Well, that was an absolute blast of an opener!
I'm still grinning from the opening lap of Race 1 with Matteo, even though I'd even planned for it I'm kind of gutted he fell off as that was effectively the end of any proper fight for me that race.
That said both Jeffrey and Matteo maintained a high enough pace to mean that I couldn't dare back off or make a mistake, so the entire 20 minutes was still very hard work for me.
Race 2 got off to a much worse start though - Just past the end of the pit lane barrier Jeffrey swerved into me and put me nose first into the barriers.
It's only after the race when I saw the replay that I realised he'd been hit by a blue car I couldn't see.
After this I burnt the white flag to save weight and drove at my absolute hardest, slowly picking off one or two cars a lap for maybe the first 4 laps. Eventually I reached MJ battling another car just after I had passed Fabri.
Their battle had caused a bit of a gap up ahead but was also serving nicely to block the road for me as I didn't dare dive up in/outside either while they were fighting so hard.
They conspired to help me out on about the 2nd lap I was behind when they contacted into Park. This fired MJ left across the grass pretty sideways and looked near certain to spin the other driver into the in-field - So as I already had a better exit from the corner than them I went up the middle
This is where it then got a little messy, as the car I thought was going to spin somehow caught their spin and swerved a bit towards me (I was now almost completely between the drivers by this point) so I jumped a meter or so left to avoid being clobbered.
Unfortunately MJ was returning from the grass under full chat at this point and caught my car. With dirty tires the outcome was pretty certain.
Sorry about that, I had originally intended to go down the middle leaving room for both of you - the avoiding action put paid to that!
The strange thing is that the replay shows me avoiding the other car and contact only occurring between MJ and myself - yet at the time I was convinced due to the force feedback I'd received a bump from the right as well.
After this I managed to make some good ground on Jeffrey who was now only 1 car ahead and struggling a bit. I think he was stuck behind Kai, who I also had a job to get by a lap or 2 later when I caught him.
Once clear and in 3rd I really put my head down - and recorded a new PB that was slightly quicker than my qually effort. But just couldn't catch Jeffrey or Matteo due to their respective pace.
Very good hard and clean racing I thought, although Kai needs to check where his opponents are before moving to block.
Possibly a mistake - but I have one very strong memory of having to swerve and back off to avoid pit-manoeuvring him into a wall, as i was already alongside when he decided to move over.
Anyway, I've also thrown a pair of videos together from race 1.
1st is this opening 2 laps - I've set the camera to watch Fabri as this captures most of the field, most of the time
https://youtu.be/TgtizHstCaYThen there is the first lap from Race 1, showing how hard Matteo and I were having to work to try and out-do each other! While Jeffrey sat back and waited for us to do something stupid
https://youtu.be/edLm3CQRKck