Well, now... That was a thrill a minute, wasn't it?
Grats to our podium finishers! Well done, lads.
The less said about the 'pace lap', the better. Sigh...
As noted above, another ripper of a race in the 'Phil & Doni Show'. In S38 and most likely in S37, too, Phil and I crossed swords frequently with terrific battles no matter what the mod. It was enormous fun. This season, I don't think that we've been near each other enough with cars of parity to renew the friendly feud. Til yesterday. I held the upper hand in the early laps til gassing it a little too much coming off Oak Tree on Lap05 and took a brief ride through the infield grass. By the time I got it back on the road, Phil was streaking away. By half distance, things were looking pretty solid for Phil with a handy 6-7 second lead over my Lola. Then, on Lap13, a curious development. On the main straight, I could have sworn I saw an object in the far distance recovering from the outfield grass. Coming up to complete the lap, I came across a car on the grass on my left in the Hog Pen. This was Phil off the road and I was by cleanly for the position. Great for me but in looking at the replay cap, I can only think that PT suffered some kind of controller failure. He was the car off the road on the straight and again in the Hog Pen. Phil... What on Earth happened there?
Now up to P6, I had Phil gather things up and give hard chase. On Lap16, PT was really close coming off Oak Tree and he used the extra 20bhp under the hood of the knee-high Shadow to gun me down on the straight. Not yet ready to concede, I gave chase til snatching a brake going into the Roller Coaster on Lap19 and falling off the road. I lost a few seconds in gathering it up and am thankful that it didn't cost me more than it did. Phil was now a good 5s clear and home free. I started to pull back some time on Phil over the next few laps and was within striking distance when on Lap24 with just two to run, Phil got wide in T1 and onto the grass verge. He narrowly missed the polos there and in recovering, got a bit sideways. This gave me my golden opportunity to pounce and I slid by on his right approaching NASCAR Bend. Holding my breath over those last two laps, I concentrated on hitting my marks and making no mistakes. Got 'er home with only 3/4s to spare. PHEW!
Epic stuff indeed, Phil!
