Congratulations Dan, was a well fought and enjoyable championship.
Not to knock your achievement, but I still feel cheated and annoyed about last night, even more so after a crappy nights sleep immensely wound up about it.
You have had the lead and a very good chance of stroking it home for the championship but to be knocked off, then spoil someone else's race, then have another lesser chance of taking the win and spin out taking evasive action, that was not how I wanted the showdown to go. So I miss out again, after last season when a power cut while leading at Goodwood denied me the championship.
Did my usual only qualifying a fraction quicker than my race pace trick (how Dan and some other go soooo quick in qually I don't know
) so started 5th. Perfect start launched straight past Dan and Madd and had to lift to avoid the McLarens, but they ran a little wide at T1 and I could just dive down the inside and carry a massive lead onto the straight. Knew that I basically had it in the bag at that point, with Dan in 4th or so, he'd be a bit quicker in the middle of the race and then I'd be quicker at the end, that's the usual pattern I've observed with me using the tyres less. With the Mclarens between I was confident of hanging on.
Could see Geoffers closing but still way too far back so instead of staring at my mirrors I concentrated on perfect braking, nailing the hairpin apex and a good exit, reached the apex and *bang* was knocked off to the outside of the track.
Not what I expected when I'm racing for the championship, a divebombing. I know it was unintentional, you're a clean fair racer, but I simply couldn't believe it. Fell to 4th.
Then immediately I had the slowing Matt Rowe through the esses, at that point with Dan taking advantage of the hairpin incident to grab the lead and me needing to finish one place ahead of him, I just had to go for it, if I'd braked I'd have been swamped down the s/f straight by several cars. So I tried to duck down the inside line but yes, I touched you Matt, for that I'm very sorry, any other race I would have stopped and waited.
Lost my composure then and thought about jacking it in, so lost any rhythm then I was caught up in close fighting with Madd, which was excellent stuff, but not what I needed to close the gap up to Dan, or at least try to hold it stable. Finally pulled a gap then I saw Madd make a mistake and started reeling in Geoffers, lost some time behind him having to brake at points where the McLaren was slow while the 906 would be full throttle, he made a mistake and I found I had a 14 second gap to Dan.
Began to eat away at that and then Dan had his mistake and I was 3.7s behind, couldn't believe I had another opportunity with 5 or 6 laps left, and at that point I'm certain I was quicker, I was running my quickest portion of the race, found where I could get on the gas earlier etc. Think I got to within 2s then came round the hairpin and Oily was going slowly just where I was headed (not your fault though) so to try and maintain momentum I kept on the gas and tried to steer inside him, was too much input for the car to take and it pirouetted off onto the inside bank where I couldn't get the thing moving. My only mistake of the whole flipping race (apart from tagging Matt Rowe).
Sorry for the long report, had a lot to get off my chest.
So ends another great season, many thanks to Ian and Bob for putting it all together
(even if I'm left immensely frustrated by the ending!).
