Hi all,
Very happy with my first UKGPL win! Also grats to Al who soldiered on with remarkable pace in the mediocre Cooper, and John for 3rd place!
I decided to explore the limits a tiny bit on the outlap of qualifying, to warm me up a little bit. I then went on with a flawless albeit slightly conservative lap, which about equalled my PB
. The next lap I went all in but spun it very early in the lap. There were still ten minutes left so I decided to give one of Huttu's Long GP setups a try, with increased ride height, lower wheel rates and more open diff. It felt very solid and although I knew I would probably be faster with my Huttu quali setup, I also knew this would be a matter of surviving rather than pure speed.
The start went well, saw a little warping in my mirrors but nothing jawdropping. I couldn't see it very well in my mirrors but I heard the engine sound of others further away so I just apexed T1 and started to pull away. At Karusel in lap 2 I heared Hristo for the first time and I was getting a bit nervous. I had high hopes built up quietley as Hristo started back in the pack, but he had caught up real fast! I decided to put my foot down a little bit more without taking many more risks, and did two 8:11's, 5 seconds faster than previous laps. It was at this point that Hristo crashed at the 'votfoolplanttreedere' corner, and when my pitboard (no Pribluda here) still showed Hristo even though he had already retired, I knew I had to be ahead by quite a margin, so I decided to take it easy. This presented another challenge as concentration lapsed a coupla times, leading to a half-spin at Adenauer Forst without time loss, and a HUGE scare at Tiergarten, where I almost missed the kink at high speed. But in the last lap I found my groove and settled down to score the win!
About mid-race I was left wondering if I was the only driver left on the server, after seeing a lot of disco's on the screen and my pitboard showed info which was two laps old (Hristo had just crashed). Still, I was surprised only me and Al saw the checkered flag in the end, with John limping home on three wheels one lap back. There was an easy podium up for grabs if someone had taken it easy. Competitive people those UKGPL'ers
.
Tom.
