Practice:
Saturday's session was great; I got a good couple of medium length stints in before taking the fuel out to attempt a go at David Ward's benchmark, which proved somewhat difficult. I adapted the setup a bit, mainly the rake and front toe in trying to dial out the initial turn-in understeer into fast corners and ended up blasting my pb by six tenths straight away, ending up at 59.2 - although I reckon a 58.9 was on the cards if I could dig deep enough. No way I was getting near David, Darren, and Paul though.
Sunday's session was pretty straightforward; with more Mustangs driving around it was a good experience gathering session ahead of the race. The setup was very comfortable indeed across a range of fuel loads so I was quietly confident heading into qualy and the race.
Qualification:
The first half of the session ended up being a bit of a washout; either I'd nail the throttle just a touch too early, or I'd get compromised by traffic. I had a decent banker lap in the bag at one point, until near the end of the lap I was compromised by catching a Mustang in a particularly bad place, so I abandoned the run and tried again from the pitlane hoping for a bit of space. Thankfully that space materialised, and I pumped in a 59.5 followed by a 59.3 to claim 6th place. I had another two tenths on the following lap but gave it a smidge too much welly out of a slow corner, so I abandoned the lap a minute or so before the chequered flag came out.
Race:
I popped out to point percy at the porcelain so to speak quickly, but came back with not a huge amount of time left to grid. I clicked the tempting green button as I sat down and started psyching myself up a bit waiting to set off before realising that I hadn't changed setup since qualifying - I only had 10l of fuel in the car! I escaped out hurriedly, chucked the race setup on it, and lined up in the pitlane waiting for the back of the field to go past. Not the end of the world, I thought, until I noticed the fuel level - still 10l! Bugger! I would've been better off starting on the grid after all!
I trundled out of the pitlane at the back of the Mustang field and promptly overtook the whole lot pretty much in one straight, which was pretty cool I have to admit. I had figured out which lap I'd have to get to as a minimum in order to tank the car to the end earlier on, which happened to be the end of lap 4, and thankfully that was precisely how far my 10l would get me - so I dived in the pits, got a set of fresh boots, tanked the car, and set off in tyre conservation mode.
The car felt great with 91l of fuel in, and so long as I didn't take too much out of the fronts at the Carousel and the Kink, and didn't lock up, I felt I could see them through to a decent state come the end of the race 41 laps later. I got my head down and got some reasonably consistent laps in for the first half of the race; not fantastic pace wise but stable, and that's all I'd need to get myself back up the field come the pitstop phase later on.
The Mustangs presented me with a few hairy moments - I recall two trying to pass each other on the front straight, taking up all of the room. I thought about diving past on the right but that was closed off as I approached, so I braked, waited behind for a bit, thought 'sod this' and sent the car straight through the middle. A bit like Spa 2000 really, backwards
Towards the end of the race the tyres were still holding up nicely, but as the lap counter hit the mid 30s the rear juuuuuuust started to become a little skittish. That didn't stop me from setting my fastest lap in this time, but it was a little unnerving nonetheless. A few cars had come out of the pits immediately behind me and then dropped back, so I knew that I had enough pace to hold people off despite having tyres some 20-25 laps older.
James caught me up gradually near the end of the race, and I knew it would be a big ask to keep him behind with some 11-12 laps to go, but I managed to peg the gap to around 2 seconds for a while, until Robert Burton slowed us both up weaving about after the kink. This provided a net gain to James, putting him right under my rear wing - he got a much better exit out of the last corner and started pulling alongside as we went up the hill. I gradually moved right to defend my position and compromise his entry into turn 1, squeezing him against the pitwall until I thought I'd reached a sensible gap size ("DP + A little bit"), at which point I reverted to a straight line. We continued until just after the start finish line until James veered slightly left, clipping my right rear wheel, sending me nose-first into the concrete.
I reset and followed Ian around, a lap down, until the end just in case any other +1L people ran into fuel trouble etc, eventually finishing P10.
It was a bit of a shame after working my way up to P6 after my horror start, but I'm not actually particularly downbeat about it, because
a) I was pretty pleased with my own pace, consistency, and tyre management throughout the race; so it wasn't a disappointing
performance at all.
b) I know James to be a quality driver and I can't believe for one second that there was any malice involved whatsoever.
c) I learnt a great deal about getting the most out of the car on the absolute limit from the Saturday session when we ended up having a 6-man qualy lap battle. I'd driven it in races before of course, mostly at Homestead B, but I was really digging deep there and I got a lot out of being pushed that hard.
Props to the Mustang field, a great deal of common sense was being used out there and while the DP closing speeds are really rather scary at times I think everyone handled it pretty well. Props of course also to David and Simon respectively for their wins.
Looking forward to VIR already (connection permitting of course!)
