As I don't think myself really good on Division 3 cars and especially not good on 1600-2000cc cars, I did not expect much. When testing the track for the championship, I found myself really struggling with Capri so 2 hours before qualifying, I decided to give a go for the Escort. Did almost nothing to default setup, just adjusted the final gear and fired it up. While I did find it more my liking, I still was going to start the race with "I get 3 points from starting" attitude.
In qualifying I noticed lack of other Escorts and huge number of GTAm's. Nor did raise my expectations when I saw Geoffers' set up Alfas getting regular almost 10 km/h higher top speed in the end of the main straight than my BDB... So, "3 points secured" -attitude continued. I did my PB in Qualifying, this time with optimal amount of fuel, so I thought it being as fast as Escort could go on my hands. Slight hope raised when Daz tried to join several times with BDB. That might signal that Escort is not that bad after all.
So the race started. I was expecting quite lot of hassle in first lap and there was. however with some careful wait and see I was able to survive first lap. The thing I was not expecting was my own capability to improve lap times on each lap. Continuously every lap all the way up to lap 7. While Suti felt that I was close and faster, I was in fact almost exactly as fast as him and to be able to do that, I needed to drive race of the year. I eventually shaved 0.2 seconds off my qualifying time which I thought to be absolutely best I could do here. Of course I knew that I was always so close that even small mistake could have made the table turn, but I was really happy to my own performance here, so it did not matter that much. And most likely I drove better as hunter than I would do as hunted.
I was enjoying every lap. Good event with better result than I expected.
EDIT: Dimitar, waiting to see if you can beat my Giannini 500TV Targa Florio record.
