This was quite an enjoyable race, despite driving on my own for most of the distance, it was a fight for each tenth of a second on each lap, in each corner, so that kept the motivation high enough despite the long straights.
I was never a fan of the Porsche and with not enough testing my setup was so-so, but still better than what I started with the day before. One thing I wish I had done, in hindsight, was to use stronger FFB, because once the front tyre wear became excessive, I lost almost all feeling from the frontend and had to only rely on visual cues to find the limit. This made for inconsistent driving and led to many mistakes.
My qualifying was quite poor as I haven't tested running on low fuel, plus I jumped straight into Q without any prior practice in the last hour. It was still good enough for 5th on the grid or something like that, then I managed to overtake Geoff as we went into the first chicane, but I hit the inside curb too much, it unsettled my car and I almost spun to the left side. That was a costly mistake because it meant I had to drive without getting the slipstream from Dimitar and Micha, so catching them up was a very difficult task.
I managed to reduce the gap down to around 3-4 seconds, but kept making some mistakes that allowed the gap to grow up again, so overall I was making very slow progress. Once Dimitar pitted Micha was suddenly very quick, but I was still able to keep up with his pace more or less. He pitted earlier than I expected though and once I did my pitstop I was surprised to see him so far ahead, and not only that, but he was going much quicker than what I could manage on full tanks. It soon dawned on me he didn't fuel up too much and that I have made a mistake with my strategy.
Despite all that, I still hoped to challenge him at the end, but some additional mistakes cost me valuable tenths and seconds, and then I also lost around 1-2 seconds behind Tony as he slowed down to make his pitstop. I was hoping you'd let me through before that, Tony, was really angry at you there.
Micha made his pit and now I was the quicker Porsche because of our fuel differences, though I couldn't pull away as fast as I had hoped. All of this became irrelevant as I finally made my 3rd cut on a corner exit and got a stop/go penalty, just 1 lap before I was going to pit. Frustrated by the penalty I went off immediately at the next corner and then I also messed up my pit entry, locking the rears and sliding to the left side. I had fuel for just 1 more lap, so I had to reverse back, enter the pits, serve my penalty and then do 1 more lap and do my regular pitstop.
By then Micha was long gone, but I had plenty of time in front of Dimitar in 3rd, as he was struggling with his own issues (tyres, mistakes, longer refueling). As we neared the end of the race, I realized that I miscalculated the fuel and would run out with half a lap to go, so I had to pit right at the end. Fortunately for me Dimitar lost time on that same lap and I emerged just in front of him.
Having lost my motivation, I was looking back at him going fast down the straights, and in one of those look backs, I went off into the grass near the end of the penultimate lap. That allowed him to close up to just 1.5 seconds and I knew that he would most likely overtake me before the stadium section on the final lap. Luckily for me he went off at T1 and that settled it.
Thanks for organizing this race and thanks everyone for yet another great season in 2021! I'm taking a break from racing for an indefinite amount of time, as my health issue is affected by doing so many races, but I'll be keeping an eye on how things go with future races and may enter some from time to time.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
