Sometimes I wonder why I do this. Races like last night remind me.
I'd worked hard for this one. As soon as the Radical was chosen I started to work out how to drive it. I've always had trouble with it's habit of swapping directions mid corner and I'd not previously driven at Philip Island. I developed a setup which suits me and which I can drive all day at 9 tenths, figuring a clean race would bring a good result.
In Monday's practice session I concentrated on doing a full fuel run to figure out a strategy. I figured a 9.9 first stint coupled with 7 gallons at the stop would safely get me home with a fast pre pitstop period while the 50:50 stoppers were carrrying fuel. In the pre race practice I concentrated on pitstops. The only thing I hadn't got round to was a low fuel run and that nearly came back to bite me.
For qually I just took the fuel out which resulted in a car which oversteered massively in the fast stuff. It took a few laps to get a clear lap and I put in a fairly smooth lap as a banker. As I was coming to the line I thought "OK, that's a mid 27, I'll have to do better than that". Then the time came up = 1:26.6, a new PB! Fair enough, I can go quicker than that. I eased off for the next lap to get a space and made sure I got a real slingshot out of the final two left handers. Mark came out of the pits in front of me and I was caught in two minds which side of him to go into the hairpin. I chose left but missed my braking point. I braked harder than usual and got round the corner sweet as a nut so filed away that new braking point for later. 1:26.3, half a second faster than my pre session PB. 8th. Good start.
I apparently lost a place off the start though I'm not entirely sure how. It didn't matter as people soon started slipping wide and spinning up ahead and I started to pick up places. After 10 laps or so I was in fifth and had a little pack of cars swapping around behind me but other than the odd challenge at one of the hairpins if I had a bad lap I was comfortable, especially as I felt I was probably carrying more fuel.
Then the gearbox bit me. Ross was the current leader of the chasing gaggle and he'd got close enough into the final hairpin to be big in my mirrors, though there was no room to get by. The distraction must have been enough for me to make a mistake and miss first gear. I finally found it as I was 75% round the corner, put the power down and pirouetted to the inside. I found reverse, positioned myself to rejoin and waited for the pack to pass. It could have been worse but suddenly I was reliant on them having less fuel than me.
I was behind
Pops Pete and was catching him but not by anything significant. After a while people started to pit and my position improved. Soon I was back to 5th.
Coming down the straight I saw Paul and Dave coming out of the pits. They came out just in front of me and I slotted in behind Dave. By this time I was up to third, it occurred to me later than without my spin I'd have been in the lead but in the event third was perfect. Dave's pace helped me put together a string of low 27s and 26s just when I needed them. At the 2 lap warning I did one more lap and came in. The pitstop practice paid off and a perfect stop ensued but I came out inches behind Matthew into 6th. Luckily he stopped at the end of that lap, it hadn't occurred to me that he'd not stopped which put me back to fifth.
The rest of the race was spent concentrating to keep the competition behind me and trying not to feel smug. Initially that was Ross who was 2-3 seconds back. He started to catch me a little but I managed to maintain a safe gap until Martin got past him. I wasn't sure of Martin's pace and he seemed to be catching me so I upped my pace to match. I had to negotiate a couple of lapped cars spinning in front which got the gap to 1.8 seconds which I considered too close for comfort so started using my new deep braking point into the hairpin and concentrating on getting the power down earlier at the key points. With a lap to go I'd pulled it out to 3 seconds so eased off slightly to avoid stupid mistakes and brought it home in fifth.
Looking at the results I'd not have caught Darren even without the spin. If I'd not spun and not changed tyres then I might have been pretty close to him but realistically I think that was as good as I could have done.
I do love it when a plan comes together.
Sebring I've not done so much work at. Better get down to it.
Paul
