Much fun in yesterday's race. Without much practice and little knowledge of the track, I had no expectation to battle for position in this one. Qualy proved this with a 6th place that still felt good as it could have been worse.
The start wasn't good and to avoid contact with the cars ahead on the right side of the track, I had to lift a couple of times at crucial moments that lost me momentum and the chances to fight for a podium in the early stages of the races if, and this was a big if, I managed to raise my level with the adrenaline of the direct fighting (that always help).
Fabri's late decision to change the gear ratio had a big effect on his pace (it was a brave decision, eventually wrong) and we lost contact with Maxime in front. I managed to overtake Fabri soon and went after Kimi for a P5 battle. Before that, I have to apologise to Mark J for a light touch we had on the straight (entirely my fault) that, thank goodness, didn't impact much our races.
The battle with Kimi was great. I managed to use the apparent performance enhancement effect of running behind another car and overtook him after a few laps of intense racing. He kept coming back, and so did Mark J, for a few laps, but I was very lucky with the unfortunate events affecting others (amongst them my teammate Maxime - sorry about that - ). The first incident involving Geoff and Maxime didn't have a negative effect on my at all. On the contrary, it helped to increase the distance with Kimi and Mark enough to reduce the danger from them. Later on, I had a close one after Syd's crashed in the downhill but it seemed to have been much worst for Kimi behind so it did benefit me again.
the aftermath of Geoff crash meant I was battling for P3 and, with Geoff's pace heavily affected, I could overtake him and keep good chances for a podium... Then Lorenzo pitted... I was by then a bit on my slowed down mode but give it a go to see if I could keep the unexpected P2 I had found myself in. Lorenzo's pace was too much though and, eventually, I finished in P3 (much better than what I would have expected at the beginning of the day...). The battle with Lorenzo was interesting. Having caught up from the 15 secs gap after his pitting, his pace was way much faster than mine so I wasn't planning to battle for position and left him the right part of the track for overtaking on the straight when he caught me 3 laps before the end of the race. Funny enough, that strategy and me keeping the pace made it more difficult for Lorenzo to overtake. I surprisingly kept the position for two more laps... This didn't work in the last lap though. Lorenzo went for it with more determination and just managed to get the car in front of mine at the critical part of the corner. Not sure what would have happened if I had fought more aggressively for position but it felt ridiculous to do so with such a difference of pace in the race. His pace was definitively a P2 pace and P3 was already too good for what I have managed to put together on the day.
All in all, a much better result than expected and a very fun race.
Congrats to Tim and Lorenzo for their podiums and well done to everyone for navigating through such a great but difficult track.
Video of the race as usual:
https://youtu.be/uTkkg-PC5_0Enjoy!
Jos
