Oh balls, did the race really finish 20 mins early? I had to bale with about 20mins or so left on the clock :'( I was gutted to have leave but got my times all wrong and should have left at 10pm. I stuck with it until 10.10 then reluctantly pulled off into the pits when it looked like i could have had some fun fending Dave off.
To now hear it finished early is pretty mortifying
Damn.
I thoroughly enjoyed the race, i absolutely love Brands and wish we could make it one of the rounds of our normal season as its such a cracking track layout.
The damp slippy conditions made my car a real handful early in qually and race. I just couldnt get some clean laps together after not being near GTR for a few days and when i was on a flyer i would either drop a wheel off the track or catch some traffic at a bad point.
Early race was pretty tricky with my lower rear wing and med tyres, the car was quite an oversteering handful but still managed to fight my way upto 2nd GTC for a good spell. The odd error allowed Jan Dujis through in front and i then chased him hard for most of an hour of the race, always just a few secs behind. Everytime i closed up, i then ran wide in the damp and frustratingly dropped back a few more seconds.
Simon caught me back up after his stop but my rears were on 23 wear by that point!
so didnt try to fend him off.
The pitstop was a real comedy of errors with my be-fuddled brain pressing the wrong buttons several times and also getting told off by my crew chief to turn the sodding engine off twice during re-fuelling
I came out a whopping 17 seconds behind Jan, which was pretty frustrating.
Now i was on fresh rubber i could really push again and my laptimes went down to the 28's with a full tank and meds and i started to take some time out of Jan but a few laps later i got badly blocked by a car i was lapping who refused to let me by for the entire sectors 2 and 3 of a lap despite me obviously way quicker everywhere and we then had contact out of clearways
Totally un-necessary and bad sporting really.
This allowed Mark Mclean to catch me right up and we then had a cracking fight for about 30 minutes with him chasing me really hard but i was always able to pull away from him enough to keep a gap.
But with half hour remaining and whilst a GT1 was lapping me heading upto paddock, Jeffs discoed car appeared stranded mid apex
and the pair of us did some erratic braking and lost a load of time. Mark took his opportunity and got past, we had some good close side by side action for half a lap and i got back in front, only for Mark to retake the lead at druids when i late braked myself and took a wide line on the marbles. I chased him too hard on the next lap, got one rear onto the outside kerb at the dingle-dell hilltop right hander and the car span me a very quick 360 into the gravel. I was stranded right in the middle and by the time i rejoined DG closed upto a about 3 seconds behind.
I was gutted, i had been in a podium position the entire race for 2hrs and 10mins and now it just wasnt right for me to stay on another 20 minutes (or so i thought) to bring it home 4th or whatever. As i mentioned i was already 10mins over when i was supposed to be elsewhere and the racer in me would have faced the consequences for a podium slot but i decided to call it a night and save myself some real world grief, so apologies for having to leave early.
Cracking event, great track and brilliant fights with Jan and Mark Mclean in particular. Nice one guys
Well done to all that finished and especially the podium finishers.
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