Qualifying went well, but I dropped the revs too much on the start and went into the no torque zone of the McLaren's engine which instantly lost me 3 positions and almost another one around T1, but the driver behind (not sure who) didn't take any risks and let me live.
Probably me. This white thing was dog slow just in front of me but I wasn't sure who was to my left or when it might suddenly come back to life. I have spent so much time on the grass on the outside of T1 that I was just didn't want to know. Besides which, I had elected to drive the Ferrari, which appeared to be on castors.
That was as far as my progress went at the time, because the calamity ahead in the shape of evil's Honda was like an impenetrable wall - terrible in the corners, braking when it shouldn't be and going all over the track from left to right (and right to left!)
I thought that was Evil's normal style.
The penultimate lap was very fast and I'm very happy with it - 26.4.
Great lap H.
At 8:00 I decided that, since I will never get the hang of Zandvoort's wiggly bits, I might as well go for a car that would claw back as much time as possible on the straight. Hence the Ferrari. I spent the next hour trying to tame the Steve Cloyd Ferrari and eventually reached a stage where I could lap in the 1:29s. I was slower than I was in the BT19 but that beast, I thought, would just leave me stuck behind someone for the duration of the race because it is not that quick in a straight line.
Whilst H sorted himself out in front of me I think that Bernie may have been sniffing about behind me but thankfully the Ferrari's oumph out of the hairpin put a bit of daylight between us.
The guy who gave up third spot to Hristo got himself crossthreaded near the end of the same lap and allowed me to move into 4th spot, where I stayed for the duration. With H and Evil chewing lumps out of each other in front I was able to close on them but I think that I made a mistake somewhere and they escaped before I could show them what use a Ferrari with a high top gear could make of the straight.
Evil fell back towards me after his excursion at T1 and we then had a long chase, punctuated by backmarkers; some of whom helped me and some who fell just right for him.
One point about being lapped, once you have the overtaking driver alongside, why not lift a little? Then you don't both have to compromise great shedloads of time at the next corner.
Anyway I managed to close to within 2 seconds of Evil and that was almost fatal. I changed down too quickly going into T1 and lost the back end. I had to allow the recently lapped Honda back through before I could set off after Evil once more, who was now some 11sec up the road. And that about how it finished.
Grats podium.
PS I ran out of fuel as I crossed the line and there is a Numptygraph here
http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showthread.php?p=3911297#post3911297