ..they were always across the line before me!!! :
I was sure that I was going to finish behind Phil and Andreas, until on the last lap Andreas disappeared from the battle and I was ahead of Phil into the last banking. But Phil's Fezza was just too quick with the benefit of the tow and he swept past easily to take 3rd.
I then discovered that I had an extra 10 galls of fuel on board!! maybe that was why I was struggling for top speed??
